Chapter 5 Hateithere
Hateithere
Eve
“Hey, Ma.” Eve greeted her mother with a little wave despite the FaceTime screen displaying only the bottom left half of her mother’s face.
Like a typical Boomer, she held her phone much too close to her mouth, using it as a speakerphone instead of a camera.
But Eve did get a few glimpses of her mom’s Sunday best, from her shamrock green dress to her favorite tortoise-print cat-eye specs.
“Hello, Eve,” Joan returned loudly. Her tone was already a combination of cross and concerned. “Are you okay?”
“I am,” Eve said, glancing back at her surroundings. She wasn’t quite comfortable in the foreign space that was her grandmother’s cabin—not yet—but it still didn’t feel like a mistake. And even if it did, she was unlikely to let her mother know. “It’s quiet here, but—”
“Well, that’s what you wanted, right?”
“Right,” Eve said. “That’s what I was going to say.”
“Well, the way you disappeared, I assumed you’d be more excited about your little trip. Since you clearly couldn’t wait to leave.”
Eve refrained from reacting, going so far as to cover her mouth with her hand as she weighed her response. “I am excited,” she eventually said—unconvincingly. “I’m just…tired.”
“You’ve been there almost three days now. You haven’t gotten any rest?”
“Not much. Got in late Thursday, and I spent most of the last two days trying to get set up and clean up.”
“Are you saying your grandmother’s home was messy? It shouldn’t have been. In fact, I’m certain we left it pristine.”
“Ma, no.” Eve sighed in an effort to hold on to her composure.
But between her mother’s expression of her dismay and her own convoluted feelings surrounding being back in Gatlinburg, Eve was finding it difficult to appear unbothered.
“I’m saying no one’s been here in over a year and it was dusty.
There’s no food or amenities. There was work to do. ”
“That’s why I offered to come down with you and help you get set up. But again, I know you were in a rush.”
“I’m so sorry that my overactive emotions ruined your dinner,” Eve mumbled. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t like it there,” Joan said, her knowing tone feeling even more condescending than usual.
“I’m fine.”
“You can come back home,” she said. “You don’t have to force yourself to stay there just because you left the way you did.”
“I haven’t been here long enough to know how I feel about it,” Eve insisted.
It was entirely possible she was saying it more for herself than trying to convince her mother of anything, but she could not let her mother’s arrogance trick her into thinking it was already time to give up on whatever this plan was.
“I’m gonna stick it out for at least a week,” she said.
“If you feel like you can’t go home to your husband, you can always come here,” Joan appended. “You’re not alone, sweetheart.”
Eve exhaled sharply and dropped her phone onto the kitchen table.
Her mother was clearly uninterested in anything she had to say.
The fact that she insisted on calling Leo her husband when they were only engaged, and Eve had effectively ended their relationship altogether…
“I want to be alone. That’s the whole point.
” She was roughly two sentences from shouting.
“I’m sorry,” Joan said. “I was under the impression that the point was to write. Forgive me for being confused.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“I just want you to know that you can change your mind. Nothing has happened that can’t be undone.”
With her phone on the table, Eve felt slightly more comfortable rolling her eyes now. “Where’s Dad?” she asked instead. While he was undoubtedly confused by her actions as well, he at least wasn’t acting like a dunce about it.
“He’s out back tending to his little garden,” Joan said, chuckling as she so often did whenever the topic of Roger’s favorite hobby arose. In the warmer months, he spent more time with his catmints, hydrangeas, and Japanese cypresses than at work or with his wife. “You want to talk to him?”
“If he’s not too busy,” Eve said. She picked up her phone in anticipation of seeing her father, thinking—or perhaps hoping—that his quieting presence could be valuable in the moment.
She’d been seesawing between sadness and anger since she arrived—save for the few moments when the guy down the street distracted her—and talking to her mother only sharpened those feelings.
She wished she had the courage to say what she really wanted to say, to hold her mother accountable for all the awful memories Eve had attached to this place.
But she didn’t have the energy to even try to argue.
And her father tended to bring down the temperature and act as a mediator between them.
Eve watched the screen as her mother and her phone whooshed through their home, and she tried not to feel homesick for a place where she had no desire to be. It was a mere matter of seconds before he appeared in the frame, properly holding the camera an appropriate few inches from his face.
“Hi, my darling girl,” Roger greeted her warmly, a big smile to match.
“Hi, Daddy.” Eve waved at him, his happiness managing to affect her marginally. Hearing his beautiful Kreyol-tinged accent always made her feel like a kid again, leaving her grinning as she gazed at him. “Just wanted to show proof of life,” she said.
“Well, that part is debatable, but it is good to see your face,” he joked. “I am sure you are doing better than your fiancé.”
Eve knew he was kidding, as was his way; her father straddled the line between stern and droll incredibly well. But she was not in the headspace to confront her actions, even jocularly. “Daddy…”
“Oh, lighten up. You cannot be so bold as to leave that man sitting dumfounded in our home and think I will not rib you about it.”
“Okay, well, that’s fine. I didn’t want anything anyway—”
Before Eve could complete her goodbye spiel, her father cut her off to go on his typical Sunday tangent about the people who annoyed him at Mass that day.
It was funny how church was supposed to be about betterment of spirit, yet he turned into a gossiping old goat whenever he spent more than an hour there.
And she was supposed to feel bad about severing her ties with it?
“Deacon Withers supposedly took over at the Kennedy Community Center, he is supervising our food pantry, and he is leader of the altar servers. But my question is how he has all of these jobs when he does none of them well?” Roger’s laugh came from deep in his belly, as it often did when he amused himself, as his smile, contrasting with his ebony skin, lit up the screen.
“I am sure you have people like that in your department, hmm?”
Eve was likely that person in her department. “I do,” she said.
“I shall pray for us both then,” he said, still chuckling. “By the way, have you watched Lupin yet?”
“Daddy, I’m the one who told you to watch Lupin .”
“Are you sure? I don’t think so. It was recommended to me by Deacon Brown.”
“Yes. Several years ago.” With that, Eve effectively checked out of the conversation as he went on about catching up with the series over the weekend.
She reached for the little non-birthday birthday cake Jamie brought her the other day, not bothering to cut it into any discernible slices or even find a fork.
She snatched a chunk using her thumb and forefinger like the depressed mess she was.
Though, to be fair, the cake was quite tasty for a grocery store variety, rivaled only by Publix, in her estimation.
Eve began to reminisce on her college days, and the genuine delight that was their regular escapades to Publix.
A couple of Pub subs, some fried chicken, and a pound cake would make her whole weekend.
She made a mental note to research the nearest location now that she was back in the South.
In the background, Eve could hear the faint sounds of a lawn mower, and she assumed it was Jamie tending to his yard after taking care of hers.
She wondered how long it would take him to find his way back to her door, and what excuse he would bring with him.
She’d take pretty much anything that would get her off this phone.
As Roger went on to regale her with his tales of solving Saturday’s NYT crossword, Eve would nod every thirty seconds or so and then submit a well-placed “Mm-hmm” or “Wow, that’s crazy” to give the impression she was engaged in whatever he was saying, but it was becoming impossible to hide her boredom.
Her lack of focus was getting to be a problem.
And she didn’t know whether she could blame it on her parents—and Leo, for that matter—or if this was something else to add to her ever-growing list of neuroses.
“What is that you’re eating?” Roger asked, just as her mind had wandered all the way out of their conversation.
“Cake,” Eve replied with a mouth full of it.
“She doesn’t have any real food in that house?” her mother asked in the background. “Tell her to get some real food.”
“Your mother says you need some real food.”
“Yes, I heard,” Eve muttered. “I have real food.” It was a lie; she had been living solely on what Jamie brought over Thursday, too lazy to actually fill her refrigerator after going through the trouble of turning on the electricity for it.
“She looks like she hasn’t been eating,” Joan said.
“Your mother says you look like you haven’t been eating.”
“I heard,” Eve said tersely, utterly unamused by this tag-team shtick they were doing.
She wasn’t sure where mothers perfected the art of death by a thousand cuts—probably from their mothers—but now that her father was playing along, it was definitely time to go.
Eve surreptitiously swiped to the Wi-Fi option on her phone and disabled it, knowing her weak cellular signal would end the call before she could hear another passive-aggressive word.
She did, however, take the time to text them and apologize for the mishap. Because, thanks to her mother, she was also learned in the art of passive aggression.
Sun, Jun 29 10:56AM
Eve Ambroise: Sorry about that! The wifi went out! I can call you back when it returns
Mom: No need. We are going to brunch with Harriett and Calvin in a bit.
Mom: You make sure you eat something. Will talk soon.
Eve Ambroise: I will