Storymania - The Masochist Boy by Pearl S

The Masochist Boy (4)
Pearl S

"I guess," she said, dazed.

He patted her hand somewhat awkwardly. "Cheer up. However low you get, you can’t possibly get as low as I am."

"You’re more cheerful than I’ve seen you in months."

He raised one eyebrow. "I could be my usual peppy self, but I don’t want to rain on your stormcloud."

She laughed.

"Phew. For a moment I thought you were an imposter. But now I see the Vivien smile-yeah, it’s you."

" ‘The Vivien smile’?"

"Nobody else does that funny thing with their eyes."

"Is it that hideous?"

"Not hideous. I like it. But you know what?"

"What?"

"I need help with another algebra problem."

She blinked. "What?"

"I know, it hasn’t got a thing to do with it, but I had to bring it up somehow."

She laughed again, and then leaned over the textbook. "Ok, let’s see what you did…"

That was the first time it came up, and for more than a few months it was the last. It seemed in control; still Rob kept a watchful eye out when he was around her. Odd that some one as sunk into depression as he had been should even bother; and really, he wouldn’t have had it been anyone but her. But Vivien was different; Vivien, in his mind, was a class of her own. And so he was very, very careful. She, of course, did not suspect a thing.

Vivien avoided home as much as possible. Her sister Penny had come home, and her parents sung her praises day and night. Penny was a successful attorney; Penny had her masters’ degree and had graduated high school, college and law school with top honors; Penny’s wardrobe and manners were impeccable; Penny had a wealthy fiancé; Penny was everything her mother wanted Vivien to be. Penny was confident and adventurous; why couldn’t Vivien take a lesson from her? Penny was neat and organized. Penny planned ahead. Penny did this. Penny did that. Vivien, why can’t you be more like your sister? My goodness, are we embarrassed to have such a messy nutcase like you in the family!

So she went to Rob’s house and tried to keep him away from his heroin and pills. She could tell that he didn’t want to take them in front of her-and sometimes he would try, even, to get along a day without them. But, as he would have desperately liked to explain to her, addictions just don’t work that way. He was trying-he was trying so hard-but it hurt. It hurt so badly now, now that he’d been taking almost a bottle and a half a day, and who knew how many bags of heroin. After about six months she thought she knew what times of day were worst for him, when he usually took them: in the early morning after he woke up (he didn’t eat breakfast), during lunch break, right away when he got home, again at supper time, and whenever he felt a sudden burst of despair, which she was also beginning to trace to several specific sources. So she made it her business to walk to his house before school, wake him up and walk him to school, sit with him at lunch, walk him home and sometimes stay at his house until supper, not that his mother made any. It was an exhausting habit, but she felt that it worked.

And he liked her-he liked her a lot-and she knew it. He didn’t want to lose her friendship; he actually cared what she thought of him. He didn’t have much of pride or self-respect, but the little that he did refused to let him take his pills in front of her; hated being weak in front of her. But it was killing him, and that she somehow didn’t see. His body was used to the heroin, his body needed the heroin just to function properly. Without it he felt like a piece of driftwood in a raging ocean. His pulse pounded in his head; his heart palpitated sickeningly in his chest, in his throat; he felt hot, cold, feverish, he couldn’t catch his breath, he felt like he was going to explode. No…he felt like he was going to cry. And if there was one thing that disgusted him more than his own life, it was crying.

But he never said any of this to her, and she didn’t know.

What she did know was that he was working himself up to some pretty darned unhealthy levels of the drug, and the sleeping pills, too, and as a friend, she couldn’t allow for it.

That’s what she told him, sitting cross-legged on the old grey blanket on his bed in January.

"I’m worried about you, Rob. You take too much of that stuff. You’ll make a hole in your stomach. You’ll make your veins explode."

"I need it, Vivien," he said, leaning back against the wall. "You don’t understand. I-I need it."

She sighed, and looked around at his room. She loved it; it was just as ironic as he was. Everything had its place. His clothes, even though they were old ones he’d gotten from the school lost and found, were all stacked exactly so; his music cases stood in just such a position; his bed was neatly made and his floor was spotless. The notebook was in its special place on his dresser. The shades, or what passed for shades, had been pulled down when she got there, as they always were, and she left it like that; for some reason Rob hated light, and that was one battle she decided not to fight. It was just so funny to her, though, watching him quietly straighten everything in his old Slipknot t-shirt and worn-out black pants, watching him fuss over every little thing almost without realizing it. Now he was straightening his blanket so that it laid exactly flat.

She decided to try it again.

"Listen, Rob," she said earnestly, "if I don’t watch you, you take sixteen of those a day! And who knows many bags of that white stuff. You don’t eat, and what you do eat you throw up. Look at yourself, Rob-you’re thinner than a wire. Look at your skin!" She took his palm and turned it over in his hand. "Cold and dead white. For all you know, you might be giving yourself some kind of cancer!"

"I don’t have skin cancer," he said irritably.

"How do you know? You take so many pills, Robbie; so many pills. You don’t know what they do."

"Would you like to know what they do? They help me survive, that’s what. This is how I deal with things. They give me a reason to live!"

"What, so you can take more pills? More shots?" She looked him in the eye, and said softly: "You can’t find a better reason than that?"

He looked away and folded his arms across his chest.

He said: "I hate you."

She nodded wordlessly. Guiltily. He had enough people telling him off all the time. She was his friend-she was supposed to be some one he could turn to to get away from the criticism.

Wasn’t she?

"I’m sorry," she whispered. "I’m not your mother. I shouldn’t be on your case all the time. It’s just-you scare me, Rob. I don’t want you to die or get very sick or who knows what else, and it feels like I’m being forced to sit by and watch you kill yourself."

"Not this time," he said firmly. "I’m not trying this time. I don’t even want to take the stupid things, ok? If I could get by another way-but I can’t. I just can’t. If I could stop taking them I would."

"If you can’t stop-Rob, that’s the definition of addicted. You’re addicted. There are places you can get help for that."

"Your head is full of idealist fluff. There’s nowhere a boy from a family whose possessions are about to be seized can get help, and even if there was-what are they going to do? Click their heels together three times and bop me on the nose with their magic wands?"

She smiled. "You know, you could go into stand-up comedy."

"Yes, that’s right. My life is just laugh after laugh."

"Rob-you’re making excuses."

"Damn straight."

"I thought you said you wanted to quit."

"I…I do." He sighed and cradled his head in his hands. "I do, Vivien, but I…I just…"

"You’re scared," she said, surprised.

He shrugged. "Scared…more like dread. People are always talking about how hard it is to quit, and I believe them…everyday, one less pill…and not even flea powder to calm you down…every day, one less minute of being happy…one more minute of pain…and it only gets worse, not better…" he covered his eyes.

She clasped her hands together and leaned over on her knees to look him in the eye. "It’s not all cold turkey, you know. They have-they have counseling, and things like that-bonus systems-maybe they’ll give you a free cd or something if you stay off for a week. I hear if you stay off for a week all the withdrawal symptoms go away."

"A week?" he said helplessly.

His eyes held pain.

She saw it, and for a moment, just a moment, she understood everything completely…and her heart filled with sympathy, filled and overflowed. She felt awful for him. Without thinking, she put her arms around his neck in a hug, patted his back, and soothed: "It’s all going to be alright."

He blinked, bewildered. He had never, to his knowledge, been hugged before. Not ever.

For a moment, just a moment, he was surprised.

Then he took the comfort where he could get it, and felt his heart rise slowly. Maybe, he thought, maybe…

"Will you at least try?" she pleaded.

He nodded slowly. "Maybe…maybe…there’s just one thing, Vivien."

"What?"

"The reason I started taking the darned stuff in the first place is because I wanted to be numb. But if I’m not taking pills, not taking the heroin, and I’m not numb, what will I do to fight it?"

"Fight what?"

"The pain."

"The pain? What pain?"

And then, out of nowhere, the door burst open, and a tiny woman with hair half-bleached blonde and baggy sweat pants burst into the room. Her face was chalk-white. She glared at Rob.

They moved apart from each other quickly. Vivien turned to look at Rob. He was glaring right back.

"You," the woman seethed, pointing an accusing finger at him, "you took my smokes!"

"Don’t be ridiculous," he scowled. "I didn’t take anything from you. You just forgot what you put them."

"You’re lying! You took the money I gave you to buy my smokes and you bought more of that heroin! Why don’t you just admit it? You’ve been stealing from me!"

"Leave me alone, would you?! I’ve had enough of you for today."

She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him off the bed. "Don’t talk that way to your mother!" she screeched.

Rob pushed her hand off, disgust and hate burning in his eyes. He was an inch or so taller than her, and bigger. She couldn’t hurt him anymore like she used to.

Not physically, anyway.

"Get out of my room and leave me alone!"

"You’re a good-for-nothing bum," his mother fumed. "Just like your father. Just like your damned father! Pig-headed, stupid, druggy-drop-outs-"

"Oh, as opposed to you, Ma," he mocked. "Leave me alone."

She slapped him across the face. "Why didn’t I just have an abortion like my father told me to? Why did I go to the trouble of giving birth to this waste of space standing in front of me-"

Vivien saw him blink. His face never changed.

That one had gotten through.

"Leave me alone, Ma," he said quietly.

She pushed him; he fell back a step. "I should have put you up for adoption! I should have given myself some time for me. But did I? No. I raised your dumb idiot self and I spent seventeen years nursing you and taking care of your sorry excuse for a-"

"Like fudge you did," he cried. "You spent seventeen years dying your hair and painting your nails and sitting in front of your television smoking your marijuana and cocaine and watching those idiot soap operas! You didn’t give me squat!"

"I gave you an existence!"

"A miserable, pathetic hell of an existence! Thanks, Ma, thanks a lot!"

"You ungrateful-disgusting-screw-up!"

"Screw-up?" he hissed. "Gee, I wonder why?"

"You-"

"Enough!" cried Vivien, stepping in between them. "That’s enough out of both of you!"

They glared at each other, catching their breath.

"Mrs. Schultz," she suggested, "why don’t you go downstairs and leave Rob up here with me? I’ll deal with him."

"He still hasn’t told me what he did with the money I gave him for my smokes!"

"For the last time, Ma, I didn’t take the damned smokes!"

"Rob," said Vivien, placing a warning hand on his arm.

He sent his mother one last glower and turned away.

"I’ll go," his mother said calmly, "but as for you, girl, I suggest you come with me, before this drugged-out loser starts stealing from you, too. Some one has to pay the bill for that white stuff, and once I run out of money…let’s just say, you should run while you can."

Coming from Mrs. Schultz, a woman saying the words out of anger because she couldn’t find her cocaine, the warning was somewhat diminished. For all that, it still made her stomach knot.

She filed it away in some part of her mind.

"No, thanks," replied Vivien with equal calm. "I happen to like this drugged out loser. Goodbye, Mrs. Schultz."

She closed the door firmly behind her, and let out a sigh of relief. She said over her shoulder: "Whew. Your mother’s tongue is almost as sharp as mine’s, isn’t it?"

Silence.

She turned around.

He was sitting on the bed, his hands clasped between his knees, his eyes black and unfocused.

She said hesitantly: "…Rob?"

He sprung up suddenly and started for the door.

She blinked. "Where are you going?"

He didn’t answer her. He fumbled with the door handle, threw the thing open and raced down the stairs. She had no choice but to race after him.

She found him in the kitchen, emptying an unmarked bottle of pills into the palm of his hand, a glass of water on the counter.

"What are you doing?" she cried, horrified.

He said nothing. He counted them with his eyes, frowned, frantically opened another plain bottle, poured half of that into his other hands, and crammed them all into his mouth. He took a gulp of water and swallowed them all-he swallowed them all.

Vivien put a horrified hand to her mouth.

"Rob," she started.

He said nothing. For a moment he only stood there, half-frozen.

Then his eyes widened, burst with some awareness, and his knees buckled under him.

She shook her head, tried to pull him up, but he couldn’t stand. He motioned her away, pulled himself up by the counter, fell again.

She knelt by him.

He looked up at her without hope, with only a kind of tiredness, and said lowly: "I’ll be addicted forever."

So she left. Half the time she expected to get a call that he’d died or was dying; but she didn’t, and the next morning he pretended as though it had never happened at all.

Sitting on her bed that night, she thought she understood part of where it came from. He’d already said that it was his way of dealing with things; he took drugs. That was his way of coping with his mother.

As she found out, that was his way of dealing with anything. The amount of drugs he took was about the same as the amount of emotional pain he felt. It was his only defense. That, then, was what he had meant when he said ‘pain’. He didn’t know how to handle pain, and if she took away the drugs, he would be vulnerable. He was using them to forget all his problems, to avoid them.

He didn’t know what to do, and neither did she.

She went to the library, took out a few books. After reading those, she almost couldn’t sleep that night. They said the typical addict thought exactly like Robby; they didn’t know how to deal with their problems, so they took drugs and ignored them. The books warned that this was dangerous for everyone involved, that the addict did not have the skills needed to get through life, namely: problem solving. They needed to be taught this in order to get over their addiction. The books said that having a trusted friend or family member was beneficial, so long as that person remained firm and put in a positive effort to steer the addict from their drug habits. The books also said that while withdrawal symptoms disappeared after a week, and while it was possible for addicts to continue drug-free, addiction was a lifelong problem, and they would have to conquer cravings for the rest of their existence.

It also told her that heroin addicts in particular had one of the highest instances of overdoses, heart attacks, strokes and suicides.

She was overwhelmed.

And so, for the moment at least, she left it alone.

Her mother found out she had seen him and was forever on her case. The boy had no redeeming qualities, she ranted; none. He took drugs. He had no money. He was failing out of school. He was always angry or overly cynical and he used profanity and his morals were probably so corrupted, and what kind of influence would he be on her life? Terrible! There was nothing good in the child; nothing at all. Vivien should leave him to his fate and find a useful way to spend her time. No good at all. No point in putting packages on a sinking ship, that was what her mother always said.

But Vivien couldn’t help feeling that there must be some good in him. Somewhere…

And one day, she found it.

They were sitting in Rob’s room. They always had to be at his house; her mother would never let him come to Vivien’s home. It was a Sunday, an off day, and they were just sitting there in silence; Rob was writing fluently in his notebook and Vivien was working on her biology.

It was cold enough outside that day; the middle of January, and everything was frosted over, including the window, in a freeze of white. No bird sang today.

A slurred and high pitched voice called Rob’s name.

He rolled his eyes, sighed: "Coming, Ma," and flipped off of the bed, leaving the notebook by the pillow as he left.

Vivien raised her eyes from her biology and looked at it curiously.

It was an old notebook-the pages were a little bit yellowed already. It was bound, too, no spirals, and the front and back looked to be made of cardboard. Mauve cardboard.

She picked it up, intrigued, and passed it back and forth in her hands. So this was Rob’s sacred notebook. This was what he was always toiling away at. She put her thumb on the page to mark it and flipped to the beginning.

Every single page was filled with line after line of his precise, just-so handwriting. Sometimes titles flashed out at her, capital letters, cursive and print.

She sat down on the bed and started to read.

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