16. Teddy
SIXTEEN
TEDDY
The team is giving me shit for staying up late watching some British soap opera when my boss pulls up behind the truck. I glare back at them as they continue to recount just how many times I yawned before we break for lunch. Dale certainly doesn’t need to know how tired I am as I’m sure he’d have something to say about me feeding tree parts into the wood chipper. I need the shifts because I need the paycheck.
As Dale comes into view, the teasing stops abruptly.
He points to me and gestures for me to step onto the sidewalk. “What’s wrong?” I ask when I reach him and he can hear me without yelling above the chainsaw above us.
“It’s your mom. You’ve gotta come with me.”
“What about her?” He looks at the ground instead of me and I know but I still need to hear it. “Dale, what about my mom?”
He looks up again and over at the team lead before his eyes finally meet mine. “She’s gone.”
The chainsaw is suddenly too loud. My coworkers yelling at one another filling up every millisecond of silence when it stops. Then a buzzing. Not the saw or an insect, just a static buzzing that I can feel in my eyes and throughout my body.
“Teddy?” I barely register my name being called until I feel Dale’s hand land on my arm.
I give my head a shake, and the sounds around me die down as I focus my attention on my boss again.
He said she was gone. A tiny voice in my head asks where she’s gone. She can’t drive, she doesn’t go on walks by herself. She can’t just be gone without help. “My dad?”
“He’s at the hospital. Your brother called and asked me to come get you.”
“And take me to the hospital?”
“To the house.”
Right, she’s gone. Why would I need to go to the hospital?
“Right.” I’m suddenly unsure of what to do next. “So I’ll just…” I look around and realize that other than my bag, there is nothing for me to grab. So I just gesture to his truck and then follow. The expressions of my coworkers seem frozen in a state of pity as we drive by. Hands raise in unenthusiastic waves which I return. It all kind of seems automatic, like my body is doing what it should be doing, without me having to think about it.
The drive home is quiet. Dad’s car is gone, but Will’s is here. The only time I ever see Will’s car here is when he’s on Mom duty.
“Don’t worry about work, okay?” I hear Dale say.
I nod and slip out of the truck without so much as a thanks for the lift as my legs carry me towards the front door. The door opens as I’m reaching for the handle, and Will is there, already pulling me in for a hug. This is weird, we don’t hug. My brother is not a hugger; he’d sooner punch me in the stomach as a form of greeting than hug me. My arms wrap loosely around him as he holds me like a vice. Zoe is on the couch just staring off into the distance, and I want to push Will off so I can go see what’s wrong. She’s gone, you idiot , I remind myself.
Mom is gone.
When Will pulls away, I get the first look at his face. His eyes are red-rimmed, and he looks like he’s aged ten years since I saw him on the weekend.
“What happened?”
“She was fine, we were having breakfast at that diner on Seventh. You know the one with…”
“With the extra-thick-cut chips,” I finish for him.
“Yeah. She was laughing and then…” His eyes widen as if he’s watching it for the first time. “She just stopped laughing, said ‘ow,’ and fell forward. But she was alive. She was alive when the ambulance came. She was just unconscious so I didn’t… I didn’t…” Tears fall as he mouths words that I can’t hear.
“Why isn’t anyone with Dad?”
“Brenda’s there. She’s going to drive him home. He’s not exactly in a state to drive.”
I can’t help but laugh at how obvious that statement is. “No shit,” I mumble, pushing past my brother to go kneel in front of Zoe. If anyone saw us, they’d think she was looking at me but she’s not. She’s looking through me like I’m not even there.
“Zoe?” I take her hands in mine and wait until I see her eyes focus on me. It’s then that she seems to realize I’m home.
“Oh my god.” She throws herself at me, buries her face in my neck, and crumbles.
I don’t know what to do other than rub her back and tell her it’s going to be fine. I don’t know that, though. I have no idea what comes next. I don’t think I’m fully understanding any of this. Rationally, I know what Mom’s gone means. I understand why Will hugged me and why Zoe is a sobbing mess. Irrationally, I’m telling myself this is all just a misunderstanding. Mom just passed out from the heat or she had a mild stroke. She’s gone for the time being, but she’ll be back tomorrow.
We stay like that on the floor until my legs have gone numb and Zoe’s sobs die down to whimpers. Will has moved to the front window and watches the driveway with his arms crossed, Morris watching along with him.
I eventually get Zoe back in the chair and go to the kitchen to put the kettle on. I remember when Mom had her first aneurysm. Brenda came over to take care of us while Dad was in the hospital with her.
We’d arrived home from school to find our aunt in the living room watching her “stories,” and she’d told us she was staying for a few days while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with Mom. Brenda made us tea and told us it would help soothe our worry. So that’s what I do, I make tea. I don’t even know if I’ve had tea since that day. I don't think anyone has, as is evidenced by how far back in the cupboard I find the tin of tea bags.
When it’s ready, I take mugs out to the living room and set them on coasters in front of Will and Zoe, and then I go back and get one for myself. An hour later, the tea remains untouched and the only sound is that of the clock in the front hall. An ominous ticking, counting down the minutes and hours since Mom left. I still don’t think I’ve grasped what that means.
Three hours after I arrived home the door opens, and Brenda walks in, followed by the shell of my father. Will and I stand to hug our aunt, but Zoe has gone back to staring at dancing dust particles. After I hug Brenda, I look at my dad, and it’s in that moment, as his hazel eyes meet mine, that things click. Mom’s gone. She’s dead. She’s not coming home… ever… again.
Sitting beside my sister, I join in staring at nothing, only hearing bits of what my father, aunt, and brother are discussing. Paperwork at the hospital, arrangements at the funeral home, pre-selected plan, something about British Columbia, service type. Things I recall hearing about after all my grandparents had passed away. Normal things that need to be taken care of following the death of a person. But this isn’t just a person, it’s Mom.
My mom wasn’t even sick.
She was fine.
She ate a toasted tomato sandwich this morning.
Two nights ago, she was laughing at Zoe’s ridiculous stories and bugging me about not bringing Nellie over for dinner. I’d invited Nellie just to get her off my back. Then it hits me: she’s never going to bug me about anything again. No more sly little looks that let me know she knows everything. No more evenings of her bossing me around in the kitchen. No more driving her to appointments or seeing her cuddling next to Dad on the couch. Just, no more.
I’m suddenly way too hot, still in my work stuff, bits of sawdust still clinging to me.
“I’m going to change,” I say quietly, not sure if anyone hears me, truthfully not caring if they do. Upstairs I pull off my soiled clothes. The sound of something hard hits the ground, and I look down to see my phone. Nellie , I think. I should call Nellie . I keep thinking I should call her while I change into a tank and shorts. I need to let her know that we can’t do dinner because my mom’s dead.
My. Mom. Is. Dead.
I leave my phone on the floor and grab my running shoes, which I slip on at the top of the stairs. Mom hates—no, wait, hated . Fuck, it’s all past tense now. Mom hated us wearing our shoes in the house, but she’s gone so she won’t know about me doing it now .
The first tear falls then. My rebellious action of wearing shoes in the house is what finally breaks me, and as I run down the stairs and out the front door, the tears begin to come faster. I only ever run when I need to clear my mind as if I can run away from the anxiety or sadness that’s living in my brain. But by the time I’m about three kilometers away from home, I realize there is no outrunning this. I can’t outrun anything so I bend and unleash all my rage, confusion, and emerging sorrow into a scream. I’m sure people come out of their homes because I’ve done it in the middle of a subdivision, but all I can hear is a roaring within my head. Once I’ve pulled myself back together, I’m off again, continuing to run away from home.
Eventually, I make my way into a wooded area that runs next to a golf course. Technically, I’m not allowed to be here, it’s part of the private club, but fuck them, my mom’s dead.
It’s quiet in the dense trees and I feel like I can take a proper breath for the first time since Dale showed up at the work site. I walk until I reach a shallow creek and drop down next to the water, drawing my knees into my chest.
My brother’s words float back to me. “She was laughing.”
Mom’s laugh was distinct and very loud. I have no problem hearing it. But for how long will it be easy to hear? I have tried to remember what my dad’s father sounded like but can’t. People talk about missing the physical presence of someone, but it’s the forgetting her laugh that has me rolling onto my hands and knees and throwing up my breakfast and lunch.
I hate Will at that moment. I hate that he got to hear her last laugh. I hate that his memory of it will be so fresh in his mind while I sit here not knowing when I heard it last. I don’t know if she was laughing at me or something I said. Or maybe Zoe and I were making fun of someone on a game show. I hadn’t seen her the last two nights because I was with Nellie. I missed her last days because I was too preoccupied with Nellie. My most recent memories are all of her, and I do my best to push them aside, but Mom’s off in the distance.
She’s been gone for a few hours, and she’s already fading from my memory.
When I finally get home, Dad is in the kitchen, sitting alone. A full mug sitting in front of him.
“Dad?” I whisper as I walk over and sit across the table from him.
“Zoe…” I watch as he swallows, trying to finish his sentence. “Your sister is upstairs going through your mom’s clothes. It would be nice if you helped her pick out something for your mom to wear.”
I nearly ask where she’d be wearing the clothes. But of course, there was only one place they’d be worn, never to be removed again. I nod and stand before walking around the table to awkwardly hug him. He pats my arm and then goes back to staring at the mug full of tea.
I find my sister down the hall sitting on my parents’ bed, clothes strewn around her. She’s holding a black dress, the one Mom had worn to her father’s funeral. Zoe looks up at me with red eyes, taking in my shirt and shorts. No doubt smelling the sweat on me.
“Have a good run?” she asks bitterly.
“As a matter of fact, it was shit,” I say, dropping onto the bed beside her.
“Good.”
I reach for the dress in her hands and toss it behind us. “She can’t wear black, Zo.”
She sniffs and leans into me. “I know that.”
“What about that pink one she wore to their anniversary party last summer?” Everyone had complimented Mom when she’d shown up in it.
“It doesn’t have any sleeves,” Zoe says quietly.
“What does that matter?”
“It matters, Teddy… It…” I can hear her start to break, so I put my arm around her and hold her tightly against me as I stare into the closet. “I don’t want her to get cold,” she finally whispers. And that thought, the thought of Mom never feeling again is what cracks me wide open.
The next three days fly by in a blur of planning, arguments, and so many tears that we all seem to have accepted that puffy eyes and red raw cheeks are just part of life now. The current altitude isn’t helping with my permanent headache.
We’re on a plane to British Columbia because that’s where Mom wanted her ashes spread. Half in the mountains and half on the coast just like her parents and grandparents. I haven’t been to BC since I was ten when we came to visit Mom’s parents, who had moved back shortly after Mom and Dad had gotten married. I remember loving it there and begging to go back. If I knew what would take me back, I never would have wanted to return.
“Here,” Will says, holding out a travel-sized bottle of pills. “These’ll help.”
I take the bottle, dump a couple of pills in my hand, and throw them back dry. He says something else, but I’ve already turned my attention back to the clouds passing by out the window.
I’ve never wished to believe in something greater than myself until now. The comfort of the belief in Heaven or something more spectacular being out there brings must be nice. Dad said Mom’s wishes were to be reunited with her family, as if it would help me understand why we were making this trip. It just pissed me off more. We’re her family. If she thought throwing her burned existence into the air was going to reunite her with her long-dead ancestors, why wouldn’t she want to stay close to us ?
Why the fuck doesn’t she want to stay with the man she’s loved since they were kids?
Why wouldn’t she want to stay with Will, Zoe, and me?
What was the point of us sacrificing our childhoods to care for her if the minute she could leave she could without thinking of us?
I dream of Nellie. Of Swedish Berries and floating beside her in the pool. Her laugh echoes in my mind, bouncing off the grief and confusion that have taken up residence. I keep trying to tell her something but can’t seem to get it out. I’m too distracted by her smile, and I don’t want to do anything that makes it go away, so I just watch her and float.
“Teddy Graham.” Zoe’s jostling me and whispering my name over and over again.
“Ugh, fuck’s sakes, Zoe, what?” I mumble, swinging my arms out to block her from pushing me again. Nellie’s smile fades completely when I open my eyes.
“We landed like fifteen minutes ago, asshole,” she hisses back, causing my eyes to snap open all the way. When I look around, I see it’s just the two of us left at the back of the plane. “Everyone else already got off, let’s go. Unless you want to fly back to Toronto.”
I consider it for a split second but then remember that Mom’s not there either. I drag myself out of the seat and pull my overfull backpack from the overhead bin. I don’t even know what I packed; I opened drawers and pulled stuff out in a fog of grief. Mom was very specific about not wanting anyone in suits or stiff black anything.
“It looks like you’re staying for more than three days,” Zoe says as she pushes me down the aisle.
“God, why are you so pushy today?” I glare back at her and manage to dodge more physical encouragement.
“I just want to get off this damn plane,” she says, pushing me once more for good measure.
The two flight attendants standing near the exit smile sadly at us as we pass, and I feel my stomach drop. They had to do a lot of gentle coaxing to get Dad to stow the ashes away during take-off. He’d insisted on holding the little gray box for the entire flight. “She’s scared of flying.” he’d told the attendant quietly. I don’t think he was embarrassed to say it. I think he genuinely believed he’d embarrass Mom. Hard to embarrass a dead person, though. Every time I had a thought like that, I felt a new bubble of fury float to the surface.
“What the hell did you give me?” I ask Will angrily as we wait at the car rental booth.
“Something to help you sleep. It worked, didn’t it?”
“Will, what was it?”
“Ambien or something like it.”
I stop dead in my tracks. “What the hell, Will? I took two.”
“Right, so definitely not Ambien.” He shrugs. “Relax, they’re leftover pills a friend had after flying back from Europe. She got them in Latvia—no, wait.” He looks skyward as he thinks. “Maybe it was Lithuania. Definitely not Luxembourg, I’d remember the x in there. It was some L country in Europe. Anyway, she told me they’d help me sleep.”
“And you didn’t think to find out what it was?”
“Teddy, if there is anyone who needs to just throw a couple of pills back and not ask questions, it’s you.” He pats me on the back and follows our father and Zoe as they head towards where our car is.
An hour later I’m standing in between my siblings listening to my uncle tell a story about Mom falling out of a moving car after their father took a corner too sharply. Apparently my uncle didn’t say anything right away because he was in shock. It’s the first time I feel inclined to laugh in days, the visual too funny to ignore. Within minutes we’re all trying to catch our breath and wiping tears of laughter from our eyes. It’s what my dad says next that has every ounce of joy leaving my body.
“When the doctor gave her five more years…”
I miss what he says next because I keep repeating five more years to myself.
“We knew it was coming…”
Knew what was coming? What the fuck is he talking about?
I look at the rest of my family as they nod along, not one of them looks surprised by what Dad just said.
“I’m sorry,” I interrupt. “What are you talking about? What did we know was coming?”
“The aneurysm they couldn’t get to after her first aneurysm ruptured,” my aunt says like she’s reminding me of a fact I have just forgotten.
“He didn’t know,” Zoe says quietly, avoiding looking at me. “Mom didn’t want us to tell him. I only knew because I overheard Dad telling Will, and then he swore us to secrecy.”
For the first time in my life, I get the saying “seeing red.” It looks like the world around me has a red filter on it. They knew. They all knew. Everyone except me was in on this monumental secret .
The same thing happens. All the noises above me grow louder. Birds, insects, voices rise like a tidal wave before crashing into silence. They all knew.
I whirl around to face them. “So, what, you’ve all been preparing for this for what? Ten fucking years?” I’m angry and embarrassed and completely confused as to why my family, why my mother, didn’t want me of all people not to know. Is this why they always seemed more paranoid than me? My memories race through every cold, cough, and fever.
“She didn’t want you or Zoe to know,” Dad says, almost pleadingly.
He reaches for me but I step back, the last thing I want is to be touched right now. “But you ended up telling her.” I jab a finger in Zoe’s direction. “Why didn’t you just tell me too?” I look over at my twin trying not to let the feeling of betrayal show too much on my face. Judging by her expression, I fail.
“You were always so hopeful that she’d end up getting better in the beginning. And then you were the only one who didn’t act like there was a deadline.”
I think of how much time over the last couple of months I could have been spending with Mom, but I was off with Nellie or playing baseball or working. Zoe and Will never switched around their schedules to avoid time with her while I’d been doing it since school ended. They didn’t do it because they knew time was running out, and instead of letting me know, they let me carry on, wasting the most precious time in the world.
There’s that question people ask: if you knew you were going to die soon, would you want to know, or would you rather be surprised? I can’t answer that for myself, but I sure as hell can for the person I love—loved—most in the world. Hell yes, I’d want to know. I should have known .
Run, a voice in the back of my mind I don’t recognize whispers.
“Give me the key,” I say emotionlessly to my dad. He looks from my hand back to my face like he doesn’t know what to do. “I need to be alone.”
He nods and fishes the key out of his pocket. I look at the box he’s holding in his other hand one more time, then turn and walk back down the trail.
At the car, I pull my phone out of the front pocket of my backpack. There are several unread texts from Nellie, and I open them now.
I focus on the last one she sent this morning.
Library Girl
I thought you were one of the good guys.
I always did too, but grief mixed with anger does things to a person. Right now I hate her name on my phone. I hate that I spent so many of my mom’s final hours with her, and I despise my family for making me resent every fucking smile she flashed my way.
Guess not.
I turn off the phone, shove it back into my backpack, lock the door, slide the key into the wheel well, turn, and walk towards the road. I have no idea where I’m going, but I can’t stay here and I certainly won’t be going home.