Free Away From Everywhere by Chad Pelley Page B

anyone of anything. And formonths, right through Christmas, he was fine.
    But, every time he’d stare off into a distance or think he heard something in the middle of the night, like anyone does, Owen was afraid his father was seeing that imaginary employer again. Or worse. Once Owen knew his father’s mind could wander, there was no telling how far. Alex told Owen, maybe every night, different stories he read about schizophrenics killing their neighbours, cats, dogs, mothers, fathers, significant others …kids. Each story exaggerated, but absolutely eerie and unnerving. His father’s illness, and the stories Alex told him, changed the environment the brothers grew up in. It fractured it. The world was no longer as small and simple as it had always seemed. It was bigger now, unpredictable, too complicated and unstable for them to retain that blind joy all their friends had. Owen felt distant from his parents and – because of differing opinions on their father – wary of of his brother.
    By April of that year, their mother had to hide any fliers that came to their house, and write NO JUNK MAIL on their mailbox. She had to get out of bed every night and snoop through her husband’s office to see what he was up to in there all day long. She found pages and pages of absolute gibberish, filed neatly away in labeled folders and drawers. Every morning, the word salads were getting worse and worse, and one night she overheard him talking to his “old employer” in the basement. As he picked up on his family’s wariness, he grew suspicious of them, and talked about how their eyes seemed “redder than they used to be.” He talked about how his wife’s face seemed to be changing.“You’re always frowning at me, your eyebrows are always furrowed.”The food always tasted funny. He was given new meds, new doses, Owen’s exhausted mother reading up on them all.
    When he was at his best, he would cry and beg her not to sign the papers. All the guilt and indecision was killing her, it never got better, just worse. She knew once she recommitted him, he wouldn’t be coming back; she’d be essentially sending him off to die. All the while, Owen knew that if his mother didn’t have two children to worry about, she’d never even think of sending him back. Every night he heard them fight and cry, he thought of her burden, acknowledged it, and felt something akin to guilt over it. She considered sending them to stay with their father’s parents while they all waited for the new medication to take effect. He overheard this in a phone call one night, from the laundry room. He needed a towel, and there were none. He dried off with a pair of pajama bottoms that night. He ran the water cold, for the shock of it, to avoid crying, to avoid feeling.
    The bad days were punctuated by good weeks, but one night their father came too close to hurting them. They were all sitting in front of the TV watching The Wonder Years when a U-haul truck pulled up in front of their house. Its lights blazed in through the windows, and the rattle from the truck, surreally loud, drowned out the television. He shot up from his chair, drew the curtains closed and yelled at his family.“Get down in the basement! Now! We’ve got to stick together!” He was screaming so loud veins threatened to burst out of his neck and forehead. “They can’t tear us apart, not now, no matter what!”
    Before they could collectively assess what to do, their father was yelling at the empty space beside Owen, pointing a knife at a man who was not there.
    â€œStay away from my kid, Ted. You said it wouldn’t come to– Owen! Don’t move like that! I’m done with the work, Ted. Hurting my family won’t change that! Owen , My God! Stop moving!”
    While their mother phoned the police, Alex tackled their father from behind, and he went mad then, suspicious and livid about