Breaking Suburbia

“Where’s King? We need to take a picture of him for your room.” Maggie frowned at the word room. It was a substitute for college, but it still sucked to say it. Soon, Chester would be gone as fast as he came.

He kisses her forehead softly and she curls up against his chest in a very cat-like manner. “What about one more of you?” He queries.

And Maggie blushes, those words carelessly waltzing on her tongue. “Chester, I’m sorry I didn’t get to know you sooner.” She sighs, staying as calm as she possibly can.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.” Chester whispers, almost so low that she swears he’s talking to someone else, like the towering oaks on the other side of the unforgiving iridescent of the window. Maggie snuggles closer to him, knowing and fearing that this may be the last time for a while, for a long while. Tears begin to stain her lash lines. There’s something frightening about not having mundane chats on the sofa. She fears the nights she must spend alone now that he’s away from her. She hopes she’s satiated his need for understanding to the best of her abilities. “Let’s go find him.” Chester smiles. Maggie can’t see it but she can feel it.

First, she looks through all of the kitchen cupboards as Chester roams around the house. King is nowhere to be found in the kitchen, which was extremely obscure, so she picks through the living room and examines what’s under each delicately knitted throw. Still nothing but the thick cat hair spotting the yarns and random lint balls. Maggie paces the entry way, but her results yield the same.

Carefully, she wraps her fingers around the banister. Her nose twitched with the odor of something positively delightful. It carried with it notes of maturity that soothed her senses as one heeled foot was placed after the other. When she was interrupted from her daze and stepped upon the top step, it was like everything was glass.

Everything in her world was glass. Still, intrinsically curved by the skilled and delicate touch of an artisan. Her body was stiff, cool glass. Her fragmented heart was glass. The fine line she walked on was an insufferable glass twig that was beginning to bow even more from her emotional burdens. It glistened with a purity, with a gleam of pride, and it was beautifully sick.

She ventures to the room he had just so casually thrown the door open to. Chester even had the audacity to sink his dirty, boot-clad foot into the white plushness of the carpet that was kept so pristine all of these years. Maggie’s head goes utterly silent. Simultaneously, a raging fire consumes her core with enough passion to make her faint.

“Isn’t this cool, Maggie?” He picks up her hand mirror and flits it around carelessly in his hands. Maggie can see her prints being smudged from the pure silver. “Why do you keep this place shut off?” His childish, wide-eyed expression made the contents of her stomach churn relentlessly.

“I told you to never open this room.” Her teeth gritted. She was angry, but that kind of angry that rattles one to their core and makes them quite uncontrollable—an earthquake. Maggie Wentworth was a bubbling epicenter of demise.

“Well, I forgot and stumbled in there and got…”

“Chester, he’s not in there! Don’t you understand, nothing is in there! Nothing has been in there for years! Why’d you have to do this?” She weeps, closing the door behind her. Her mother laid on that bed, those sheets. Her mother’s clothing still hung in the closets, her jewelry still decorated the boudoir. This place hadn’t been opened for years, that is what kept it so… Her. Maggie’s mother, her beloved mother, lived and died in that room.

The room at the end of the hallway with the crystal door knob. The room with the hand stitched quilt with the variety of paisley fabrics and the silky lining. The room Maggie would tiptoe in the darkness of some night and would find solace in her mother’s frail arms. This was the room her mother prepped herself for each waking day in. She’d rim her eyes in an elegant kohl and apply the brow dust ever-so-lithely. Along the apples of her cheeks she’d dust a matte powder in a handsome rush. Maggie’s sniffles even picked up on the notes of the late woman’s perfume. Apples and vanilla. It was always apples and vanilla. Nothing had changed.

Chester just had to ruin that. He shouldn’t have to see her like this. And Maggie wept because she knew what was to happen next.

“You’ve ruined everything for me! You’ve ruined my security! You’ve ruined it!” She shoves his arm causing the mirror to tumble from his hand and crack. Tears well up into her eyes. “You’ve ruined it.”

“You pushed me!”

“You ruined her mirror, Chester. You ruined it.” Her shrilly voice croons as she stares at him in a world masked in a daunting watercolor her tears have painted. “Just get out of here!” She screams.

His mouth opens and the river of emotions he withheld the entirety of the summer spews out.

“You’re so… you’re so… you’re so ignorant Maggie! You think that everything is supposed to be cute and problem free? Do you think anyone deserves some stupid storybook romance and dinner at the diner and sharing small talk on the walk back home? Do you think that living in some house you got from inheritance and living within it without so much as the regard for the day is in any way healthy? No. I’ve had enough. This is unhealthy. This is boring. And you… Oh god. You need to do something for yourself and get the fuck out of here. You’re a scared little girl, Maggie. A scared little girl.”

He takes a breath and has to yell one last thing before he leaves.

“I’ve got to get on with my life, Maggie. I really do. I can’t sit here and play therapist for you. You can’t really expect anyone to.”

And he storms from the room, shaking the glass chandelier as each footfall grows more forceful. Thousands of glass pieces shimmy together, creating a score of shrilling chimes and dreadful, dreadful harmony. Thousands of little pieces. Thousands.

And there was something about it that reminded her of that fucking glockenspiel.