He wants to leave. You can feel it. That’s why you’re here, living this moment, feeling your body slipping away from you. This is the price.
Daddy left you when you were eight, and never even said goodbye. Truth is, even before he left, he hardly said anything at all; when he was around, it was usually to hound Mommy for sex she refused to supply in exchange for money he didn’t have. Talking to his little girl —simply acknowledging your existence— was seldom on his agenda. And when it was, he most often took the opportunity to let you know exactly how you’d ruined his life.
The short-term uncles and drunken stepfathers who followed Daddy were better and worse, each in his turn. Some looked upon you with disdain, a few with a thoughtfulness that stirred something uncomfortable inside you, and one with a detached, passive pity that made you want to scream at him. None of them cared, not even enough to hurt you.
They didn’t care much more for Mommy, who you discovered was too stupid and selfish to ever hold on to them. You observed the same mistakes made, over and over, until you could see how she was everything she shouldn’t be, and nothing that any man would ever want to keep. She was always a disappointment.
So all these years later, when your own man quit his job, the rent was due, and he fell silently into a bottle of bourbon, no one even had to ask. You called the number, booked the gig, took the pills, and went to your knees. You surrendered your pride and your emptiness, destroying the former and deepening the latter. You’ve proven again that there is nothing you won’t do to make him admit he still loves you.
And now he’s downstairs in the car, waiting. He wants to leave. You can feel it.