Crystal Lies - Melody Carlson [11]
“Jacob.” I looked into his eyes. “What exactly are you saying? Is this some kind of threat? Are you going to hurt us?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Not me, Mom. It’s Dad. Watch out.”
I frowned. “He’s just upset, Jacob. He’ll be fine.”
He just shrugged. “Dad hates me, you know.”
“He doesn’t hate you, honey. He’s frustrated by all this.”
“No, Mom, he hates me. Can’t you see I’m an embarrassment to him? Just like Grandma was. I gotta go.” He hugged me so tight that it reminded me of his first day of school when I thought he’d never let go.
“Where will you stay?” I asked.
“I’ll be okay, Mom. I’ll call you once I get settled.” And he got in his car and drove away.
As I followed the faded blue blur of the Subaru down our street and disappearing over the crest of the hill, I thought about what Jacob had said—“just like Grandma…”
Although she’d been gone a few years, I knew he meant Jeannette, Geoffrey’s mother. She’d had what Geoffrey had loosely termed “mental problems.” But never properly diagnosed, the poor woman had been shifted from one treatment center to the next until she’d finally ended up in a nursing home where she was sedated around the clock in the years before her death. Jeannette had never taken the role of a real mother in Geoffrey’s life. It was her parents, the Madisons, who had raised Geoffrey after his father, whom they claimed was an alcoholic, had abandoned his crazy wife and infant son. Naturally, Geoffrey had nothing but praise for his maternal grandparents. Wealthy and educated, they’d made certain that Geoffrey had only the best of the best. Meanwhile, his poor mother was either locked up in her bedroom or in whatever institution they felt was most suitable at the time.
We’d only spoken of Jeannette a few times. But both of our children knew that their grandmother had never been “well.” I think Sarah had been the first to mention the possible connection between her brother and grandmother.
She’d come home from college during last Christmas break. And, as usual, Jacob and Geoffrey had gotten into it when Jacob announced he was going to go “hang with friends” one evening.
“Maybe Jacob’s like Dad’s mom,” she had teased as Jacob was pulling on his coat and Geoffrey was fuming. “What was wrong with her anyway, Dad?”
“She was unbalanced,” Geoffrey had stated as if that explained everything.
“Yeah, maybe I am like her,” Jacob had said flippantly. “Maybe I’m crazy too.” Then he had stomped out the door.
But Sarah’s less-than-thoughtful comment had started me thinking, and after the holidays, I questioned Geoffrey a bit more about his mother. Naturally, he was reluctant to talk.
“I don’t know what was wrong with her,” he finally said in irritation. “She was moody, okay? And she did bizarre things. And she’d take off in the middle of the night without telling anyone.”
“But she was never diagnosed?”
“No. My grandmother always just said she was eccentric.” “Another word for crazy?”
“Maybe. I don’t really know, Glennis. I was just a kid. And then she was institutionalized. That’s all I remember. End of story.”
Well, I wished it was the end of the story, but unfortunately the story just kept on going. And Jacob seemed destined to become the next chapter.
It felt as if a giant pair of hands reached down and tore my life in half on the day that Jacob left home. It’s not that I blame God exactly. Maybe it was my own undoing or just something inevitable. And I’m sure I was somewhat sleep deprived at the time—a little fuzzy from my previous evening of extracting bail money from the ATM and then waiting for Jacob to be released “into my custody” in the wee hours of the morning—but as I walked through my large, quiet home the following day, I began to wonder what my life was all about. I began to doubt everything about myself and to question everything about life in general. Even God.
In something of a daze, I went from perfect room to perfect room as if searching for clues. Something that would put it all back into perspective and cause my life to make sense again. I looked at the selection