“Oh my god,” she gasped, cupping her hand over her mouth.
“That is really romantic,” I said, not able to stop the huge smile that cracked across my angry face. “See? Now this is what I want, a grand gesture, like in the movies.” I bent down and breathed in an array of red and pink roses. “If your admirer comes out of the bushes with a boom box above his head with the song, “In Your Eyes,” blasting out of it, I’ll drop dead. I want a love story like this.”
Her face was ashen. “Trust me you don’t.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, glancing around looking for whomever left the gifts. Nothing but mist and rain surrounded us.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I just wish he wasn’t making this so hard for the both of us.” She walked me to the door of my car. I could tell she was trying very hard not to get flustered by what was going on.
“Why don’t you think it’s romantic? What happened between you both?”
“It is romantic, Liv. I just—” she shook her head and gazed back over her shoulders to the forest of flowers covering her porch. “He could have gone about it another way, that’s all.”
I watched her for a few moments, concerned, but she ended up smiling back at me and poking my shoulder with her index finger. “Remember you promised to come back here and say goodbye, okay? I’ll talk to you later.”
An inch of ice and snow covered the front yard and the top of my car. High above our heads white ice coated the pine needles on the huge evergreen tree between our houses in beautiful blue tinted patterns. My boots slid over the ice and snow as I attempted to clean off the car and warm up the inside. Vermont winters were much worse than New York ones, but somehow I struggled getting it done.
When the car was finally drivable, I made my way slowly through the icy covered streets. I drove slowly, not wanting to slide all over the road; my car wasn’t the best in this kind of weather. Now that I had a nice-sized bank account, I’d see to it that my old rusted car got upgraded to something a little more Vermont-ready and had four-wheel drive.
I distracted myself with images of the prettiest looking SUVs I had seen, but unfortunately, all my thoughts keep running back to Dean. Or my parents and how horribly alone I felt in this world.
I walked into hospital room feeling resigned to my fate. I was completely okay with not being wanted…by anyone. I was ready for her to lie and fight with me, and I was ready, more than ready, to say goodbye to this place and go home, even if it was to an empty home.
My mother was lying in her hospital bed, upright, staring quietly at a blank space on the wall. She looked almost peaceful, calm—not an adjective I would have ever thought to use to describe her. For a brief time, I leaned up against the doorway watching as she lay there, hoping and wishing one last time that maybe, just maybethistime—afterthistalk, things would be different.
After a while she noticed me. “Olivia?” she asked, her eyes narrowing into tiny slits.
I walked in slowly and pulled one of the soft cushioned chairs next to her bed. And without a word, I slid the papers out of my bag and in front of her.
Her face paled, but she didn’t move. “I told you not to go through my things,” she croaked. Her voice was heavy with agony, rasping with years of inhaling and drinking her self-inflicted punishments.
“Well, see I had to,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I had to, because you had exactly fifty-six empty bottles of booze, twenty-eight half full ones and five unopened ones cluttering your house. All your clothes were full of piss and shit and vomit. I needed to clean it all up. You started a house fire. Your home was uninhabitable, and I could have had it condemned.” I pushed the papers closer to her. “Why didn’t you tell me he was dead?” I asked, low.
She flinched back at the words.
“Or that he had a family?” I continued, as calmly as I could.
She looked away and a surge of white-hot anger tore across my chest.
“Look at me, Goddamn it!” I said, losing my shit, pounding my fist down on the metal side rail of her bed. “Why didn’t you tell me my own father was paying you off to keep me away?”
“Keep you away?” she barked out a laugh. “He didn’t want you away.”
“What?” I suddenly felt dizzy, lightheaded.
She sat up in her bed and leaned all the way forward. Her face was about two inches from mine. “That whore bitch and him wanted you with them.” She did some crazy thing with her fists, some tic that I didn’t understand. “Kenny said he was a good man. Said he’d take care of me. He always did. He never stopped loving me. That whore? He had to marry her. But I couldn’t let her take you, too.”
“What? Why?” I asked, stunned. This wasn’t what I thought I was going to hear. It made me more confused and angry. I wanted to tear at the sheets and scream and cry.
“Then, I’d have nothing left,” she mumbled, almost incoherently. “Livie, be a love and get me a ciggie. Please?”
I sank to the floor.He wanted me? My father wanted me?
“As soon as they she knew about you, he was asking for you, but I told him no. I wasn’t letting that cunt get anything else of mine. She couldn’t have her own kids. Then, all of a sudden, she went and got knocked up right after you were born. He wouldn’t leave her then.”
I felt sick. “And the money?”
She smiled a toothless smile. I blinked rapidly wondering when the hell she’d lost all her teeth. “I don’t care. I just need enough to go to the bar, and maybe play some slots on the weekends. I loved when he came to see me; he’d leave crying. I loved making him cry as much as he made me cry.”
