The Abyss Within

Bridget and her younger brother, Luca, know both their parents are godly, respected people. Well-known in their community. The family’s outer appearances match the vibrant breath of the home. Bridget and Luca fell in line: lacrosse, reading club, debate and softball wound their way through their lives like a reliable and active tributary, tying the family and their time from one week to the next. 

Their mother, Tori Blestain was the center of the home with calm organization, easy playfulness and a constant presence. Tori retreated at times to the laundry room, where she sat to have a cigarette and linger with a romance novel. The family ignored both the open window and the obvious cigarette fragrance that clung to Tori’s brown bob haircut, the same style she wore when Michael proposed on the steps of Flint Hall their senior year.

Michael Blestain has a thriving appliance business, inherited by Bridget’s grandfather, a man of the same ilk. Of course, siblings have constant quibbles and Michael and Tori wrestle the mystery of any marriage with an occasional day-long blue haze. Yet, the family functioned like any busy American midwestern family. 

Nevertheless, dear reader, you must be wondering about monsters and skeletons? You know, the family ones that spill from the closet with dramatic violence at the author’s whim? This might be one of those stories. No apocalypse or mutant extraterrestrials. No, not here. Unless you want to talk about Luca’s suicide attempt after a breakup his senior year. But no, we don’t and we won’t. We will learn about images to be held and the arrogance that is required to make any WASP-y, entitled family a true American success.

Since she was young, her mother ensured her daughter attend an all-girls high school, where Bridget Blestain became “Bridge,” as she continues to be known today. She learned how to use her voice at Lushing Flats Day School, unhindered by extroverted and attention-foraging teen boys. School was a breeze, when she went to class that is; there also were days she stayed in bed, unprepared for the world. She was grateful for the teachers she had, and most were glad to see a student of theirs somewhat learned, and at times even enthralled. 

Bridge’s thick, glossy, dark hair hung around her shoulders like a cashmere scarf that could be mistaken for mink. She knows she is attractive with her flawless, olive skin and curves blooming under her signature white shirts and faded jeans. Her divine qualities are not enough. Long hours spent thinking about style, skin creams and shoes—she knows she is the feminine ideal—but the loss of it terrifies her, albeit just outside her awareness. 

Upon graduation, Bridge accepted a coveted academic major in philanthropy leadership under a well-known professor in the subject. This included an internship at a renowned foundation in LA. Her parents, although thrilled, tried not to boast. Their daughter, it seemed, advanced the family’s values just as expected. Bridge, excited to leave their midwestern town of five hundred thousand to Pepperdine on the Westcoast, could hardly wait. Her father gifted her with a beautiful Movado watch.

A match for the hard work she has demonstrated, he thought.

Michael also hoped that this opportunity, far from home, will build armor from all the sensitivity Bridge has battled over the years. Maybe Daddy’s girl will toughen up?

A month later, Bridge awoke on the beach before dawn, a slew of sleeping young adults, some she recognized, some seemed a bit older. The fire from the night before glowed like the coils on her electric stove top in her studio apartment. An aching head, sour stomach and anxiety arose as she searched for her phone.

Trudging through the wet sand toward her studio, she thought about the freedom she felt the night before; music, smiles, flirting and some weed she smelled for the first time. As she walked up the hill toward campus, she crossed over beach debris and then heard the gravel as she walked through it, crack-chomp, crack-chomp.

Fortunately, the early morning hours had left the PCH deserted, and she crossed easily. The tile roofs covering the campus weren't far away now.

Shower, she thought.

Although the studio was her own for the semester, she shared a bathroom suite with three other women, all who were disciplined students and kept envious schedules. Most of them were already stirring awake, making tea, or reading when she returned to collect her hygiene caddy and made her way to the shower.

“Where have you been?” Jana asked, dunking her tea bag, hair slung up in a towel.

“Uh, little beach party, I fell asleep by the fire,” tentative at first but tying to convey no-big-deal.

“You smell like smoke and alcohol.” Jana replied.

Ugh, Bridge thought. It was a normal party.

At a school established by the Church, Bridge worries about judgement. Washed clean by her shower, she set out to Saturday chores and reading.

The text arrived about 5:30 pm from Morton the Guitar. He must have entered that in her phone last night.

Who? She thought. Oh, him!

“Hey Bridge, it’s Morton.”

She thought of a clever reply:

“didnt know guitars could text…”

“from last night at the beach! hey, we are having a few friends to my place tonight. Wanna join? I’ll have those seltzers you like- please come.”

She thinks about Jana’s distance as she came through the door early this morning. But Bridge feels bored, that old familiar tension inside building, except now she has potential relief and excitement waiting because last night was a bit thrilling. Plus, she remembers, he was interesting, older, wise.

“Okay, but I dont know the area well”

She was attempting to be cautious.

“i’ll get you an uber, not far from campus…an offer you cant refuse. pick you up at the main campus entrance at 8:00?”

“Sure. See you soon”

She felt a nerve in her chest flicker like lightening.

The night was filled with music, singing, booze, weed and coke. Bridge was in for it all. She met some interesting women who made things they sold on Etsy and a writer working on a book about the origins of native plant migration. Plant slavery and trafficking, the woman called it.

This is one of her last lucid memories. The rest were hazy but she felt the free, exciting feeling linger.

She woke on a scratchy tan and brown plaid couch, same aching head but worse. No Morton, but two of the women she recognized on a blanket on the floor. The sun was overhead and her phone was at two percent but read 12:05. She saw four texts. Two from Jana and the rest from her mom asking about her Sunday plans. Jana seemed worried.

Bridge typed a text: “I’m ok!”

Then she erased it.

When she pried herself from the scratchy couch, she still felt drunk. Not a lot of experience with vodka. She looked around for Mort and found him naked in bed with one of the women. She gasped and they awakened. 

“Oh, hey, yeah Bridge,” he said sleepily.

“Um, I’m at two percent, not enough for an Uber, I’m afraid. So…”

“Oh Yeah, no problem. Want some pancakes or something?”

“No, I should get back. But thanks.”

When she arrived back at the studio appearing like a mobster on a losing mission, she was confronted by all three suite mates and an internship steward.

Oh, shit.

Landon, the twenty-five-year-old steward, steps toward her and pinches his nose.

Gosh, girl! You’re still drunk!

“You scared us to death. Two nights in a row.” Jana said.

Shut-up Jana, Bridge thought.

As the months went on, Mort and Bridge did become closer, and many more late nights hung in the air like perfume inside her cubicle during the day. She was intoxicated by the loose tension, barely there. Finally, after many threats, the internship steward did call her parents.

Bridge had not witnessed the rage coming from her father since Luca attempted to ruin Michael’s fantasy of a perfect family by hurting himself. After Luca returned from treatment, no one spoke of it again. Michael secretly wished he’d died to at least bring the family sympathy.

After leaving the internship that she so badly wanted, Bridge thought about the way the whole program seemed to turn away when she walked to the cubicle in the philanthropy section, everyone knew she wasn’t a godly woman herself. She had fallen for Mort, fallen for the freedom from the tension that pulled her apart inside. Breaking the rules seemed natural and she had made a mess of things, which also tasted delicious.

When she went missing before Thanksgiving break, the internship steward called her parents. She was not missing completely. She was ashamed and hiding at Mort’s. Nights of drinking surprised her friends, and the philanthropy program called her in for meetings about her behavior several times. Shocked, her parents flew out immediately. Her father told her to pack a bag and her mother pleaded with her to explain the events of the last several months. Bridge stayed quiet eyeing her father’s pulsing vein in his neck.

How could she explain? The age-old story of kids getting freedom for the first time and abusing the absence of parental eyes did not feel quite right to her. She’d always had a tension inside her. Stealing small items in the store when her mother was distracted eased the conflict inside. Those secrets gave her a jolt of power and freedom from…what? She did not understand why she needed the freedom. 

However dear reader, Bridge always had everything she needed. She had friends, instructors liked her, an easy life we might say. You do not always know what secrets are kept. You do not anticipate what a clear skinned, privileged girl from an upper-class home will keep. You see, I am in this puzzle with you. Quite a conundrum for me, I suppose.

Bridge packed, her mother sniffled, her father carried her bags to the rental car. When they returned to her hometown, the familiar drive suddenly seemed unknown to her. The car arrived under the porte-cochere of a low-slung, mid-century building. The sign on the door read Green Hills Retreat. 

Retreat? thought Bridge.

“Where are we?” She asked.

No answer, just swift movements.

Her parents believed she needed respite, but Bridge soon discovered this was a residential facility.

“No!” she screamed.

She texted Mort that she was being kidnapped by her own parents. They took her phone, shoelaces and went through her bag removing “unsafe” items after a storm of paperwork. She learned that she could sign herself out on her eighteenth birthday which was only two months away. 

Bridge awoke to a bedside table stinking of cold breakfast. She only hoped that Mort did not think she had abandoned him on purpose. She was stuck in this place and had no way to communicate with anyone.

Bridge decided to be compliant during her stay, a decision that came as easy as smiling and crying at appropriate times, planning to leave on her birthday. Thankfully, she had her father’s AMEX in her digital wallet, calling the airlines for the fastest route to LA. Her plane was in the air by six o’clock.

She was aching to see Mort.

This tale is beginning to be somewhat obvious, correct dear reader? More self-destruction. Now, no internship to be the turnstile of her comings and goings. Who knows, maybe she’ll move in with Mort.

Her father is blowing up her phone. Annoyed, she drops it to the bottom of her bag in the Uber. He must have disabled the card on the car ride. “Declined” read the credit card screen when she asked the driver to stop so she could purchase a vape in the store.

Shit!

Five more texts from her dad, she left him on read.

When she arrived at Mort’s, he did not seem happy to see her, maybe surprised? She pushed her way past him and flopped on the couch forcefully, like a crash test dummy.

“I’m exhausted.”

“What happened to you?” Mort asked. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“A fucking mental hospital. Can I get a beer?”

“Bridge, what are you going to do? You can’t stay here.”

“Why?” She asked.

“You know the landlord will be all up my ass. She already has a problem with the parties.”

“She won’t know, I don’t have a car to add to the parking lot in the yard. Mort! You must be with me. I started to fall for you.”

Bridge moves in to hug him tight. His arms participated without his heart.

“Come on, Bridge. You know Betsy and I are open, but I am ultimately invested in her.”

Bridge started to cry and then sob and ultimately began screaming.

Morton left the room and returned with Betsy, who must have been listening to everything.

You must think you know what’s about to happen, dear reader. Do you? Who really is the monster in this story? Let us see…Aren’t most of us misunderstood?

Just then, as Bridge devolved into sobbing hiccups, the screen door clapped as it slammed shut.

“Hello?”

There’s no one there!

In rushed a large figure. 

Mort got up and chased it, “Who are you?”

The dark figure stood motionless, staring. Bridge walked over and stood next to Mort. Squinting her eyes to see better, she suddenly took a step back.

“Dad?”

The figure lunged forward.

“Stop! How did you…?”

Just then she remembered “find my” on the iPhone.

How stupid, she thought.

He came into the house and walked toward her. Her father’s face was bloated and red. He looked like a cartoon, with steam exiting from his ears like Squidward Tentacles.

Funny, she thought.

“Bridge, you betrayed us in every way!”

His pace became faster as she moved backward.

“No! Dad, wait!”

All of Bridge’s upbringing, her schooling, church, sports, debate, flashed before her in that moment. Her innocence and her self-sabotage. For what? For freedom or for rage? Rage for the expectations, for her father’s demands? Rage for the compulsion to steal, to curse in public, to pull Luca’s hair until he cried and then the tension was released inside and she smiled afterward.

The loneliness of hiding all these years?

Yes, freedom from rage and the emptiness inside that has felt like an abyss since she remembers.

She decides this must be the answer.

Answer to what? To the lack of a moral compass that has directed her since she was old enough to feel the glow of warmth when Luca fell and broke his arm.

Sweet warmth.

Her father took her delicate neck in his hands and did not simply squeeze. He extracted her every breath.

Mort, clinging to Michael’s back throughout the grizzly act, but too scrawny to affect the adrenaline powering the exhilarating venom inside Michael, had no effect.

“I expected it from Luca, but not from you.”

The statement hung in the air as Bridge’s lips turned white, then blue.

“Someone call 9-1-1!” Betsy screamed.

When Michael stood and shook Mort off his back, Mort attempted CPR for about 10 minutes. Just as Michael slammed the door of his Dodge rental car and the wheels screamed reverse, the sirens wore faintly down the street until the EMTs rushed the door.

The deed was done, dear reader. Her emptiness always claimed the air around Bridge but inside her as well, until she was free for good, crawling to the other side.