24
“How you doing, kiddo?” Vi asks, tenderly, with a head tilt.
I look over her face—brows low, lip sucked in a tiny bit. Shallow, shaky breathing.
She’s in pain.
I’m doing better than her, that much I’m sure of.
“How are you?” I ask her instead. “You spoke beautifully.”
“Yeah?” She blinks over at me.
“Yeah.” I smile.
“I was glad to see him again—is that weird?” She shakes her head, like she thinks it’s a dumb thought. “I was glad to see my brother dead in a box?”
“Grief is weird.” I give her a small shrug. “I don’t think there are hard and fast rules for dealing with it.”
She nods a few times and forces a smile. Then she clears her throat. “So is grief why you were getting felt up by some guy at your dad’s funeral?” she asks as she drags me into a corner, hands on her hips.
“Some guy?” I blink, looking around the room wildly for Clay, that traitor.
Some guy? What the fuck?
We’re back at my parents’ for the wake now, and the room is too full of people who knew my dad better than I did.
“Who was it?” she asks. “Was it Sam, or—”
“Yes, it was Sam!” I growl, and I’m offended now. “I’m not as slutty as you think I am, Vi!” I whisper-yell, and her face softens.
“That’s not what I—” she starts, but my chest is heaving a little.
“And he wasn’t feeling me up.” I’m not meeting her eye. “He put his hand on my leg when I was sad.”
“Okay.” She nods, sucking in her lip. AU28. She feels guilty, but she should, and my head keeps shaking.
“What happened happened ten years ago—a decade ago! I was a kid! And none of you, no one”—I meet her eyes now and let her see how much it’s hurt me—“not even you, has ever let me forget about it.”
“Sweet pea.” Violet shakes her head. “I overstepped; I was joking! I—”
And then I walk away.
I’ve never walked away from her before, actually.
It’s not that I’m all that angry; it’s just that I’m tired of my narrative here, even from the people I love and who love me.
Redemption is an important part of every person’s narrative, but not one I’ve been afforded. This is partially my fault, because I left and never came back—but why would I come back? And sure, it’s hard to be redeemed from ten thousand miles away. But I crave it anyway.
It’s not about being vindicated—because that’s too embittered and there’s a vitriolic undertone there that I’m not interested in—but redeemed… You don’t need to only have a murky history to crave redemption, because I think redemption covers more than just our sins; it covers everyone else’s too.
This town to me is full to its brim with regrets and wishes that things were different.
I don’t even want the Beckett part of my story to be redeemed anymore. I want the part where my parents didn’t give a shit to be proven wrong.
I walk through the living room and hear Debbie telling Sam about the gospel, and I wish she’d shut it. A surge of anger pulses through me as I panic she’ll fuck it up and make God sound weird or judgmental…make him sound like he’s the pricky God America might have you believe him to be.
I have to stop myself from interjecting, and the only reason I don’t is because I feel so on edge, I can’t be fully sure I wouldn’t find out her deepest secrets and use them against her on the spot, just for talking to the boy I like about something I think she doesn’t know shit-all about.
Debbie goes to church on Sunday. Debbie reads the Bible. She goes to Bible study and prayer group and the women’s meeting, and she thinks these things qualify her to tell people—perfect strangers, like Sam—about the gospel, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the only thing that qualifies you to talk about the gospel is admitting you need it.
The concept of the gospel is counterintuitive and much easier to digest if you adhere to a strict regimen of shallow perfectionism, like Debbie does, or my mom. It’s in this hollow I think most of the church resides, but I think the place God would like us to be is in the gutters or the libraries asking questions about why a good God would make a world so fucked up.
I’ve always thought like this, all my life. My Sunday school teacher used to sit with me in a corner and answer question after question that she couldn’t have possibly known the answers to, but she tried because I think she saw the value in asking.
I understand now that I’m older that it takes a true and deep faith in God to feel comfortable enough to ask and be asked such questions, but I don’t think many people like the depths.
The deeper you go, the darker it gets, but I once knew a guy who said there are shadows to his wisdom. Mom said he was a heretic because God is all good all the time, but I wonder where his goodness lands her today, when her husband dead.
I heard her saying before to her friend that God is in control, but I watched the way her mouth twitched in pain as she said it, like her body was physically rejecting what she was saying. She doesn’t believe it.
And that’s okay to me—I think he probably is all good, all the time, but I think good is probably just a vaster, more nuanced construct than we grew up believing it to be.
I think God is good, even on the day of my father’s funeral. And I think he likes a redemption story.
Me too, actually.
I think it’s why I like Sam… A once-upon-a-time bad boy and reformed alcoholic spends his life helping other people not make the same mistakes as him while, probably unbeknownst to him, dabbing the hearts of those around him with a soft, cool cloth.
I catch Sam’s eye. Are you okay?
He gives me a slight and tiny wink. Yes .
And then I spot my mom in the kitchen. She’s backed up against the fridge, hugging a large glass of rosé to her chest.
I approach her, feeling timid. “Are you…okay, Mom?”
She looks up at me like she’s surprised to see me, and my heart breaks on the spot because she’s in anguish. She’s probably drunk too much; I can tell that by the softness of her face. That, or she’s drinking and taking sedatives.
“Am I okay?” she eventually repeats. Then she sniffs a laugh and takes a sip.
“I’m really sorry,” I tell her.
She glances at me from the side of her eye and then tugs on my dress.
“This is nice. Is it your sister’s?”
I press my lips together and take a breath. “Nope, I bought it yesterday.”
My mother makes a hm sound.
I pour myself a glass of wine and stand opposite her. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
She breathes in through her nose, her eyes pinching.
“Do your thing.”
“What?” I blink.
She squares her shoulders. “Read me.”
I shake my head. “Mom—”
“Read me, I said!” she says, sharply. “Tell me what I’m feeling.” She sniffs again—it’s all full of emotion—then quickly regains composure. “Please tell me what I’m feeling.”
I take a breath and look at her, pretend like I’m just noticing it for the first time, like it’s not the first thing I saw on her when I walked into the house on Monday.
“You’re in trauma,” I say to her, and swallow heavily because who the fuck wants to say that to their mother? “You’re in so much pain, you can’t even feel it all. It’s why you feel confused—confused is the most obvious thing you feel.” I point to her upper face. “The way your eyebrows pull in, you’re confused on the surface, but underneath, it’s just…” I tilt my head—it’s easier sometimes to spot emotions that way. “Anguish. And fear.”
She brushes away a tear that’s about to slip from her eye. Says nothing.
“What are you most afraid of now that Dad’s gone?” I ask her. Nowhere like your father’s wake to dabble in some light immersion therapy.
No one’s asked her that before, I can tell that much. Which is crazy to me, because it’s the most obvious thing about her the more I look at her. She’s afraid.
She stares off at nothing for a long time, then glances at me. “How much my life will change.”
I nod once.
“I married your father when I was nineteen. I’m fifty-three now. I don’t know how to live in a world where he doesn’t love me.” She blinks a few times. “I’m alone now.” She looks past me for a while, brows furrowed, lips pressed down.
“You’ve been alone before,” she tells me, nodding her chin toward me. “How do you…?”
She trails off, looking at me with hopeful eyes, but I’m thrown as fuck by the question. I don’t know how I’d even begin to answer that. Therapy? Trying to feel wanted by anyone who’d have me? Overachieving? Avoiding? Self-acceptance?
Instead, I find myself folding my arms over my chest, and before I do it, I know it’s probably a bad idea, but it might be my only chance because my mom doesn’t drink this much that often and I’ll never get her to say it when she’s sober.
“Why did you do it?” I ask, and I hate that my voice nearly breaks at the question before it’s even all the way out.
Her gaze shifts from far off to me. She blinks thrice in quick succession, then sighs out her nose.
“Your father begged me not to…”
That makes my chest go tight, and I suck in my bottom lip. “Why?”
She sighs again and gives an indifferent shrug. “Said it’d be damaging to send away your brother’s only real friend.”
My face falters. Really? No concern for me? Like, none at all?
“So why did you, then?” I press, eyebrows up.
And then my mother looks at me with no one abject emotion present; instead, it’s flickers of tones. Regret, guilt, sadness, fear, contempt, anger—
Then she says, clear as a bell, and I know it’s the truth because I can see it all over her, plain as day:
“It was easier.”
I tip my wine glass back and drain it, banging it down on the bench with a clatter.
I walk back into the living room, where most of the wake is, and up to Sam and Oliver.
“I’m going to a bar,” I tell them. “I know you’re alcoholics, so please don’t feel any pressure to come—but I’m fucking done here.” I give them a curt nod.
Sam catches my eye, brows dipping with concern, but I can’t meet his eyes right now. If I do, I’ll cry.
“I’ll come,” Tennyson says from a few meters away, inviting himself. He throws his arm around Savannah. “Let’s go.”
I walk toward the door and grab my keys out of the bowl, but Sam plucks them from my hand.
“I’ll drive.”