Silent Confession

Chapter 31

Views:

Biquge www.xbiquge.bz, the fastest updated silent confession!

She reached out a hand and ripped Einstein from the wall, tearing him in half, and then the periodic table, which was now useless. She yanked the earpiece of Lydia's stethoscope, twisted the ribbon that had been her prize into pieces, and knocked down the books on the shelf. "Color Atlas of Human Anatomy" and "Female Pioneers in Science", each time she pushed down a copy, Marilyn's anger grew a little higher. "How Your Body Works", "Children's Chemistry Experiments", and "The Story of Medicine", she remembered the story behind each book, as if going back in time, Lydia's life replayed before her eyes, and the books were piled at her feet collapse. Downstairs, Hannah huddled under the table in the corridor and listened quietly to the "bang bang" sound upstairs, as if one stone after another was hitting the floor.

Finally, it was the turn of the book on the far edge of the bookshelf: the first book Marilyn bought for Lydia. It was as thin as a pamphlet. First it shuddered alone on the bookshelf, and then it fell to one side. The air is everywhere, written on the unfolded pages, hovering around you. Even though you can't see it, it's still there. Marilyn wished to burn the books, peel off the wallpaper, and remove anything that might remind her of Lydia. She wanted to trample the bookshelf to pieces. Because the books were piled on the floor, the bookshelf was crumbling, as if exhausted. She pushed it gently and it fell to the ground.

At this time, a book appeared in the space under the bookshelf: thick, red cover, with transparent tape on the spine. Marilyn recognized it without seeing the photo on the back cover. She opened the book with suddenly trembling hands, and Betty Crocker's face suddenly appeared in front of her again, staring at her.

"Your cookbook," Lydia once said, "I threw it away." Marilyn was excited because she felt it was an omen—that her daughter had read her mind; her daughter would never Confined to the kitchen; her daughter wanted more. It turned out that she had lied to her. She turned the pages of a book she hadn't seen in years, tracing with her fingers the pencil lines her mother had drawn and rubbing the paper where she had wetted the paper when she cried alone at night in the kitchen. Somehow, Lydia knew that this book, like an extremely heavy stone, had a huge appeal to her mother. Instead of destroying it, she hid it and hid it for so many years. She piled rows and rows of books on top of it, weighing them down so that her mother no longer had to see it.

When Lydia was five years old, she would sit by the sink and observe the foam created by the neutralization reaction of vinegar and baking soda. Lydia dragged down a heavy book from the bookshelf and said, "Tell me more." Lydia gently placed the stethoscope on her mother's chest. Tears blurred Marilyn's vision. In fact, Lydia’s love from beginning to end was not science.

The tears in Marilyn's eyes seemed to turn into telescopes, and she began to see more clearly: torn posters and pictures, scattered books, and the bookshelf lying at her feet. They represented every expectation she had for Lydia. Lydia didn't want them, but accepted them. A dull chill gradually spread throughout her body. Maybe - she thought breathlessly - maybe they were the ones who dragged Lydia to the bottom of the lake in the end.

The door creaked open, and Marilyn slowly raised her head, as if Lydia would suddenly appear. Suddenly, this scene seemed to really happen. It was a shorter, fuzzy figure that looked exactly like Lydia when she was a child, with dark hair and big eyes. She stood hesitantly in the corridor, holding on to the door frame. Please, Marilyn thought, all she could say now was, please come back, please let me start over, please stay. Please.

Then, she blinked, and the figure became clear—Hannah, pale, trembling, with tear-stained face.

"Mom," she whispered.

Marilyn opened her arms without hesitation, and Hannah staggered into her arms.

Across town, Ness placed a 750ml bottle of whiskey on the counter in a liquor store. Before that, he had only drank once. When he was at Harvard, the student who hosted him gave him a bottle of beer. He took four sips in a row, more excited by the idea of drinking than by the taste of it—the beer tasted like foamy urine, he thought—and then the whole room shook in front of him. One night. Now, he desperately wanted the whole world to spin before his eyes and turn upside down.

The man behind the counter studied Nath's face, then glanced at the whiskey bottle. Nath's fingers began to tremble. By law, the eighteen-year-old could only buy beer with an alcohol concentration of 3.2%—the same tasteless liquid that his classmates drank as water at parties. 3.2% obviously cannot meet his current needs. The clerk gave him another look, and Nath expected him to say, "Go home, young man, you're too young to drink this."

However, the clerk asked: "Is your sister the girl who died?"

Nath's throat hurt, as if there was a wound there. He nodded and stared at the shelf behind the counter, where cigarettes were piled in red and white boxes.

The clerk took another bottle of whiskey, put it in the bag with the first bottle and handed it to Nath, returning the ten-dollar bill that Nath had left on the counter.

"I wish you good luck." After saying that, he turned his face away.

The quietest place Nath knew was outside town, near the county line. He parked the car on the side of the road, took out a bottle of whiskey and drank it in large gulps, letting the liquid burn his throat and burn away all the red, swollen and painful places inside his body. It was not yet one o'clock in the afternoon, and by the time he had finished drinking the first bottle of wine, he had only seen one car passing by. It was a dark green Steerpunk driven by an old lady. The whiskey did not work as he expected. He thought it could completely erase his memory, like a sponge wiping a blackboard. However, with every sip of wine, the world in front of him became clearer, and all kinds of details fascinated him. Vertigo: specks of mud on the rearview mirror next to the driver's seat, the last digit of the odometer stuck between 5 and 6, the stitching on the car seat starting to wear; a leaf caught between the windshield and wiper , shivering in the breeze. When he was finishing the second bottle, he suddenly remembered his father's expression when he went out. He didn't even look at them, as if he was focused on something far beyond the horizon, or existing in the past, and neither he nor Hannah had seen it, let alone touched it. The carriage became stuffy, and his lungs felt like cotton. Nath rolled down the window and let the cool breeze blow in. He grabbed the car door and spat both bottles of whiskey onto the curb.

James was also in the car recalling the scene on the stairs. After backing out of the garage, he drove the car in a daze, keeping his foot on the accelerator. His goal was to drive to a place where he could press the pedal to the bottom, so instead of going back to find Louisa, he found himself walking across town, past the school, and onto the highway, the speedometer needle going from sixty to sixty. Sixty-five jumped to seventy. When the green sign "Toledo, 15 kilometers" appeared above his head, he realized how far he had driven.

How fitting, he thought, Toledo, the symmetry of life is so incredibly beautiful. Ten years ago, Marilyn abandoned everything and hid here. Now it's his turn. He took a deep breath and stepped on the accelerator more firmly. He finally said it. It was what he was most afraid of saying, and probably what she wanted to hear the most: Pretend you have never met me, and none of this has happened. He had corrected the biggest mistake of her life.

Yet—he couldn't deny it—Marilyn didn't look grateful. She flinched, as if afraid he would spit in her face. She bit her lip twice, as if swallowing a hard and painful seed. The car moved onto the shoulder, the gravel shaking under the wheels.

She left first, James reminded himself as he pulled the car back into the middle of the road. This is what she wanted all along. But even though he thought that, he knew it wasn't true. The yellow line wobbles. James had endured years of unabashed scrutiny from people who seemed to treat him like a zoo animal. He had had enough of passers-by whispering - Go home, Chinaman - that being "different" was a constant imprint on his forehead. , shining between the eyes, the word affected his life, it left its dirty fingerprints on everything. However, "different" has a different meaning in Marilyn's eyes.

When Marilyn was young, she had no fear in a room full of boys. She poured out the beaker of urine and plugged her ears with dreams. She is a white blouse in a sea of blue sweatshirts. She has always pursued "difference": originality in life and herself. It is as if a man lifted up his world, turned it around, and then lowered it back to the ground. Later, the frustrated Marilyn carefully buried her dream among lavender for the sake of their daughter. Imprisoned in that house on a cul-de-sac in Midwood, her ambitions could not be unleashed. The intricate gears in her mind did not rotate for anyone. Even though she had countless ideas, they were like bees trapped in the window and could not be realized. Now, she was alone in her daughter's room, surrounded by various relics. There was no lavender, and there was only dust in the air. James had felt a long time ago that his wife lived for her various wishes.

Later, for the rest of James' life, he struggled to repair this feeling, no longer able to explain his true intentions, even to himself. At this moment, there was only one thing he could think of: How on earth, he wondered, could it be so wrong.

In Midwood, Nath wasn't sure how long he'd been lying in the front seat. All he knew was that someone opened his car door, someone called his name, and then, a hand grabbed his shoulder, warm, gentle, and strong, and did not let go.

Nath, who was so drunk, thought that the man's voice sounded like his father's, even though his father had never called his name so gently or touched him so carefully. Before he opened his eyes, he thought it was his father. Even when the hazy sunlight shone into his eyes, he found a police car parked nearby. When Officer Fisk leaned in through the open door, he still believed that it was his father. It was his father just now. Obviously, it was Officer Fiske who took the empty bottle from Ness' hand and raised his head. However, in his impression, it was his father who just said to him, "Son, it's time to go home." Thinking of this, Ness started crying.