Episode 8: Voices- Carol and the Past

Episode 8: Voices

Grant encountered Carol playing on-line chess. He didn’t want to meet her, at first. He felt like she didn’t exist. She was a perfect computer program who listened intently to his text and spit back kind words of sage advice and understanding. She was a supportive voice in his head that he didn’t want to change. He loved her; he trusted her. He didn’t know her.

He lived with his mother at 26? It’s common to not have direction after college. He had no steady employment? More time to play on-line chess and drink whiskey in the afternoon sun. His car was repossessed to pay for his second DUI? It’s difficult for an artist to find himself within the boundaries of the law.

After Carol saw a photo of his art, she was smitten.

Carol knew Grant was the artist trifecta: No job + No Car + Lives with mother = irresistibly talented, scorching hot man. He even held the slight alcoholism card; better than addiction to opiates, but just as tortured.

They had amazing sex.

He cooked her breakfast in bed complete with rose from neighbor’s garden on plate. He was emotional and communicative. He stared hungrily into her eyes with a passion she never previously encountered when dating accountants and lawyers. He was younger than she and intimately connected to his art.

They had amazing sex.

Grant was honest about his walnuts. He opened the duct tape duffle bag of crazy and unloaded his tattered rags of faith and sparkled trinkets of broken relationships and imitation silver jewelry of fatherless childhood and desperate hatred of abandonment; she welcomed the green neck when he placed his burdens upon her. She ate his yellow snowy past with a delicate spoon clenching her eyes with the freezing headache begging for more scoops into the bowl.

She held him when he cried. For the first time, Grant felt safe.

Carol forced the wedding when he discovered the pregnancy. She was trying to hide it. She scheduled abortion, but Grant somehow knew her plan. He reached inside her head and pulled out specific details: doctors, appointment times, secret thoughts of names (Sally was her grandmother’s name), fears and regrets she barely acknowledged. She didn’t know how he did it, but everything was true. It scared her. She must be talking in her sleep. She didn’t keep a diary. Carol did not believe in magic.

After the wedding, Grant’s art began to suffer. He zoned distantly in a cosmos of his own creation; he stopped talking to Carol about anything but the impending baby. His palpable fear of fatherhood loomed like a piano on dental floss, swaying dangerously above him; he looked up fearfully all the time. Head zipping from corner to corner, his eyes scanned most every room before he spoke. Mouth grimaced, teeth bared, he snarled or whispered slurs when meeting new clients or friends of Carol’s. Head cocked, eyes rolling, he listened to an invisible something that made people obviously uncomfortable. They would widen eyes at Carol and scathingly scoff when turning away from Grant.

Carol learned to laugh and titter nervously, drawing attentions from his “artistic eccentricities”.

No one was buying his work.

Carol was worried; this was not the man she fell in love with. This was not her internet confidant. The Grant she knew was replaced by a paranoid circus mirror version of an image she had built. She placed him on a pedestal of art and sex and emotion and Savior complex, and it was dangerously crumbling when she needed a foundation for her baby. He was losing his mind.

She could fit the pieces together, but was unable to hold Grant’s puzzle with glue or tape or rubber cement. She didn’t have time. She had a baby.

They stopped having sex when Grant stopped taking showers.

“Honey?” Carol tempered her tone and softly smiled masking desperation. Grant didn’t like nagging. “Can you at least go to the store for me today? We need diapers and food and milk. I know it’s a bother, but we do, and Sally’s too difficult to take in the basket.”

“Leave her with me; you go to the store. I’m out of ...” Raising his glass, Grant barely muttered coherence through whiskey. It was 11:20am.

Carol was afraid to leave Grant with their newborn. He hadn’t washed since Tuesday and wore nothing under his bathrobe. Sally was going to the store. She contemplated packing their things and leaving at that moment, but Grant fell from his chair and began to cry at her feet. “I’m sorry. Don’t leave me. I need you. I love you. I’m sorry. It’s THEM, they tell me; don’t you see? You can’t, ‘cause I never told you. They told me not to tell you. I can’t tell you. They won’t let me. I’ll stop drinking. I only drink ‘cause it makes them softer. Muffled. It puts them in a box and locks them away, but I can STILL HEAR YOU!!!!!!”

“Grant, I think we need to get you some help.”

She couldn’t leave him.