A Broken Kind of Life (5 page)

“I’m sorry, sir, only children twelve and under can order from the kids’ menu,” she said in a mildly sardonic tone, and likely expected Aaron to pick something else. As the table went completely silent, like the calm before the storm, Aaron balled his hands into tight fists and rested his forehead on them. His breathing became even more labored, and before anyone, including the shocked server could speak, Anthony jumped in.

“Ma’am, I’m twelve. Please bring me chicken nuggets.” Aaron raised his head at his brother’s voice to see that the server was staring at him. Then, almost as an afterthought, Anthony added, “Could you bring my brother the spaghetti and meatballs?” That brought the server back to herself, and she looked away from the horror of Aaron’s ruined face.

“I… I can do that,” she said, still a little shaken by Aaron’s behavior. Falling back into her learned routine, she started to collect the menus. Everyone passed theirs to Allen, and he handed them to the server. One menu slipped from her grasp and hit Aaron’s shoulder before she could grab it. The apology died in her throat as Aaron jerked away from her so violently that he knocked over his water glass. He stood up with heart-clenching haste and backed away from the table.

“Aaron,” Allen said quickly, getting his brother’s attention. “Let’s go outside for a few minutes.” Aaron looked around wildly for a moment and saw his mother’s sorrow.
Please don’t send me away. Please. I can’t.
He faced his grandparents’ shock before he locked eyes with Allen. Nodding furiously, he let Allen lead him from the table and carefully around the inanely curious inhabitants of the other tables until they reached the lobby area. Not bothering to return the good-bye from the host, they practically ran for the door.

The door slammed open as Aaron rushed through it, nearly sprinting toward the edge of the parking lot. As he reached it, he stopped, putting his hands on his knees. Aaron’s face had a light sheen of sweat as he gulped down air. Allen could do nothing but stand next to him, looking helpless and being very careful not to touch his brother.

“Aaron, look at me, man…. Breathe….” Allen began to take slow deep breaths. “It’s okay, Aaron, just breathe.” His deep breathing was exaggerated, trying to get his brother to match his pace.

An older couple came out of the restaurant, watching them warily as they shuffled past the boys on the way to their car. The man, who must have been in his seventies, used his cane heavily as his wife held his other arm. Glancing back at Aaron again as she helped her husband into their sea-foam-colored sedan, the woman turned her heavily lined face to Allen and furrowed her brow. When Allen didn’t say anything, she walked slowly around the car and got behind the wheel. As she pulled out of the space, she narrowly missed the minivan parked in the row behind her. The two boys watched as they rolled slowly, merging into traffic as they left the lot.

Finally, Allen looked back at Aaron, who was breathing deeply and slowly with his eyes on his brother. It helped him to have something to focus on, something to keep him anchored in the present when his mind wanted to travel back to that dark place and keep him there until he screamed.

“Thank you,” Aaron whispered and closed his eyes against the dying afternoon light as the darkness in his mind started to recede and his lungs slowly started to work again. Each breath came easier than the last, though his face and neck still felt hot and tight. The long-sleeved polo clung to his back in the heat and tension of the near breakdown. Aaron continued to take slow deep breaths for a few more minutes until he felt calmer. Opening his eyes, he looked at Allen and saw his own sadness reflected in his brother’s face.

“Aaron, you’re my brother and I love you. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, man.” Allen moved to put a hand on his brother’s shoulder but then remembered himself.

“Love you too, kid, even though it’s me who is supposed to be looking out for you,” Aaron said with real remorse. It
was
his job to look out for his brothers, not the other way around. It killed him that they had to treat him like some kind of invalid because he couldn’t function. One menu hitting his shoulder and he lost control of everything. He couldn’t live like that. He just… he couldn’t. Something had to change. He just didn’t know what he could do to make it happen.

“You always watched out for me and Anthony,” Allen said, looking his brother in the eye. “We can do the watching for a while.”

Aaron closed his eyes again briefly. Then after a moment, he nodded.

“Are you okay to go back inside? I’m sure Mom is wondering where we are,” Allen asked and then glanced around, probably to see if their mother had followed them outside.

Aaron let his brother lead him back to the table like a naughty child. When Aaron sat down in his place, he found the mess from his spill was gone, and he had a fresh Coke. The food had been brought out while they were outside, so he grabbed his napkin and rested it in his lap as Allen sat down beside him. If he could just get through eating without any more problems, he might be able to salvage the rest of the evening for his mother. By the look on his father’s face, that cause was lost.

“Thanks, Anthony,” Aaron said quietly as he picked up his first piece of chicken. Miraculously, he found he had an appetite. The last thing he wanted right then was to cause his mother more worry, so he ate as Anthony smiled back at him through a mouth full of spaghetti.

The rest of the meal crawled along, subdued but uneventful. Aaron noticed that when the server returned to the table, she made sure to do so near their grandparents, as far as she could from him. The tightness in his chest dissolved after nearly strangling him all night, and he watched the conversation with a small measure of interest. His mother smiled at him when she noticed that Aaron had cleaned his plate for the first time in six months.

“A
ARON
,
your father and I have been talking,” Michelle said quietly as she and Aaron sat alone at the kitchen table a few days later. Aaron’s head jerked up, and he stared at her, his heart thundering in his chest. They’d finally come to it. His mother was sick of taking care of him, and they were going to send him away. He couldn’t take that. He couldn’t. He’d die there. His mother must have seen something in his face, because she reached for one of his hands, which he jerked under the table, banging his fingers on the edge in his haste to get away from her. The kitchen closed in around him as he rocked almost imperceptibly in his chair.

“Please, honey, it’s okay. We just think maybe you should start thinking about college.” She pulled her hand back slowly, the sting of rejection still in her eyes as she watched him.

College?
The antianxiety meds were making him feel a little slow.
Wait, if they wanted him to start thinking about college, maybe they were giving him another chance.
Aaron studied his mother and saw no real signs of deception. She didn’t avoid his eyes. She wasn’t wringing her hands. She had none of the outward indicators he’d practiced watching for during debate.

“Okay,” he replied, without even a moment’s hesitation. If his parents were giving him another chance to stay in their lives, he’d grab on to it with both hands. If college would make them happy, he’d at least give it a shot rather than ending up in a completely different kind of institution.

“Okay? Just like that?” she asked, and her tone turned a bit wary, like she was waiting for the catch, the punch line of his joke. Her face softened when he nodded.

“I could try something like that University of Phoenix and just take online classes.”

“I’m not sure that’s something you want to do. Degrees like that are pointless because employers discount them. Maybe you could look into that extension of ITM over in Donner,” she countered, and Aaron could hear the determination in her voice.

“Any degree is going to be pointless, Mom.” The fight had gone out of his voice but so had any hope. Aaron wanted to argue, wanted to remind her about the panic attacks he got just by leaving the house. He wanted to question her about how he was supposed to function in a classroom full of people or hold down any kind of job. He wanted to explain to her how useless he was as a person, but the words died in his throat. None of his well-reasoned arguments would be anything new to her. She knew them all, and she could use every one of them against him as a reason to send him away. So instead, he said nothing. He’d figure out how to survive in a classroom with a hundred other people, staring at him, judging him, making him feel worthless.

With one sharp nod, he accepted his fate, rose, and trudged up the familiar path to his room. Nothing would be gained by putting off the inevitable. Rather than simply lying on the bed listening to music like he did most days, Aaron grabbed his neglected laptop from the desk and balanced it on his lap as he sat back against the headboard. The website for ITM, Institute for Technology and Manufacturing, had a wealth of information in a clean, well-managed, and organized page. It was the only type of school in the area that would be considered a trade school or junior college. Two years ago, before his life ended, Aaron was looking at schools like Stanford or UCLA, but those dreams were gone.

Clicking on
Programs
, he looked through the offerings to see what his options were. Information Technology had the largest list, with degrees in networking, programming, security, forensics, and a host of other geeky proclivities. Also listed were degrees in business, electronics technology, drafting and design, criminal justice, and apparently to round things out, health services. Out of habit, Aaron read through the criminal justice list with a pang of regret. In high school, he’d wanted to be a lawyer like his father. Working toward that career, he’d gotten involved in political campaigns, joined debate, and sometimes helped his father do research for a case. But that wasn’t his life anymore. No way would he be able to stand in front of a courtroom and be confident or articulate like his father. At this point, he needed to work with what he had left.

Starting with Information Technology, he scanned the different opportunities, searching for one that would allow him the comfort of isolation. Networking, mobile communications, project management, they all sounded like group-type settings. Instead, he moved down to the Associate Degree programs. Maybe he should start smaller. More than one shrink had used the phrase “baby steps” with him. He hated that term. They had no concept of what it meant to increment your life by inches.

He clicked on the software development associate degree and read the description. Yes, he liked to solve puzzles, or at least he used to. Yes, he liked computers, as well as anyone else. He felt comfortable with them, more comfortable than he did with people, anyway. Computers didn’t stare at your scars or give you looks of pity and disgust. They couldn’t burn you or destroy your soul. He read through the rest of the description and decided it sounded just as good to him as anything else would. With grim determination, he clicked the
Apply Now
button and filled in the form.

When he received the response, he read through it briefly, feeling the sweat bead on the back of his neck. They would be sending him a brochure for the college and wanted to schedule a campus tour. They’d be calling to talk to him. They wanted to meet with him. Forwarding the e-mail to his mother, he slammed the computer closed and all but threw it onto his desk. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t. His breathing came in sharp, pained gasps as he rolled to his side and pulled his knees up. Curled like a baby, he stared at the wall and tried not to think about what would come next.

Just because he applied, that didn’t mean he had to go.

Until it did.

Just as she took care of everything else in his life, Aaron’s mother handled everything with ITM. She met with the dean to explain about Aaron’s issues. She met with his instructor to give him an idea of what having him in class would mean. She didn’t accept the dean’s recommendation that maybe Aaron should wait before attending college. His class was scheduled, paperwork was completed, tuition was paid, and throughout the process, Aaron sat idly by and watched his life being lived without him.

As Aaron sat ordering his textbooks for the new semester, the one thing his mother let him do alone, he wondered why he couldn’t just take classes online. He could register online, buy his books online, even turn in homework online—it was a computer degree, and yet he couldn’t take classes online. He’d signed up for only one of the recommended four courses.
Baby steps.
After talking it over with his mother, they decided to wait on taking English and public speaking. English frustrated the hell out of Aaron, and his mother planned to talk to the dean about public speaking. They were sure when they explained the magnitude of Aaron’s discomfort, the school would let him take a different elective. It would take him much longer than two years to graduate at that rate, but degree or no degree, he doubted he would ever be high-functioning enough to hold down a job. Most of the time, he was barely able to make it to dinner.

Entering the credit card number his mother had given him for the books, Aaron set the pickup date for the Friday before classes started. His mom could take him over to the college. Even in his diminished capacity, he should still be able to walk into the bookstore and pick up a bag. Vaguely, as he clicked the order button on the badly designed bookstore site, he wondered if he would be the only student on campus whose mother chauffeured him to and from school. After a moment of deliberation, he printed the receipt and decided he probably would.

S
PENCER
stood watching his father sleep, sprawled out in the recliner with a leather-bound edition of Tolkien’s trilogy cracked open on his chest, the binding stretched beyond reasonable limits. He didn’t take the book from his father’s hands but simply watched as it rose and fell with each rumbling snore. Henry Thomas wasn’t a violent drunk, or even an angry one, but it broke Spencer’s heart to see him in pain. It had been just the two of them for so long, relying on each other, and he felt like they just weren’t the same anymore. He didn’t know how to get their closeness back. He didn’t know how to help.