Much More

I was four when my dad committed suicide. He jumped straight off the roof of our fifteen-story apartment building in Manhattan. It’s funny. I have no memories of my dad when he was alive, just memories – horrid memories – of the things that had happened shortly after his death.

He was supposed to be watching me. Mom was actually at an audition. It was a big thing, a pretty big-deal audition for something on Broadway. I just can’t remember what. So I was in the living room playing or watching TV or something and my aunt who lived on Long Island came over to pick me up. She was crying but I remember I never asked her what was wrong. When we got outside I remember there were lots of cop cars and ambulances and news trucks, but I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t ask. She put me in her car – it was the first time I rode in a car without a booster seat – and we went out for ice cream.

“You’re such a good boy, Tristan,” she kept saying to me as I ate my three scoops of strawberry ice cream. Her face was red and puffy and she kept checking her phone and I didn’t ask a single question.

There were two things in my life my mom couldn’t get over – my birth and dad’s death.

My birth interrupted everything in her life that was going right. She and my dad had just moved to New York and were engaged and all that jazz. My mom was in theater. Which means she never had the same job in the same show for more than three months. She had a fairly hectic life. Okay, a very hectic life. Auditions almost all the time, twelve-hour rehearsals, always trying to make connections, make friends, make money. Most people in theater aren’t big stars but if you can find jobs, you can make a fair amount of money. Sure life for her was stressful, but she didn’t have enough time in a day to think about all the stress. And she had dad. Dad was the backbone of her life. He made the money – he was a professor and a writer – and he was always there for her when she needed him. He was some man, putting up with her crazy hours and crazy life. He got her after long, rough days, failed auditions, and the occasional good day. There were long days of workshops or yoga classes or dance or voice or acting classes. If she was lucky, she had Christmas off. But he loved her, he loved her so much, and he knew this was what made her happy. And he made her happy.

Then there was me. My mom basically lived off of rum and Coke and Chinese takeout. She usually remembered to take her pill in the morning but I don’t blame her for completely forgetting – what with all the other things she had to remember. And boom there I was. If my mom wasn’t strictly anti-abortion I wouldn’t be alive. I should probably thank her. My parents were already married, there was no problem there, but a baby and almost a year out of work could severely hurt her career. She wasn’t in a steady job to begin with because the show she was in was set to close in a month. She finished out the show and then she was out of work. Dad actually had to convince her to not look for another job.

It’s not like we couldn’t survive on dad’s salary alone, but we did live in a fairly nice apartment in Manhattan. So, we had to downsize. Smaller apartment for the arrival of me. My mom was never bitter. She didn’t take anything out on me. She loved me. In fact, she took small odd jobs around the city instead of looking for theater jobs right away so that she could be home with me. If I were in her position, I probably wouldn’t have been so nice. I mean, she had had a good thing going for her. And then stupid me came along. I would have been pissed.

Then there was dad’s death. To this day she refuses to believe it was a suicide. In her mind he was murdered. I wish I could just convince myself as easily as she convinced herself, but it’s not that easy.

Aunt Regina brought me home with her that night and by the time we pulled up to her house, my whole New York family was there. My mom was from Vermont and my dad was from Wales, but my New York family consisted of my mom’s really close friends and her sister, my Aunt Regina, and her husband and little girl Natalia. I was brought to my mom who instantly pulled me into her arms, showered me with hot tears, and didn’t let me go for about an hour. That’s when I finally asked a question.

“Mommy, what’s wrong?” I asked innocently as I sat on her lap and looked at her wet, red face.

“Daddy’s gone, Tristan,” she said quietly.

“Where did he go?”

She laughed. It was probably the most depressing laugh I’ve ever heard in my life. She proceeded to burst into a sobbing fit and I was scared. I’d never seen my mom cry that much before and I didn’t know what to do.

Aunt Regina told Natalia to take me up to her room and get me ready for bed. Natalia, the little bitch, who was about eight at the time, told me that my dad was dead and that I’d never see him again.

Being four, I really didn’t understand what death meant. I didn’t think it meant he would be gone forever. Even as they lowered him in the ground I knew that one day he would be back. It was just like a long nap, wasn’t it?

The day after the funeral, mom and I went home. The apartment was bleak, lonely. Mom spent all her time in her bedroom crying. I can still hear it now; the sound of her horrible sobs coming from the bedroom. She didn’t eat. I’m surprised she remembered to feed me.
About a week after the funeral she threw out a bunch of bloody blankets with tears streaming down her face. Only now I know that she’d had a miscarriage. She never talked about it. I think I’m the only one besides her that even knew she was pregnant.
A month later and my mom had lost a considerable amount of weight. She was frail and grey and didn’t bother to put on makeup anymore because she would just cry it off. She wasn’t working; she was letting all our savings slip away. She didn’t ever go out shopping and we were running out of food and I was getting hungry. No one ever played with me. I was bored and I missed my dad.

My mom, always the actress, somehow convinced her family and dad’s family that we were okay, living alone and all. Of course mom wasn’t okay. She was depressed and she drank and she ignored me, mostly. I kind of understood that my mom was upset, so I kept to myself as best as a four year old could.

About a month later my grandma, my mom’s mom from Vermont, came down to see us unannounced. There was almost no food in the house and there was shit everywhere because naturally, my depressed mom wasn’t going to clean. Grandma was so worried for her daughter and for me that she convinced my mom to either go back with her to Vermont or move in with Aunt Regina. Mom moved in with her sister while my grandma brought me back to Vermont.

I have to say I was pissed at my mom for deciding to leave me with her family. It’s not like they were mean to me or anything, but she could at least have come with. I mean, I barely knew these people. We got together for Christmas, but that was it. Everything I knew was in New York.

After mom tried to end her own life she was put in some sort of home. A crazy home, I guess. I don’t want to call it a crazy home because it seems kind of shitty for me to say that. She wasn’t crazy, she was just upset.
And for the next ten years, I was in Vermont.