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Jack’s crying. John doesn’t like when Jack cries. Doesn’t like when he knows he’s the reason why. Doesn’t like when Abigail acts like she isn’t a part of it. She’d slammed the door—that’s why he’d started balling… again. The first time was when they’d begun yelling at each other.
They seem to be doing that a lot lately. Sometimes he starts them, the fights, sometimes she does, and, sometimes, they start without any instigation. Those are the worst, all tangible objects able to be thrown and tears streaming down faces and clenched fists raised to strike… but they never strike. Abigail has never hit him (as of late because, back then, he supposes he really did deserve those slaps) and he would never hit her. Never.
He knows she wants to comfort Jack, to hold him tight in her arms and apologize for things he doesn’t understand. But she’d left rattling the cottage’s walls and furniture nearby, and she’s too damn proud to come back inside. Not with him still standing there in a discombobulating mess of wild emotions.
John wants to cry too. Instead, he wills the tears away like he’d learned to do long ago and wipes away the ones cascading down his son’s freckled cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” he says for the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time, Jack buries his head into his father’s chest, tiny arms reaching around his torso as far as they can go and clutching tightly.
Knees painfully dug into the wood, John suddenly sees a picture, briefly, flash through his mind of a future far away and once thought impossible of a much older Jack, and he smiles at the fact that one day his son will be as tall as him.
The smile falters when his fingers brush through the darkening blond hair and a different thought rips the picture from his mind and shatters whatever happy dreams he might’ve had.
“Go see your ma,” he says, throat catching and eyes stinging again, and he pushes Jack towards the door, “you can cheer her up better than me.”
He watches in solemn silence as his little arms reach high above his head, but five-year-olds are stubborn and, eventually, it opens after a persevering struggle complimented with furrowed brows and a tongue poking through the slit of his lips.
John runs for the washbasin before the door even closes.
A small mirror rests atop a splintered wooden crate in the corner. He looks back at himself through the glass, face split between the jagged cracks and black spots. He knows it’s his attitude and unbridled anger at the world that repels employers and fires him from jobs. But, more often than not, he can’t help but wonder whether it’s the way he looks that explains why some never even bother to give him the time of day.
For starters, they’re poor. He can’t exactly afford nice, new clothes at the moment, but the rags he’s been wearing for the past ten years are only good for a life he can’t quite let go of. Baths are also a luxury, especially the further north they travel the less available they become.
Not to mention, he isn’t exactly of a stocky build, per se. Not like Arthur, at least, the man of capability. Maybe he didn’t enjoy being a so-called “errand boy”, but at least people trusted him to get shit done. They certainly don’t John. If only they had a larger mirror, then he could stand there naked as he’s done more often than not and compare himself to a man better than himself in every physical and mental way.
Can’t forget the scars—will never forget the scars. Who cares how he got them? No one really did even then, but now he has them and they haunt his dreams. For a while, he couldn’t even look at his own reflection; now he’s accepted the ugly marks for what they are: a consequence for a dumb decision and payment for every sin he’s ever committed and ever will commit.
He often wonders why Abigail stays with him. She and Jack could make it so much better on their own. He’ll never admit so, but sometimes he starts arguments in the hopes that she’ll pack up and leave for a more worthwhile life than he can give.
But she never does, and he gets angry at the world for giving them this shit hand and contemplates leaving himself.
Instead, he grabs his knife—a gift from Arthur when he turned sixteen—and a chunk of greasy, stringy, tangled hair. And he cuts. Furiously and uncoordinated, he cuts sections into varying lengths and throws the clumps left in his hands to the ground. He nicks his ear, blood dribbling slowly down his neck, but physical pain is rendered irrelevant compared to the emotional pain he’s feeling.
Tears pour from his eyes when a particularly rough cut catches and yanks his scalp and the knife won’t go through and—
“John!”
He freezes, then the knife is pulled from his hand and that’s when he breaks.
~ ~ ~
Abigail’s heart hurts at the sound of Jack’s muffled crying. Her heart hurts even more at the absence of Jack’s muffled crying. Not because she was the cause, because, being a mother, she’s the reason for her son’s tantrums more often than not. But because she’s not the one pacifying him.
It makes her jealous, in a strange sort of way, having John finally acting as a father to their son. Not to say that she’s unhappy or unsatisfied, but, having gone as long as she did, she can’t quite get over the fact that she’s no longer alone in such an arduous job.
Fleeting thoughts race through her head whenever she finds the two playing together, thoughts of anger and spite towards John for leaving; ‘how dare you to think you can play with my son after all you’ve done?’ or ‘you don’t deserve my forgiveness”.
She hates herself for it, but she can’t help initiating meaningless arguments. And, sometimes, she thinks the only way she and John know how to communicate is through endless fighting. Perhaps it’s not so strange how fragile their relationship is, but in the heat of everything a year ago, Abigail never bothered to imagine how unbearably awkward things would be between them.
It’s as if they live in a perpetual silence that’s only interrupted with bouts of sharp words, thunderous cries, and broken minutia.
Abigail knows he’s trying, and she loves him for it, she really does. But the reason she wants so badly to forget the past is that her own is still stitched far too tightly to her. She’s never been good at forgetting or forgiving. She hopes to change that.
She hears the door open and another insult is ready to fly from her mouth before soft words permeate the air, “Are you okay, mama?”
Her next immediate response is to kneel down and hug her son tightly to her chest. “Yes, Jack, I am. Thank you for asking.” He’s still too young yet to understand.
“Oh, well daddy said you weren’t and that only I could make you feel better.” But damn if he’s not one hell of an intelligent kid.
She kisses his forehead, he’s getting real tall , “Well, you’re doing a fine job at it.”.
“I think daddy’s upset,” he says in that small voice.
“I know he is.” Her fingers brush away his bangs.
“He was crying.”
Her heart jumps for the millionth time. John never cries.
She pulls back, rubbing her son’s cheek soothingly. “Why don’t you go down and play with Mrs. Dorsey while your father and I talk?”
“You’re not gonna yell at each other again, are you?” Abigail often wonders where this intuitiveness came from, for surely not her or John. Perhaps Hosea? Then it clicks in her mind, Arthur . Just the thought of that man, just the thought of his name—it puts a knot in her throat.
“No,” she reassures, “I’m gonna cheer him up just like you did me.”
And just like that he’s a happy, little bean again running down the path towards the Dorsey’s.
Abigail locks her pride away inside a tiny, little closet and heads back inside their shabby cottage. She’d pinch herself if she knew she wasn’t dreaming up the sight she walks in on.
Freezing in the doorway, she watches John furiously cut up his hair in an emotional mess of tears and shouts of frustration. All thoughts, all confusion is left behind— his hair, why is he…? —in favor of sprinting towards his hunched form, spittle flying as he struggles with a chunk of hair. “John!”
She doesn’t know quite what to do other than hug all the bad thoughts out of him.
~ ~ ~
John cries, choking sobs rattled with shaky gasps, into Abigail's chest. Her hands run through his hair, fingertips sliding through loose strands that float to the floor as weightless as he’s never before felt. He’s only felt pressure; stacks upon stacks of minutiae spread like Jesus across his shoulders and pressing down on him every minute of every day of every breath he never could take deeply.
The presence of Abigail mollifies him, it always has, and he relaxes under her gentle shushing. Now, all that’s left is a notable silence protecting all that he wishes he
could would
should say. He stays quiet. She stays quiet. And there they stand in such a vulnerable position, to the world but mostly to each other, weaved together through a small, inevitable explosion.
Static tingles in the magnetism between them as Abigail pulls away and John watches her, as wearily as Arthur must’ve constantly felt, grab a pair of scissors. The silver glints in the lantern light; it stares him down mockingly and suddenly all he wants to do is sleep for real.
He sits, hunched over and eyes downturned, letting her fix another one of his colossal messes. It’s supposed to feel better, he’s supposed to feel better. All he feels is equal parts guilty and numb. Tomorrow is a new day to forgive, forget, and… repeat.