Behind the Falls Read online

  Behind the Falls

  Brenda Ernst Zalegowski

  All Rights Reserved.

  This edition published in 2015 by Brenda Ernst Zalegowski

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Autumn

  September

  “Are we there yet?!” I whine the four most abused words by any kid on a road trip, especially a road trip they’d rather not be taking in the first place.

  “I swear to God if you ask me that one more time I will put you out of this car and you can walk the rest of the way to Lansing,” says my dad impatiently.

  “My ass is so numb I don’t think I even HAVE one anymore. I probably CAN’T walk. I’ll have to live by the side of the road and beg for change from generous strangers,” I grouse.

  “Noah Emerson Blakely, watch your language,” says Mom. She must be getting irritable too. Ass isn’t usually one of the words that would make her three-name me. Maybe it’s the whining that pissed her off or maybe her ass is just numb too. It’s been eleven hours in the car and we’re all cranky and just a bit sick of each other.

  “Can we at least pull over and stretch?” I beg. Dad meets my eyes in the rear view mirror.

  “We’d be there already if we hadn’t pulled over three more times than we needed to so you could stretch your legs. Come on, Noah, it’s only another forty five minutes or so. I think you can make it.” He flicks his eyes back to the road then glances at Mom. “Seriously, Beth, did we bring the wrong boy? Our son is better behaved than this.”

  Mom looks at me with an apologetic smile. She knows I hate everything about this move. She knows I’d rather be anyplace else right now. She understands my petulance even if it is getting on her nerves. She also knows how absolutely terrified I am.

  “Oh I don’t know, Ollie, I think we’ll all be happy to get out of this car,” she concedes. Dad harrumphs and continues the drive in silence. I look at the passing scenery disinterestedly. It’s just green field after green field. Some of the fields are corn and some are lower bushy plants of a variety unknown to me. Not much to look at. I can’t believe we’re moving from Naperville, Illinois to Nowheresville, Pennsylvania and no one even bothered to ask me what I want.

  A few things happened recently that have changed everything in just a few short months. First and foremost the absolute worst thing happened right after the Fourth of July holiday. Gran died suddenly and unexpectedly. Gran Blakely was my last living grandparent. My mom’s parents died before I was ever born. Gramps died when I was five. I don’t really remember much about him other than his soft flannel shirts and the smell of his pipe tobacco when he hugged me. I always somehow thought Gran would be around forever though.

  Gran was a spry eighty five-year-old the last time I saw her. She still tended her own tomato garden in her back yard every summer. She still insisted on keeping up the house where my dad grew up. Two days after the Fourth she collapsed on her way to get the mail. Her neighbor saw it happen and called 911 but Gran never woke up again.

  We lived with Gran and Gramps Blakely from the time I was born until I was a year old. Of course I don’t remember that time but Dad was really close to his parents so we spent a lot of time in Lansing. It’s a small town in the middle of nothing surrounded by other small towns surrounded by the same nothing. It’s about halfway between Harrisburg and Philadelphia but without easy transportation to get to either it might as well be as far as Chicago. In the past we had always spent most of the major holidays with Gran but we usually flew.

  I’m not a good flyer, terrible in fact. Every flight we take is a major undertaking with a lot of prep, a lot of coercion from my parents and drugs. I can’t even make myself get on a plane without at least taking Xanax. I will probably never be able to fly on my own. I’m not sure if that fear is as bad as the monotony of eleven plus hours cooped up in a car.

  We flew in from Illinois for Gran’s funeral and so Dad could finalize some things. He’s an only child (my grandparents had him very late in life and he jokes that he was a “pleasant surprise”) so all of the work was left to him. Actually, it was mostly left up to Mom. Dad didn’t handle Gran’s death well. He’s still not handling it well to be honest. I can’t say that I blame him

  After the funeral and all of the legal crap we went back to Naperville. Dad’s an English professor at DePaul in Chicago and he only had a couple of months before the beginning of term when Gran died. I think he got the idea when we were in Lansing for the funeral. I know he talked to Mom about it way before they told me. He must have told the school what his plans were even before I knew.

  It’s probably not true that all English teachers and professors are failed writers or wannabe writers but I always sort of believed that stereotype. It fits my dad anyway. He’s been trying to finish and publish a book for years but work and family always takes so much time that he’s still not even close. He’s published several short stories and novellas but nothing huge and important like he wants to do. After Gran died I guess he felt his own mortality. I think he realized he’s not getting any younger and he’s tired of putting off what he really wants. Losing his mom has made him face it that he needs to do something now or give up the dream.

  So my parents came to me out of the blue one day claiming it was time for a family discussion. Some discussion. They had already made the decision between the two of them without even consulting me. That was the second thing that happened. Dad decided he was going to take a year sabbatical and spend the time writing his book. That would have been fine. That wouldn’t have changed my life at all. I could actually support that but that’s not the entire plan.

  Dad isn’t getting his full pay for his time away from work. Maybe that’s why they decided to rent out our house in Naperville and move to Gran’s, which is paid for, in Podunk, PA. That’s bad enough. That news sent me into fits for days. But that’s not all.

  The third thing that happened is that Mom decided to go back to work. She’s a teacher too, or she was before I was born. She quit working to become a stay at home mom when I was born. Now that Dad isn’t working they decided it was time for her to go back to the workforce. She’s going to be subbing until hopefully a more permanent position opens up somewhere in or near Lansing. I’m going to be seventeen soon. It should be okay that my mom is finally going back to work except that Mom working leads to the fourth shitty thing.

  For the first time in my life, if you don’t count two doomed weeks of Kindergarten, I’m going to have to go to public school. My mom has home schooled me my entire life. I guess it’s not so surprising that they didn’t ask my opinion before they made this decision. There’s no way I would have agreed to it so they took me out of the equation completely.

  I really am sick and tired of sitting in this car. If we are less than an hour from Gran’s it wouldn’t kill us to stop one more time would it? It’s not like there’s anyone waiting for us there. It’s not like we’re on a strict time schedule. I consider my options and decide to take action.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” I moan the one thing that will get my parents’ attention. Dad looks at me again in the rear view mirror and I try my best to look nauseated. Mom is even more concerned and turns all of the way around in her seat.

  “Sweetie why didn’t you say something sooner?” she says, all concern. Dad scans the road ahead.

  “There’s no shoulder here. Can you hang on until there’s a safer place to pull over?” he asks and I feel like shit. I’m a brat. I can’t believe I made them worry like this. I shake my head.

  “Never mind,” I say. “I think it was a false alarm. I’m ok
ay.”

  “Are you sure?” Mom asks, still concerned. Dad isn’t fooled. He’s on to me.

  “If you puke in this car you’re cleaning it out as soon as we get there,” he threatens. Yeah, he knows I’m not really sick.

  “Oliver!” my mom exclaims. I just shrug as my dad looks in the mirror at me again before putting his concentration on the road.

  “Just wake me up when we get there,” I say and after double checking that it’s locked I lean against the door and rest my head against the window. It’s not five minutes before I’m checking again to make sure the door is locked. I doubt it would fly open unexpectedly if it was unlocked and I am wearing my seatbelt but I can’t relax if I’m going to worry about that and unless I check again I will worry.

  I can’t sleep. I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to. I keep my eyes closed anyway. At least blackness is a change from the endless fields on either side of the road. It’s got to be at least ten minutes later when my mom says my name quietly. I don’t answer. Let them think I’m sleeping.

  “Is he ready? Do you think this will work out?” Mom asks Dad. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “We have to find out at some point,” Dad sighs. “If he can’t handle high school how is he ever going to manage college? After college, how is he going to handle a job?” Now I feel even more like shit for pretending to be sick before just so I could get out of the car.

  The truth is I’ve been doing so much better this past year. I almost feel normal, or what I imagine normal is. Dad isn’t the only one thinking about college. I never would have thought college was possible a few years ago but recently it’s becoming a goal I can see myself accomplishing. It’s something I want to try anyway. Now everything is changing and I feel like I’m slipping. Moving away from everything familiar, everyone I know is scary enough but add public school, lots of different people coming into my life and even a strange doctor to work with, if I keep thinking about it I really WILL be sick.

  I guess I was never really normal but no one actually knew that until I was around five. I was sick all of the time. I’m not talking more than average I mean a LOT. My parents had me to every specialist they could find. They tested for everything from Crohn’s disease to colitis to stomach cancer and even scanned for brain tumors. There was never anything physically wrong, nothing to explain the constant illness, the vomiting several times a week.

  It wasn’t just the stomach issues though. I was a nervous child. I cried a lot. If my parents went somewhere and left me with a sitter I would cry the entire time they were away. Sometimes the crying and vomiting would be so bad that the sitter would have to call my parents to come home. As a result they didn’t go out much. My Aunt Sarah became the only sitter that would even try to deal with me.

  It wasn’t until I went to school that they figured out that it wasn’t physical at all. I don’t remember much about those ill-fated two weeks of Kindergarten. How much does anyone remember about being five? Besides, I’ve always heard that people have the ability to block painful memories. I do know that I cried uncontrollably when anyone tried to approach me. When the teacher put a comforting hand on my arm I screamed bloody murder. I cried, shook, panicked and threw up until my mom came to get me.

  They tried again with similar results. After two weeks the school met with my parents. The teacher and principal and superintendent made excuses. I wasn’t mature enough. I wasn’t ready. Perhaps we could try again in a year. They just wanted to get rid of me. I couldn’t explain it to my parents. I was too young. I didn’t have the verbal skills to express myself.

  How could I explain to them the terror I felt in that room surrounded by strangers? How could I explain the feeling that something bad was going to happen every second of every day? I was sure that at the end of the day my mom wouldn’t come to pick me up to take me home. I was sure that while I was away from her something terrible would happen to her and I’d never see her again. I was convinced that everyone in that classroom was going to hurt me. I was convinced I was brought there to die. I KNEW I would die before the end of the day.

  My parents started taking me to a different kind of specialist. After countless doctors and a total barrage of tests they decided that my stomach issues were really caused by the issues I made up in my own mind. It took until I was eight before they came up with an actual diagnosis. It wasn’t until I was old enough to properly explain what I was feeling that they gave it a name.

  Eventually they determined I was suffering from generalized anxiety disorder accompanied by a severe panic disorder and also likely a bit of a social anxiety disorder. From time to time they say I’ve also suffered from depression. Who wouldn’t be a little sad though? I mean, I wouldn’t wish my life on anyone. I don’t think that makes me depressed.

  I’ve never been able to sleep through the night. Even if I fall asleep right away I wake up totally wired in the middle of the night. On the flip side of that was the fact that I was often tired and felt so exhausted I could fall asleep in the middle of the day while Mom was giving me lessons. I told them how I was never able to relax, even as a little kid. I would wake up terrified with no idea why I was scared but my heart would race and pound and sometimes I would get dizzy. I startled incredibly easily.

  I worried all of the time. What little kid worries? I did. I mostly worried about death. I worried my parents were going to die and leave me alone. Every time they went away without me I thought something terrible would happen and I would never see them again. I worried that I would die. Even as a kid I would have heart palpitations and chest pains that just got worse and worse until I was convinced I was dying and that just made everything that much more frightening.

  I would wake up in the middle of the night with panic attacks afraid that someone would try to break into the house in the middle of the night. I was so convinced there was someone trying to get in to hurt us that I would make my parents get out of bed to prove to me that everything was locked up tight and the alarm was set.

  I couldn’t be in a room with more than a few people I didn’t know. I worried about the future all of the time. I worried about what would happen when I was an adult and on my own. How could I possibly take care of myself?

  As I got older there were times when I was just so numb, like nothing was important and nothing was really real. It wasn’t just not feeling happy or sad it was just…nothing. The nothing wasn’t great but what followed the nothing was worse…sadness I didn’t think would ever end…pain that had no source and no solution. Honestly, the worrying was better.

  I started to worry about things I saw on the news. I was terrified of the state of the world. I worried about terrorists and anthrax and global warming and school shootings even though I didn’t go to school. I was afraid to go to the mall with my mom because of the possibility of a crazy gunman going on a shooting spree.

  I fretted over Avian flu, flesh eating bacteria and other strange and unusual illnesses that I was sure I or my parents would fall victim to. At times my anxiety was extremely debilitating and I could barely leave the house. Sometimes I was afraid without any specific reason to be, I was just terrified.

  Once there was a diagnosis and something to treat things eventually improved. They don’t really know what causes my problems. Maybe it’s just my brain. Maybe it’s heredity. Medication has helped some but it’s also been a big pain in the ass too. I mean the side effects of half the stuff I’ve taken over the years can actually cause the same symptoms I’m already suffering from, especially when the doses aren’t right. The first time I had depression it was determined that the Lexapro dose was too strong. Most people go ON Lexapro to treat existing depression.

  Mom didn’t go back to work like she originally intended, instead she homeschooled me. My parents never had the additional kids they’d always planned on having. They’ve never said so to me but I’ve overheard things, conversations between my mom and her sister. I know my parents wanted at least two maybe three kids. I k
new I was the reason they stopped at one. I was too much of a handful. They didn’t have the energy to deal with more kids. When the doctors told them my condition was quite possibly hereditary that pretty much solidified their decision. I know it was hard on my parents but I’m glad it happened when I was young so I could get treatment, work on it and learn to live with it before the suckiness of my teenage years.

  Things only really improved when I started seeing Dr. Bachman. I’d been to so many doctors over the years and still I was barely managing. To be honest, a lot of the time I wasn’t even managing. She came to me after what happened when I was fourteen. I think if it hadn’t been for her my parents would have given up on me by then. I think I’d still be there…I don’t want to think about when I was fourteen. Dr. Bachman is the reason I’m as normal as I am now. I rarely even need meds anymore even though I have an open prescription for several anti-anxiety meds and anti-depressants.

  I’m still not exactly normal. It’s always there, under the surface, something I have to manage daily. A lot of people with anxiety and panic disorder can totally move beyond it and get past it and it’s gone but I’m not one of them. So far, the best I can hope for is just managing it. It’s better than it was when I was a kid at least. I’m what you’d consider highly functional and I’ve gotten quite good at hiding the worst of it especially from my parents. I really don’t want them to keep worrying about me for the rest of their lives. They deserve more than that.

  I want to go to college. It’s not just my parents’ goal it’s mine as well but I still have a problem with crowds. I still have a problem with strangers. I still worry about things more than I should, getting myself worked up until I’m physically ill. I know without them having to say it that this move is just as much for me as it is for my dad.

  If I’m going to be able to handle a college campus, even a small one, I’m going to have to go to school. I’m going to have to learn to deal with strangers. I’m going to have to get comfortable in crowds. Lansing is a small town with a very small school. What better place could there be to get my feet wet?