Lazar
At the time, we were convinced that waiting for the situation to calm down would be the best solution. Waiting. Always waiting. We thought it was a short wait because our parents always said they loved us when they gave us all the punishments they could think of. But it was a wait that was likely to last. Our parents, who were parents in name only, made the choice very early on to listen to their desires rather than their obligations, to a certain extent. I have to give them credit for an independence at the time that was not lacking in a certain courage.
Our parents did pass something on to us, though: the ability to leave everything behind and not look back...
I almost ran into the flat, my leather shoes almost slipping on the polished parquet. I threw my city coat on an armchair in the living room as I walked quickly towards my bedroom, the first door in the corridor on the left. I pulled a shoulder bag from under my bed and threw it on the huge king-size bed in the middle of the room. I opened one of the two huge solid oak wardrobes, mine, and quickly but accurately pulled out some clothes, which I then threw on the bed with its dark green sheets. Winter coat, thick but practical trousers with lots of pockets, big warm jumpers, turtleneck T-shirts and underwear. I swapped my dress shoes for leather boots, and looked awfully funny in my bloody cowboy boots. As I put them on, I heard the front door open and close. Footsteps approached the conjugal room. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I continued to throw clothes on and put them in my bag, in an unstoppable burlesque cycle.
"What are you doing here?" asked a familiar voice.
"I had to leave the office in a hurry," I replied calmly to my partner, Lazar, who froze.
"What's all this about? Is it about your project in Paris?
"Nah," I replied coldly, colder than I would have liked. "I have to go away for a while, I'm sorry."
I flattened the clothes in my luggage because I needed to take more things but Lazar grabbed my arm and forced me to face him.
"Where?" he asked.
"In Canada" I sighed as I put a sketchbook and a black ballpoint pen in my bag. I don't know, my poetic soul was forcing me to imagine a world where I would need them.
Lazar's face fell. His brown hair lost the shine I loved so much. His chocolate eyes looked so lost, so sad, and that made me feel bad because Lazar was one of the most cheerful men I'd ever met. And then his perfect mouth opened again to speak in that voice of his that I loved so much.
"But... in three days it's Lyra's 20th birthday! You're not going to miss your own daughter's twentieth birthday Regulus!"
I stared straight into his eyes and hoped that he could read me like an open book, that he could decipher the pain in my eyes and the desolation on my lips. But Lazar couldn't leave it at that. He had this visceral need to make me feel guilty sometimes, or not really guilty but something like that. I think he loved that idiot too much. He wasn't the kind of man to be left alone, he knew it, I knew it and he knew I knew it. Lazar Amiri was terrified of being alone, of having no one to love and being loved by no one.
"Were you going to leave without warning?
I didn't dare answer, didn't want to admit the truth that we both knew. Lazar was the master of these rhetorical questions, his sometimes amber eyes troubled by the abandonment he was so afraid of. I liked to be alone and Lazar liked to be surrounded, it was one of the biggest bones of contention in our relationship, because I had a certain tendency, probably a family one, to push away the people I loved when I felt they loved me too much and Lazar didn't want to let anyone go because he counted his importance in the number of people who loved him. I looked at my bag and added some magazines, a packet of cigarettes and a lighter for Sirius.
"It's your mystery brother, isn't he?"
His words froze me and took my breath away. From my reaction, Lazar knew he'd hit the nail on the head. Touché.
"Bloody hell Reggie! We've lived together for five years but we've known each other for seven! I've stood by you through thick and thin and I've always been there for you over the years but you keep... I don't know how to put this into fucking words! It's as if you keep pushing me away every time you feel down! I know you've got a brother but I didn't even hear it from you! It was Pandora who told me and neither you nor she wanted to tell me this brother's name! I don't even know if he's older or younger, if he looks like you or not, what job he does or if he's even alive! So fucking talk to me, Regulus! I'm your boyfriend, not some sock you can use whenever you're sad or angry or need a fuck! Tell me what's going on!"
And I was saved from my shame by my black curls, which I had been so hesitant to cut because I thought they were too long. But when they landed in front of my eyes, in a movement in which I lowered my head to my feet, I thanked all the Gods and Lazar, who had been the most convincing in fighting my desire to sacrifice my lovely natural curls (his words, not mine, though...).
"I don't know," I muttered. "I don't know anything. I don't know what to tell you." I swallowed hard. "I've got... I've got a very bad feeling.
Lazar looked at me, disappointed and sad and angry, and I was almost relieved to see him like that because those were emotions I could handle very easily, without being confused. Negative emotions were more bearable than an "I love you" said at any moment, slipped into conversations in the middle of the night in a bar while I was fighting the shame that was eating my insides, the shame of loving men as much as women.
"How long are you going away for?" asked Lazar, trying to calm down and show a better image of himself to the bewildered man in front of him, his partner, the man he loves, me.
"No idea," I sighed apologetically. "I'll call the kids and apologise to Lyra."
I grabbed my bag with my left hand and pulled Lazar into an embrace with my right arm and Lazar, my beloved Lazar, let himself fall into this clumsy, sad embrace.
"I'll be in touch," I promised Lazar. "I'll try to call you when I can."
I kissed him gently, tasting the sweet scent of his lips, and headed for the front door, picking up my coat that had been thrown wildly into the living room. Lazar followed me, this golden boy who would surely forgive me far too much, but I hoped deep down that one day he'd get really angry with me and break my heart. I must have been a bloody masochist. Just before walking through the door I'd just opened, I turned one last time towards my partner, whose eyes were so beautiful and so sad, and I still wanted to kiss him. But a voice deep inside me, a nasty female voice that I knew all too well, whispered to me that the most important thing was my family, my blood. Toujours pur. And I couldn't share my family's madness with a man who had grown up as an only child in such a loving and accepting family. I wanted to share my thoughts with him, to justify myself to those sad eyes that tried to hold me back silently. And in one breath, I gave this man with an insatiable need to know the most important information.
"Sirius. My big brother's name is Sirius. The brightest star."
With that, I left, almost running, down the stairs at breakneck speed to get out and join my big brother as soon as possible.
Finally, I rushed downstairs and got back into the taxi. I asked for directions to London Heathrow airport and the driver, sensing I was in a hurry, started up immediately. The journey would take about fifty minutes but, unlike my famous patience, I felt sick to my stomach and couldn't wait to get to the airport. And I found that the minutes went by far too long, like a cruel trap in which I was trapped. Jeez, if only I could appear and disappear wherever I wanted in less than a second!
After about twenty minutes, and while I was trying to remain in total denial like the unworthy father I was, my phone rang and my daughter's name appeared. Lazar must have told my ex-wife, who had told my children.
I picked up.
"Yes Lyra?"
"Dad, it's my twentieth birthday."
I sighed in anger and frustration with myself as I knew I was about to ruin one of the most important birthdays of my eldest daughter's youth.
"I know, I'm terribly sorry."
My daughter, my poor little girl, began to cry at the other end of the telephone and I could hear two other voices, that of Anastasia, my ex-wife, and that of Antares, my eighteen-year-old son, trying to console her. I thanked heaven or fate that my children were so supportive of each other and that they had a good relationship with their mother. I didn't really have much of either. And I knew the damage that could cause. The same damage that the fact that I had hidden part of my existence from them could potentially create.
"What the fuck are you and Sirius up to, Dad? He actually means more to me than we do!" she was crying. I had no words to console her because I would have given up everything for Lazar, Anastasia, Lyra and Antares and to help them, but I would have given up all of them for Sirius. And that's exactly what I was doing, I realised that no words could excuse me. It was them above the world, but it was Sirius above them.
"It's complicated to explain... Lyra, I have no choice now, you have to understand."
"I don't want to understand Dad any more..." she said between two hiccups of sorrow. "You always have a choice, and you've made yours."
And she hung up. And the twinge in my chest and stomach told me she was absolutely right. But my mother's voice in my head congratulated me on my choice, and the part of me that was still subservient to her demanded that she congratulate me, she who had died years ago and had been a horrible mother. But hey, Toujours pur, right?