Page 32 of Pages of My Heart
If God wishes to condemn us to eternal damnation, then so be it.
Charlie you are my savior,
mysacred love,
and my fucking religion.
Bad thoughts. Nevers go away.
Michael forced me to eat. Said the doctor would lock me up just likeMOTHER
Need you, my love.
Need you
Need you
need you
Can you fucking hear me Charlie????????
Have you FORSAKEN me?
Need our bodies to be as one, move as one. Need your touch. Your lips upon mine.
Come home.
PLE A SE
Your sweetheart,
Thomas xxxxxxx
—LETTER NOT SENT—
Chapter 20
July 1940
Charlie
Charlie has one arm around his mother’s waist, supporting her, while Evie stands to his left, her tiny hand in his. Donnie is there too, standing on the other side of his mother, their family united in make-believe grief. Behind him, somewhere among the few attendees, is Thomas. Before him his father’s coffin makes its agonizingly slow descent into the ground. Charlie stares at the cheap pine box, his face immovable. Blank. His physical facade concealing the turmoil raging inside his head.
“Hey Charlie, stop. Look.” Thomas grabs his elbow and points up the alleyway they’re passing. “There’s a fight going on.”
“Leave ’em to it. We’re already runnin’ late.” Charlie keeps walking without even glancing toward where the muffled grunts are echoing off the brick walls. But Thomas doesn’t. “Red, come on,” he says, turning back around. But Thomas’s frown has him taking a closer look at the scuffle.
“Charlie, isn’t that your—”
“Father,” he says, finishingThomas’s sentence. “Yeah. Looks like the stupid drunkard is gettin’ the beating of a lifetime. And he fuckin’ deserves it. Now let’s go.”
Charlie moves toward Thomas, intent on grabbing him by the arm and dragging him away, when a flash of silver catches his eyes.
One of the two men beating on his father has a knife.
Charlie needs this to be over. He wants time alone with Thomas, although God only knows how he can have that today.
There is profound relief at his father’s passing, especially the knowledge that he can never lay his cruel hands on his ma ever again, but it sits alongside a myriad of mixed emotions—guilt and confusion, hatred and regret.
