The Rise, the Fall, and the Rise by Brix Smith Start

Author:Brix Smith Start [Brix Smith Start]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571325078
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2016-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

THE TRUTH

The early morning light was weak as it filtered through the dirty bedroom windows of our house. The sun seemed masked behind a veil of deceit. As I opened my eyes I heard a strange sound. Quiet sobbing. Mark’s face was buried in the pillow; lying next to me, his thin body was shuddering with grief. I could tell he was trying not to wake me, but at the same time wanted me to wake up.

‘You’re crying,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter? Why are you crying?’

‘I’m leaving you,’ he said.

‘Leaving me? Leaving me? Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘I’m leaving you today.’

He managed to choke out those awful words, his sobs growing stronger as his resolve deepened.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked again. ‘What do you mean, “leaving me”?’ I remember actually laughing a little. Incredulous, I couldn’t quite fathom the magnitude of his news.

He sat up and wiped his eyes. ‘I’m leaving … you.’

At last I got it. Panic hit me hard in the stomach. Panic, then anger, then nausea all at once. I wanted to punch him in the face and vomit at the same time.

‘You can’t leave me!’ I started to wail. I tried to grab him and cling to him, to physically stop him from leaving.

He wrenched out of my arms and rose from the bed to dress. His clothes had been laid out neatly the night before. He disappeared from our bedroom into the box room, the room in which we kept his microphone and lyric sheets, where we kept my spare guitars and the three-stringed violin we used on ‘Hotel Blöedel’.

The dirty little protest room.

He retrieved an already-packed suitcase.

I heard a car horn beep outside.

Mark left the room and headed for the stairs, suitcase in hand. I flung myself at him. In my panic and desperation I wrapped myself around his legs. I tried to stop him. He dragged me down the stairs. I was screaming, crying and trying to reason with him; make him hear sense. Nothing worked. He was determined. This was premeditated.

I felt ashamed of myself at the loss of control over my emotions. I felt weak, ugly and undignified. I was a shrieking banshee. I couldn’t think straight. I was in shock.

‘They’re here,’ he said.

‘Who’s here? WHO’S HERE?’ I screamed.

He opened the front door at the foot of the stairs. I released my arms from around his legs. I saw a car idling in the street. The getaway car. I thought I saw Simon Wolstencroft, our drummer, in the driver’s seat behind the wheel, but I couldn’t tell for sure. ‘It can’t be Simon,’ I thought. ‘He wouldn’t do this to me.’

Mark got into the car with his suitcase and it drove off. I sat on the floor with my head on the stairs and sobbed. I was broken, bewildered, betrayed and abandoned.

I thought about killing myself the day he left me. To punish him.

Little did I know it then, but my anger is what saved me. Anger was the life raft that pulled me up from the pit of my desperation.

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