Chapter 14 – Lily #2
I clear my throat and say the thing I’m not supposed to say.
“She wasn’t a good person, Pat. I’m sorry, but she just wasn’t.
She was an addict, and addicts are liars, cheats, and frauds.
I know it wasn’t her fault, and I know a lot of it was the disease, but she abandoned her kid and made a living stealing from other people.
That is the definition of a bad person.”
He slams the dish down into the soapy water and turns to face me, the lines of his face pooling with tears. “Don’t you dare talk like that, Lily. I won’t have it. Not after all she’s done for you. For us.” His tone is harsh, but his eyes are pleading.
But I will not stop. This feels like opening the seal to a long-forgotten jar and releasing the festering odor inside so that it can be cleaned—a long-overdue catharsis.
The words tumble out of my mouth, sharp and strained.
“All she’s done? Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?
She might have been a lot of fun for you, but she was an awful mother to me, and you know it.
She broke every promise she ever made us.
She picked drugs over me, Pat. Every single time. ”
Pat’s shaking his head defiantly, head bowed, hands clutching the edges of the sink.
I twist the knife. “You were in love with the idea of her. The twisted fairy tale of the musician and the chaotic manic hippie who pool-hustled and card-sharked her way around the country. Uprooting her family every few months because she’d pissed off the wrong gang of thugs.”
“It wasn’t like that—”
“It was exactly like that. Even she knew the truth of what she was. That’s why she ended up drinking and drugging herself to death.”
“You don’t understand, Lil. She was different. She was in a lot of pain.”
“So was I!” I roar, angry tears welling. “I needed my mom.”
Pat reaches out and tugs me to him, and swiftly wraps me in an awkward, tight hug.
It’s so fast I barely register it, and I resist at first before I surrender and let go.
I’m not sure when it started, but I realize I’m sobbing and wailing against the scratchy wool of his cardigan, my breath barely filling my lungs as he strokes my hair and shushes me.
We stand there for a while, swaying in the kitchen, the music humming in the background punctuated by my little hiccups as I get my breath back. Eventually, he kisses me on the top of my head and wipes his tears away.
“I’m so sorry, Lil,” he says, his hand rubbing and patting my back with the kind of reassuring firmness you’d use to soothe a baby.
“It must be so hard for you. I shouldn’t take that away from you.
Whatever you’re feeling, you should just feel it.
It’s not my place to minimize. Your feelings are valid. ”
I look up at him and sniff. “‘Your feelings are valid’? Where did you hear that?”
“Therapy.”
“Really? I thought you always hated that stuff.”
“Alright, you caught me. It’s from Dr. Phil.”
It catches me by surprise, and somewhere from deep in my chest comes a burst of laughter, replacing my miserable shrieks with a joyful cackle.
Pat laughs, too, wheezing and wiping his eyes all over again.
We clutch each other still, our heavy shoulders heaving until they eventually slow, then settle.
“I’ve a chocolate cake in the fridge,” he says with a grin. “Fancy a slice? I’ll make us a nice tea to go with it.”
I nod and pull away, leaving a snot-laced, damp patch on Pat’s chest. “Yes, please. Chocolate is exactly what I need right now.”
I’m curled up on the couch with an ancient crochet blanket draped over me when he emerges with a little plate of cake in one hand and a steaming mug of sugary tea in the other.
I never had the heart to tell him I can’t stand hot tea, so I let him make me one every time I come back here.
Always with a minimum of three sugars to mask the bitterness.
I brace myself for the acerbic taste, except this time the sip leaves me feeling comforted. It tastes like home.
He settles down in his armchair near the TV and sets down his own mug on a stack of cork coasters between us. “You alright, Lilypad? Warm enough?”
I nod. “Thanks, Pat, this is perfect.”
“Right, so I’ll find us a film to watch then.
” He picks up the remote and points it at the screen, but before he can turn it on, his hand lowers, and he looks down at his lap, a small drama warring across his face.
When he speaks, his voice is soft and tentative.
“Can I say something? Just one thing about your mam?”
“Sure.” I’m too emotionally exhausted for another confrontation, but I owe him something after my outburst.
“She may not have been the best, but she loved you so much, Lil. She did everything for you. Even the bad stuff. You might not agree with how she made her living, but it put food on the table, and it paid the way for us both years after she died. Without it, you’d have never gone to college.”
I frown. “She really made that much from pool-hustling and card-sharking?”
“Aye, and then some.” His eyes are misty at the memory, like he’s proud of her.
“She had a real gift for it. Said she could hear what they were thinking a lot of the time. These weren’t good people either, Lils; they were the lowest of the low.
Criminal scum, but she could read them all like a book. ”
My vision blurs, and my throat tightens. “You mean like…what? She was good at reading body language?” I offer as I grip the edges of the couch to steady myself.
“Something like that,” he says, taking a deep slurp from his mug. “Your mam reckoned she was a kind of psychic. I didn’t believe her, of course. Thought it was a load of ol’ shite at first, but one day she told me some stuff about my mammy that changed my mind. Stuff no one else would know.”
My heart is thundering, hammering itself against my ribcage with such force it feels like it could crack.
“What kind of stuff?” I ask, trying to sound composed, but my voice wobbles out like a tape deck with a dying battery.
Pat waves the TV remote like a magic wand and squints at the screen as he flicks through the channels, only half paying attention.
“All kinds. Stuff about my brother, funny stories about my da. Little things like that. She even knew Mammy kept my first tooth in a little blue box on her dresser until the day she died. We used to joke that she was psychic, but she never managed to come up with the lotto numbers.”
The world tilts on its axis, and darkness creeps at the edges. Narrowing like a camera rapidly closing its aperture. Everything collapses inward like a dying star, pulling all reason and breath into its dense, inescapable center.
Please. No. This cannot be happening.
“That’s not a psychic,” I croak, but my voice is far away, floating somewhere in the abyss. “That’s a medium.”