Three years ago
Dad cried at Mom’s wake last night. Shit, the whole funeral parlor practically dripped with tears. I was proud I kept it together. Shook hands with a million people and clenched my jaw tight each time. When my lacrosse team came through the line, I almost bit through my cheek. There was no way I was crying in front of those guys. Dead mother or not. No way.
Oscar had to be medicated like an old lady. Dad gave him one of Mom’s anti-anxiety pills so he could function, and it turned him into a zombie. He blinked in slow motion all night, and all he could mumble was a weirdo version of “Thank you.” He sounded like one of the drunks at the Blue Mountain. He should’ve stayed locked in his room with his art and not stood there like a drugged psycho. Everyone I knew came through that line.
Each time I looked over at my mother’s body, I swear to God I thought she was going to sit up, shoo everyone out of there, and send them on their way. I guess when you die at forty-eight—in a car accident that doesn’t put a scratch on your face—you look that good as a dead person.
As if that made a difference. If one more person told me how beautiful she looked, I was prepared to punch them. Luckily, the last in line were two of Mom’s old-lady coworkers and they didn’t say it, or I would’ve laid them out right there on the cream carpet.
When the funeral parlor guy announced that tomorrow’s burial information was being handed out at the door, the room cleared. He came back carrying a little silver tray with three Dixie cups sitting on it. He handed us each one, and I threw the ice-cold water back like a shot of vodka. I can’t remember water tasting better than at that exact moment.
“You have anything a little stronger back there in your office, Bob?” my dad joked. Bob pursed his lips and shook his head. I was glad Bob wasn’t standing as close to my dad as I was because his breath reeked of the two martinis he’d had for breakfast. Bob told us we could have a moment alone before they closed her casket.
I turned and stared at my dead mother. We’d argued over what dress to put her in. Each of us had a different favorite, a different moment attached to it. I wanted her to wear the dark-red one from the time we all dressed up as vampires for Halloween. It was Mom’s idea, and I swear it was one of the only times we did something together, the four of us, and we had fun. Even Oscar.
Oscar wanted her to wear the orange-and-yellow-flowered sundress. He said it reminded him of sunsets. Dusk was her favorite time of day. She used to say how amazing it was the way the sky exploded in color, how it was so different from the bright blue of day. She loved how one thing could change so dramatically but still remain beautiful.
Dad’s choice won though. She was laid out in her fancy, emerald-green lace dress. He said he loved it because it made her green eyes even greener, and she wore it whenever they went out to special-occasion dinners, otherwise known as the happy nights.
I got it. I understood. Dad wanted to remember her smiling and laughing. He wanted to remember her loving him. And she did love him, just probably a long time ago. I have memories from when I was little of them kissing and dancing to reggae in the kitchen, of them being happy together. That all changed after Dad’s first affair.
“I’ve stared at her enough today,” my dad announced.
Oscar winced, knelt down in front of my mother’s body, and dropped his head in his hands.
My dad threw his arm around me. “I need a stiff drink after all this.”
“I hear ya, man. This was rough, Dad.” He never hit the hard stuff. Beer was his thing. He said he hated the way some of his regulars at the Blue Mountain acted when they got into liquor. But Dad deserved to have as many as he needed. If there was ever a day for drinking, it was then.
“She shouldn’t have stormed out of the house like that so mad.” He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “She never let me finish.” That’s when his tears came. He dropped his arm and turned away. I knew not to say anything. He needed to get it out. He’d been like a rock all night.
Dad was right. Mom shouldn’t have left so angry. After I left the kitchen that day with the simmering chicken and mushrooms, my parents went at it. Screaming, crying, plate throwing. I sat on the closed toilet in the bathroom at the top of the stairs and listened to every word of their argument. It was where I always sat when they fought.
My dad had gotten caught cheating on my mother. Again. This time it was with Miss Rawlins, Oscar’s first-grade teacher. Dad must’ve run into her at the bar.
See, the thing was, I understood my dad. I got the impossibility of staying faithful to one girl. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Some guys weren’t wired that way. He was a fan of variety and excitement. Truthfully, what real man wasn’t?
My mother lost her shit that afternoon, and her voice hit levels I’d never heard a human voice reach before. My dad tried to explain that he was a man, and if she would take the time to understand him, things would be much better for her. She was real quiet at first, and it was a one-sided shout-fest, with my dad hurling slurred statement after slurred statement.
“You’re too much. You get off on humiliating me, don’t you, Steve?” my mother screamed.
I heard my father pop open a fresh beer, but he kept his mouth shut. I remember thinking, Good call, Dad.
“Alyce Rawlins?” My mother’s voice cracked and she coughed. “She is young enough to be your damned daughter!”
When he told her Miss Alyce Rawlins—who was now married to Dr. Beech and known as Mrs. Beech—may be pregnant, the plates started shattering.
“I.” Plate smash. “Am done.” Plate smash. “With you.” Plate smash. “Steve!”
He shouted, “Done? Where’re you gonna go? I know everyone in this town, Peggy!”
“Then I’ll move out of here. Vance will be getting his license soon.”
Hearing my name being screamed from my mother’s mouth made my stomach cramp up. My dad got Miss Rawlins pregnant? That sucked in every way something could suck. Everyone would know, and Dr. Beech was Oscar’s orthodontist.