Baby Don't Return to Me

I hated taking cabs, there was something about a stranger driving me around that creeped me out. Limo drivers were one thing, taxi drivers were another story. I stepped onto the streets’ edge and waved down the nearest yellow car.

“Where to?” The driver questioned in broken English as I piled into the taxi, my luggage cluttered around me.

“1475 Davenport Drive.” I sighed. I was going home.

”What am I going to do?” Cassandra cried.

She had hazel eyes that nearly matched the sunset on display. She was sitting on the corner of her street, out of sight of her parents’ house--she couldn’t deal with them just now. Her eyes were darting every which way, unable to focus as her hand clamped down on the locket adorning her neck, tugging on it lightly.

“Tell him the truth.”

Her best friend since third grade sat faithfully beside her. Her name was Claire; she stood 5’4 and had long wavy dirty blonde hair. Her style had always been her own, constantly creative and changing, Cassandra’s brother liked to say. She wore an endless amount of bracelets on her wrists, most braided herself, and others were bought or given as gifts. But Claire spun these bracelets around her wrists anxiously, sensing the change in the air.

“I can’t,” Cassandra cried, grief stricken as tears ran in rivers down her blotchy cheeks.

“CJ,” The voice brought her only the smallest amount of comfort. It was the low and quiet voice of her best guy friend. He was innocent and caring. He saw the good in everything and he believed in things like fate and second chances, he was optimistic at best and hopeless with girls at worst—that is with the exception of the two friends he sat beside now. “It will be okay, you’ll see.”

“This will hurt him. It could change everything for him.” Cassandra sobbed imagining the boy she loved life’s crumbling before her very eyes; every hope and dream vanishing, only to be replaced by shock and fear and uncertainty. “I can’t tell him. I won’t.” Cassandra announced decidedly rising to her feet.

“CJ,” He started, his voice growing a nervous edge. “What are you thinking?” But the shaken girl never glanced back at her two friends, she simply walked away, disappearing with the sun into the shadows of the night.

I awoke suddenly but the abrupt hault of the cab as it idled within a familiar neighborhood.
There before me was the off white colored house, with the forest green shutters, the wood brown roof, with the half dead front lawn. It was the image of my childhood projected straight from my memory. I had not realized how much I missed this quaint little house, tucked away in the forgotten corner of Tempe, until I stood before it now. I felt like I was eight years old, I felt like this place was the only place in the world where I could feel protected and wanted, loved and safe…and then my brother opened the front door.

His hair was tousled and his clothes where disheveled as though he had just rolled out of bed. He stared at me inexplicably as though he could not understand what he was seeing. It was then that I saw my brother in the light he did not wish for me to see.

I saw the stress, etched in the dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep. I saw the vacillating look on his face, plagued between greeting me and shutting the door in my face. But what I saw most as he stood within the threshold of our childhood home was the look of despair in his face, the same look I’d always seen when my brother could not handle what was happening. I remember seeing it when we went fishing when we were four, his bear fell over the boat and disappeared beneath the waters before our father could grab it. I saw this look when we were seven and our mother explained that our Pop-Pop had died, I remember seeing it the first time his heart was broken when he was 14. I had seen this look every time our parents fought—this version of my brother I was well acquainted with. Every time this look crossed my younger brother’s face I was always the one he confided in, hid beside, the one he cried shamelessly in front of; he was my protector and I was the one who picked him up when he fell.

It was then that the severity of the situation hit me. My mother was in the hospital. My erratic anxiety prone mother was in a hospital, her husband no where to be found, an exiled daughter, and her eldest child had run away leaving her grandchild in the care of the barely legal.
Then there was my brother, admits all of this was my brother trying to hold it all together—trying to hold the pieces of our crumbling family together. Absentmindedly I reached for the locked that hung around my neck.

“Kennedy,” I murmured, a single tear trickling from eye. He stood there on the front steps and for a moment I worried he would shun me from his life again, but his perfectly composed unmoving posture crumbled as he suddenly lurched forward, running down the front steps until he was standing before me.

“I’m surprised you came,” It was the defensive edge in his voice, hiding his feelings in his words. It was a defense mechanism I believe everyone in our family had inherited.

“I’m here now,” I assured, even though his words still held bitterness toward me his eyes filled with tears as his composure relaxed and nearly crumbled before me. I saw his eyes glaze with unshed tears. “Oh, Kenny.” I reached forward, wrapping my arms around his neck, as his face hid in my shoulder, his pride getting the better of him.

“It’s bad, Ceej.” Kennedy admitted. “Mom is in bad shape and Macy is gone. I don’t know what to do, I’m just supposed to stay with Jamie but I just don’t know what to do. Any time Jamie got upset I would just give him to Mace, and she’s gone, and Dad has dropped off the face of the earth and Jamie won’t stop crying.”

“I’m here now, Ken.” I repeated, linking my arm with his. “Let me help.” He grabbed two of my bags as I grabbed the last of mine before we silently trekked up toward the house of my youth.

In my heart I knew this temporary truce between my brother and I would not last, but I hoped to God that when my past came looking for me Kennedy would be beside me and not leading the witch hunt.

The house was everything I remembered it to be nothing at all had changed in my absence with the exception of the scattered toys and added pictures on the mantle above the fireplace.

“Come see Jamie,” He nodded down the hallway and leaving me to follow whether I wanted to or not. I could help but stand frozen in the living room a moment longer, absorbing everything around me. So much had changed in the days before I had all but fled Tempe, my world had flipped upside down and yet some how this house had remained unchanged, unaltered, unphased throughout my absence. I sighed, finally finding it in me to put one foot in front of the other and heading down the hallway Kennedy had disappeared through.

I could hear the low voice of my brother now and the even quieter, higher voice, of the nephew I had hardly known.I knocked softly on the closed door--suddenly I didn’t feel as though I had the right to enter any room I chose. I felt like by turning away I had thrown away my right to feel at home again—after all this wasn’t my home anymore, not really anyway.

“It’s open.” I turned the cold golden knob and pushed it open to reveal what could only be described as the after math of a mini bomb. Stuffed animals, action figures, and odds end ends were strewn about the small blue room. Jetting out from the wall was a simple twin sized bed whose Transformers comforter was falling off it in every direction. But atop the bed sat my brother as he cradled a mass in his arms covered by blankets.

I moved silently into the room, afraid to make a noise as I sat wordlessly beside my brother, gazing at the mass that could have only been Jamie hidden beneath the security of his blankets in his Uncle’s arms.

“Hey little man, Aunt Christa is here, you going to say hello?” Kennedy questioned softly. But the mass just moved slightly, Kennedy could feel the small boy shake his head from side to side. “That’s not very nice Jamie.”

“I don’t care!” He declared indignantly. “Aunt Cassie ran away and now Mama ran away!”

I hadn’t expected that, I hadn’t expected Jamie to blame me for his mother, my sister’s, runaway. I also didn’t expect the guilt I felt by this. I didn’t understand how I was the cause for Macy’s disappearance but I knew that I had been the cause of mine. I could now see it in my nephew, the damage I must have left and yet I can’t help but think: Macy ran away, I had gone off to college. The two did not go hand in hand.

“Jamie,” Kennedy began stunned. “It’s not Aunt Cassie’s fault your mama is gone.”

“If Auntie Cassie hadn’t left, Mama wouldn’t have left.”

“I didn’t run away, Jamie.” I spoke up softly. I didn’t understand how explaining my reasoning for leaving to a boy who had hardly been a year old at the time could make a difference, but I was going to try. “I went away to school.”

Jamie clawed his way into view, still huddling against my brother as he stared at me accusatorily. Jamie was older since the last time I saw him, he was nearly five now, his eyes were brilliant sunsets like my sister and I’s, something inherited from our Pop-Pop, his sandy hair was frizzing and curling in every direction as it fell into his beautiful eyes.

“You left.” He stated simply, the sunsets narrowing to slits. “You ran away because you were scared. You left and now Mama left. Mama left because you did.”

“Jamie that’s not true. It is not her fault your mother is gone. Apologize to Aunt Cassie.” Kennedy ordered but tears welled in the small boy’s eyes as his sunrise eyes became startled by his Uncle’s scold.

“No!” He cried jumping out of Kennedy’s arms and fleeing the room, neither of us moving after him.
So that was it, somehow I was the cause of Macy’s leaving; Macy who I hadn’t talked to in two years, Macy who even when I lived at home hardly talked to. Yet somehow this boy I hardly knew associated me with her disappearance.

“He didn’t get there on his own.” I stated rising to my feet. This had been a mistake; I was blamed for more things than I knew. I wasn’t strong enough to fight these wars against my family again. It had nearly torn us all apart last time.

“Oh come on CJ, you think I told him you’re the reason Mace left? Is that really what you think?” Kennedy question as he rose to his feet and stared at me in disbelief.

“I don’t know what to think Kenny, all I know is that that little boy blames me. He was 14 months old when I left. Who told him I ran away?” I demanded. It just didn’t add up, it didn’t make sense. Four year olds don’t run around saying things like that.

“Look,” Kennedy snapped suddenly annoyed. I could feel more of the strings that held us together fray. “I know that before you left you and I weren’t really on good terms-“

“Really?” I questioned sarcastically.

“-But I never spoke shit about you after you left. You’re my sister, CJB. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Then he brushed past me out of the room in search of our nephew. Suddenly I felt like accusing Kennedy had been out of line and guilt ate away at my stomach again.
I clutched the metal locket around my neck subconsciously. Perhaps nothing was as I left it; suddenly I didn’t know anything anymore. Was I the only one to not get over what happened?

I ventured out into the living room where I had left my belongings, expecting to find Kennedy and Jamie—but they weren’t alone. Kennedy was there standing over someone I could only assume was Jamie. But then the figure stood from where he had been kneeling before Jamie and my heart stopped. The figure was not Kennedy…

There he was 6’3, hair in his face, yet his stunned sea glass eyes easily saw me. Jamie was beside him and suddenly I understood. Kennedy had not thrown me under the bus to Jamie—John O’Callaghan had. He took one look at me, disentangled his hand from Jamie’s and walked out of the house without uttering word.

I was wrong on another note as well; Apparently I wasn’t the only one not over what had happened in our not so distant past. As the door slammed shut behind him, this revelation rattled in my mind and I did not find the slightest comfort in it.