The World Shakes

[Monty Pendleton]

[adminapproval=30083257]Everything and nothing had changed. Stood there on the end of the street, Monty could think of nothing else. The street, Southby Close, was relatively unchanged: save for the flowers in the front gardens and the curtains in the windows, the houses looked more or less as he remembered them. Semi-detached, three-bedroom, chimneys roughly uniform against the dark winter sky. But Monty - Monty had changed beyond recognition. Thirty-one years had not been so kind to him as they had been to the street, and the lines of his age seemed to reflect obviously in the December moonlight.

It was strange, returning here after all this time. He felt older than forty-five, yet simultaneously exactly like a fourteen year old boy. Did any of his neighbours still live here? It occurred to him that the street still knew him as Richard; and as he stared it down, working up the courage to move, he realised that even though at fourteen he'd packed a bag and taken his life elsewhere, Richard, in his abstract form, had never truly left. To his mother, and to anybody still living nearby who might remember him, Richard was a missing boy, last seen July 24th, 2013. He was a half-whispered word hanging painfully from the lips. A thought late on a summer's evening, when the calmness of the night recalled to memory how Richard had so loved to point at and name the constellations in the sky. They knew nothing of the life he lived now - nor whether he was even still alive - and thus his existence was arrested in their minds from the moment he had left. To imagine where he might have been was to wonder if he might be dead; and that was a dangerous thought to cultivate.

Monty's stomach lurched in a way that he thought he might vomit. He had been sick lately - an unfortunate symptom of the stress he'd been under since Odette and Margo had revealed his past identity. He did not doubt they would adhere to their word and keep the whole affair private, but it was not remotely fair to pressure them so - even if they had been the ones to offer. No - they did not deserve to worry. Besides, Monty had a lifetime of wrongs to right, and nobody was getting any younger. He had to do it. Tonight.

He took a deep, long breath in, flexing his fingers, which were stiff where he'd involuntarily been squeezing them into fists. The bitterly cold air wasn't helping his shakes. He hadn't trembled so hard since the last night he'd stood on the end of this road, looking down towards his house - only that time, he'd been saying goodbye to it. Had he ever imagined he'd see it again? No, not at the time. He'd hoped he wouldn't, anyway.

He needed to move. One foot in front of the other, small steps. What would she say, when she saw him? Not far to go. Would she demand an explanation? That was Mrs. Woolfrey's house - she'd once given his mother a recipe book, though she'd never used it. What if he couldn't bring himself to love her? The door was in view, now. A light was on in the living room, though the curtains were drawn tightly shut. She'd always loved her privacy.

Monty's heart wasn't just hammering in his chest, but in his shoulders and his arms and his legs as well. His mouth was dry and refused to moisten, his tongue like sandpaper against the roof. And every step felt as if he were wading through jelly - as if some supernatural force were pushing him back, urging him away. But he kept walking. The driveway was familiar under his feet. He knew where to pick them up over the uneven stone. It was natural. He could have done it blindfolded. The door was still white, but the light hanging on the wall beside it was new. It came on when it sensed his presence, making him flinch. Through the frosted glass, he could just discern the shape of the stairs. His stairs.

He thought about running, then. Not just down the driveway, away from the street, but from the school as well - from the life he'd built. It would have been easier. He'd done it before. He liked the name Montgomery Pendleton, but he could change it again. He wouldn't have to speak to his mother, or face his fears, or fake a story. But then, before he knew it, he'd raised a fist and knocked - not because he wasn't scared any more, but because in forty-five years, never once had anything good come from running away.

 

[Liselle Pender]

Christmas time. Liselle hadn't enjoyed Christmas since... well, she couldn't remember. It wasn't just the commercialism and the gift-shopping that she hated; Christmas Day fell just over a week before her son Richard's birthday. Tonight, on January 1st, his birthday was a matter of hours away, and already the heavy, sick feeling had begun to settle in. It was a day for wondering - wondering whether he was still alive, wondering what she'd done to drive him away, wondering why he hadn't come to her first, or whether she could have done something to prevent it all, if only she'd been a better mother. For that was what it surely came down to. She'd failed him as a parent. She fended off her therapist's useless attempts to persuade her otherwise. Of course she'd failed him. Towards the last few years, she'd scarcely even acknowledged his existence. She understood, logically, that it had not been her fault - she could not have helped her depression - yet still she could think of nothing and nobody else to blame. If only this, if only that... The ways she might have prevented it were endless, and she turned them over in her head almost every night. And still, after nearly thirty-two years, she had no answers. Nothing. Thirty-one birthdays spent wondering if her son was even still alive. It was an ache too terrible to describe.

As evening fell, she drew the curtains, settling into the sofa with a glass of wine in her hand and some sort of documentary on the television. She wasn't really watching. It was just a distraction, and not a particularly effective one. She thought of going to bed, but what for? The earlier she slept now, the earlier she would wake on his birthday - the longer she would have to think about her son. Perhaps, if the weather wasn't bad, she would drive into Oxford and take pictures of the river. Or perhaps she'd just curl up beneath a blanket and will the day to pass as quickly as possible.

She cursed herself often for birthing Richard two days into January. Now each new year began the same way - with the reminder that there was an enormous, irreparable hole in her life, and that she would never, ever truly feel happy again. While her friends were out celebrating all they had to look forward to over the coming months, Liselle was wondering whether she'd make it through them without relapsing into depression. So far, she'd been OK. After divorcing her second husband, Rich, she'd reclaimed as much of her life as she could, retraining as a therapist and taking up photography to keep herself occupied. But since she'd retired, the days had been longer than ever, and she was beginning to consider going back to work just to give herself something to do besides think. She'd bought a dog, too - a golden retriever called Orion. Called Orion, because that had been her son's favourite constellation. Even when she tried to get away from it, she couldn't. But she hadn't bought the dog as a distraction - she'd bought the dog because Rich had always refused to let her have one. She was rebelling. That made her feel better, at least.

The old grandmother clock struck eight. Only eight? Dinner seemed hours ago. Somebody on the television was talking about different species of dolphins. Liselle closed her eyes, nearly drifting off with the wine still in her hand. It was only a knock at the door that kept her from falling right to sleep.

Somebody knocking? At eight o'clock on a Sunday evening? Of course, it wouldn't be Richard. After thirty-two years, he hardly had reason to return now. But a flicker of hope rose helplessly within her nonetheless. The first few years after he'd run away, she'd spent every January 1st and 2nd by the window, cradling the phone religiously in her lap. He'd come back one day, she told herself. He'd call. She was sure of it. But after the fifth or sixth year, when she'd neither seen nor heard a single thing from him, she'd given up. Hoping is dangerous after a while. Hoping paves for the arrival of disappointment.

Orion lifted his head lazily to the sound, but did not move - he was comfortable by the fire. "You'd make a useless guard dog," she told him, to which he responded by resting his head back down on his paws and closing his eyes. Liselle rolled hers, putting her wine down on the low table and standing up. Whoever it was, she hoped they'd come with an excellent reason for disturbing her this late in the day. She smoothed down her shirt, tucked her hair behind her ear, and went out into the hallway.

Through the frosted glass, all she could really make out was the shape of a man in a dark coat. Her chest tightened, instinct cautioning her not to answer. She knew no man who would turn up this way, without so much as a phone call in advance. Come to think of it, she hardly knew any men at all, not counting ex-clients. She'd heard stories from fellow psychologists about weird clients who'd shown up at their houses at odd hours of the night. Was this one of those? And should she be afraid?

Well - he'd seen her now, so she couldn't walk away and pretend not to be in. Mentally locating her mobile, just in case, she unlocked the door and pulled it open.

She knew, of course, that she was looking at her son. It was undeniably him - not in the way she sometimes caught sight of a familiar pair of eyes across the street, and her heart gave a hopeful leap before falling miserably as she realised they were not Richard's - but completely, indisputably, incomprehensibly him. His face was rougher, his hair coarser and grey at the temples, and he was taller, much taller, but it was him. All she could do for a moment was stare: she had often tried to envisage him a middle-aged man, but never with much success. Her only memories of him were fresh-faced and soft, hardly a year into adolescence. This was a fully-grown man. The same man, but a different one. And for a moment, her brain struggled to accept the picture before her, to piece together the missing years and understand that this. Man. Was. Her. Son.

Then, like a bolt of lighting, it struck her. She reached out her hands to grab onto him, any part of him, as if she needed to touch his shoulders and his arms and his face to believe that he was really there, that he wasn't just a figment of her imagination. He was bigger than her, now - too big to wrap up in her arms, like she'd done when he'd been six, and she'd tucked him into bed and read him stories to soothe him from a nightmare. Now, when she wrapped her arms around him, he wasn't holding onto her - she was holding onto him. "It can't be you," she whispered, her voice getting lost in the lapel of his coat. Of course it was him. He still smelled like him. It was his warmth she clung to. "It can't be you." She pulled away to look at his face again, her hands like claws on his forearms. "My God." Though his eyes were starting to wrinkle at the corners, the expression in them hadn't changed a fraction. She threw herself back into him, holding him as tightly as she might a cliff face from which she was dangling over the sea. "Richard."

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Monty hadn't expected to cry. He hadn't known what to expect at all, really. He'd thought he'd closed all affection for his mother on the other side of the door on the night he'd run away, left it there along with his possessions and most of his clothes. Besides the essentials, the only thing he'd taken with him was a small pocket watch - the very same he carried on his person today. It had been a gift from his mother on his thirteenth birthday. Monty strongly suspected that the watch had not been her idea: she seldom gave meaningful gifts, while Rich had always been quick to buy his stepson anything that might please him. If Monty had known for certain that the watch had come from Rich, he'd have tossed it out immediately; but so long as there remained any small chance that his mother had especially chosen it, he couldn't bear to throw it away. Thus it remained one of those bizarre mysteries he had no inclination to solve, lest he discover a truth more painful than the potential reward.

But when the door opened, and his mother reached out to hold onto him, he completely reverted. He was just a boy, scared of the dark, scared of being alone, scared of losing his family. His affections, as it transpired, had not been left behind the door, but simply closed inside some dark room of his heart; no sooner had she uttered his name than he crumpled, the tears falling from his broken face like rain. "Mum," he managed to say, the word tight and choked. He could feel her weight dropping against him, and carefully lowered himself down so that they were sat side-by-side on the carpet, Monty's legs still hanging out of the door. And this was how they stayed for several minutes, locked tightly in each other's arms, faces taut with pain. Perhaps it was longer. Hours could have passed and Monty wouldn't have known it. When he cried, he often lost track of time.

He squeezed his eyes shut and rested his cheek on the top of her head, his arm starting to hurt where her fingers dug into him, but he didn't pull away. How naive had he been to think he did not love her? She was not perfect - during her darkest years she had neglected him, driven him to believe he was useless and unimportant - but she was still his mother. More than that, she was a human being, flawed and scarred and imperfect just the same as him. He held her tighter still. She was warm, and not so soft as he remembered, but the way she cried was familiar - the pattern of her breath the same. He'd watched her cry after his father Stephen had left - held her the way he held her now, except his arms had been too small to reach all the way around her, and she'd been cold and stiff against him. She'd turned over beneath her blankets, told him to go away. God, that had hurt. He'd been six at the time, too young to understand that it wasn't his fault, that his mother didn't hate him. What else could he have done but blame himself?

He drew in a breath that rattled his lungs. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He couldn't stop saying it. "I'm so sorry." How many times would it take before he felt it was enough?

 

[Liselle Pender]

Liselle's tears turned quickly into wails that drew Orion instinctively into the room. The Golden Retriever sat down and watched from several feet away, as if warning this strange, unfamiliar man of his presence. Not that he was a particularly intimidating dog. That was one of the reasons Liselle had fallen for him - he always looked at if he were smiling.

Richard's voice was hardly recognisable any more: deeper, fuller, rougher, like it belonged to somebody Liselle didn't know. Maybe she didn't know him. Not really. Did any parent ever really know their child? On the surface, perhaps. But what about the things that happened on the inside? The thoughts and the feelings and the loves and the losses. Even when they'd lived together, her son had been a stranger to her. That much she admitted was her fault. She'd never tried to get to know him. After Stephen had left... Well, she'd closed herself off from the world, and in turn from her son. There were a thousand things she'd have done differently, now, if she'd been given the chance. She'd have gotten the help she needed sooner, so that she could have understood her depression before it crippled her. She'd have told Richard how much she loved him, every single day, so that he wouldn't ever forget it. It was Liselle who'd made the mistakes. It was Liselle who should have been apologising. Yet when she opened her mouth to do so, something entirely different came out of it.

"F**k you," she sobbed, feebly punching at her son's chest. Her arm felt so weak she could hardly lift it. "Why would you - why would you do that? Why did you leave me? You a***hole. I hate you I hate you I hate you." Her words were slurred with tears and garbled almost into incoherence. "You killed me - you killed me! I waited so many years - thirty-two f***king years! I thought you were dead. Why? Why why why, tell me why!" She grabbed hard at the front of his coat, suddenly overwhelmed with fear. "D-don't go. Don't leave me again. Don't you ever leave me. Don't you f**king leave. Oh my God. Oh my God, Richard." She pressed her face hard into his chest and howled, feeling as if someone had turned her heart inside out, and the storm she'd contained quietly within it for thirty-two years had finally been allowed to break. "Please don't leave me."

 

[Monty Pendleton]

The wails tore through Monty's chest like knives. The worst part of it all was that it was his fault. He'd done this to his mother. Perhaps not on purpose - he'd only been a child when he'd run away - but he could not deny that he was at least somewhat to blame. He could have written, or gotten in touch - just to let her know he was safe. But he'd been scared. And besides, for many years, he'd convinced himself she didn't care. While he lay alone in the bedroom of his abandoned old house, cold, shivering, and afraid, he'd convinced himself that his mother had barely even noticed he was gone. After all, she hadn't given him very much reason to believe otherwise. It was only when Saveli had packed a bag and disappeared into the pouring rain one night that he realised it is incredibly difficult for a parent not to care when their child is missing. And by then, he'd thought it too late to go home. By then, he'd been missing for nearly thirty years - probably presumed dead. He couldn't just show up on his mother's doorstep and expect everything to work itself out. It would be complicated, and difficult, and scary. Three words Monty had spent his entire life trying to avoid.

And he'd been wrong. It wasn't too late to come home. As he sat there, his mother howling incoherently into his coat, cursing and swearing and begging him not to leave, he realised that the only mistake he'd made was not coming home sooner.

"I won't," he promised her, fresh tears spilling from his eyes every time he blinked. "I'm not going. I'm so sorry. I thought you wouldn't care. I'm so sorry."

 

[Liselle Pender]

"I know," Liselle cried, her fingers curled so tightly around her son's coat that her knuckles had turned bright white. "I know. I made you feel that way, didn't I? It's all my fault." She paused to catch her breath, struggling to sufficiently fill her lungs. Something heavy seemed to be sitting on her chest, pushing out all the air. "That's why you left, isn't it? I made you think - I made you think I didn't care. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to! I was a bad mother, but I wanted to be good. I wanted - I wanted you to be happy, I swear. I even thought - I even thought that somebody should take you away from me, because then you'd have the sort of mother you deserved! Oh, God. Please don't leave me, Richard." Liselle cried softly for a moment; the storm had beaten her. "I tried so hard. I won't blame it on depression - I can't. But I did try. I tried to give you a family. I thought that if I married Rich, if you had a dad again, everything would be OK. Nothing worked out the way I wanted it to, Richard. You ran away. You left me here, and I knew that... that if I could just tell you I loved you, you'd come home. But I couldn't find you. I tried so hard to find you. Where did you go?"

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Monty shook his head continuously while his mother spoke, but didn't interrupt. It wasn't as simple as she'd been led to believe. Really, it was far, far more complicated; but he couldn't talk about that. He wasn't ready.

He cried when his mother told him she'd married Rich for his sake. Was that true? Did she mean it? If so, he might have prevented the whole thing, if only he'd had the courage to protest. He'd never liked Rich. In fact, he'd positively loathed him. But because he hadn't been able to say why - it was just a bad feeling in his stomach - he hadn't felt bringing it up would be justified. His mother would have ignored him, he'd thought. Besides, she'd been utterly smitten with the man, from what Monty had been able to see. From Monty's perspective, Rich's entrance into his mother's life had been the cause for her renewed spirits. Finally he understood. Rich had not made his mother happy - his mother had made herself happy for Rich, so that she could give Monty the family she thought he deserved. On both parts, the whole thing had been one terrible, terrible misunderstanding.

"Eastleigh," Monty said. "I changed my name. Please don't say that, Mum. It wasn't that simple. You couldn't have helped it, I promise." Even if he'd had the courage to tell her at the time, the knowledge would have broken her. He hadn't been so naive as not to realise that. And now that he knew she had married Rich entirely for his sake, there was no way he could ever tell her the entire truth. The regrets on her shoulders were numerous enough already. She didn't need that as well. "Rich was... he was... he was scared of me, I think. He loved you so much. He didn't want to lose you, and... and I was a threat. So h-he, he scared me into th-thinking I was useless. He told me that. He told me I was useless." The trickle of tears had become a heavy flow. There were so many things he wanted to say - it was as if he couldn't get them out fast enough, nor in the right order. "It wasn't your fault."

 

[Liselle Pender]

Liselle pushed herself upright to look her son in the eyes, face stricken with horror. She'd always thought the man she'd married was stubborn and possessive, but this? That he'd called her son useless almost made her wish he was still around, just so that she could smack him across the face. How had she never noticed how unhappy Rich had made her son? Maybe she'd just been trying so hard to make things work, she'd blinded herself to the possibility that things had actually gone terribly wrong. Or maybe she'd just heard her son incorrectly. Still clutching his arms for support, she whispered, "He said that to you?"

 

[Monty Pendleton]

She believed him. His mother believed him. Slowly, as if scared she would suddenly reject it, Monty nodded, his face screwing up all over again. "I couldn't tell you. I thought you loved him. I was so scared I was going to lose you again." Though Rich's verbal abuse had been shattering, it hadn't been anywhere near as crushing to his young heart as his mother's depression. "He told me every day. He swore at me - said that I was pathetic, and that I was the reason you were depressed, and that you'd be happier without me. And I believed him." Monty hung his head, tears falling into his lap. Those vicious words... they'd haunted him since the moment he'd heard them. Even three decades on, he still occasionally heard them echo through his head, reminding him that he was worthless. He didn't believe them so much any more - he understood they weren't true - but in a way, they were ingrained onto his heart. It was hard to let go of something he'd so long believed, even when he confronted it with logic and fact. "I'm sorry."

 

[Liselle Pender]

Of course, looking back on it now, from a psychologist's perspective, the signs had been there. Why had Liselle never stopped to consider it? In the thirty odd years her son had been missing, why had she never considered that some external influence might have been responsible for his running away? She'd only blamed herself, that was why. Liselle had been so certain that she had driven Richard away that she'd blinded herself to the possibility that it could have been anyone or anything else. She might have fixed it, if only she'd shown her son how much she loved him, if only she'd had therapy for her depression sooner, but... it wasn't all her fault.

"Oh, no," she said, leaning in to hug her son again - only this time, she was the one supporting him. "No, no. None of that's true. What are you sorry for? I'm the one who should be sorry. I'm the one who didn't see it." Liselle closed her eyes and sighed into his shoulder. Then she pulled away and looked him in the eyes. "You know that isn't true, don't you? My life - my... my whole world fell apart that night. You always have been and always will be everything to me. You are worth so, so much more than he made you think, Richard. So much more." Suddenly she frowned. "No, you changed your name. What did you change it to?"

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Monty felt strange when his mother hugged him, though he couldn't pinpoint why until she leaned into his shoulder again. Though the two were related, he felt as if he were being held by a stranger. In a way, he was; he did not know the woman sat beside him, not really. What was her favourite colour? What did she do in her free time? How did she feel about thunderstorms? These were questions for which he had no answers. But for the first time in his life, Monty wanted to find them. He wanted to get to know his mother, to understand her faults and imperfections, to forgive her where she had failed him and to love her where she had not. Did Arvo have a perfect family? Undoubtedly not. Did they love and care for each other regardless? Absolutely.

Monty blinked quickly and looked up in an attempt to stem the flow of tears. "I know, I... I don't believe those things any more," he said, truthfully enough. He might always be a terrible perfectionist, perpetually afraid to fail or disappoint for fear of being shunned, but he did not believe that he was useless, or pathetic, or that his mother was better off without him. Nonetheless, her words touched him in a way nothing ever had before. He did mean something. He was needed. And somebody - his mother - was telling him so. "Thank you." He brushed his face quickly and nodded. "Er, I changed my name to Monty Pendleton," he said, suddenly embarrassed. "I mean - you know - I was fourteen, at the time..."

 

[Liselle Pender]

All at once Liselle knew her son was a strong man. And though she had not nurtured this strength within him, her heart swelled with pride, for he was hers, and he had shaped himself into exactly the man she had hoped he would be. Hearing the name he had chosen, Liselle laughed through her tears. "Monty," she repeated, wiping her own cheeks dry. "It's perfect. Richard's a terrible name. I think I was high on laughing gas when I chose it for you."* Remembering that day in the hospital - the first day she'd held her son - brought fresh tears to her eyes. The days had been long, but the years had passed quickly - just as all the other parents had told her they would.

Spotting the chain dangling from Richard's - no, Monty's waistcoat, Liselle freed the watch from his pocket, turning it over in her hand. "You still have this," she whispered. It was the very same one she'd bought for him for his thirteenth birthday. One of the only gifts she'd ever given him. And he'd kept it. Suddenly she looked up. "Your bedroom..."

*Disclaimer: I don't really think Richard's a bad name ;p

 

[Monty Pendleton]

For some reason, Monty was relieved by his mother's approval, as if he'd been subconsciously worried about her response to his name change for some time. She had chosen the name Richard for him, after all - even if she now regretted that decision. Monty smiled, but it was a shaky smile, full of tears and apologies. He could no longer tell who had done the other the most wrong. For years he had been sure the entire predicament was his fault; then he'd blamed it on his mother; then on himself again. But now that he was here, and they had finally understood each other's side to the story, Monty wondered whether either of them had really done the other wrong at all, or if the villain in the story had been Richard all along.

Monty's smile grew marginally as his mother fished the watch from his pocket. She remembered it, too. Did that mean she had been the one to choose it for him? It must have been so; she would surely not have remembered a gift she hadn't chosen. "My bedroom?" he repeated, his heartbeat quickening. "No..." It had been over thirty years. Surely his bedroom had been converted by now.

He helped his mother to her feet and followed her up the stairs, his legs threatening to give way beneath him. Everything was the same. The carpet, the wallpaper, the mark on the banister where he'd drawn a dot in permanent marker, just to see if it really was permanent. The landing on which he'd tested some of his silly childhood inventions, and where his stepfather had kicked one of those inventions into the wall, destroying it. "You'll never make anything of yourself like this," he'd said. Monty could hear it as if it were yesterday. "Quit messing around and do something useful, will you?" Monty was crying again.

He paused at his bedroom door, taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, and then pushed it open. The force of it hit his chest like an oncoming train. It was like stepping back through time, back to a moment he remembered so clearly, back to the moment he'd said goodbye to his room and slipped away. When he opened the wardrobe, he knew what he would find: all of the clothes he had been unable to fit in his suitcase; the waistcoats and the jackets, and the rest of his ordinary shirts and jeans - the ones he'd worn when he'd been too tired to deflect his stepfather's accusations that he was gay. He wouldn't have cared, now. Times were different. But back then, he'd been utterly mortified.

The small bed was still made with navy blue sheets, and the eight clocks (yes, eight) on the windowsill were still ticking. His mother must have wound them every day. He'd made those clocks in the workshed with his father - his real father - before the affair. He wanted to feel something tender when he looked at them, but as with everything else in the room, he could remember only the arguments, the shouting, the insults, and the humiliation. After a moment he turned to his mother. "Can you convert the room?" he asked. "Throw everything away. I'm sorry, I just... I hate this. I hate it. I know why you kept it, and I'm grateful, but I can't stand it. Everything reminds me of him."