boxes and squares #5.5: kill the fairytale (1/2)

November 2088. Jordan Graham is 28, Colette Marin is 31, Maria Boone is 26.

26 years ago: Mick is 38, Adelaide is 30, Jordan is 2.

content warnings: implied terminal illness/cancer, verbal abuse, grief, intrusive thoughts, passive suicidal ideation

previously: the promises // you’ve got to do right by those boys // Maria’s flashlight

It was supposed to be such a beautiful life…

Oh, my angel boy. I suppose you won’t remember this at all.

It isn’t entirely true that he doesn’t remember her at all. He remembers something, vague and hazy like it might have been a dream. There was a lot of laughter, a song hummed low, fields of long grasses, bare feet, and a blanket to lie on. Long blonde hair that she wore loose and falling all around, sunflowers, and sunshine. So much sunshine, as if every day of their lives was sunny, but that couldn’t have been true.





Were these her words, or just the sentiment of them? Not many people can remember life before they were three years old.

“Close your eyes. Not too long in the sun because you’ll burn. But a just little bit. We need a little sunshine, because sunshine is happiness. Did you know that?”

He knew that now. He always thought he learned it in school.



But sometimes in his memories the sun was too bright for her eyes, and her hair was shorn and fuzzy, and her eyes were sunken and dark. They didn’t lie outside in the long grass anymore. She was too tired to walk to the field of sunflowers. But there were still songs hummed low, his head on her chest feeling the music inside her.



“My baby, it’s not fair. It’s not fair. Sometimes life is just not fair and it’s nobody’s fault and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Silence and then a sharp inhale. Jordan wouldn’t know until adulthood that was something a person did when holding back tears. Soon after, she started humming the low song again, her chest rising and falling like the rhythm of the wind in the tall grasses, like whooshing and whispers.



“Oh, my angel boy. I suppose you won’t remember this at all, and there’s so much I need you to know.”

She touched his face, inhaling sharply.

“I just hope you always know that you are made of love, through and through. You are so loved.”

———

Laying on a blanket under a sunny sky, it always made Jordan long for bare feet in the grass. But it was nearly December now, sweater weather and fuzzy socks, not bare feet, and this dusty earth had no grass in sight at any time of the year. He would teach Johanna the constellations some day, but she was too little to stay up that late most nights, so they looked at clouds instead and he taught her about nature and the world around them. “Did you know your skin makes vitamin D in the sun? Not too much, or you’ll burn. But you actually need it. Vitamin D makes us happy.”

“Wow,” Johanna cooed. “My skin is a factory.”

“Absolutely,” Jordan agreed. “And you can tell your grandpa you learned that in homeschool.”

Johanna was different from his boys. She was smaller and still brimming with that unstoppable toddler energy, even if she’d already had her preschool growth spurt. His boys had outgrown chase in their preteen years.

“You can’t catch me!”

“Too fast for me,” Maria said from her cozy blanket.





Johanna was fast, but not too fast for Jordan. Not yet, anyway.

“I’ll always be able to catch you, silly monkey!”

He snatched her off her feet and twirled her around on his shoulders, all thirty eight pounds. Maria looked up from her book to smile at them occasionally, because this evening was so pure and happy. He could start to take this for granted, that this much bliss could be his life now.

Then, as if to make a point, his phone rang in his pocket.

He didn’t need Colette’s ugliness infecting all this bliss. He returned Johanna to the ground. “Here, go sit with your mama for a minute.” And he stepped aside to take the call. He didn’t usually answer, but he answered this time because he was mad at her and he had something to say.




“What do you mean you’re mad? What right do you have to be mad?”

“You took the boys to Thailand,” he said.

“We always go somewhere for Thanksgiving.”

“You flew right over us.”

“Us? You and that skank you’re fucking are an “us” now?”




“Don’t change the subject. You could have let me know. I could have met them at the airport. I haven’t seen them in almost three months.”

“Who’s fault is that? We were already on planes for twenty-two hours. I didn’t want to waste even more time. And besides, I got a good deal on that flight.”

“I’m sure they were sad about it. It’s not okay. It was really shitty.”

Colette huffed. “Oh, what’s the big bother? You’re coming to visit soon, anyway, right? You said you were. You’re not taking that back now, too, are you?”

“I’m not taking anything back.”



A giggle traveling at light speed, faster than Maria could run, the unmistakable piercing glee of a four year old girl. The soundtrack of his life now, happiness and laughter. Us. “Jordan, come chase me,” Johanna shrieked, sprinting circles around him.

It wasn’t her fault. He started this game in the first place.

“Who was that?” Colette asked.




“Uh,” Jordan stammered.

“A kid,” Colette answered for him. “Who’s that kid asking for you?”

“Yeah. That’s JoJo.” Jordan couldn’t think fast enough to lie. He should have lied. He really should have lied, feeling the grave mistake churning in his gut. Or maybe the mistake was that he hadn’t led with the information months ago.

Or maybe there were no mistakes. This moment was always coming to crack his life wide open, whether it happened now or later or months ago.

“Your girlfriend has a kid?”

“Yes. She does.”

“What kind of kid? A little kid?”

“She’s, um, four.”

“She has a kid, and she’s living with you, and her kid is living with you?”

Jordan was just stunned, like he should have seen this coming a thousand miles away. He should have prepared. He should have had a script. Colette knew he had a girlfriend, but she didn’t know his girlfriend had a kid. Living with him. And that mattered. Of course it did.



“Answer me! Are you fucking kidding me? You have a whole kid living with you out there?”

Feeling the tension growing uglier by the second, he walked away further where Maria and JoJo couldn’t hear what was about to become an explosive fight.

“You ran away from your boys to shack up with some other woman’s brat? Jesus, just when I think you can’t get any lower. You’re a real piece of shit, you know that? Do the boys know about the kid? Did you tell them?”

Do they know? Of course they do. Well, kind of.



“Don’t tell them like that?” he pleaded. “Don’t say it like that. You have to hear me.”

“Go on, try to explain? How could you?”

“They weren’t with me when I came here. Not at first. That’s not how it happened.”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters!”

“You left your family to shack up with a new one!”

“I left you, I didn’t leave them!”

“But you did! You left them, too. You walked out with your own damn feet!”




“You made it impossible,” he said. “I was trying to do something. It could have worked. It really could have been something.”

“You’re selfish. You’re an absolute disaster of a man. And it’s okay, I dodged a bullet. I really did. Me and the boys, we all dodged a fucking bullet. You will never see these boys again. Never. I’ll find them a new dad, a better dad. Have fun with your new family.”



“Please don’t. You can’t tell them that. It’s not like that.”

“Why not? Why shouldn’t I tell them? Isn’t it the truth?”

“No, it’s not the truth! It’s not supposed to be this way. You were supposed to let me see them. You were supposed to share. You’re not being fair!”

“You’re right, it’s not fucking fair!” She was yelling now. He couldn’t see her, but he could picture the pinch in her brows and the veins in her temples. “None of this is fair for them. They deserve their dad, not some other kid. You’re with her every day? You tuck her in every night? Why the fuck does some random brat deserve that and not your own damn boys?”

“I’m trying.”




“You’re not trying hard enough! You were a selfish loser of a boy, and now you’re a selfish loser of a man. You took nothing from your father. Not a scrap. He was the real deal and it’s a fucking tragedy that we’re stuck with you instead of him. It should have been you who had the heart attack! It should have been you we buried! We’d all be so much better off. Whatever, I don’t even care. We’ll figure it out on our own. We’ll be fine on our own. I don’t care. I don’t care. God, please, I don’t want to care anymore!”



*click*



She had her last word, as she usually did.




He called the boys next, trying each of their phones one after the other. Then he tried them again. The phones went straight to voicemail. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock—she made them turn the phones off for the night at eight, but she probably did it early tonight.

“Please leave your message after the beep…”

He didn’t know what to say to them.

How is it fair that you live with her every day and not us? How is that fair?

He didn’t have the right words, anyway, because it was exactly how it looked, and how it looked wasn’t fair.

“I’m sorry. I love you. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

He hung up. Did they even know how to check their voicemails?

He wanted to be the one to tell them about JoJo first, because he didn’t want to fathom what horrors Colette planned to tell them. Surely they knew that JoJo existed, as a human being in this world. They knew that Maria was her mother. They had even met her a time or two, playing tag together in the fields outside Coolidge House. But they didn’t know the promises, the entanglement, the future. They didn’t know what it all meant.



It was all over now. Everything you did or didn’t do, everything you tried to be or failed to be. It was all done. Or in the morning it would be. Let those boys sleep the peaceful dreams of normalcy for one last night, and in the morning, the bombs would drop. Or had she told them already, so their sleep would be filled with nightmares? Or had they heard the whole ordeal with their own ears, sitting at the top of the stairs in silence?

He left them to live with somebody else’s kid. He did that. He walked out with his own damn feet. And now he couldn’t reach them. He could drive for two days and still not reach them. They were too far away. Too far away for too long, and it wasn’t okay.

Get on a train, an airplane. Be there in the morning. And say what? How is it fair? Go ahead and try to answer that.

Fuck.





He didn’t know where to go except that he needed to be lost. So he walked off-road into the desert, between the deep canyon walls that blocked all but a diffuse blue light. There was no cell signal here between the rocks, so he stopped trying to call anyone. He walked as far as the trail went, before it just became the dusty plains of a wide desert, miles and miles of it.

He should keep walking, maybe. Get himself lost. Maybe he’d come out on the other side a new man, nameless, without a place, without a history or a future. He’d wander alone for the rest of his days and disappoint no one.

Or maybe he wouldn’t make it out the other side. He could lie down in the sand and let the vultures and coyotes whittle him away to bones. It should have been you we buried! Good. Let the sand bury his remains and make him nutrients for the desert. Finally useful for once in his life.

Either way, they would both find new fathers for those children, and wouldn’t they all be better off?

He was tired of his hopes and dreams being too much trouble for everyone to bear. He was tired of being an odd-shaped peg in the wrong hole. There’s a way to do this, and you’re doing it wrong!

It was all too hard, and he didn’t want to do it anymore.

He lay down in the sand and felt the full weight of quitting. It sat heavy on his chest, but his heart wouldn’t let it in.




Eventually he opened his eyes and noticed the night had taken over completely.

Wow, those stars. How many ancient peoples looked up at those stars to feel less alone, to feel the presence of those who went before?

“You’ve got to do right by those boys,” his father said. It probably wasn’t the exact last thing he said, but it was pretty near the end. In one of those lost times when Jordan had abandoned everything and everyone, because he was nineteen and at the start of his whole life and it wasn’t fair what one stupid mistake had shackled him with. It wasn’t fair.

But there was no order or instruction to it. Jordan’s dad was like that. Never heavy-handed on the guidance or rule. You’ve got to do right by those boys. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I know you will.

Do you know? How are you so sure?

It was too late now, and his father was a whole lifetime away. Too far to reach. His father had loved him, there was no doubt about that. But Jordan had made such a disappointment of himself, leaving an old man to pick up his slack. And then his father died. And that was the image he would take to his grave, of a selfish playboy who’d ditched his responsibilities. Too bad if he ever made up for it, which he wasn’t convinced he ever had. His father would never know. That was the last impression his father would ever have of him, a selfish disappointment, forever and ever into eternity. Jordan could never say, “Wait, I’ll fix it.” He could never say, “Look at me now.”

You can’t fix that. You can never, ever fix that.

The stars didn’t offer any answers.

The stars were just stars, just balls of distant burning gas, and the dead don’t come back to guide us.



Rattle, thump. Gravity. His keys fell out of his pocket. Car keys, camper keys, and a tiny flashlight Maria put on his key ring.

He got up to pick the keys out of the dust. His fingers went to the flashlight, flipping it on and off, on and off, like an SOS.

The dead don’t come back to guide us, but maybe the living do.

Maria would not be happier if he disappeared from her world, that blessed woman. Maria believed in him. Why? She wasn’t stupid, so he wondered how she knew what she claimed was so true. You’re so good at this, she told him. But after what he’s heard from Colette, he was the world’s most worthless father, a complete failure, a bumbling mess, specifically not good at this. The two things didn’t compute. A good dad doesn’t leave his kids. No matter what.

But he made promises. He made vows. Spoken explicitly, with intention. Those vows he made to Maria were a deliberate choice, even more intentional than he ever made to his boys. And he had probably worried her to death by now.



His phone still had no signal here.

He still had no answers. But if for no other reason than that he couldn’t bear to disappoint any more people tonight, his feet walked this dusty earth once again, making their way between steep canyon walls where no light could reach.

He left Maria’s tiny flashlight on.

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notes and gameplay: 

Please hold tight, we’re unpacking a lot of stuff here… 

I’m sorry if this one was rough to read. It’s one of the climax points that this story has been building to for a very long time, and some of these scenes have been brewing in my head for over a year. It's harder to face those demons than to bottle up or run away, but it feels like it's finally time. The only way out is through! 

- the apartment he never got in the three months he’s been away (there is a why, and he'll say it out loud in the next part!)