The Truth Behind a Smile

Stephen’s face fell between the ripped fabric and plunged into the bare mattress underneath. His ears turned a bright red as he screamed into muffling cushion and continued to shred the fabric, bringing his fists to his side. Once he could no longer feel the cotton tearing, he let go of the sheet and snatched up the ragged pieces. He ripped these into smaller pieces, following along the mattress until it was visibly bare.

He held back screams by clenching his jaw and he could feel the veins along his temple swell. Saliva ran from his mouth as forced down screams attempting to claw their way out. Without an outlet, his rage took control of his arms instead, and he pounded the mattress with his fists. But just as it had done with his screams, the mattress absorbed the blows, its indifference inflamed his rage even more.

He slid off the bed, grabbed the mattress from underneath, and flipped it on its side. It leaned against the dresser. Stephen lost his balance, stumbled forward, and broke one of the exposed slats. The crack of the thin wood pierced Stephen’s ear’s and brought him a small semblance of joy. He looked down at the broken slat and began to stomp on the others. With each stomp, there was a snap of the thin boards, and a small bit of rage was quenched.

He continued this rampage until he reached the final board, right in front of the headboard. With his last stomp Stephen grabbed the headboard and shook it violently, attempting to tear apart the entire bedframe. With each shake, the legs of the bed scraped the ground and post banged against the wall. After a few knocks against the wall, the large painting that Ana had bought a few years prior at a flea market fell. The bottom landed on Stephen’s hands while the top fell against his face.

The heavy wooden frame of the painting stung his knuckles, as he took a quick step back. The painting dropped to his feet, face down, its blank backing taunting him. Stephen tilted the painting up, holding it at a 45-degree angle with one hand and propping the bottom of the painting on the floor against his right foot. He then proceeded to stomp at its center until he’d ripped the canvas in two. Lifting the whole frame, he slammed it against the bedframe as if it were a log and the frame he held, his axe.

The frame Stephen held in his hands broke apart with each swing but did little damage to the bedframe. He gave that a swift kick though he only succeeded in nudging it a few inches. Whirling around, he caught sight of Ana’s nightstand. He lurched over to it in his drunken rage. He swiped up the wedding photo Ana had placed there. Glancing at it before flinging it like a Frisbee into a corner of the room, where the glass and frame shattered on impact with the wall. Stephen used his forearm to wipe her other belongings off the nightstand and kicked it over where he then proceeded to stomp the toppled piece of furniture. The thudding of his Chelsea boots against the flexible side paneling of the nightstand sent vibrations throughout the room, and several other picture frames fell from the walls and crashed to the floor. Focusing on the destruction of Ana’s nightstand, he failed to notice the additional damage he was doing.

He finally managed to break through the siding of the nightstand, but in doing so, his foot twisted on the drawers inside and knocked Stephen off balance. Unable to catch himself, he slammed his face against the door of the mahogany wardrobe. His rage became even more blinding, and he began to hammer at the wardrobe with his fists. He kept up the barrage of punches, treating the wardrobe like the punching bag his father had made for him in their shed. Each blow more furious and violent than the last, the skin on Stephen’s knuckles tore and blood spurted out.

The pain in his right hand became too much for him even in his blind state, so he used only his left hand, landing a vicious series of hooks to the side of the wardrobe. With each hit the wardrobe teetered back, then slamming down again on its stubby legs. The mahogany cracked along its side, and each blow sent a dusting of tiny splinters flying out. Some lodging in the open wounds on Stephens hands. At this point, however, Stephen was beyond pain and felt only numbness in his hands.

The wood cracked loudly and continued to split under his assault. Furious at how little damage he’d done, he launched a massive left hook into the side of the wardrobe, lifting off two legs but still not enough to topple it. While it was still teetering, he plunged his shoulder into a corner of it and gave it one last ferocious push, sending it crashing to the ground. The top broke off and several other objects in the room to fall over as well.

Still not satisfied, Stephen went blindly throughout the room breaking anything he could find even resorting to punching holes in the walls. Each new hole came more blood; the demolished sheetrock cut tiny nicks in his hands. When he punched a hidden beam in the wall, the impact hurt his hand so much he pushed it between his legs and held it.

Yet he wasn’t done. With his hands now virtually useless, he rammed his head into a wall. He fell backwards, too stunned even to stand straight he turned his body leaning his back to the wall. This self-inflicted blow to his head was the drop that was able to finally extinguish his rage. After nearly knocking himself unconscious, he reached out toward the battered wall in an attempt to latch onto something that could support his weight but found nothing. His body gradually sliding against the wall and crashing to the littered floor below it. His sight began to fade in an out. After some time—maybe minutes, maybe an hour—Stephen regained enough consciousness to get on all fours. He began to vomit profusely.

Once he’d emptied his stomach of all its contents, the moonlight shined its light upon one of the objects he had mistakenly thrown about during his rampage. It was a revolver. A model 36 Smith & Wesson to be exact, that Stephen had in case of emergencies and was small enough for Ana to use if she’d ever needed. He had brought it to the home with him when he had first moved in and had not touched it ever since, keeping it in the recesses of his sock drawer, forgetting entirely of its presence. Had he remembered that there was a gun in the house while Ana suffered from her condition, he may have disposed of it earlier. Instead, the gun now called to him as he lied on the floor dazed amongst the rubble, staring into its black metallic body that laid between the wreckage.

Stephen began to crawl to the pistol, slowly creating a path through the debris, he began to reach his arm out toward the gun, and then he heard it. A faint static distortion of an infant’s cries, muffled somewhere in the room. As he became more coherent the cries became louder and louder. He crawled around the carnage of personal items, tossing items aside, he looked for the source of that horrid sound. He’d made it to his mattress, which lay twisted across several pieces of broken furniture, and shoved it aside.

Emily’s baby monitor was underneath it and had been transmitting her cries for God knew how long. If he hadn’t just finished emptying his stomach, the nausea his self-disgust brought would have made him vomit even more. His daughter was alone, calling for help, but he’d been too blinded by his own grief to notice her.

Stephen rushed to her room down the hall.

Emily was standing up in the crib, wailing.

“Shh, shh-shhh.” He squatted down to be eye level with her. “It’s okay sweetheart. Daddy’s here now, don’t worry. I’m so, so sorry I didn’t hear you sooner, my love, but I’ll take care of you, don’t you worry, I’ll make sure that’ll never happen again. Shh-shhh. Now, let’s get you out—” Stephen stopped mid-speech as he reached for Emily and noticed the blood, splinters, and vomit that covered his hands.

“Oh ... my …” Stephen trembled as he stumbled out of the room in his hurry to get to the bathroom and clean himself off.

“Don’t worry, baby!” Stephen shouted from the bathroom. “I’ll be right there! Daddy just has to clean his hands before he can pick you up.”

He fought back tears as he desperately tried to clean himself, sending shooting waves of pain with each cleansing wipe over his wounds. After he’d finally cleaned the blood and vomit from his hands, he looked up at himself in the mirror. What he saw was a version of himself that would haunt him every day for the rest of his life. He saw a “weak man” as he put it, in disheveled clothes. His shirt had somehow been torn, and all of his clothes were ruined—stained not only by his blood and vomit but by his actions. After a moment of self-loathing, Stephen collected himself and grabbed an armful of towels. Ripping off what remained of his shirt. His hands still bleeding, so he bandaged each with a towel. Somewhat cleaned, he finally picked up Emily and sat in the rocking chair beside her crib, slowly rocking and attempting to sooth her. He shushed her softly as she lay on Stephen’s chest.

After a few minutes of rhythmic rocking and the warmth of Stephen’s chest and the towels around his hands embracing her, Emily finally fell back asleep. As he rocked in the chair with his daughter in his arms, Stephen was able to relax. He was so at peace that even though the adrenaline had subsided, and his nerves had revived, his injuries didn’t bother him as much as he remained as still as possible. He enjoyed this for some time, almost dozing off, until he heard a familiar sound. It was a sound he hadn’t heard for quite some time, but he recognized it the second he heard it. It was the sound of his blood that carved through the towel and dripped onto the carpet below.

* * *

“Have you ever heard the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?” Stephen asked me.

“I’m afraid I am not familiar with it, no.”

“Well, I will give you the shortened version of it, but, essentially, Orpheus was a Greek hero who played the lyre more beautifully than anyone. Believed to be the son of a Muse and Apollo, he enchanted his listeners, whether human or animal. Even the trees bent closer to hear him play. Women often fell in love with Orpheus, but he had eyes only for the beautiful Eurydice.

“The two of them shared a happy marriage for some time, but it ended tragically when Eurydice was bitten by a viper in the forest. Heartbroken, Orpheus journeyed to the Underworld and conveyed his grief through his lyre.”

“Uh, I’m sorry Mr. Clark, but what is the point of this story?” I asked.

“I’m getting to that.” He held up an index finger, signaling for patience. “Orpheus’s music so moved Hades and his wife, Persephone, that Hades allowed Eurydice to return to the mortal realm with him—under one condition.”

Stephen paused and looked to me as though waiting for me to ask what the condition was, but after a few seconds of awkward silence, he continued.

“Hades had told Orpheus that on his journey back, he must walk in front of Eurydice and not look back until he’d returned to the upper realm. Here is where the story begins to vary. Some believed that Eurydice pleaded incessantly with Orpheus to look at her, while others say Orpheus became worried that Eurydice, following in silence, was not behind him and Hades had played a joke on him. In each version, however, the result is the same.

“When day is about to break and the two lovers are almost out of the Underworld, Orpheus looks back. He sees Eurydice for an instant, but she’s quickly sucked back down to the depths of hell, never to be seen again by her lover. Orpheus had ruined his one chance of happiness and spent the remainder of his days singing his grief and wishing that death would take him.”

Stephen awaited my response with a blank stare on his face.

I was confused. I still didn’t understand why he’d told me this story.

Stephen forced smile as he rolled his lips together. “You see, Orpheus and Eurydice were never meant to end up together. There’s no happy ending to their story. There never is with death. But this story brought me some semblance of peace because it made me realize that maybe, just like these two ancient lovers, Ana and I were never truly meant to end up with each other. Maybe our only lasting contribution in this world was meant to be our beautiful little girl.”

Stephen squeezed his lips together and his head bounced slightly. He was considering, I suppose, what to say next.

“That night was the first time in my life I ever truly considered killing myself. I feel sick just saying it and I’m sure my mother would tear up if she could hear me right now, but I couldn’t see myself going on without Ana there. Our time together wasn’t long, but those were the most meaningful years of my life. Had it not been for Emily’s cries that night I probably never would have gotten up again.”