Page 30 of Teddy Bear

When my father was officially released from the hospital, we all somehow accepted that it was necessary to pretend that everything was fine and normal.

Although, of course, it wasn’t.

Admittedly, I didn't really accept it, but I was just unable to resist the role that was somehow imposed on me.

My voice died away like a stone echo inside the hollow of a dead, wild, and desolate cave, and I was just some dead tool in the charade of my family hell, with the rules already clearly established - there was not much personal freedom or expression.

You could say that my opinion didn't count; in fact, it didn't even exist, since I didn't have the privilege to express it.

So when my father got out of the hospital, Danny drove him to the lake house, where my mother, with her hair done and her makeup fresh and with an unwavering glow and conviction in her bright pupils, was waiting excitedly for him.

I wasn't all that excited about his return, because, as I said before, in my opinion, there was no point in reviving the dead. Anyway, I accepted the role and tried; I really tried to act like everything was normal.

I got the impression, and I believe I had an absolute right to believe, that I was expected to act as if nothing had happened.

It was necessary, almost crucial, that I forgive my father, understand the severity and nature of his terrible mental illness, and realize how good a man he really is, and that he didn't actually do any of this on purpose.

No one spoke of my scorched childhood, of Mr. Bunny screaming with fiery pains gnawing at his perfectly puffy, innocent white ears, or of Teddy, lying buried with his eyes gouged out deep beneath the dead earth.

No one talked about the fire and the burial of my childhood dreams and carefreeness, nor about the label of "slut" and "whore" that my father's desperate, muffled voice stamped all over my body.

No one mentioned it, so I shouldn't have either.

All I had to do was forgive, understand, and move on.

-Tyler, do you know that Lizzie enrolled in the Faculty of Arts?

My mother's delighted, beaming smile was so wide it almost blinded me from across the table. I suddenly lost my appetite and all possible desire for food.

My father nodded, not looking at me.

-Excellent.

He answered flatly, blankly, and curtly, his face, just as I had guessed, still with that hideous, grotesque white mask pulled over the contours of the man I once knew - unnaturally hung and dead, like a scarecrow without gesture or movement.

I directed an unnatural, equally broad grin to my mother, whose irony, of course, she could not understand.

My father didn't even bother.

Of course, nothing was normal anymore, and it never will be again.

- How about we take a little weekend trip? Remember how you loved to grill?

The glee on her face was so stupid and naive that it was starting to irritate me.

My father was trying to chew the rather tough meat of the beef steak, flattened and blunt.

Now I had the impression that there was a huge lump in my throat and that at any moment I would start to drown from the horrible, red-hot ball that blocked my airways, my esophagus, and my lungs.

I wanted to vomit, to throw it all out. I was unstoppably sick.

- I think dad is tired. Why don't we let him rest for a while?

I spoke in a desperate attempt to prevent my regurgitation, choking, and dying.

Mom blinked her eyes in that specific way - I don't understand, everything is beautiful, why are you doing this now - unaware of her naivety and mild childishness - she could never fully understand my father; she loved him, with all her heart and all parts of her tortured soul, but she simply could not understand the worlds and colors that colored and made up the universe inside his head.

In that way, I was much closer to him.