Someone Like Me - 10. Epilogue

Eight Years Later…

I’ve never been more nervous in my life.

It took many conversations with my husband to gather up the balls to finally see two people I had put off seeing for so long. They wouldn't want to see me, I’m just going to make them angrier, I don’t have time to see them - I’m too busy with work. Excuse, excuse, excuse. But there were no more excuses I could make, this had to be done whether I liked it or not.

Or else, I thought, I’m sure to be dead to them.

Today I was paying a visit to my parents.

Most twenty-three year old’s I know see their Mom’s and Dad’s fairly often. Perhaps every month if they live apart? My ones I hadn’t seen in…shall we say quite a long time.

With a clerical buzz, gates ahead of my vehicle swung open and I drove forward apprehensively. I was alone of course. There was no way I would be bringing my married partner to say hello to these monsters. The mission today was to make peace. Or at least to try to not fuck it up completely. So having him, my highschool sweetheart there, would eliminate all chances of success. Hopeful suspicion whispered inside myself that perhaps I was being overly fatalistic and that they would simply be happy to see me after all this time. Maybe they have changed.

I stopped the car in the visitors park and climbed out. It was a beautiful August day in Omaha. Birds squawked playfully nearby. A very gentle cool wind was the perfect compliment to the dry heat of the sun bearing down overhead. A day like this should be spent at the park kicking a ball around and having picnics.

Instead I was visiting my criminal mother and father Isabel and Victor Brooks, otherwise known as Inmate’s 334-562 and 334-555.

I made my way to reception and requested for those exact numbers. A moment later, I found myself being led to the visitors room. My heart pounded with every step closer. This is it. I mentally rehearsed what I was going to say to them.

We passed an entrance to the public visitation room. I frowned as the corrections officer directed me to another room instead. “We’ve had to place further visitor restrictions on these inmates.” He explained. “It’s for your safety.”

“My safety?” I questioned.

He nodded. “You’ll understand when you see them.”

This didn’t sound good at all.

The corrections officer opened a door to a private booth which held a table with seats on both sides.

“They’ll be here in just a moment.” He said. “I’ll come and let you out once the visitor time limit for this room is reached.” He closed the door behind me.

And so there I was alone in a cold room awaiting Mom and Dad. What would they even look like now? What has prison done to them? I tapped nervously on the table, looking at my surroundings. Cameras pointed down at me from the corners of the room. Informational posters on the walls displayed rules of visitation and helpline phone numbers. A clock ticked away on the wall, audibly dominant in the silence of the room, showing itself to be a little past two in the afternoon. The whole place was a miserable shade of grey, keeping back the evil of society from the rest of the world. It’s where they belong.

I found myself shivering. This room is too cold, I told myself. I didn’t want to accept that I was absolutely terrified of what was about to step through the door ahead of me. The faint noise of doors closing and muffled voices could be heard on the other side. I half-expected it to be them but the sound faded away. So I sat there waiting still.

I felt that now was the right time to see them. Enough time had passed since that fateful day where I saw my own father arrested before my eyes because of me and what I had done. It took a while, but I had forgiven him for his actions (even if he wasn’t), and my mother for her own crimes respectively. He had only been trying to protect me in his own twisted, hell-bent way, even though I hadn’t actually needed it. As horrible as they had been, they were still my Mom and Dad at the end of the day, the only ones I’ll ever have. I simply wanted them to know that, to make peace, and to really just say that I still loved them despite the circumstances.

But did they still love me?

Another chill coursed through me like an electric shock, making me shudder and this time I couldn’t blame it on the internal air conditioning over-compensating for the hot day outside.

Where were they anyway? How long had it been since the officer left the room?

A glance at the clock revealed it to be barely five minutes past two. Those couple minutes gone by since I arrived seemed like an eternity. I was getting impatient with anticipation. The waiting has and will always be the worst part to anything dreadful I’m expecting.

I thought back to the last time I had to wait forever in angst. Oh that’s right, Mom and Dad’s court trials. Both were defiant enough to plead innocence for their cases. The jury however were professionals and made sure justice was delivered to them stone cold, despite the expensive New York lawyer friends that made Saul Goodman look like Mother Teresa which Dad had personally sought out to defend him. That in itself was highly questionable. The waiting for the jury’s decisions had been frightening, I was desperately praying and hoping they would be sensible enough to see how worthy Victor and Isabel were for a decade behind bars (and then some for Dad’s case). The outcome of that waiting had been an insurmountable relief. Mother Dearest, as it turned out, was found guilty of fraud to the sickest degree. All those environmental care foundations and organizations she managed, all those public appearances to promote the need to do everything possible to save our earth from the societal threat of global warming, never got to do so much as plant one tree. All proceeds she had ever made (totalling somewhere deep in an eight digit sum), went directly to her secret bank accounts. Not even Mom and Dad’s plan to hide out in Nebraska to avoid suspicious associates in New York could save them from the sentence she got slapped with. Their story of taking me out of school in New York because of how bullied I was there and moving to Omaha to live a better life and for me to have an easier time at school was nothing but a sham. I was used. It was a solid cover while it lasted, and so I had felt completely betrayed. Hence the wait to see her get what she deserved was a lot more stressful than Dad’s trial, who could do nothing as the overwhelming evidence was laid out against him.

There was another type of waiting that I had endured before too. Waiting for my to-be-husband to walk down the aisle. As nervous as I had been on that special day, this was different. It was an excited kind of nervous. My mind drifted back to that day barely a year ago. Locking eyes with the love of my life, the very same person who eight years to this day hid a little handwritten note in my school books, signed with the letter ‘X’. Ever since then….well it had been a rollercoaster ride I still don’t quite know how I survived. I realized that I couldn’t avoid the subject with Mom and Dad. I had to tell them I was a married man, it would be rude not to. That was something I had been debating with myself over once I had booked my visit, but the man of my dreams insisted that I needed to. He was right of course. Trying to search for peace with my parents did not mean hiding the truth from them.

The door ahead of me remained shut. I glanced up at the time. It was ten minutes past now. I frowned. They must know that I’m visiting them since I booked an appointment…why are they taking so long? I considered pressing a help button behind me to see what the hold up was. Maybe I’ll give it another five minutes. I instinctively reached for my phone only to remember that they had made me leave it behind when I checked in. A security measure. So I couldn’t pass the time scrolling through Instagram or playing one of my mindless phone games. I was too firmly in the grip of anxiety for that anyway, and I was struggling to stop my hands from ferociously fidgeting. I drummed on the table some more, played a bit more with my fingernails, then ran my hands through my thick mop of hair. Another thing on my to-do list - visit the barber. I preferred my hair a manageable length of short, rather than a wild stack clumped on my head. Completely opposite to my husband who decided that mullets and mustaches were the current trend, though I tried telling him that firstly he was a year or so too late for that and secondly that he looked completely ridiculous (although I secretly thought otherwise). I smirked as I recalled our silly arguments which would most of the time dissolve into hot, passionate love making. What a way we’ve come since we first laid eyes on each other all those years ago. And to think that at first he was virtually indifferent toward me…

The door behind me suddenly opened. I jerked up in surprise and turned behind me to see that it was the same corrections officer as before.

“Your time’s up.” He announced. “Let's get you out of here.”

What!?

“There must be some kind of mistake, no one’s come to see me yet.” I protested with startled confusion.

The man chortled. “That means there ain’t nobody who wants to see ya. Happens more than you think.”

I felt the color drain from my face as the realization struck me. They’ve refused to see me at all. No, that can’t be true, I HAVE to see them!

“Can’t I wait just a bit longer?” I pleaded, desperation edging into my voice. “Maybe they’re caught up with something.”

He shook his head and pointed to the poster on the wall displaying the visitation rules. “Fifteen minute visits only, son. It’s the rules in here. Bad luck on the no show.”

I couldn’t believe it. My parents, having lost everything, managed to still flex their dominance over me and had stood me up. And to think they might’ve changed after all this time!

I scowled and rose from my seat, following the officer out of the room and towards the exit. He looked at me in a way that seemed to reveal that he had started to pity me. Obviously this was my first time here.

“So what’s your relationship to them?” He asked.

I sighed and gave a sarcastic reply. “They’re my Mommy and Daddy.”

“Tough parents you got there.”

“Well,” I replied. “I should have known that this would happen. They hate me now.”

The officer didn’t say anything in response. Just as we were about to reach the main entrance, he stopped, clutched my arm, and dragged me through a side door which opened with a beep of acknowledgement to his key tag.

“Wait what, where…?”

“Just follow me.” He hissed. He led me down through a maze of corridors and doorways.

I started to protest, unsure of what was happening but he interrupted me again.

“Trust me. Do you want to see your parents?”

Oh boy, this is happening now isn’t it? I was struck with panic again. This time it was scarier. They purposely chose not to see me, but now I’m being led straight to them. I could already see them seething at me with murderous eyes. My stomach twisted as we continued marching up a winding staircase.

We reached a door with yet another keypad. The officer turned to me.

“We’re about to go through and look out over the courtyard. The inmates in this block are outside at the moment. You’ll be able to find your parents from a distance. You won’t be able to talk to them, but you will at least see them. You wanna do this?”

I gave it a moment's thought. There was almost no point if I couldn’t talk to them. But I guess there’s no harm in seeing them either… maybe if they see me too they’ll realize that I still really care about them. They might even change their mind and want to talk to me. Oh what the hell.

“Let’s do it.” I nodded.

The door opened and the officer allowed me to pass through. I found myself walking across a balcony over a bleak concrete courtyard. People dressed head to toe in orange milled around doing various activities. Some walking around, some playing basketball, others talking with each other at tables. I stopped and leaned against the railing, my eyes roving among them. Where are they?

“Do you see them?” The officer asked behind me.

I shook my head and continued scanning the swarm of orange below. “Wait…there!”

The moment I saw her I knew that it was none other than my mother. From a distance, Mom looked remarkably different from her days before being hurled behind bars. I could’ve almost mistaken her to be an afflicted refugee from a war-torn country. A face that used to permanently be highly adorned with makeup for press conferences and public appearances now was inconceivably stale and tired, despite the sun’s magnificent light. Mom must be hating it so much, I thought. I almost started feeling sorry for her.

She faced my direction, sitting at a table opposite a man with balding, salt and pepper hair. He looked thin and wiry. Is…is that Dad?

Whoever it was seemed to be in deep conversation with Mom. And then my heart almost stopped when she glanced up. Two sets of eyes that hadn’t connected with each other in over seven years suddenly did just that. Isabel froze from her murmured conversation and stared directly at me. It was an all too familiar eyeballing that sent my whole body into paralysis.

It was the stare she gave when I used to take suspiciously long showers.

It was the stare she gave when I had spoken up during important meetings with important guests.

It was the stare she gave when I told her ‘no I’m definitely not being bullied’ despite obvious indicators in the form of welts and bruises that I actually was the victim of a fierce bully.

It was the stare she gave when I disrupted a pride parade and upon a flamboyant float declared myself and my boyfriend’s homosexuality to the whole world.

That same stare bore through me even now as I stared back with widened eyes, the horrible feeling of getting into trouble being brought back from the past. No, I don’t deserve to feel like a naughty child anymore.

I straightened, unsmiling and raised my hand up to gesture a small wave. Hi Mom, I mouthed.

Mom didn’t respond to this. Instead, she reached out and tapped the man opposite her on his arm, speaking words I couldn’t hear from about a hundred feet away. This simple action confirmed to me that this person was indeed my father. He looked at her as she spoke, while her gaze was still fixated on me. No doubt, she was alerting him to my presence. It was very difficult to see how Dad reacted to this. In fact, I couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to see him at all.

Victor stayed absolutely still, refusing to turn and look up at his only son.

And now Mom was turning her face back to him, ignoring my existence as if all I had been was a stray cat slinking along the railing. It hit me like a slap in the face right then and there that I had received the same fate as Uncle Phillip.

I was dead to them.

A strange feeling stirred inside of me. I could feel my face burning with hurt and even embarrassment. Here I came to make amends in an attempt to restore an ACTUAL relationship with them, and this is what they do! Is this what it feels like to lose your parents? I couldn’t see them anymore, but not because I couldn’t bear to look at them any longer. It was because my vision melted into a watery blur. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see the corrections officer was still there. He had noticed I was starting to get emotional.

“You ok, son?” He asked.

I sniffed and glanced back at my parents. A bell rang and prisoners below started shuffling to the doors back into the complex. Victor and Isabel rose and left with them, completely disregarding me. And then strangely, another new feeling came over me, being somewhat peaceful.

I no longer matter to them, I thought. Therefore, they no longer matter to me. Fuck them.

I turned back to the officer. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

….

The brightness attacked my vision as I stepped outside to the sweltering summer day. I blinked, trying to readjust to the dimness of the complex’s interior lighting. I looked down at my phone I had retrieved to see I had missed calls from the office. I knew I couldn’t take the rest of the day off now, I’d have to go back to work. Architectural drawings couldn’t draw themselves, not even in 2023. I texted my husband to say I was out and had to get back to the office. Mobile data was low out here so the message took a while to send.

I unlocked my car and plonked myself inside. I took a large breath. So…mission accomplished? I paused to ponder this. Things hadn’t gone how I had initially wanted it to, but the one thing I got out of the visit was something I never thought I’d get.

It was freedom.

Freedom to do whatever the hell I wanted. I didn’t ever have to answer to my parents anymore. I didn’t ever have to meet their expectations anymore. I didn’t ever have to work so hard to impress them anymore. Not that they deserved any of that after what they had done anyway. But I realized now how things would have worked out if they did agree to see me. If we had talked things out and made peace somehow. I would have left feeling very happy to have my relationship with Mom and Dad restored. Except I would have then felt eternally bound to them. I would have consiously made all efforts to hide my life away from them, even if I informed them that I was married, so that they could blissfully ignore my homosexuality for the sake of me pleasing them. And especially once they were out of prison, I would have had to continue to obey them, fulfilling every request and desire they had just so we could maintain that good relationship. I realized that continuously living like this would have cheated myself, my partner in marriage AND my parents. And I would eventually have to choose one or the other, which would have destroyed me.

But today that decision didn’t even need to be made, it had already been made for me.

So now my life is permanently without a Mom and a Dad. When they eventually died, would I mourn? Would I attend their funerals? Would I even be lucky enough to inherit something from them? Maybe, but it didn’t matter now. My own life and the life of my husband is what critically matters to me the most, and will be like that for the rest of my life. A burdening weight that had been stubbornly sitting in my mind for many years has now suddenly disintegrated. I smiled. It felt good.

The text message that had stalled now suddenly completed its send. I started to turn the ignition to leave when my phone rang. The ID showed ‘X’ between two red heart emojis. Yes, that was my husband. Naming him X on my phone was a little joke I had made since he signed his love notes off with that when he was getting my attention at high school.

I picked up my phone and answered it. “Hey sexy.”

“Heyyy, so how did it go?” His voice came on the other end. “I don’t think I can wait ‘til tonight to hear about your visit.”

“Well I just got out, I’m still here in the parking lot actually.”

“And…?”

I sighed.

“Oh…that bad?”

I shrugged. “It actually went better than I was expecting.”

“Want me to FaceTime you?” He asked.

“Nah man, mobile data isn’t great here, so…”

“Sure...so you talked to them, right?”

“Well, not quite.” I admitted.

“Why, what happened?”

I sighed again. “They…they didn’t want to see me.”

Silence at the other end. I almost asked if he was still there.

“Oh Jordy….I’m so sorry.” He said quietly. “I shouldn’t have made you go.”

“You know what?” I responded. “It doesn’t matter. We’re gonna be just fine, you and me.”

“You really think that?”

“Hundred percent. Hey so I’ve got to get back to work now but I’ll tell you more when I get home.”

“Ok man.”

“Cool.”

I went to hang up.

“Jordan?”

“Yeah?”

A pause.

“I love you so much.”

I never tire of hearing these words from him, especially considering what I went through today. It was just what I needed right now. And he knew it. He understood me as much as I understood him, a psychological power that made us an unbreakable force. He was someone like me after all. A spark from that psychological power we shared cracked in my head and a mischievous grin widened on my face as I foresaw what was about to be one of our famously ridiculous arguments.

“No Levi.” I replied. “I love you more.”