BEFORE I LET GO: BOOK II: CHAPTER 5: THE FACTS OF LIFE EXPOSED

PITTSBURGH

MELANIE:

I wonder if hearing the truth has taken the wind out of Deb’s sails, but I highly doubt it. If Michael has learned anything from his mother, it’s willful blindness and persistence in their perceived truth. Looking at her now, sitting there rocking in hurt and anger, part of my heart goes out to her. Her illusion that her Michael could never be so cruel to another person has just been shattered into a million pieces, and publicly no less. I guess by putting the phone on speaker, she wanted to reassert her authority over, not only the guys, but over the entirety of Liberty Avenue. But clearly that is not the case, and from the murmurs of the diner’s patrons, it hasn’t been for a long time.

I would almost be shocked at this revelation, except that given distance and time, I saw exactly what Deb’s influence had done within my own life. It became apparent that it wasn’t only Em, Ted, and Brian who were expected to take care of Michael, but me and Lindsay, too. Or should I say more myself than Lindsay, because I was the one with the law degree, who would pull every string I had to get Michael out of trouble at Deb’s behest. Lindsay, on the other hand, would just coddle her to death and hold her hand, and whereas that’s useful in its own way, it still wouldn’t have covered her baby’s shit. That would have been my job.

“Melanie…”

“Don’t, Deb. I love you, but don’t ask me to deny what it is you’ve heard, even though you didn’t want to. It was all true, and there is so much more to the story.”

“But Michael… I didn’t raise him to be like that!”

“In intention, no you didn’t, but in theory you did.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

“It means that even as a child, you never made him take responsibility for his own actions. You cloaked and covered for him, thinking that he couldn’t have possibly been as bad as people said he was. He was a boy able to be corrected, but you treated him as if he was your own personal Jesus, incapable of doing anything wrong. But that’s where your mistake was, Deb, because unlike Jesus, Michael was never blameless! He caused his own problems, and instead of you accepting that he’s imperfect, you are demanding that someone help you fix his shit, AGAIN! I can’t even believe you right now!”

“What do you want me to say, Melanie?! All of his friends are deserting him…”

“While he deserted their friendship years a-fucking-go!”

“HE HAS NOT!”

“Bullshit! It’s bullshit, Deb, and you know it!” I take a calming breath, which is actually hard to do. How can she still think that others are responsible for the actions they’ve had to take to save their sanity, to preserve their lives and the relationships they want to have?! “It’s all reactive, Debbie. Michael’s actions have caused this, and the guys are only now reacting to everything Michael has done to them, and to their partners over the years.”

“Well if the partners can’t respect the friendship between Michael, Brian, Emmett, and Ted, then perhaps they are NOT the right people for them!”

“Can you hear yourself? Do you?! Let me ask you something Deb, and be honest with yourself and everyone in here for once. Let’s not forget that I actually know the answer, so you can’t lie to me, and I won’t let you do so to yourself either. What happened when Michael threw a verbal tantrum after you had gone out on your first date with Carl? Didn’t he order you not to keep seeing him, and when that didn’t work, didn’t he basically tell you that you were acting desperate and imply that you were acting as a whore without actually saying it, instead using your ideals regarding gay people as a sticking point?”* She gasps at the reminder, which is exactly what I wanted, but again she’s fighting the truth of how her son really is about the things he doesn’t like.

“He didn’t mean it like that!”

“Oh, and how did he mean it?”

“And I’m pissed that you would bring something up in public that I told you in confidence!”

“But it’s okay for you to berate other people for what Michael does in and out of the public eye as long as you don’t see or hear of it? Way to expose your double-standards, Deb!”

“I don’t have any fucking standards!”

“And that’s becoming more and more evident the longer we talk, especially in reference to Michael! No! What you have are expectations! You expect that everyone will tow the line with Michael in order to keep their association with you. You expect that we all not call Michael on his shit, while you happily verbally spank us for our own. You expect that Brian, Emmett, and Ted put Michael first instead of their partners, because it just so happens that you are doing the same fucking thing to your own. How much longer do you think Carl is going to keep putting up with your first husband coming before him.”

“CARL IS MY FIRST AND ONLY HUSBAND, AND YOU KNOW IT!”

“Is he? Because you treat Michael as if he’s your husband instead of your GROWN SON!!”

“Alright ladies, I think we’ve all had enough of this conversation for one day.” Diane steps between us. “Let’s just table this discussion for a later time when cooler heads can prevail, okay?”

“I agree,” Jennifer says, as she steps into the Diner. As always, she has such a calming presence about her. Before I can even ask how she came to be here, she tells us. “Diane darling, when you suggested the Diner for lunch I had no idea that it had turned into a warzone.”

Diane laughs. “It’s not, right ladies?”

I’m almost inclined to feel ashamed that I’ve gotten in Deb’s face, but when I think of all the shit she refuses to believe, I can’t find it within myself. She needs to face reality, and the only way I can do that is to stand toe-to-toe, and face-to-face with her and yell back. I unclench my fist, and nod only once to indicate that this is over for now.

“Jen, I…” Deb begins, but the rest of her sentence is cut off by the raise of Jennifer’s hand.

“I know, Deb. Justin called me this morning after his session. He thought that you might be able to use a friend.”

“Did he tell you everything?”

“More than that really,” Jennifer sighs. “He told me the truth of things, even of what happened at the airport yesterday and what exactly spurred him to take the actions he’s taken.”

“You mean it’s actually true?” Deb cries, despairingly.

“Yes, it is,” Jennifer confirms, just as sad that she had to. “We have to let them all sort this out by themselves, Deb. There are things that we don’t know, but even if we did, we can’t bully them into doing what we want. For some reason you’ve always been able to, but it won’t work this time. They all stand to lose too much to blindly throw it all away to please you, and therefore, Michael.”

“You have to, for once, stay out of it and let Michael learn the lessons he should have learned long ago. One of them being that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, which is exactly what he’s done to Brian, Justin, and Ben. He’s also done the same to Emmett and Ted, but in a less harmful way,” I tell her.

“What way?”

“You know,” Jennifer begins, “This really isn’t conversation that we should have here in the Diner, although I’m sure that many of these people have their own stories about Michael’s involvement in their lives, no matter how small it has been. But you should hear all of how it affected Ben, Ted, Emmett, Brian, and my son, from us in private so that you can understand the full truth without bias.”

“I’d like to come, too,” Diane says.

“Why?” Deb ask accusingly. “You don’t even know Michael!”

“I found out all I needed to know about Michael when he showed up at my brothers’ condo on the night before they left town. It only confirmed what I was told by both Blake and Drew before even meeting the others. I didn’t automatically believe them, not wanting to believe that there was a three year old trapped in a grown man’s body. But let me tell you, the personal experience of seeing him in action, left a lot to be desired.”

“Look, Deb,” I say before she responds negatively to what Diane told her. “We have the truth- all of it- but it’s up to you if you want to hear it or not.”

“I don’t,” she says, belligerence in every pore of her posture. “I don’t want to know any of it! But I guess in light of everything, I think I need to.”

Is it wrong of me to want to crow right now? Probably. Am I sorry about that? Nope. My feelings about all of this aren’t set up that way. Somehow, I feel like I owe it to Lindsay, to our son that was near-stillbirth because Michael kept saying evil things to Lindsay during her pregnancy that scared her and stressed her out. And to Brian, who despite the fact that he didn’t want a child, still donated to us so that we could have one; who swallowed his own tears so that Lindsay and I could grieve for the lost dreams toxemia and her unknown stress disorder caused. I owe them all, because instead of staying and helping them to fight for the partners they hold dear, I left them helpless to Michael’s mercenary tactics to rid his friends of anything that didn’t keep him as the center of their worlds. And this is a debt I’m going to be glad to pay.