The Space In Between

Chapter Eight

THEY WERE PLAYING reruns of our reality show that night. I couldn’t help but watch. How did my life get like this? Shutting off the television, I sat in the dark hotel room and stared at my hand that had driven through a portrait a few months ago. The f*cked up truth was I appeared a lot more like my father than I ever wanted to. That thought was messing with my brain. Reaching into my wallet, I pulled out my wedding band and ran it through my fingers. I kept thinking about what Jesus had told me in the clinic about Iris. “What your wife did had nothing to do with you.” But was that true?
I wondered if I had been there for Iris after the two miscarriages, instead of at the bar drinking, how different things might have been.
My mom was an artist. Growing up in a house with an artist and an alcoholic, was quite interesting. I remember one night my father wanted her to stop painting her ‘f*cking pieces of shit’ and cook him dinner. It was three in the morning, which was when mom said she found her inspiration. Looking back, I realized she was really up at three a.m. to make sure the a*shole came home from the bars and didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere. I’d sat and watched him yell at her, spit at her, and belittle her from the top of the stairs.
“You stupid bitch. Stop wasting our money on this garbage.” He yanked her from the canvas and started saying things that could f*ck up anyone’s mind. He threw her painting and raised his hand as if he were going to slap her across the face.
My stomach twisted as I watched my mom cry and beg him to stop drinking. When I saw that hand of his hovering over her, I leaped up and screamed, shoving him away from her. The taste of the blood dripping from my upper lip was a surprise to me when he shoved me across the living room floor. The way my father’s eyes shifted to a person I’d never known terrified the living hell out of me. “Stop it!” I heard Mom cry as she raced over to me and stroked my hair. “Are you all right, Cooper?” Tears were streaming down my face and I shook my head. That night and many other drunken nights, were forever captured in my brain. A memory photograph book I wished would vanish.
That was the first summer I went to stay in Wisconsin. My mom had packed me up and sent me on an airplane by myself. Ever since she’d met my a*shole of a dad her connections to her family faded. He moved her away from everything she knew and kept her to himself in his home state of South Carolina. Mom didn’t think much of it—she was in love. But on the day she called my uncle for help, he was more than willing to allow me to spend the summers at their home. Before she sent me off the first year, she handed me a Polaroid camera—that camera changed my life.
My father was the alcoholic, yet it appeared my mother was the one with the illness. Dad was her sculpture and she was trying to shape him into something he wasn’t. I wondered, if she would have gotten on the plane with me, how different things might have been.
I slid the wedding band back into my wallet; I wasn’t ready to part with it yet. Shit. I was going to let her be the first to text, but sitting in the dark hotel room with nothing left but memories was too much. I was in need of some forgetting.
F*ckin’ A.
Soda pop.