Breaking Suburbia

“You’re the first person that has been in this house since she died.” Maggie admitted, sipping soup. For some reason, she allowed him to stay. She always seemed to drive people away, not by consistent effort, but just by her persona. Chester was the first person that was actually enamored by the parlor trick her subconscious facilitated to further protect her from any other emotional pain. Maggie was not sure she could crawl back to a solid ground if another emotional blow came her way. It was what made her fall into the constant spells of fatigue, the anxiety that she might come to close to the edge.

“Your mother?” Chester questioned. He stared at her mouth as it slowly slurped soup. She ate entirely too slow. Everything about her was slow in this state that he could only describe as the presence of death in life.

“Yeah.” Maggie choked, pushing the soup away from her on the tray. She wasn’t hungry, there wasn’t a need to eat.

Chester pushed it back towards her, eyes widening as if a few more spoonfuls of the lukewarm soup was the difference between vitality and ceases to exist. Maggie proceeded to push it back, a scowl settling on her otherwise indifferent face that held the weight of prolonged numbness in the black bags under her irises. She clenched her teeth, staring into the vivacious aqua of Chester’s innocent eyes. They pleaded with her steely gaze. “Don’t treat me like a child.” Maggie scorned, trying to communicate but ultimately failing.

“I’m going for my shift in thirty minutes. It would give me a clearer frame of mind, Maggie.” He sighed, rubbing his temples.

“I didn’t ask for you to do this.” Maggie frowned. Staring at Chester’s tired thoughtful stance. He was studying the contents of the cream colored room. She pondered if he had even slept since he arrived in her home.

Chester sighed, looking at her for the briefest moment before swiveling his neck back to observe the blandness of the wall. “You need someone.” Chester lowly spoke, but his light words still filled the room.

Maggie’s face flushed a bright shade of red. She was absolutely livid and ripped from her catatonic state. Her limbs ignited with a pure, unadulterated fire of disgust. “I don’t need a savior, okay?” She spat. A vile taste filled her mouth as the words left her mouth.

“Oh no. Oh no.” Chester tried to interject. Only to be cut off.

“Because I wouldn’t have my life any other way, this is what I want.” Maggie continued on her rampage, knowing she would soon become a blubbering mess.

But as that sentence left the confines of her mind, Maggie Wentworth felt a tingle in her gut. The slightest fluttering enveloped from the raggedy cuticles of her painfully gnarled fingernails to the tips of her freezing toes. Every square inch of her was engulfed in uncertainty.

“Maggie.” Chester sighed in a tone Maggie knew all too well. Her mother used to use that tone when Maggie would tell her about the kids at school. Then, her mother would force Maggie into her lap and would smooth down the girl’s hair, whispering sweet words Maggie forgot, but soothing nonetheless. “Maggie.” He shook his head, trying to fathom the intricate mystery of the girl that was seemingly unscathed on the outside. Somewhere deep into the skin, too far for the naked eye to see, Chester knew there was a festering wound that would most likely never heal all the way. He accepted that. “It’s not good to be sitting in this big house all day.” He frowned.

“It’s not good for you to be getting involved.” Maggie’s voice cracked. Instantaneously, Chester’s head snapped around as Maggie wiped away the stray tear rolling down her cheek.

And he gave her this insecure stare as his eyes fixated on the tear. “I’ll be back in the morning.” Chester sighed, his voice on the brink of the precipice that would vault him into salty tracks on his face.

As he left, I would like to believe Maggie chased after him, or at least thanked him or said goodbye. Maggie sat there, she sat there and watched the man trudge out of her room and she laid down on her bed seemingly unaffected. It was a strange occurrence to have two utterly passionate people depart without as much as a word. Confusion is what I boiled it down to. We’re slaves to our emotions. We invest ourselves in people and things when we shouldn’t. When it isn’t healthy to dive, we bolt down that pier with the wind at our back and our rationale lying on the rocky sores. As the cold water envelops us in a toxic relation, we either hit the jagged floor of the ocean or we barely make it out. Many never resurface.