The Thunder of the Drums

Twenty steps forward….

Twenty steps back….

Twenty steps forward….

Twenty steps back….

I paced the overly large living room. That room that no one actually lived in or even visited. That hollow space. I can’t remember the last time anyone ever truly used the room…maybe last Fall for one of Father’s high-end business parties, but I’d hardly count that as a check mark in the ’proper usage’ box. Weren’t living rooms supposed to be a family gathering place? A place where your mother brought out the food on the holidays for all your relatives? A place where everyone sat down to relax and maybe talk about their day? Or was that just saved for the sparse small-talk of the dinner table? Were they meant, as I knew, to simply attain a fine coating of dust before the maid cleaned it once a week? Were they meant to only be a transitional room, a pathway to another, perhaps more important, room? No, that doesn’t seem right. It was just there, as if for show.

Had all of this been for show?

I clenched my jaw as I walked, uncertain even as I did so why I believed walking would help clear my mind. Maybe it soothed a subconscious need to escape, but it wasn’t as if I was going anywhere. There wasn’t anywhere to go. Well…for now, at least. In a week I’d be back at school, preparing for semester finals, maybe having a drink or five after the last exam with friends and useless acquaintances. Not that this was any sort of relief to me. How was I supposed to focus on any of that anymore? It no longer seemed important. Nothing did, to be honest. How could it? I know they say that family spats tend to break out around the holidays, but the word ‘spat’ or even ‘fight’ just didn’t sum this up.

If I’d known I’d come home to this…I wouldn’t have bought the damn plane ticket.

I didn’t smoke, yet my shaky fingers still fervently fumbled with the lighter and cigar I’d nicked from my father, eager for some sort of relief, anything to take the edge off. I forced myself not to cough as the acrid smoke filled my throat and lungs, not wanting to show weakness, even now, when no one else was around. I glared at the cigar, disgusted, as if I could somehow blame it for all the weight of my problems, somehow blame it for not solving them. My brain tortuously took me back to a simpler time, to when I was sixteen and my mother had taken me to buy my first car. ”Never trust a man who smokes a cigar,” she’d said, eyeing the greasy looking salesman. Funny, now, in a bitter sort of way. Father’s stash never runs low.

There was no discussion about it. Just a ”This is how it is, how it has to be” explanation and a brief reassurance that everything would be alright and taken care of. Everything would be alright? Taken care of? How? How could anything possibly be alright after this? What was left to be taken care of if everything had been ruined? This wasn’t just something you could sweep under the rug and pretend it wasn’t there, like the distance and the coldness that family photographs concealed with picture-perfect smiles. This wasn’t a political mishap that you could blame someone else for, some crooked lie passed to another from beneath a black market table.

Yet I felt like the only one affected by what had happened. Did anyone else care? If not (definitely not) my father, at least my sister? No. Apparently not. Her reaction was a face of stone and an apathetic ”Oh…”, as if she were being told that someone had destroyed something she cared least about; mental shock or fully expressed (repressed?) emotion? I shouldn’t have expected much from her, but some sign of pain would have been comforting. At least then I would have maybe stopped doubting my own reactions.

I stopped my pacing to glance at the ornate mirror hanging on the wall; how could I judge my sister when I looked uncaring myself? If there was one thing I’d inherited from my father it was his coldness. At least, the façade of coldness. The only sign of inner turmoil was reflected in my eyes; panicked, angry, confused. I guess I had that going for me. Not much else.

I had never been one to doubt myself. My whole life I knew what I wanted…needed…to do, knew that everything was set in stone and that the sailing would be smooth. It was my birthright, and though it lacked the freedom most might yearn for, something about knowing that was comforting. There wasn’t much need to worry if you took care of the basics. Good grades lead to good job opportunities. Good jobs lead to a career, and a career, if done correctly, lead to power. Power lead to money, and money fueled power, and the circle would just keep repeating itself until it tuckered out with the end of your life. Simple, right? I used to think so, but again…apparently not.

What a fantastically fabricated lie.

Worse than the lies and confusion were the clarifications, the little things that made sense now. The private but extensive self-defense and combat lessons funded by my mother (“Don’t tell your father”)…the endless sense of paranoia prickling the back of your mind as you laid down to sleep at night from the whisperings of the day before.

”Be vigilant. Be strong,” she’d say to us when my father wasn’t around. ”And most of all be wary.”

Of what? At the time, I didn’t know. I still don’t know, not completely. Did she know things would end this way? Or had she been thinking from a different angle, aiming for another outcome? Would either result have been less of a shock? Somehow, I don’t think so. There was no easy way in or out of this. Trapped. From all sides, trapped. And the decision that was left for us to make: impossible.