7. Tidal – Stella
“Hello, Mother,” I say, walking into my parents’ home for family dinner. Even though I try to put some emotion into it, I know I fail when her all-seeing look scans me. The weekly family dinner at my childhood home isn’t nearly as optional as my mother makes it seem, though Evie gets a much larger pass, considering she’s often on assignment.
Thankfully, my twin will be here tonight because the cruel, emotionless look my mother is giving me makes it clear she’s in one of her moods.
“No makeup?” she asks in lieu of a greeting. I fight a sigh.
“I worked all day, and I”m not…” I pause. “I’m not feeling too well.” She stares again for a moment, assessing me before rolling her eyes and stepping aside to let me in.
The house hasn’t changed since I last lived here when I was 19, right before she kicked me out. Even when things with Riggins and Atlas Oaks came crumbling down, I didn’t move back home; instead, I stayed with my sister until I found a place of my own.
Even now, this place still feels like a prison.
“This again,” she says, exasperated. Like many in her generation, my mother thinks any claims of mental health degrading are just a weakness, a laziness my generation created.
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“Oh, I know you are. This dramatic stint of yours… I would’ve thought you outgrew it by now.” Now I really do sigh.
“You can’t outgrow depression, mother.” Her eye roll is almost audible as I toe off my shoes and hang my light jacket.
I should have just put on the fucking makeup; I already can feel the animosity between us growing.
“Depression. What do you have to be depressed about, Stella? If anyone should be depressed, it’s me. Stuck in this town, my daughter constantly telling me how miserable I’ve made her life and refusing to make it any better.” I take a deep breath, then move to the kitchen to get a drink: anything to distract myself.
This is not a new conversation.
I just need to endure it until she’s done.
“I just don’t understand,” she says, her voice trailing behind me. “What could you be so depressed about?”
Thankfully, my father is in the kitchen. A tall, broad, quiet man with greying dark hair, my father was never one to argue with my mother. But as the years have gone on, he’s more likely to tell her to stop, at the very least.
“Hi, Dad,” I say, walking over to him and letting him pull me into a hug.
“Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”
“Depressed again,” my mother says with another eye-roll, pouring herself a large glass of wine.
“Rhonda, drop it,” he says, and my shoulders relax just a bit with relief. I can feel her eyes boring holes into my father and me, but I ignore her, grateful for the reprieve.
Now, I just have to make it through a few more hours.
An hour later, I’m sitting at my childhood dinner table, my eyes locked on the meal in front of me: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, and baby carrots. It’s been in the five-meal rotation since I was a kid, even though I’ve hated both carrots and meatloaf with a vengeance since I was five and realized I could dislike foods rather than dutifully eating them just because my mother served them.
Everyone is at the assigned seats we’ve always had: my sister across from me, dad at the head of the too-long table, and mom at the other end.
Everest, or Evie as everyone but my mother calls her, is my fraternal twin. We look nothing alike, except for small, almost unexplainable similarities which make it clear we’re sisters, but not necessarily that we’re twins.
She sits, moving around the mashed potatoes. While I was served and expected to eat every bite on my plate out of spite, Evie was always expected to eat just enough to sustain a small toddler. Our mother had her different ways to pick at us, to keep us on our toes and in line. Mine was her disapproval of my friends, of my life choices, and, of course, of Riggins, but for Evie it was her undying disapproval of her body.
While she loves to fuck with me, to torment and remind me of all of the things I’ll never be strong or smart or capable enough to do, sometimes I’m grateful I got this end of the stick. Evie stays in line and still gets torn down repeatedly.
Of course, she lets her because if there’s one thing that is ingrained in my sister’s DNA, it’s striving for our mother’s approval. I only come to these dinners because Evie will never be able to cut our mother out, and I think if she disowns me, there’s a chance she’ll push Evie to cut ties, too. And if I’m here, it’s an extra person for my mother to focus her anger and sorrow on.
But it seems Evie is safe tonight since she seems intent on picking on me.
“Stella, next Friday, you’re going on a date with Francesca’s son, Parker.” This again.
I blink at my plate a few times before looking up at my mother. Her hair is the same dark brown as mine but without the lowlights breaking up the color. She has it cut into a severe bob ending at her chin, and it barely moves as she looks up at me. There’s a pair of pearls at her ears and a strand around her neck. Her black dress is perfectly tailored. She’s dressed to the nines, despite the fact that I know today is her grocery shopping and clean-the-house day.
I also know she put this outfit on at 6 am before getting coffee and breakfast ready for my father before he left for work.
My father, who’s nearly seventy, does not need to work. My parents could easily live off of retirement savings and the income from the diner, but I’m convinced that man refuses to retire because that would mean spending every waking hour with my mother, and what kind of torture would that be?
“What?” I ask.
“Next Friday, you’re going on a date with Parker Johnson, Francesca’s son,” she repeats. I roll my lips into my mouth and fight back the version of me who argues with my mother. She’s been missing for seven years, and I’m not letting her out now.
“I appreciate it, mother, but I’m not interested in dating.” Her chin goes firm, her eyes going steely with her irritation at the fact that I’d deign to argue with something she’s saying.
You don’t do that in this household. I learned that lesson young, forgot it, and regretted it ever since.
“It wasn’t an option, Stella. The date is made. He’ll pick you up at your house and take you out for dinner and dancing.”
Dinner and dancing. My god.
“Mom, that’s really not my style; I’d much rather?—”
“You’re going,” my mother repeats before taking a deep sip of her wine.
“Rhonda,” my father starts, his voice low. “Maybe we let Stella decide who and when she wants to date.” My father piping up means that this is going to be an issue, something he knows she’s going to dig her heels in on.
I knew the moment I argued I should’ve said yes and gone on the date to avoid the drama, but something made me feel like I needed to argue, to not be the perfect daughter I’ve forced myself to become.
Riggins.
Of course, it’s Riggins. I can’t even pretend I don’t know that, that him just being in town isn’t impacting me, fucking with my new life, cracking the shell I had to craft after we broke up all those years ago.
Broke up,I think. Such a funny choice of words, Stella.
“If we do that, she’s going to die alone,” my mother insists.
Evie rolls her eyes and sighs loudly. “Stella is not going to die alone, mother.”
“At this rate, she absolutely is. And before that, your father and I are going to be stuck with her?—”
I see this spiraling quickly. Every once in a while, Evie gets brave and likes to stand up to our mother, but unlike me, Evie cannot handle the heat of her wrath. She can’t handle the look of disappointment, and it tears her up each time.
“It’s fine, Eve. I’ll go.” I turn to face my mother, pasting on my fakest, perfect daughter smile and nod. “I’d love to go. If you don’t mind, send me over his information, and I can set up times and whatnot.”
My mother gives Evie a, see? Your sister listens to me, look, then me a small, almost-approving smile. My mother never has a full-blown approving smile—just the hint of one, the promise that if you did everything perfectly, maybe somehow, some way, you might get that genuine approval. Something to always strive for.
Silence takes over the table, and the only sound is that of forks and knives on china, of Evie pushing food around and myself dutifully eating, my father keeping his eyes downcast. I think we’ll make it out of this okay, in one piece, before my fucking sister opens her damn mouth.
“Riggins is in town,” she says, a smile in her words that I don’t see because I keep my eyes staring at my plate, pushing things back and forth. But with her words, the already quiet room goes painfully silent, the ominous quiet before an atomic bomb explodes.
“What?” my mother asks, venom in the words. I clear my throat, tipping my chin up, and quickly glance at my twin, who is staring at me, not my mother.
Like she’s trying to gauge my reaction.
“Riggins Greene is in town again,” she repeats
“And how would you know he’s in town?” she asks her jaw tight.
“It’s a small town, Mom. Gossip travels quickly. Word on the street is that the band is on break for a bit while they write their next album.” The knife in my chest twists, and I fight every instinct to let it show on my face. Is that why he’s back in town? Does he need to write?
My mind keeps traveling.
Is that why he’s finally reaching out to me? Is he out of inspiration, out of songs? Does he need my help?
“Did you know about this, Stella?” my mother asks, dragging me into the conversation where I don’t want to be but leaving me with no option but to answer.
I roll my shoulders back, straighten myself, and do my mental check to make sure I fit her expectations. I started this when I came back, making the checklist of what she expected of me and how to be the dutiful daughter.
She told me if I skipped college and instead went on tour with Riggins and the boys, I would regret it. He’s going to chew you up and spit you out, Stella Jane, and then what will you have? Nothing. You’re throwing your life away, she said.
And she was right.
He chewed me up, spit me out, and destroyed me.
And then I had nothing left. I should have listened to her.
Becoming the daughter she wants me to be is my penance for not listening.
When I came back from tour, I was a shell of myself, so hollow on the inside you could hear air howling and twisting within me. So from then on, I listened to everything she told me, going to work at her restaurant, living under her thumb.
I came back with no idea of who I was, who I was without Riggins, without music, and without the band. I had built my entire life since I was five around the daydream of touring the world with him, and in one summer, it all fell apart.
I was a shell of myself, so when I built myself back up, I made sure my armor was bulletproof and that I became everything I needed to win my mother’s approval. If I was nothing anymore, if I was a shell of myself, I might as well fit into the role she wanted for me.
“I did,” I respond simply, removing the ability to read between the lines.
“You better not see him,” she said.
I don’t know why I don’t tell her he”s already stopped by my place and that he’s come into the diner for lunch, but I omit it all the same. I’m contemplating the why of that when Evie speaks, exasperated by her words.
“Mom, she’s an adult; she can see whoever she wants.”
“Not if she wants to work at the diner. If she respects herself, if she respects this family, she won’t see him. He’s trash, just like his parents.” Evie shakes her head.
“You used to spend every night in the summer out drinking on the patio with his parents.”
“And then his mother passed away, god rest her soul, and his father became a drunk. And then Riggins followed right in his father’s footsteps.” She turns to me, telling Evie without words she’s done speaking to her, and shifts her venom to me. “I don’t want to see you out with him, Stella.”
“Rhonda,” my father, the world”s worst mediator, says, but she doesn’t even bother to move her head to slice her daggers at him.
“I’m not going to, Mom. Don’t worry. That’s… ancient history.” She stares at me, inspecting my face for lies and untruths, but just like her learning to ignore my father, I’ve learned how to make my armor Rhonda-proof, to make a facade she’ll approve of.
When she sees exactly what she wants, she nods, then changes the subject to gossip about someone in her group of backstabbing friends.
“Hey, Stell, wait,” Evie says as I walk out the door toward my car. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, hoping she’ll let me go easily but also knowing there’s no chance in hell. My steps slow, and hers quicken until we’re standing in a shadowy spot of the yard where, if our mother stood on the front steps, she wouldn’t be able to see us.
It’s the spot Riggs used to stand in, waiting for me to sneak out of my window back when he was mine.
I shake my head, knocking that thought out.
“Yeah?”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine, why?”
“Armor down, Stella. I’m not Mom, and I’m not going to narc to her, either.”
“There was a day,” I start, my words trailing off.
“There was. And then I came to my senses about the family we were born into.” She gives me a look, but I just shrug. She sighs before asking what she really wants to, like I knew she would. Evie is the only person who actually knows what happened all those years: the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly.
“How are you doing with Riggs being home?” she asks, her voice low and cautious. I suck in a deep breath at her saying his name like that, calling him Riggs, but it’s like I’m breathing underwater. But even though it wasn’t the same, she loved him too. She knew him and grew up with him and saw him as a brother, and when he was gone, I know in her own way, she felt that, too.
“He came to see me,” I announce for some reason I can’t figure out. Her head moves forward, her mouth dropping open.
“What?”
“Three days ago, he came to my place. He,” I scrunch up my nose, fighting emotions I don’t want to address and tell her the worst of it. “Brought Gracie.”
“Gracie,” she whispers as if the dog was actually my child and she was the aunt we pretended she was as if she had ever met the dog ever, rather than just seeing pictures and hearing stories.
“What did he want?”
“To talk,” I say, jiggling my keys in my hand.
I want to go home.
I want to go home and forget about tonight and the fact that the entire town is buzzing with conversations about Riggins and the fact that Riggins is back here in Ashford.
I want to grab my guitar and write a song and then ignore that song, cataloging the emotion so I don’t have to feel it anymore.
That’s my way, after all. Why talk about or process my feelings when I can turn them into something beautiful, get it out, and never have to think about it again?
“And did you?”
“Nothing to talk about,” I say, tipping my head back, taking in the stars.
“Nothing to talk about? Are you insane? Stella,” she starts, her eyes wide and worried. I take a step backward.
“I gotta get home, early shift tomorrow.” Her face goes soft, concern laced within it.
“Stella—”
“Come for dinner soon. I want to hear about what you’ve got going on.” I take another step back towards my car.
“Stell, we really need to talk?—”
“Love you, sis,” I say, then walk to my car and drive off.
I hold it together until I open my mailbox, pulling out the three pieces stuffed in there, including a postcard. My hands shake, holding it as I take in the green trees and happy type set across the photo, reading, Welcome to Ashford! When I flip it, there’s no stamp and no address because it isn’t needed, but there is a scribbled note.
We really need to talk, Stella.
All my love,
Riggs.
I make it inside the house, the keys in my hand jingling as my hands shake as I turn the key in the lock.
It isn’t until I lock the door behind me that I let myself cry until I can’t breathe.