The Alexander Swallowtail

I remember being very young when I first met the Way brothers.

It was the middle of winter. I was staring out the window at the snow as it fell, feeling a little bit hurt because my mum had promised to make a snowman with me before it got dark. But the sun was starting to set. The sky was becoming a slightly darker shade of grey with each passing moment as I sat in that chair by the window and sighed, not really understanding why I’d been dumped at some near-stranger’s house. Not really understanding why my new friends were so eager to share their toys with me. Definitely not understanding why my mother didn’t come to collect me for several days and why I’d had to sleep in Mikey’s bed, and him in his parents’.

Sometimes I wish I’d been a little older, and capable of understanding. Other times, I was glad I hadn’t had to deal with my father’s passing so much. But it meant that I also hadn’t understood the phone calls my mum would make when the moon was still high in the sky, and why when I went downstairs to find her sitting in the small space of the pantry with the phone, her face a distraught mess, she would be screaming for me to go back to bed.

As I grew up, I began to learn the pattern my mother seemed to lead. I could almost call the exact night that there’d be paramedics busting down the front door. I’d woken with a fright the first few times, getting used to it as time went on, until I started packing my own things in my overnight bag and heading downstairs by myself, readying my lies to tell Mrs Way who, of course, was already aware of what was going on, regardless of how many times I’d told her mummy just wasn’t feeling well. I was only ten.

I remember another day, one filled with distress and confusion, but not only for me this time. Mrs Way had taken me to the hospital to see my mum, still there after a week – much longer than any other time. There were two really nice ladies in her room waiting for me to get there, who I decided after a short while were not all they seemed. You see, they wanted to take my mother away from me, as if the limited time I had with her was still too much. I knew now why they’d been sent to talk to us, and how lucky I was, in a way, to still be living with my mother after all these years. Because it might have been much worse. That conversation in the hospital had been a sort of turning point for my mother. I could count on the one hand after that day the times she'd been back to the hospital since.

I tore my eyes from my parents’ wedding photo, still hanging in the hall after all this time. Mrs Way was by my mother’s side, one of her bridesmaids back in the day, with her hair up all pretty like I’d never seen it before. My mother told me a few years ago that the reason she was so fat in that photo was because she’d been pregnant with Gerard. I found myself oddly jealous that he’d attended my parents’ wedding, in a way, and I hadn’t.

I continued to the lounge room where Mikey was waiting for me to come back with the snacks, his finger still patiently hovering over the play button on the remote. I wasn’t sure how, through everything, we were still friends, but I was sure I loved it. I remembered all the nights I spent over at his when we’d play hide and seek until bedtime, and then as we got older, started watching movies until we couldn’t hold our eyes open any longer. We’d drag his mattress into the lounge room and sleep there without interruption until the early afternoon, when one of us would wake up and get to decide then how to wake the other. His mattress was in the lounge room for months on end at one point, when I’d had to stay a little longer. I tried not to think of that visit – the time I’d almost lost my mother. Again. Though this time it hadn’t been the alcohol or the pills but rather an unpleasant fellow by the name of Bill, who seemed to think it okay to take a swing at a thirteen year old girl for being slightly out of line. Well, quite out of line. I could admit I’d grown up a little bit lippy, but I’d had to. I’d had to learn to survive, or else the universe might have swallowed me up by now. Sometimes, I felt the edges beginning to curl towards me, threatening me with my own insignificance.

I leaned in towards Mikey as we watched the movie, which I almost regretted picking as it appeared it was going to be a romance. But Mikey wasn’t making his clever remarks as he usually would, and telling me he could take a quick run down the street and grab one of Gerard’s videos to watch instead, which were always pretty interesting. I heard him sigh before he pushed himself up to face me, his mouth opening and closing a few times before he could finally get his words out.

And I don’t know how it happened, but Mikey Way had a girlfriend. Mikey Way had a girlfriend, and I’d yet to even have gone on a proper date. As much as I hated it, my mind immediately imagined how for the first time in forever, things were going to change. As selfish as it was, I already hated whoever she was for taking Mikey away from me as I could only imagine she would. All anyone seemed to ever want to do was to take away those that mattered most.