It was only a matter of time before Perry would come banging on his door like an enraged Incredible Hulk. Aiden stood in the kitchen at 2:00 AM, wearing only a pair of loose jogging pants, guzzling down milk out of the carton. He’d spoken to his baby for about twenty minutes, giving her the rundown of his extremely fucked up day. She’d offered to come over immediately, even though it was her first week of work and she needed her rest while getting acclimated.
He declined, wanting her to have a productive and good time meeting her new coworkers and getting into the groove of things in her new position as a Speech Pathologist. Like clockwork, a series of rapid fire thuds came hard and heavy at his door. The doorbell rang frantically as if some bird was using its beak to peck it to death, then more thuds followed.
“You haven’t been answering your phone. Open the damn door!” Perry yelled. Aiden took his time placing the carton of milk back in the refrigerator. When he swung it open, Perry stood there with sweat all over his brow, nostrils flared like bat wings, and his right hand balled in a tight fist.
“You want to fight me?” Aiden sneered. “I have enough anger right now to tear you from limb to limb so I think you better pull yourself the fuck together before you come in here.”
Perry’s lips moved to say something slick, but he stopped short and unfurled his brow. He stormed into the condo, knocking Aiden in the shoulder as he did. Locking the door behind him, Aiden dragged himself back to the kitchen on the hunt for the leftover quiche Addison had left at his place. It was her slice, but he sure as hell hoped she didn’t mind.
“Aiden, I’m not asking you. I’m telling you that we gotta get Mom outta jail,” the man barked as he plopped down at the kitchen table. Aiden grabbed the quiche that was enclosed in aluminum foil out of the refrigerator. As he slowly unwrapped it, he glanced into his brother’s eyes.
“Perry, we won’t be helping her by doing this. Do you know that Ms. Appleton had to get twenty-three stitches tonight? Twenty-three fuckin’ stitches in her head.” He tore at the foil and was happy to see it wasn’t some old thing, rotten and moldy, that he’d forgotten about. It was the motherload, the cheesy quiche with the light, flaky crust. He tossed it onto a paper plate and plopped it in the microwave.
“Mom didn’t mean it. She was drunk. She needs help, man, not to be in jail!”
“That’s the whole damn point! She’s always drunk. This has to stop, Perry. She needs to sober up and start to take her life seriously. I’m not her father, and neither are you. When are we going to let her grow up? She will never hit rock bottom if we keep saving her. We have to stop helping her!” Perry looked away as if he didn’t want to hear anything else he had to say. “She pitched a fit because I stopped paying her phone bill the other day. I quit buying her cigarettes, too. I stopped talking to her when she’s drunk; I hang up now. This last stunt was nothing but a way to get my ass over there and do what I always do. Save the day, pour some water on the flames that she started. I’m not a fireman! It’s time she feels the heat. Queen of manipulation. I’m done, man! Done!” He waved his arms like a referee calling, ‘Out.’
“I will keep saying this until I’m blue in the face, Aiden. She can’t stay in jail. She’s not strong enough and what type of asshole are you to leave your own mother in jail?!”
“The type of asshole who has given away his whole damn life to a woman who can’t even call me to say hello with no strings attached! The type of asshole who has sat in my car on the verge of a nervous breakdown believing my mother was going to die after finding her unconscious in a pool of her own vomit! The type of asshole who tap-dances for the cops that visit her apartment for the umpteenth time in one month just so they won’t drag her ass off to jail! I’m done tap dancing. I’m done being her janitor and maid! I’m done bein’ Mom’s slave. We are slaves to her addiction, Perry!”
His brother looked away sharply, his lower lip trembling as his eyes glossed over.
“What? Are… YOU… gonna do when she’s dead, Perry?!” He stormed towards his brother and sat right beside him, his eyes tearing up with rage and a broken heart that he was certain would never fully heal. “We’re helping her kill herself! When the cops were taking her away, I looked at her, Perry. I looked at her real close, and for a split second, I could see the young lady who’d had two sons and took care of ’em, so long ago. No, she wasn’t perfect back then, either, but she didn’t drink all the time. She showed up to our school for events, and she helped us with our homework, broke up our fights, took us out to eat, ice-skating and to the movies. She talked to us; she was there for us. She laughed, she was fun, not much of a disciplinarian, but we knew she loved the hell outta us. But then, something happened.”
“It was like a light switch, wasn’t it?” Perry’s voice quivered.
“Not really. She was declining, but maybe you were too young to see it happening so to you it seemed to happen all at once. The beer or two a week turned to every day, then that turned to four to five a day, then more, then the pills. I don’t know what exactly she was running from but something was going on with Mom, something we didn’t understand or see coming. I know people don’t just wake up overnight and ask to become alcoholics or drug addicts, Perry… but something breaks inside of them.”
A tear streaked his brother’s cheek as he began to rock back and forth in the chair.
“Nobody at my job knows Mom drinks too much. It’s not so much because I’m ashamed of ’er, it’s because I’m trying to protect her. But hiding her secrets doesn’t help her… saving her doesn’t help her, either. We’ve already tried that countless times.” He snatched a napkin off the dispenser on the table and handed it to his brother. The poor man’s eyes dripped liquid pain onto peachy skin. The tears would eventually dry and be gone, but their source would linger forever.
“Well, what do we do?” Perry dabbed at his eyes and sniffed.
“We wait. And then we do the humane thing. We offer her a chance for a new life or allow nature to take its course. It’s ultimately her choice. If something happens to Mom because she continues on this path, neither you nor I are to blame. It took me a long time to realize that, but I do now.” He rested his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “She took our voice. She made it about her and we ended up wailing her song on her behalf, while our own lyrics got lost in her sauce. You’re here right now not because of what you need, but to feed the monster inside of her. We can’t afford to do that anymore. It’s gotta stop.”
“Monster… yeah, it’s a monster all right.” Perry swallowed. His lips parted and his face scrunched hard, as if he were fighting the next tear.