Excerpt from "Beautiful Vices"

by Samuel Harris

Excerpt from "Beautiful Vices"

Book I - The Upwards Gaze (Words Between Mother and Daughter)

“Hey sweetie…happy birthday. How are you?” her mom said.

“What do you want Vanessa?” replied the daughter. (Sharon)

“Nothing really…just some things I have to get off my chest,” said her mother. Sharon could tell that Vanessa (her mother) had been crying.

“Look, I really don’t have the time right now," Sharon replied.

“I have so much to tell you…and I know you’re in a place right now that if you never heard from me again, you wouldn't shed a tear. But I feel I must let you know these things. I haven’t been the best parent sweetheart, and I know this –”

“Are you high right now?”

“I’ve failed you in so many ways. The things I’ve done to you, I feel I must atone, but I don’t know how. All that I’ve put you through, I feel like it is impossible to atone. I think that all the wrongs that I’ve done to you and father placed a stain on my soul.”

“And you want me to feel pity for you?”

“Baby I just want to you listen, and really hear me.”

“Sharon, call me Sharon, not baby…”

“It creeps up late at night and at the most unexpected moments. Just when I think I’ve overcome just a little, in comes the guilt which drags me lower than where I was before, and then I use.”

“Like you probably did a few hours ago?”

“Sharon, this soul of mine is marred, and there is no escaping. It weighs heavy on my heart. I want to get clean, I do, but I feel like I deserve to suffer. I’d do anything for you, anything, just to show you how sorry I am.”

“I know where you’re going. I’ve heard this time after time, so don’t, just don’t.”

“I’ve been to the most dangerous crevices of the mind, thinking about how much pain you’re in, that if I sent you to God, you’d be better off. How if you’d never been born, then you would never have had to endure the heartache you have, which is ten times over my own. Baby, I’m so, so sorry. I ask your forgiveness, from the bottom of my heart; please, I need your forgiveness to in part lift this weight off of my shoulders. I feel that if I don’t resolve this, then I can never be truly free…and I will wonder…sweetie, please…just tell me you love me, tell me you care and are willing to let me try to make up for what you needed from me that I couldn’t give because of my addiction.”

“You don’t get to do this!”

“Do what?” Vanessa said. She could hear the tears in her daughter’s voice.

“Call me up, and put me in a position to feel sorry for you! You’ve made your choices. You decided that it was better drop us off at the park so you could sleep with some random stranger for the promise of whatever it is you were using at the time. You don’t get to come back into my life and rob me of my joy, peace, and happiness.” Sharon stood up while she was speaking, and her voice as she said this was shaky. She was holding back so much hurt and she didn’t want to break down in front of her friends, on her birthday.

“…I’m sorry…Sharon…just…please…”

“I have to go Vanessa, I’ll call you if I need you,” said Sharon; and with that she hung up the phone. She sat down again, slammed the phone on the table, and brought her hand to her face and closed her eyes. Even so, tears squeezed through her shut eyelids. When she opened her eyes again, she saw the door to her apartment close as her friends were walking out. She lied herself onto the couch, curled her legs and let out sobs so great that her friends could hear them as they walked to the elevator.

After a while, the sobbing died down and in that moment she felt an even greater sorrow swell up within her. As she whispered uncontrollably, she felt in her body that all of her ill-doings and those of her mother and father were brought to consciousness at the center of her spirit; her body moved on its own accord. With each grumble, each breath, piece by piece, the weight of her angst was trying to be released to God, but instead of a release, it expanding within her without bursting. In her mind she recalled when she was six and went looking for her mother around the neighborhood and found her in the alley on the side of supermarket with a stranger, tourniquet on arm, needle by her side, foaming at the mouth. She remembered how her father warned her not to go the supermarket anymore. But she also recalled that her father would often leave the house and head in that direction. When he would return, he had bottles of liquor in brown paper bags, and would sit them on the coffee table, and drink until he passed out. She remembered sitting by his side, waiting for him to wake up and fix her something to eat, for him to hold her, to tell her that mommy would get better, and that everything would be alright; that the family she’d known just two years ago would be restored. But that never happened.

As her voice carried on without her control, she felt arms surround her, and a still, quiet voice said to her, “Push through.” It was Aaron (her boyfriend) and he held her until she fell asleep.