Born Different Page 16

  “People just want to be listened to and feel loved, respected and appreciated,” Gina rambled a bit from the sofa and Gabe wondered if he had been thinking out loud.

  “That sounds simple,” Gabe replied and then couldn’t help adding and then regretting, “If that’s the case, why isn’t everyone happy?”

  “Human nature,” his mother said sounding defeated. “The heart, the mind. It is all human nature. We can’t help it, my darling. Ah, the complexity of human emotions and relationships. It is the rich tapestry of life.”

  Gabe thought about it all and realised that if everyone was happy all the time, would it just get on his nerves? If people were happy, would a depth of passion be lost? Passion is love and loss, pleasure and pain. Passion is the full spectrum from one end to the other. Passion is the extreme.

  The human instinct of wanting more and the ingrained dissatisfaction with what was received might just be one of the propellers of invention, of advancement, of evolution.

  Did Gabe not use his own suffering as a platform for the art he painted? How would anyone know happiness if they didn’t know sorrow? How would you know delicious if you didn’t know bland?

  People lived their lives in the pursuit of an ever alluding and completely unattainable state of constant happiness and fulfilment. In hope. Maybe peace and happiness were allusive for that very reason; for the strive, for the continuation, for the survival. Suffering for not achieving the desired level of goals set, might be one of the fundamental basic facts of human evolution. Create and evolve or be extinguished.

  Gabe wondered how the human species would evolve next. All have wings perhaps? And he involuntary laughed out loud, he was clearly going insane with all the stress.

  Gabe thought that there was enough in life to be sorrowful about, to grieve over without all the added stress of people being horrible to each other, with being hostile and unfriendly. It could be a lot better world in so many ways, if people just lived with nature rather than against it for a start.

  Gabe felt a bit stupid now for taking the vodka, he didn’t even want it. He unscrewed the lid and took a sniff of it, foul stuff and he poured the whole bottle down the sink and as the clear liquid ran out Gabe thought it was like a washing away, a symbolic gesture of cutting his friends out of his life for good. Like a little funeral. With an inch of vodka left in the bottle Gabe downed the rest and would have liked to have thrown the bottle across the kitchen in a final flamboyant gesture, but he just put it in the recycling like a good boy. Gabe read the headline of the newspaper on the kitchen top as he waited for the tea to brew. One in every three women on anti depressants. His mum wasn’t the only one, everyone was depressed it seemed. For all they had, for all the information, for all the consumer choices, for all the people that could be having meaningful interactions with each other; everyone just wanted to clock out of the experience that was their life.

  And why didn’t they change? If they were depressed, then why didn’t they move, change job, change relationship, change whatever it was that was getting to them. Why didn’t he? Because of fear. The fear of taking the leap of faith that a dream might come true was more than the fear of now. Weighing up the pros and cons, it was better to be grateful for what you had, to suffer, to wait and secretly hope that it got painful enough to force you, or that some knight in shining armour would hand it to you. That it would just happen like a miracle. Than to just go out there and try and grab your dreams and live by your own ideals like your heart yearned for.

  But Gabe had had enough. It had got painful enough. It had got unbearable.

  One way or other, Gabe was going to have to jump.

  Looking across to his mum, she looked so sad, devastated and heart broken and he would have given anything just to see her better again. He needed to ring the doctor. The modern world was making her ill but he needed the modern world to get her better again. He was as brainwashed as the next person, Gabe knew that. brainwashing was everywhere and it was completely impossible not to get caught in its spin cycle.

  Gabe sat down next to Gina on the sofa and gave her a cup of tea.

  “I don’t know mum, I really don’t know.”

  “No, me neither Gabe. Sometimes I think I’ve really got something, grasped it. That I have reached an understanding, only for it to slip through again.”

  Gina didn’t know if she believed in herself or anything anymore.

  As Gabe stroked his mum’s hair, he thought that the world seemed to have gone mad. Overloaded with greed, with consumerism, with stuff to eat, wear, drink, watch, buy, do and know. It was making some people somewhere very rich but it was making the masses ill. Gabe wondered if they would ever wake up to it. And if they didn’t? There was nothing he could do about that. It had to be enough for him to know, to act in accordance to this knowledge. For him to look for answers and seek truths. To go and live with nature and be healthy and be surrounded by loving friends. But, at the same time, Gabe couldn’t think of any way of going about this other than by being really rich. Being rich seemed like the only way out of the misery. The only way out would be to have lots of money and to buy yourself out of it. Gabe could only buy a tropical island to live on if he was the richest man in the world. This was the trap and a huge one at that. It seemed to cost a huge amount of money to be free.

  Gabe drank his sweet tea and he thought of Grace. He thought that Grace was the only perfect thing and he imagined that her mum didn’t suffer. They had money. They had everything that they wanted. They had a perfect daughter and they had holidays and new cars and designer clothes. They could afford anything they wanted so that they never needed for anything, they could afford to go and be with nature and do nothing for a few weeks, do nothing for the rest of their lives if they wanted to no doubt. They could afford freedoms. Gabe couldn’t give his mum any of that.

  Gina didn’t want any of that.

  Gina was an anomaly; she went against the grain of almost every other person too and it made her ill; being different in this society with all its judgements and stresses. The Middles wanting you to be like them. And needing to be accepted, but not finding an acceptable place for you to be accepted into. Gina couldn’t conform like most people did. She had no desire for material possessions. She couldn’t keep up the pretence; she was too honest in a world built on lies.

  Though, at the same time Gina thought that her whole life was a lie. In truth Gina had hated the city from day one and pined for the day when she could sell up and move to the countryside again. She could have perhaps made her dream come true quicker if she had been more business minded, more callous. She would have done the same job for free if there were not bills to be paid but it still didn’t ever feel right or sit comfortably with her own innate ideals to charge to help people.

  By rights, Gina should have been more popular but everyone ignored her mostly out in the street and she, due to patient confidentiality, never connected with a client in the ‘real world’ unless they connected first, which never happened. If anything, Gina’s job led her to be shunned and sometimes Gina wondered if she wasn’t much different to a prostitute. Providing the love and service in a private place, denied knowledge of in the outside world, like a dirty little secret. When Gina thought like this, she knew it was time to take up another course or pop another pill.

  Gabe often thought that perhaps he should take up his mum’s offer on some of her therapies, open up his mind a bit more, as really half the time he did his own head in and wondered sometimes if he were not on the edge of his own depressive illness. When Gabe did rest his mind and stop the internal chatter, he invariably was simply given the answer of what he was looking for without even having to try. It was like it was all already there, waiting for him to just shut up.

  And who was to say who was right or wrong? ‘The cure’ for human nature was a multi-billion dollar industry. There was no shortage of people trying to feel better about themselves, wanting to figure it all out, to fix it, to find some sort of
meaning. Wanting to know the future, the choices, the paths available. How to suffer less than they were. There was no shortage of hearts and minds with wallets, wanting all of the answers, and there was no shortage of answers; theories, pretty patterns, experiments, cases, diets, therapies and experts in this, that or the other field. It is just that none of them were right, or were they all right? Gabe hadn’t yet decided.

  Was life just life? Was it all really just chaos, all of it? And you could fear it or be fascinated by it. But the truth was, that fear dominated Gabe. Fear. Gabe knew all about fear, it was a constant companion of late. FEAR. What drove everyone to keep their heads down and do as they were told. If people weren’t already born with fear, society, governments, religion and the media soon bombarded them with it, till it is seeped deep into their every conscious and subconscious action and thought. This was the struggle; the secret silent battle of the internal war with phantom fears.

  Gabe left his mum sleeping on the sofa and went to his studio to finally immerse himself in solitude.

  The sculpture was life size, it was three dimensional, it was growing and coming together. Gabe just had to do a few last finishing touches. The studio was the tidiest he had ever seen it as everything had made its way from the discarded to the useful in the sculpture. There were still a few recent items he was thinking of adding to it. The vodka bottle label from the night out with Grace. Ideally he would like to add an item of Grace’s, something that had her scent; if she gave him something or even if he had to resort to stealing something off her.

  Gabe had a lot on his mind and was making a mental list of all the things he had to get done when he felt someone touch his waist from behind.

  It was Grace.

  Chapter 18

  Gabe couldn’t help but smile when he saw her. He had left the door open, thank God he hadn’t undressed. A sweeter relief washed over him at the sight of her and for so many reasons.

  “You ok Gabe?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m ok Grace. I’m fine, you?”

  “Do you know that is supposed to be the world biggest lie, telling someone that you are fine. What is it? F…I…N…E. Freaked-out, Insecure, Neurotic, Every day. WOW, so this is the mysterious sculpture?”

  Gabe quickly threw a blanket over it as he didn’t want anyone to see it yet, not even Grace. Especially not Grace.

  “Do you want to come round to my house for a bit?”

  All the thoughts came flashing back of Grace’s brother Nathaniel and the warning he gave earlier. Gabe remembered his mum, now asleep on the sofa and the doctors’ appointment, great reason why not to and great excuse to get out of it.

  “I don’t know Grace, I’ve got so much to do.”

  “Please Gabe, don’t make me beg.” Grace said but her eyes were already begging, like a puppy dog.

  “Erm, where is your brother?”

  “My brother? What, you mean Nathaniel?”

  “Yeah, Nathaniel!”

  “Did he say something to you Gabe?”

  “Er…yeah…sort of…”

  “Bloody hell, he’s an idiot. Don’t listen to a word he says Gabe, he’s a drug addict, needs to mind his own business and sort himself out. It’s his way of trying to be responsible, be the big older brother. Make up for failing in other areas…”

  “A drug addict? Great! I think he wants to kill me.”

  “Ha ha Gabe, you have seen him? He couldn’t kill a lady bird, he’d sell his soul for twenty quid!”

  “Oh well I’d better keep a spare note in my pocket in case he comes looking for me again then. Thanks for the heads up on that one Grace!”

  “Please come over Gabe, just for a bit? Nathaniel is out with the crowd he’s always with as usual. He only ever comes home to sleep when he’s run out of friend’s sofas to crash on.” And she held on to his hand, tight.

  Gabe wanted to ask her why she wanted to see him and spend time with him but he was torn again because he was really so over the moon that she even noticed him, let alone wanted him to go around to her house. He could make the doctor’s appointment on the way over there and he could bring in some food for them later. Gabe couldn’t resist the temptation of Grace.

  Gabe knew Grace’s house well from the outside. As soon as he was allowed to ride his bike out on his own, he had cycled up here, to where all the nice houses were on the hill. From the river, the houses got bigger and bigger as you went up the incline. Big, fancy security gates, that got more ornate with each increasing house number, till the houses no longer had numbers but graduated, due to their splendour, to have proper names instead. Some properties had guard dogs that barked and went crazy the whole time. Others had security cameras that moved in the direction of anything out of the ordinary.

  The cars parked outside were all pristine and top end models. Gabe thought it looked like a paradise up here, a heaven that he would never enter.

  This was not his world. He sometimes dreamed that one day it would be but Gabe didn’t say anything of this to Grace. He didn’t want Grace to think that he liked her because of all this. He liked her for everything else and he knew they would all think it was for the money, but it wasn’t.

  Gabe told himself to be cool, calm and confident as the big black wrought iron gates swung open silently. They walked up the driveway that was sandwich by manicured lawns and flowers of all colours in full bloom, it was like a show garden. It could have almost been plastic, with a huge rockery and a water feature. Gabe wanted to say it was beautiful but he knew it would sound wrong somehow.

  He stopped at the huge polished wood, double front doors and Grace let herself in and stood in the big porch that lead, past the huge glass interior doors, through to a grand hall and she beckoned him in.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes of course Gabe! Just come in would you?” Gabe was dazzled by the huge brass multi-tiered, light fitting on the ceiling and the antique looking furniture standing proud everywhere he looked.

  It was like the inside of one of the stately homes or manor houses he had seen on school trips or with his mum on days out when they still did that sort of thing. It was like stepping out into of one of those posh glossy magazines for homes and gardens. Everything looked clean, lush, soft, and shiny. Expensive. Everything was the complete opposite to the way Gabe looked and felt.

  Gabe caught himself and wondered if his eyes had gone like saucers so he tried to rein himself in a bit and be a little bit more ‘cool’ about the whole situation, after all, they were friends, right? Also, her brother hated him and no doubt her parents did too, so at any minute he might have to make a run for it. They might even think that it was him that beat her up that time!

  Oh my God, Gabe hadn’t thought of that, of course. Not only was he poor and had a hippie for a mum and the hump, they might have thought or presumed that it was him that did that to her! That beat her black and blue and split her lip!

  Gabe was just about to bring this up with Grace when he saw something that got all the words stuck in his throat. It was not because the kitchen was huge, the size of his whole house, both top and bottom put together, or that the vast kitchen led through to a games room, mini-gym (but still with half a dozen or so machines) and a huge indoor heated swimming pool. It was because there was a middle-aged woman, lying on her front in the middle of the tiled floor of the kitchen. And not just lying, she seemed to be out cold. Dead even!

  “What the hell!” Gabe managed to utter.

  “What?” Grace saw that Gabe was pointing at her mother. “Oh mum, don’t worry about that.”

  “What do you mean don’t worry?”

  “Just step over her or go around.”

  “Is she alright?”

  “Yes she is fine Gabe, except she’s left the bloody oven on jeez!” Grace opened the oven door and smoke came billowing out, filling the room with the scent of burnt pizza and setting off the fire alarm.

  It was just about the loudest fire alarm, or any alarm, that Gabe had ever h
eard. It was like a scream in the highest pitch possible before your ear drums burst and the windows shattered. It was deafening. Grace grabbed a broom and frantically tried knocking the alarm off the ceiling. Gabe went and opened the back door and then came back and reached up to the alarm ‘off’ button for Grace, immediately stopping the piercing shrill white noise and leaving an echoing deafness and an unnerving silence in its place.

  Grace’s mum didn’t budge. Didn’t so much as twitch. Gabe noticed then that Grace’s mum was holding a cigarette between her fingers and it had burnt down, past her fingers to the stub, leaving an almost whole cigarette of ash. She must of hit the deck not long after she had lit it and then slept right through as it had burnt and blistered the skin on her fingers.

  Gabe bent down to feel the pulse on Grace’s mum’s neck and as he did so, the woman let out a deep, loud snore and frightened Gabe half to death. He also realised now that the woman stank. She reeked of booze and, what Gabe would not mention as he felt so bad about it for all involved, was that the mother also smelt of piss. She had wet herself in her sleep, or what Gabe was coming to realise, her drunken stupor! The booze smelt strong, aniseed booze and then Gabe’s gaze landed on the pint glass and the Sambuca bottle on the kitchen counter.

  Grace was getting two tumblers out of the pristine cupboards that house every sort and size of glass, cut with the same diamond patterns and she filled them one each from the offending bottle.

  “You want a drink?”

  Gabe knew he should say ‘no’ for all sorts of reasons but his nerves were shot to bits now and he reckoned he needed it.

  “How long has your mum been like this Grace?”

  “Like what?” Gabe got confused, which must have shown in his face because Grace extended her question. “Do you mean today or in years wise?”

  “Erm, both I guess.”

  “Well she’s hitting it bad at the moment. Obviously! She thinks my dad is having an affair, which he strenuously denies. He says she’s just mad but really she’s been like this for as long as I can remember. Not always this bad but always pretty bad. When I think back to the first time she got like this, I remember a time when I was like nine, carrying her home from the pub and then I remember something else and I am younger and as I get older and think about it, I realise what I didn’t know then, that she wasn’t perhaps sleeping or having a funny reaction to medication or ‘ill’ as such. What was normal then, was it actually normal? I don’t know.” Grace smiled a sad smile. Her face was looking better, the bruises had gone down and were yellowing, no lasting damage.