Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-4199666-20140217122042

All morning, Max had been repeating instructions to his daughter on how to pack and why they need to pack. “We’re going back home,” he explains but the word “home” made something twist over in her stomach. She wanted to hear “We’re going to Barfield,” as if saying home was a lie. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t convince herself to get out of the hotel bed. She had been up all night, staring at the roof, playing with the wedding band on her left hand, and trying to push away scary thoughts of running away. She couldn’t leave now. She had too many people depending on her.

It wasn’t until a bit before twelve, when Max finally disrupted her from her pretend sleep with a soft kiss on the forehead. She tried to force a smile, but her lips turned down at the edges. “I want to say good morning,” he begins, playfully, “but if I wait a few minutes I’ll miss the opportunity.” Rachelle rolls over onto her back, feeling the weight of her abdomen squeezing itself down on her bladder. Her least favourite part of pregnancy was trying to get up in the morning. Max offers his assistance in helping her sit up, but she refuses, carefully sliding herself up. They’d been in Canada for a whole fortnight, but for some reason thinking about leaving to go to their house in Barfield made her feel more nauseous than any home sickness, travel sickness or morning sickness combined.

After she had freshened up, she walked out of the bathroom to the sight of her neatly made hotel bed, and the rest of her belongings sitting packed neatly away in her suitcase. Her little toddler came running into her legs with a freshly made drawing of their family, holding it up proudly for her mommy to see. Rachelle managed to force a more genuine smile, but inside it stung knowing how much she thought about escaping it all, and how nobody even seemed to notice. Max seemed a lot more eager to see it, swooping her up in his arms and announcing that he’ll hang it up on the fridge when they get home. There’s that word again. She tried to move past it, before realising that she hadn’t said anything all morning. “That’s awesome,” she tried to enthuse. Speaking wasn’t a matter of what she wanted to say anymore, it was what people wanted to hear.

People don’t like to think of a married adult with one and a half kids wanting to run back home and live with their mom. People don’t like to think of a mother regretting her kids. Every time she thought about how she couldn’t even manage to live with her life choices, it was like a new hole being cut into her, and she had to hide it and pretend it didn’t hurt. Somewhere deep inside she knew that if she kept hiding the cuts one day she’d just be an empty pile of bandages, but now she had to think of more than just herself. Or at least she had to remind herself of that.

She just had to get to Barfield, she told herself. It was her mantra for the day, and she kept reminding herself the whole trip back. It made it easier if she set small goals, and today she didn’t even know if she was going to reach that, but after half a day of travel, she found herself standing right at the gates of Barfield airport, waiting for a taxi to take her back to her normal suburban life, and soon to be nuclear family. Somehow everyone else around her seemed to be dealing with it fine, but no matter how hard she tried to accept it, she couldn’t make it sound right. Then all of a sudden, she could feel everything she had worked so hard to cover up tip over the edge. She clutched her hand around the top of her suitcase, and she could feel the tears come pouring out. Max tried to console her, and all Ronnie could ask is “Why are you crying?” but she didn’t want to say why. She couldn’t find it in herself to say why.

“I need to go back home,” she says, hopelessly trying to wipe tears out of her eyes. “I need my mom and my brother and I need to go home.”

At first, Max doesn’t say anything. He just stares at her, mouth agape, eyes blank, as if lost in thought. Ronnie doesn’t seem to understand at all, and the unknowing is obviously frustrating her. Rachelle slides her suitcase closer to her, as if someone will try and take it from her, and then finally, Max speaks. He doesn’t sound angry, or upset, or shocked, but somewhere between the three, and he just says “Then go.”

Rachelle can’t help but cry some more. He couldn’t possibly know what she meant, and yet, he was supporting her. As far as he was concerned, she just missed her family. He didn’t know that he was telling her to abandon her kids, and him and every piece of stability she’d ever known. When she said she wanted to go home, she meant that she wanted to stay home, and leave every mistake from the past few years in a closet with her other skeletons.

“Rachelle, I know you miss them and you’re already packed. Just buy yourself a ticket, and we’ll catch up.” He orders, his voice sounding soft and understanding. Clutching at the handle of her suitcase, she wipes a final tear away from her eye. Parts of her don’t want to give a hug and kiss goodbye, but another part of her is screaming that this might be the last time she sees them, and she hugs them both with as much passion as she can, and she kisses Ronnie on the forehead. She’d kiss her a thousand times if she could, but she knows she can’t. Max wipes away the tears under her eyes and he kisses her while she shakes, sobbing. She rests her head against his forehead and tries to say “I love you” or “Thank you” or anything of substance, but the words won’t come out.

She kisses him, and then she grabs her suitcase and walks into the airport gates alone, fighting the urge to turn around when she hears her daughter begging to know where her mommy is going. She doesn’t want to look back, or even acknowledge the life she’d lived here, and then as she’s queuing through the ticket lines and waiting for the first departure to LA, she remembers her loose ends, and she calls them up, one after another, and thankfully for her, no one seems to have their phone on, so she doesn’t have to defend herself or answer questions, she just has to tell them what she’s been dying to tell them, and then she has to get away from this place.

Despite being on numerous planes in her life, this was the first time she had been truly alone. She looked around to all of the blank faces of people hopeful to get to their loved ones, and she realised that she didn’t have that. There wouldn’t be anyone waiting at the gates to greet her, and if she did run back to her family, she didn’t want to think of what they’d say to her. Her mother never gave up on her kids, even when her husband died, she stood by them. She didn’t want to think about them looking down on her, so she tried to focus on sleep, and listening to the rhythm of the heartbeat inside her belly, and just like that, all those sleepless nights caught up to her, whilst sitting alone on the plane. Now she felt safe. She was really going home this time. 