Page 26 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

He sidles up to me, the closest he’s been in a long time. He didn’t shave today, and his shadow of a beard is white, his irises rimmed in red. He doesn’t say anything while he wraps his arm around my torso like a boa constrictor. I try to wiggle away, but he doesn’t stop until his fingers wrap around my wrist to take the keys out of my hand.

He shows them to me as if he’s won some sort of victory, and the fight drains out of me. The past few weeks, he hasn’t been around to check on Mom or even cared to ask how I’m doing, so if he wants to kill himself driving because he’d rather be dead like his son, so be it. But he’s not going to kill anyone else either.

I hold up my cell phone. “I’ll call the cops if you drive like this.”

He stares at me in a standoff. We each wait for the other to flinch. I move my hand, ready to dial 9-1-1, and he gives in, slamming the keys back down on the counter next to me.

“I’m going for a walk.” He practically spits the words at me, and I exhale as he stalks away. A few seconds later, the front door slams shut.

I know my father’s not himself, hasn’t been since last month, but I can’t find the sympathy in me to forgive him.

I don’t bother going to my mother. She’s probably been asleep for hours. Instead, I find a spoon and the jar of Nutella that I splurged on during the last grocery store trip. Without consciously making the decision, I flop on my bed with my cell phone and start typing.

I snap a picture of the spoonful of Nutella, post it, and then proceed to devour the entire fucking jar.

The post is one of my most popular.

MARCH 10

My brother and I were always competitive with each other as kids, from Monopoly to school report cards. He was great at everything, and it was all so easy. Or at least it seemed that way to me, a kid who lagged behind him every step of the way. He had tons of friends, he was smart, athletic, funny, he was perfect. King Midas. No matter what I did, I couldn’t capture a piece of that gold, and at some point, I stopped trying to.

It was self-actualization for me, but I think to other people, maybe it appeared to be laziness. It wasn’t. It was self-preservation. There was no way to live up to Ray, so I needed to do my own thing. That meant giving up the competition. There was no way to win anyway.

But now, after Ray’s death, I’m back in competition with him. I’m fighting to keep my family together, fighting for my parents to recognize what I’m doing and that I’m still here. I’m trying my best, but it’s not good enough. Again.

I’m walking the tightrope, straining to keep balance of my life. I’m doing it all. I’m doing the hard part. Meanwhile, all Ray did was die. He got the easy part, and he’s still winning.

My brother died, and all I got was this jar of Nutella.

#Grief #GriefFood #RaymondStGeorge #NutellaNut #FueledByRageAndNutella

CHAPTER 10

The next morning, I slink into my parents’ bedroom. Dad is nowhere to be found, but Mom is still in bed. Crawling onto the mattress, I rub her shoulder until she turns to me.

“You awake?” I ask, taking in her bed head and wrinkled sweatshirt.

“Yeah…yes,” she says, sitting up with effort.

“Coming down for breakfast?”

She weighs the question as if I asked her how to achieve world peace.

“I picked up pancake mix. I can make some.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not hungry.”

My mom had a full-time job as a paralegal, but she hasn’t returned to work since Valentine’s Day, and I can only assume early retirement has become her new reality. Too bad she’s spending it wasting away in bed.

Not that I don’t want to do the same.

“I have the day off. We can go get our nails done,” I offer, an activity we haven’t done together since I was in high school.

She wipes at her eyes. “Do you need something, Cassie?”

I need my mom, but I don’t tell her that. How could I? Can I really blame her for acting this way after her son has died?

“No,” I murmur, and she slips back down under her covers.

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