RAY

I despised my job, but it wasn’t entirely Ray’s fault. After all, he was only seven years old, and, at 24, my long-term goals reached far beyond nannying.

Life was already bleak in those days as I mourned the death of my mom who’d passed away in a freak accident a few months prior. She’d struggled immensely with debilitating mental health problems, making life with her like gambling: you went all in when you were hopeful for a good day and backed down when you realized things were not in your favor, never knowing which hand would be dealt.

As my mom and I grew into different stages of our lives, I watched closely as the light behind her eyes dimmed and she steadily unraveled. I cherished the moments when I could grasp a glimpse of her luminosity but also found myself longing for escape when her unpredictable negativity permeated the walls of our home.

And then she died. The escape I’d longed for was mine, but I found myself sinking into a new abyss—not one of my mom’s mood swings, but rather of my own bewildering grief.

After her death, nothing seemed to really matter. My body operated on autopilot, and I watched as everyone returned to their lives while I adjusted to my new normal. I couldn’t succinctly parse out or articulate what it was I was feeling. Was I devastated or slightly grateful? I wished there was a word that could somehow carry the paradox of my pain.

I attempted to stave off my desolation by pursuing my dream of moving from New York to Los Angeles to take a stab at acting and writing. I could potentially die in an unexpected freak accident any day now too, I thought. Why shouldn’t I chase a pipe dream?

Five months after my mom passed, I arrived in Los Angeles with a naïve vision of where I was headed. With two indie films, a couple of co-starring roles, and a pilot that never saw the light of the silver screen under my belt, I blindly stepped foot into the entertainment industry with a head too heavy for my own shoulders. I’ll make it big, I thought, and fast. I would get an agent immediately, be cast in something major—like a Martin Scorsese film—or star on a hit TV show like Big Little Lies or Stranger Things. I would write my own screenplay, and it would be bought by a major studio in a matter of months. Perhaps I would option the rights to one of my favorite memoirs like Chanel Bonfire by Wendy Lawless and turn it into a series. Someone would recognize my passion for storytelling and do everything in their power to catapult me to the success I so eagerly thought I deserved.

I had just lost my mom, after all. Clearly the world owed me a break. I had earned something to celebrate, something to focus my chaotic energy on as I wandered through life, searching for purpose. Surely by now it was time for a winning hand.

It was a jarring experience realizing that, no matter how close you may get or how much you want something to work out, success might not happen overnight. After months of constant rejection and negative comparison, my naiveté was threadbare, and I began to wonder if anything would ever work out in my favor. As I surrendered to unglamorous odd jobs, it was unclear if pursuing a dream was even worthwhile. Were these goals really worth sacrificing my patience, dignity and tolerance? Was this truly what I wanted my life to be?

These doubts swirled through my body as I agreed to nanny for Ray’s family.

I watched Ray five days a week from 11am to 5pm. At seven years old, Ray didn’t have many friends, and he didn’t seem to care. He collected broken, rusted antiques from garage sales that he placed carefully in a glass display cabinet in the corner of his bedroom. He was a World War II fanatic who refused to leave the house without his personal war kit complete with an old water jug, ammunition pouches, tinned rations his parents found on eBay, and entrenching tools. He wore the same outfit daily: tall white socks that reached the bottom of his knobby knees, gray shorts that fell just above, a gray t-shirt, tan suede boots and an army-green bucket hat. He wished more than anything that he was old enough to enlist in the army.

50% of the time, Ray was a sweet kid. He was a bit different, but there was nothing wrong with that to a point. However, some days his obsessions exuded a specific type of darkness that made me yearn to understand the wiring of his pre-pubescent brain.

It’s not his fault. He suffers from the difficult experiences of his past life.

Ray’s mother, Sherri, chimed in often with these sorts of notions, brushing away his oddities as things entirely out of anyone’s control.

Personally, my patience for Ray quickly dried up. His quirks, I could manage, but his tantrums were untenable. His positive moods would short-circuit, resulting in constant blowups, peevishness and irrational behavior. His mind would enter a black hole, and he’d step out as a completely different child. He’d cut up his clothes, break electronics, hit his head repeatedly and scream at the top of his lungs at his mom and me.

I hate you! Get out of my room! Why would I need your help? You’re a girl. You’re stupid, and nobody likes you. Stop looking at me!

At times, I saw bits of mom in Ray’s eyes. He reminded me of the worst pieces of her that I had just said goodbye to at her funeral. Honestly, this reverberation of my mom’s tempers probably made my feelings towards Ray a bit harsher than they should’ve been. The shared inability to productively communicate their hurt or frustration made it almost impossible to have sympathy for their fanaticism.

He was just a child though, and I knew how ridiculous it sounded to compare him to a deceased sixty-year-old woman. But I couldn’t help it, and sometimes I didn’t even care to try. This job was just a paycheck on the way to my own success. This wasn’t my forever. I forced myself to remember that.

His mother, on the other hand, was not a child, and my patience for her equally began to dwindle after about three weeks in. She was undeniably kindhearted and loving, there was no doubt about that. She bought my favorite green tea that she prepared upon my arrival, had my car washed anytime she ordered a service to come wash her own and insisted she’d send my resume to any friends of hers that worked in the entertainment industry. She was easygoing and goofy, a retired professional dancer who loved to perform old routines on the beige-tiled kitchen floor. She switched her hair color every month from bright blues to dark purples and loved nothing more than discussing her favorite 80s movies like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. We got along swimmingly for the most part, but her lack of filter and nonstop otherworldly obsessions increasingly grated on me. I witnessed her perpetual stress latch onto Ray like a leech, constantly reminding me of the dynamic between me and my mom.

Sheri believed her young children should be privy to all information regarding the world around them.

O.M.G. Another school shooting… If I were your age, Ray, I’d be terrified to go to school. No one is safe anymore.

She read articles in the same vein aloud, sometimes in hysterics. The opioid crisis, ISIS, bombings in the Middle East, acid throwing attacks, stabbings and captured journalists in war zones. Ray never wanted to hear any of it; it unsettled him to his core. I never cared for it either. Life was heavy enough without being ambushed by horrific news.

Just when I thought I’d trained myself to expect the unexpected, Sherri transformed into a self-proclaimed spiritual guru and energy reader. I found myself caught in the crossfire of her newfound “purpose.” Her obsession with tuning into her “highest self” and connecting with greater powers came after Ray’s two-year-old brother, Liam, who spent most of his day glued to his mom’s side (leaving me with minimal caretaking time with him), received a diagnosis for autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

I always wondered whether Sherri began this all-encompassing spiritual journey to escape her life or to find justification for her familial troubles. In the wake of Liam’s diagnosis, she realized that traditional therapy was imperative for her younger son, but she didn’t completely believe in it. As for Ray’s fitful behavior, she tried any alternative she could think of: hypnosis, video calls with psychics, meeting with energy healers and frosting his room with crystals.

Though I kept my opinion to myself, Sherri once decided to explain adamantly that she and her husband suffered immense pain in a past life.

That’s why we were gifted two difficult children. Whoever is up there knew we could handle it. The Spirit told me so.

“The Spirit” had been relaying a lot of information, it seemed. Sherri was convinced, through “The Spirit,” that it was just a matter of time until she won the lottery. She attended showings for multi-million-dollar homes she couldn’t afford, explaining to the broker that the money would appear in due time. “The Spirit” also told her to not worry herself so much with the newfound cryptocurrency and NFT frenzy, as energy was sure to be the world’s future currency. She began to create merchandise for herself and gifted me a shirt that bragged Energy is the new Currency.

While biting my tongue and forcing the occasional fake nod of agreement, I felt my eyes roll to the backs of their sockets the minute she turned away.

Her zealous demeanor sapped every remaining ounce of my energy. I was grieving and exhausted from watching each of my dreams stall and die one after the other. It was all I could do to keep my head above the clawing ocean of Sheri’s chaos as I continued to watch Ray.

Liam’s diagnosis seeped between every relationship in that house. Sheri and Clay both felt a bit lost, trying to navigate this new information about their younger son. Clay, a doctor, clearly shared my irritation with Sheri’s new-found spiritualism, and he often was too exhausted at the end of the day to reciprocate the excitement of his children as they asked him to play with them. I also noticed Ray's anxiety grow as his mom brushed their relationship to the side. She’d choose to communicate her care for her son by withdrawing into a spiritual state whenever she wasn’t impressing the horrors of the world upon him. No one seemed to quite know what to do with anyone else.

Mayhem ensued; Ray’s outbursts upset Liam, causing both children to wail, taking a minimum of fifteen minutes to settle down. Doors slammed—heavy objects, like staplers and portable book lights were thrown. Shattered glass scattered the floor from the windows Ray kicked in and countless holes pockmarked the walls. Tears flowed endlessly. Everything was outside of Ray’s power, and everything began to set him off. He screamed and cried if his hair was out of place, if his air purifier wasn’t cleaned well enough, if his mom was talking on the phone in the other room and the volume wasn’t low enough. The faint sound of his little brother’s footsteps could conjure a wellspring of sobbing if they somehow interrupted Ray’s. sacred focus as he cleaned his antiques – items he clung to like an old friend. All the while, a blue vein emerged on his pale left temple and another on the side of his neck. Tears streamed down his face, wetting his eyelashes as if he’d just applied mascara.

I looked at the familiar scene playing in front of me. The bright natural light that filled their home in the early afternoons, the air always a bit too cool at 65 degrees as it blasted from the air conditioner in the summer heat, and the harmony of hums coming from each individual air purifier in every room.

While I knew vaguely that I should be horrified, autopilot had control, and I simply watched the minutes on the clock move slowly forward, thinking about the moment the hands would finally point to 5pm. I was grateful the clock was analog; I could watch time pass like a race and feel my head disassociate from my body as I floated above the clouds. I had enough problems myself—I sure as hell didn’t have the energy for theirs.

One Tuesday afternoon, before getting out of my car to start my day with Ray, I received a call from my manager. Another major rejection. He told me I had not been chosen for a lead role after undergoing a grueling, four-month-long audition process and final chemistry read for Netflix’s Greenhouse Academy. The weeks of anticipation and anxiety surrounding whether I could make it to the next round had taken every ounce of positive energy I had left as I poured my final shreds of hope and self-worth into the process. I had spent all the extra money I was making with Ray on acting coaches and my enrollment at Lee Strasberg. I wondered what it was all for if I had nothing to show for it. I was failing, and I didn’t even have to vocalize it. My lack of IMDb credits spoke for themselves.

When I was younger, I struggled immensely with math. Feeling deeply defeated, unable to understand why it was so much easier for my peers, I told myself I was a failure. My mom responded by saying:

Failure will never define who you are. It’s just one small example of a much bigger experience.

But in that moment, surrounded by still air and sitting behind the wheel, it was starting to feel like failure was the only thing that defined me. The laundry list of rejections, my inability to understand my reaction to my mom’s death—my failures certainly added up to more than just one small example.

I hung up the phone. I leaned back in the driver’s seat, closing my eyes. In the stillness, I felt a new wave of loss as the last thread connecting my hurting self to my hopeful dreams snapped.

I willed myself to climb out of my car and walk up the steps towards the front door.

Screaming immediately assaulted my ears as it echoed off the walls. I unlatched the door and the sound rapidly heightened as it does when someone turns up a speaker. Ray was wearing his usual outfit, except today his gray t-shirt was stained with tears. My eyes squinted and a shudder ran through my shoulders as he screamed. Stepping through the door, I saw that Ray was holding Sherri’s cell phone. He looked at me, threw it on the ground and watched it shatter.

You can’t act like this, honey. Can we try some breathing exercises? Sherri pleaded.

Fuck you! I hate you! I hate living here! I hate everything! Ray screamed back.

I locked eyes with Sherri, and she shrugged and let out an exhausted chuckle.

What can you do? She smiled softly.

I followed Ray into his room and sat on his bed while he cried on the floor.

Why are you so upset? I finally asked, monotoned, nonchalant.

Everything is so unfair.

I know what you mean. I blinked as I felt an unexpected twinge in my stomach. I agreed. Everything was unfair. Life kept dealing one low blow after another. It was so unfair.

For a moment, I lowered the wall I’d built between myself and Ray. Every day since my mom’s death, I’d felt the weight of the world, but it always felt heavier the second I walked through their front door. I couldn’t blame him. Sitting here, I realized I understood his outbursts.

Ray wasn’t prepared to articulate that he was feeling slighted, abandoned and misunderstood in the throes of his brother’s diagnosis and his mother’s neurosis. Sometimes emotions were too big for words. Wreaking havoc was the only way Ray knew how to control the narrative and make sure he still had a pulse. He wanted so desperately to be seen and his frustrations bubbled to the surface when no one could read his mind. I knew the feeling. I wished I could join him as he banged his fist on the floor, expressing pain without the shackles of words.

Once it was clear Ray was on the comedown, I left him sulking on the dark brown hardwood. He couldn’t find the language to express himself, but maybe I could give it a try. I hesitated in trepidation as I mustered up the courage to knock on Sherri’s door. In our interactions, I rarely did the talking.

Sherri, can I talk to you for a minute? I knocked on her door after pressing my ear to her door, waiting for her to finish her meditative Ohm mantra chants.

Sure sweetheart, come in.

Is that a new lamp? I like it. I’d been in her room multiple times and knew damn well that this lamp was in fact not new.

Oh no it’s not, but thanks.

I don’t want to overstep, but can I suggest something?

Sherri nodded.

I think Ray just needs some attention. I don’t want to speak for him, but it seems like he’s feeling a little overshadowed by his brother. I don’t know—it might help with the breakdowns.

Sherri began to cry. Sherri cried a lot, so it wasn’t unexpected, but something in her sorrow felt different in the dim room.

I’ve had it up to here with this kid. I don’t know what to do. I’m just trying my best. I don’t know what I’m doing, and nothing I do seems to change anything or help at all. She paused, her teary eyes searching my face for a hope neither of us had found. Am I a terrible mother?

In that moment, I saw my mom in her eyes. And honestly a shred of myself.

She was just a person, a mother, latching on for dear life to a tattered normalcy, doing everything in her power to bring a sense of happiness and serenity back into her hectic life.

Every day, I’d watched her with endless judgment and cloudy irritation, absorbed and overwhelmed with my own sense of failure, condemning her for the anxiety she inflicted on her kid, blaming her for Ray’s indefensible outbursts. But here she was with tears falling down her flushed cheeks, desperately navigating her own mental health while struggling to raise her children. It all suddenly looked nearly impossible as I watched her tears fall.

My eyes began to mist.

I don’t think you’re a bad mom. To be honest, it’s hard for me to imagine how suffocating it must feel to never put yourself first because you’re taking care of kids. Especially when you’re struggling. Sounds unfeasible, actually.

Sherri stared blankly and nodded her head as tears continued to silently flow, sticking stray strands of hair to her forlorn face.

I think everyone is just doing their best, I whispered as my own tears began to stream.

Tara Layne is a writer based in Studio City, California. She is currently writing a collection of essays about navigating complicated forms of grief and growing up in your early 20s.