Crystal Lies - Melody Carlson [26]
I stammered for several moments but managed to explain that I’d left him.
“Because of Jacob?” he asked calmly.
“I don’t know…” I struggled for an answer. “Because of everything.”
“You’re going to let Jacob destroy everything? All that we’ve built over the years?”
“You can’t blame this all on Jacob,” I said. “Who then?”
“It’s all of us. It’s just not working.”
“You’re the one who left, Glennis.” His voice became edgy.
“I couldn’t stay any longer, Geoffrey…” I felt a tightening in my throat, hot tears burning behind my eyelids. I longed for him to say something comforting, something warm or loving—anything to make me want to come home again.
“Well, you’ve gone too far this time.” It felt as if he’d just shut the door.
“Too far?” My voice sounded small and distant to me, but it was all I could do to get the words out. “I’m warning you.”
“What are you warning me about?” I asked, trying hard to keep calm.
“If you do this to me—if you walk out like this, Glennis—well, just don’t plan on coming back.”
I stood up and walked around the small, cluttered apartment. It felt reflective of my life. But as I walked, I considered his warning.
“I mean it,” he continued, his voice growing sharper. “If you think you can pull something like this and then come waltzing back into my life, well, you just better think again.”
For a split second I wasn’t sure if he was talking to Jacob or to me. But I glanced around the messy living room and realized that Jacob wasn’t even here. “Have you seen Jacob?” I asked.
He fired off an expletive, which I took as a negative. “Are you listening to me, Glennis?”
“I’m listening,” I said, growing weary of him and the entire conversation.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Glennis?” His tone softened, and I could imagine him willing himself to be composed. “If you leave me like this, it’s over.”
“I’m so sorry, Geoffrey,” I told him in my most polite voice, the one I used for the opening day of kindergarten when I was meeting the anxious parents of my students for the first time. “But it was the only thing I knew how to do.”
“Is he living with you now?”
“Well, no.”
“So, Glennis. What’s the point of your leaving? You’re letting him rip our home apart, and it’s not even doing him a bit of good.”
“I’m just trying to make a place for him, something to come home to.” I felt the tears in my voice. “He won’t make it on the streets, Geoffrey. He’s too—”
“It’s his choice to live like that.”
“Not really. He’s in a trap, and he needs our—”
“He needs to make better choices,” snapped Geoffrey. “And for that matter, so do you!”
“I’m making the only choice I know how to make at the moment.” Tears were sliding down my cheeks now. “I’m just trying to help Jacob. I’m trying to just… just survive.”
“So that’s your answer?”
I grabbed a paper towel to wipe my face. “My answer?”
“Meaning, you are choosing not to return home?” I looked around the shabby apartment, piled high with a bunch of cheap, junky pieces of furniture. “I think I am home.”
“Fine!” And he hung up.
My heart felt as if someone had strapped a boulder to it and thrown it into the sea. I collapsed into my camp chair, leaned over with my head in my hands, and began to cry harder.
I think I sat there and cried for about three days. And then one morning Jacob called.
“Mom?”
“Jacob!”
“Where are you?” He sounded small and frightened, like when he’d been a little boy and awakened from a nightmare. “I keep calling the house, and you never answer. And the answering-machine message is different.”
“Different?”
“Yeah, its Dad saying to leave a message.”
“Oh.”
“Where are you, Mom?”
“I… uh…I moved out.”
“Moved? Like out of the house?”
“That’s right. I have an apartment now.”
“You mean you’ve left Dad?”
I could tell he was completely stunned, but I wasn’t sure how to soften the blow. “Well, sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of? You’ve either left him or you haven’t.”
“Well, I had to get away for a while. I needed some time and space to think about things.”
“Is this because of me?”
“Nooo…” I picked up a pillow from