She told me something about her father

More from Jayne's life...

I knew her father, only a little. He had another family. He was their father now. Jayne thought that she was over it, that she had made peace with the hurricane. Being around him, trying to figure out what to do with him, it was the same as 75 m.p.h. winds chucking branches, stones, and unidentifiable debris at her. She kept the hurricane in a closet. When her mother told her about Jeremy, the closet door opened again. Jayne struggled to shut it. She asked for my help. "What is wrong with people, Ryan? Why doesn't it work?" I wanted to be sad. I knew she was sad. I didn't say anything. We were sad together. Jeremy, what a dope. We had trusted him. Jayne had trusted him. What an idiot. "I mean, he was a family friend. When Dad was an idiot, we thought, 'Hey, at least we have Jeremy still.' I mean, that's what we thought." What happens when Superman is an idiot? do all of his friends follow his bad example?

Today. She found out today. Her mother called her after work. Jayne didn't really tell me. I wish I was in her life when she found out. I wish I was there for her that day. I wish I was there for her the day that she found out about her Dad. She was on the train up to Poughkeepsie. It was beautiful sunny day, Metro-North clickety-clacked below, a continuous muffling sound. Her mother's words were too distinct though. She shuddered as the truth was presented detail by detail. "It's just all disgusting, Ryan. Don't you get it?" She twisted in her seat. "It makes me want to throw up, the way these guys behave. Why do they do it?" I have no real response, only a meager, "I don't know. It's just sad and awful." 

It was mid-August when she found out about Jeremy--almost a year ago. She was working in her studio most of the day, not really around anyone. In the evening she had gone to church to practice a dance for their branch luau the following week. She wanted to tell someone. She wanted to beg the question then, "Isn't this just sad? Look what he did? Awful, right?" But, she had no one to dump on. She let herself go in the Polynesian beats, shouting timidly, then more loudly, the unintelligible syllables that accompanied the dance. It was easier to put on a smile, to share happiness with the missionaries and the other branch members. She didn't like being a downer. Dumping on other people had always been a volatile experience. Jayne was so incredibly cautious about sharing her feelings. It took months of spending time with her before she trusted me enough to speak up about what made her sad or frustrated. I don't know where her reluctance came from. It's like every time she had shared her sadness before, someone had stabbed her with a knife. 

I don't know how deep down she buried her feelings. Pretty deep. I guess we were using the closet metaphor earlier. It's not just that her feelings surrounding her father were locked in a closet. The windstorm was in a closet, bounded by a brick wall, a steel lining, laser security system, and a rabid dog. Mainly, she wanted to keep others from getting hurt. She wanted to keep them from the storm, away from the hurricane. It hurt. It hurt bad. 

Jeremy's behavior had crushed his marriage and stirred Jayne's feelings. A forty year-old intern was to him what the manager was to Jayne's father. "'Did she suck it?' What an asshole. What am I supposed to do? He's my father. He at least paid for my life growing up--even if he wasn't really interested in it." Jayne gets really upset sometimes. I think me being around is the first time in a long time that she has let herself work through some of her vitriol and angst. She paints. Disgusted, jubilant, despairing, ecstatic forms and colors across dead animal skin canvas. She hates PETA. Jayne's body is a brush. Jayne's mind soaks up hues from conversations, her ears absorbing dyes from street music, her mouth and tongue gulping up metallic and flat shades in the food she eats and the air she breathes. Jayne is distraught. Jayne, almost destroyed. Full, to the brim, almost bursting. A six-inch long hoagie we buy from a small town in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, at least three inches stacked with meat products. Gorging, sickly stuffing, uncomfortably full. Ugh.

PETA is dead.
Plants feel pain, too.
World peace is in my head.
I'm going insane with you.
I lift up little fingers
To let me walk out the pain.
I search my locked up closet
For windy, whipping rainy pain.
You seem to think I noticed,
You always hoped I cared.
I'm never sure I've left off hoping
That you would learn to share.
She feeds me in the shower,
I'm hungry in the tub.
Everday, quotidien, distraught,
You were my friend again,
'I thought', a flightless dove.