Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > The Cure
She had seen them argue, then watched Frank storm out in frustration, then Gerard sulk back to the soft armchair in the dim living room. The floor screamed under her weight as she strode across the room, the damp wood encrusted with dried mold squealed her approach but Gerard didn’t look up. She sat on the arm rest and hung her arm across Gerard’s shoulders; he made no further action than a sigh. She lowered her head to rest it on his shoulder.
“I just want answers,” were the first words to crash the uncomfortable silence, yet wrapping the room in an even thicker blanket of awkwardness. “I just want help.”
She didn’t say anything, she just breathed in, breathed out, felt Gerard’s chest also rise and fall with air, felt her head be enveloped and pressed inward with thought and confusion, felt a sticky sweat forming between her arm and the artist’s back. She didn’t say anything, her silence spoke for her.
But he didn’t understand her silence; he wasn’t very fluent in the language of human action, a more difficult study than any language conjured by tongue. “Can you help me?”
His voice did not crack, nor did it stumble, it was smooth, like water sliding down a duck’s feather coat. That made her nervous. She leaned over and kissed the frown on his forehead and stood up. She straightened out her dress and pushed stray hairs behind her ears. The afternoon was turning to dusk and she needed to start supper. She began shaky steps but soothed them to strides towards the kitchen. She could hear the artist slump back into his chair. She stopped at the door frame and turned to him. She saw his head rise and looked into his deep sunk eyes, crystallized with brown and green, like a genetically mutated combination of amber and emerald. Her voice, unable to be masked by strength like the artist’s, was rough and awkward. “I’m sorry, but for now, I can’t.”
=-=-=
“Wait here,” she told them. She looked different today, she didn’t have her bright smile that was hiding her somber eyes, she didn’t have her wavy chocolate locks pinned into a bun, nor did she have bright rouge smudged perfectly on her small lips. No, today she was a disaster. Her lips held no sign of joy, they were lopped and frowning, there were lifeless and pale, deep lines traced the sides of her cheeks; her eyes were deeper than usual, purple rings gripping them with worry and anxiety, wet and shiny with a building mural of tears; her hair was a storm, it was pulled loose of her usually beautiful bun and looked like an angry crow had attacked it. She pushed them into a loose bush with as few thorns as a rose bush could bare, and she kissed them both on their foreheads.
“Behave yourselves, be quiet, and whatever you do stay here.” She was kneeling on the floor to the level of the crying girl and the confused boy hiding in the bushes she put them in. She started to stand, pulling her hand away from stroking the boy’s hair, when he grabbed it tightly and himself crying. “Where are you going? Please don’t leave.”
Her eyes gave up on collecting tears and began to pour them out but she pulled her hand away. “I’ll be back.” She did not promise anything. She turned the other girl with ivory, young skin and glowing almond hair. Her eyes were far from young yet her body was ten years old. The woman kneeled down once more and began stroking the girl’s smooth hair. “Alicia, sweetie.”
The girl looked up at the woman and began weeping harder, she knew what was going to happen. “Take good care of Gerard.” The girl nodded, slowly and shaky but she nodded, that was a promise she was making to the woman.
“Alicia, who’s Gerard?” asked the boy. The girl hugged her friend and just whispered, “he’s nobody, okay? Talk to me.” The woman left and the boy didn’t speak. The girl hugged him tighter and repeated her order.
“What do you want me to talk to you about?” the boy said, almost inaudible.
“Tell me… tell me your name, your age, your friends.”
“But you know all that, Alicia!”
“Just tell me, talk to me.”
The boy, whose coal stringy hair traveled smoothly under the girl’s small hand that was stroking it, whimpered. His voice was still small, quiet, “Well, my name’s Johnny. Jonathon. Jonathon Grey. I’m… I’m seven years old. My friends are you, Alicia, um… Mr. and Mrs. Iero… and Mikey. He’s my friend, yea.”
“Good,” began the girl. And she said no more.
The boy, though, was beginning to feel uncomfortable and lonely. It was true that the girl, his closest friend, was hugging him tight and keeping him warm from the cold and safe from the thorny bushes, but he felt like he was just a tiny boy in the giant shell of his body and there was nobody else inside. He wanted to change his sitting position, give his legs a break, but the girl kept her grip around the boy tightly. He began to grow impatient but he soon began to hear noises. It was four adults bickering. He recognized two, Mr. and Mrs. Iero, but there were two others. A few yellow rose petals landed on his head and he shook them off, trying to remember who the other two were. They were so familiar, like he had seen them many times but had never captured their names. The screams got louder, the boy didn’t like loud noises. He covered his ears and closed his eyes tightly, but the noises got louder, the adults were approaching them. He clasped his hands tightly over his ears, and for a while he was certain he had blocked all outside noises when two loud claps came, then a warm sensation spread on his face, then silence. He slowly opened his eyes and he saw it. He saw the thick crimson that was sprayed everywhere, on the unconscious girl next to him and all over himself; the yellow roses still fresh on the beautiful bush were now obscured with the sight of red splashed on yellow; then finally pooled around two of his friends.
The artist’s eyes flew open. He did not pant or panic, nor did he shoot up in fear or sweat in frustration. He had grown accustomed to the dream. The dream was part of his memory already, whether it had truly happened or not, because it had occurred so many times already it was a memory to him. He simply sat up and found his house slippers on the floor, pushed them on, and stood up, out of his blankets, and pulled on a shirt. He walked into the kitchen and set a kettle on the wooden stove. He looked out of the small kitchen window and saw that the sun was already climbing over the horizon, pouring daisy yellow clouds over the crystal blue sky. He walked out to the front door and found the paper sitting on his step. He returned to the kitchen, grabbed a seat, and opened the big black and white print and began scanning headlines that were the same with text he had already read with news he was accustomed to hearing about the war. Once the kettle startling screaming, he put down the paper, just to find that Alicia was already wearing a house dress and her hair pinned and primped, and was pulling the kettle off to prepare a steaming mug of earl grey tea and some wheat biscuits she made fresh last night. She put the prepared meal down with a smile on her face, and though he was famished, he dismissed her with a proper thank you and the lack of a smile, nibbling on the bread.
=-=-=
The day was another amber one that made the public glow with embers from the sun; it wasn’t too warm or windy, the weather was simply there, comfortable. The sky was faded and there were some light brown clouds in the sky. The air was crisp and he inhaled it in thick portions, as he had left the musty house for some fresh air. The lanky thin waitress brought him his café du lait with a pain au chocolat. She wobbled with an uneasy step and she was deeply focused on keeping her small heels in line and her hair from falling from a pin and in front of her oblong pale face, she must’ve been new there. He gave her a warm smile and a thank you. He was sitting at one of the outside tables, included in the perimeter made from blackened iron to an antiquated fashion. He was sipping his steaming coffee when a familiar face strode by him on the small sidewalk.
“Hello, Frank,” said Gerard, keeping his cap low and sipping on his warm coffee. “Would you like to join me?”
Frank’s mouth opened, ready to object, and he pointed in the direction he was headed, but closed his mouth tightly and pulled the small iron door and walked through, taking a seat across from Gerard, soon being spotted by the waitress. Frank was quiet while Gerard looked out at the luscious green lawn adorning the base of the Eiffel tower and pensively sipping his coffee. He ordered and the same waitress brought him his sandwich au jambon a glass of jus d’orange. He looked at Gerard, who still did not advert his attention to his invitee, while he nibbled the sandwich. Finally, Frank gave up.
“Hello, Gerard.”
Gerard broke from his delirious state of focus and looked back at the young man across from him. He wore sandy gray slacks held by dark brown suspenders and a well mended, faded cream colored dress shirt. He wore his usual cap with his hair flattened and sticky beneath. He put down his coffee and turned away from the Eiffel tower and faced Frank. “Hello. How have you been?”
“Fine.” Frank’s lips were pursed and kept in a straight line, but his eyes showed no signs of discomfort or annoyance, they even showed a hint of relief. “But Carmen isn’t.”
“How’s the madame been?”
Frank looked into his orange juice and kept his hands tight around the glass. He watched his face get distorted through the ripples in the class filled with liquid the color of daises and wilted, dying grass. Hope and pity. Frank’s emotive state.
“She’s… very very ill. She’s been coughing up her lungs, her hair wilting lifelessly and her eyes losing a glint of life. I called in the doctor to come in later today.”
“Oh,” said the artist. He leaned back in his chair and snatched a somber glance from Frank. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s been days, Gerard.” His hands twitched and moved nervously, jumping from scratching his head to smoothing his pants to rotating the glass of juice. “She hasn’t been feeling well since we visited you at first. She’s been restrained to her bed.”
“And what do you think it is?” followed the artist, uncertain what else to comment on.
“Ranging from a fever to… to something worse.”
“Oh,” the artist repeated.
A salty tear rolled down his fragile cheek. Frank pushed it away and straightened his cap. He took another cool sip from his drink. Gerard leaned over and, not knowing how else to react, placed his hand to lie gently on Frank’s. He began stroking the warm skin below and tried, with an honest intention in his heart, to comfort his broken friend. He felt another deeper, more sunken emotion he couldn’t or simply rather not explore, and pushed it from his thoughts. Frank stayed there, silent, and finally retreated his covered hand in a slow jerk. He stood up and dropped an adequate amount of francs on the glass table and left the little café without another syllable escaping his once again pursed lips.
=-=-=
“It doesn’t look good, Mr. Iero,” announced the round doctor who took wobbling steps that made the floorboards yelp as he exited the dimly lit room he shared with his wife.
“What would that mean?” Frank wringed his hands thoroughly and for a long time, waiting for the doctor to finish annotating and reviewing his papers, flipping though and back all of them three or four times. Finally the doctor lowered his board tacking the papers and mounted his round small glasses higher up the arch of the nose.
“That would mean, Mr. Iero, that your wife has polio.”
Frank’s breath came out shaky and a little too fast. “Oh.” He made his slow, dragged way to the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. He habitually took out three tea cups, but the doctor touched down one of the cups.
“She needs her rest. She’ll lose her appetite for a couple of days. Maybe you can have somebody watch over the shop for you, she’d like someone at her bedside until…” He trailed off. Frank looked down and slowly put back the extra cup.
“Oh.” He continued moving about the kitchen. Two sugars, no milk for the doctor, the whole town knew that; Frank took no sugar or milk. He served two steaming cups of scraggy mint and shallow bergamot. He sat down and the doctor remained standing, taking slow sips from the simmering water. “She’s terminal,” said Frank while looking at nothing in particular; he had not yet touched lips to his cup.
“I’m afraid so,” said the doctor, taking the final sips of his tea to leave the house, find another patient, and deliver more bad news.
“I just want answers,” were the first words to crash the uncomfortable silence, yet wrapping the room in an even thicker blanket of awkwardness. “I just want help.”
She didn’t say anything, she just breathed in, breathed out, felt Gerard’s chest also rise and fall with air, felt her head be enveloped and pressed inward with thought and confusion, felt a sticky sweat forming between her arm and the artist’s back. She didn’t say anything, her silence spoke for her.
But he didn’t understand her silence; he wasn’t very fluent in the language of human action, a more difficult study than any language conjured by tongue. “Can you help me?”
His voice did not crack, nor did it stumble, it was smooth, like water sliding down a duck’s feather coat. That made her nervous. She leaned over and kissed the frown on his forehead and stood up. She straightened out her dress and pushed stray hairs behind her ears. The afternoon was turning to dusk and she needed to start supper. She began shaky steps but soothed them to strides towards the kitchen. She could hear the artist slump back into his chair. She stopped at the door frame and turned to him. She saw his head rise and looked into his deep sunk eyes, crystallized with brown and green, like a genetically mutated combination of amber and emerald. Her voice, unable to be masked by strength like the artist’s, was rough and awkward. “I’m sorry, but for now, I can’t.”
=-=-=
“Wait here,” she told them. She looked different today, she didn’t have her bright smile that was hiding her somber eyes, she didn’t have her wavy chocolate locks pinned into a bun, nor did she have bright rouge smudged perfectly on her small lips. No, today she was a disaster. Her lips held no sign of joy, they were lopped and frowning, there were lifeless and pale, deep lines traced the sides of her cheeks; her eyes were deeper than usual, purple rings gripping them with worry and anxiety, wet and shiny with a building mural of tears; her hair was a storm, it was pulled loose of her usually beautiful bun and looked like an angry crow had attacked it. She pushed them into a loose bush with as few thorns as a rose bush could bare, and she kissed them both on their foreheads.
“Behave yourselves, be quiet, and whatever you do stay here.” She was kneeling on the floor to the level of the crying girl and the confused boy hiding in the bushes she put them in. She started to stand, pulling her hand away from stroking the boy’s hair, when he grabbed it tightly and himself crying. “Where are you going? Please don’t leave.”
Her eyes gave up on collecting tears and began to pour them out but she pulled her hand away. “I’ll be back.” She did not promise anything. She turned the other girl with ivory, young skin and glowing almond hair. Her eyes were far from young yet her body was ten years old. The woman kneeled down once more and began stroking the girl’s smooth hair. “Alicia, sweetie.”
The girl looked up at the woman and began weeping harder, she knew what was going to happen. “Take good care of Gerard.” The girl nodded, slowly and shaky but she nodded, that was a promise she was making to the woman.
“Alicia, who’s Gerard?” asked the boy. The girl hugged her friend and just whispered, “he’s nobody, okay? Talk to me.” The woman left and the boy didn’t speak. The girl hugged him tighter and repeated her order.
“What do you want me to talk to you about?” the boy said, almost inaudible.
“Tell me… tell me your name, your age, your friends.”
“But you know all that, Alicia!”
“Just tell me, talk to me.”
The boy, whose coal stringy hair traveled smoothly under the girl’s small hand that was stroking it, whimpered. His voice was still small, quiet, “Well, my name’s Johnny. Jonathon. Jonathon Grey. I’m… I’m seven years old. My friends are you, Alicia, um… Mr. and Mrs. Iero… and Mikey. He’s my friend, yea.”
“Good,” began the girl. And she said no more.
The boy, though, was beginning to feel uncomfortable and lonely. It was true that the girl, his closest friend, was hugging him tight and keeping him warm from the cold and safe from the thorny bushes, but he felt like he was just a tiny boy in the giant shell of his body and there was nobody else inside. He wanted to change his sitting position, give his legs a break, but the girl kept her grip around the boy tightly. He began to grow impatient but he soon began to hear noises. It was four adults bickering. He recognized two, Mr. and Mrs. Iero, but there were two others. A few yellow rose petals landed on his head and he shook them off, trying to remember who the other two were. They were so familiar, like he had seen them many times but had never captured their names. The screams got louder, the boy didn’t like loud noises. He covered his ears and closed his eyes tightly, but the noises got louder, the adults were approaching them. He clasped his hands tightly over his ears, and for a while he was certain he had blocked all outside noises when two loud claps came, then a warm sensation spread on his face, then silence. He slowly opened his eyes and he saw it. He saw the thick crimson that was sprayed everywhere, on the unconscious girl next to him and all over himself; the yellow roses still fresh on the beautiful bush were now obscured with the sight of red splashed on yellow; then finally pooled around two of his friends.
The artist’s eyes flew open. He did not pant or panic, nor did he shoot up in fear or sweat in frustration. He had grown accustomed to the dream. The dream was part of his memory already, whether it had truly happened or not, because it had occurred so many times already it was a memory to him. He simply sat up and found his house slippers on the floor, pushed them on, and stood up, out of his blankets, and pulled on a shirt. He walked into the kitchen and set a kettle on the wooden stove. He looked out of the small kitchen window and saw that the sun was already climbing over the horizon, pouring daisy yellow clouds over the crystal blue sky. He walked out to the front door and found the paper sitting on his step. He returned to the kitchen, grabbed a seat, and opened the big black and white print and began scanning headlines that were the same with text he had already read with news he was accustomed to hearing about the war. Once the kettle startling screaming, he put down the paper, just to find that Alicia was already wearing a house dress and her hair pinned and primped, and was pulling the kettle off to prepare a steaming mug of earl grey tea and some wheat biscuits she made fresh last night. She put the prepared meal down with a smile on her face, and though he was famished, he dismissed her with a proper thank you and the lack of a smile, nibbling on the bread.
=-=-=
The day was another amber one that made the public glow with embers from the sun; it wasn’t too warm or windy, the weather was simply there, comfortable. The sky was faded and there were some light brown clouds in the sky. The air was crisp and he inhaled it in thick portions, as he had left the musty house for some fresh air. The lanky thin waitress brought him his café du lait with a pain au chocolat. She wobbled with an uneasy step and she was deeply focused on keeping her small heels in line and her hair from falling from a pin and in front of her oblong pale face, she must’ve been new there. He gave her a warm smile and a thank you. He was sitting at one of the outside tables, included in the perimeter made from blackened iron to an antiquated fashion. He was sipping his steaming coffee when a familiar face strode by him on the small sidewalk.
“Hello, Frank,” said Gerard, keeping his cap low and sipping on his warm coffee. “Would you like to join me?”
Frank’s mouth opened, ready to object, and he pointed in the direction he was headed, but closed his mouth tightly and pulled the small iron door and walked through, taking a seat across from Gerard, soon being spotted by the waitress. Frank was quiet while Gerard looked out at the luscious green lawn adorning the base of the Eiffel tower and pensively sipping his coffee. He ordered and the same waitress brought him his sandwich au jambon a glass of jus d’orange. He looked at Gerard, who still did not advert his attention to his invitee, while he nibbled the sandwich. Finally, Frank gave up.
“Hello, Gerard.”
Gerard broke from his delirious state of focus and looked back at the young man across from him. He wore sandy gray slacks held by dark brown suspenders and a well mended, faded cream colored dress shirt. He wore his usual cap with his hair flattened and sticky beneath. He put down his coffee and turned away from the Eiffel tower and faced Frank. “Hello. How have you been?”
“Fine.” Frank’s lips were pursed and kept in a straight line, but his eyes showed no signs of discomfort or annoyance, they even showed a hint of relief. “But Carmen isn’t.”
“How’s the madame been?”
Frank looked into his orange juice and kept his hands tight around the glass. He watched his face get distorted through the ripples in the class filled with liquid the color of daises and wilted, dying grass. Hope and pity. Frank’s emotive state.
“She’s… very very ill. She’s been coughing up her lungs, her hair wilting lifelessly and her eyes losing a glint of life. I called in the doctor to come in later today.”
“Oh,” said the artist. He leaned back in his chair and snatched a somber glance from Frank. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s been days, Gerard.” His hands twitched and moved nervously, jumping from scratching his head to smoothing his pants to rotating the glass of juice. “She hasn’t been feeling well since we visited you at first. She’s been restrained to her bed.”
“And what do you think it is?” followed the artist, uncertain what else to comment on.
“Ranging from a fever to… to something worse.”
“Oh,” the artist repeated.
A salty tear rolled down his fragile cheek. Frank pushed it away and straightened his cap. He took another cool sip from his drink. Gerard leaned over and, not knowing how else to react, placed his hand to lie gently on Frank’s. He began stroking the warm skin below and tried, with an honest intention in his heart, to comfort his broken friend. He felt another deeper, more sunken emotion he couldn’t or simply rather not explore, and pushed it from his thoughts. Frank stayed there, silent, and finally retreated his covered hand in a slow jerk. He stood up and dropped an adequate amount of francs on the glass table and left the little café without another syllable escaping his once again pursed lips.
=-=-=
“It doesn’t look good, Mr. Iero,” announced the round doctor who took wobbling steps that made the floorboards yelp as he exited the dimly lit room he shared with his wife.
“What would that mean?” Frank wringed his hands thoroughly and for a long time, waiting for the doctor to finish annotating and reviewing his papers, flipping though and back all of them three or four times. Finally the doctor lowered his board tacking the papers and mounted his round small glasses higher up the arch of the nose.
“That would mean, Mr. Iero, that your wife has polio.”
Frank’s breath came out shaky and a little too fast. “Oh.” He made his slow, dragged way to the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. He habitually took out three tea cups, but the doctor touched down one of the cups.
“She needs her rest. She’ll lose her appetite for a couple of days. Maybe you can have somebody watch over the shop for you, she’d like someone at her bedside until…” He trailed off. Frank looked down and slowly put back the extra cup.
“Oh.” He continued moving about the kitchen. Two sugars, no milk for the doctor, the whole town knew that; Frank took no sugar or milk. He served two steaming cups of scraggy mint and shallow bergamot. He sat down and the doctor remained standing, taking slow sips from the simmering water. “She’s terminal,” said Frank while looking at nothing in particular; he had not yet touched lips to his cup.
“I’m afraid so,” said the doctor, taking the final sips of his tea to leave the house, find another patient, and deliver more bad news.
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