Page 75 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say? Cassandra, keep your voice down? He wants to divorce you, but I have to keep my voice down?”

She wipes at her eyes before aiming her head toward the wall, away from my father and me.

“Don’t yell at your mother,” Dad says.

“Oh, fuck off. You don’t give a shit about her or me. You don’t care about anyone but yourself.” He crosses his arms but doesn’t argue, so I keep going. “If you cared about Mom, you’d try to help her, not divorce her. But what did you call her?” I press my finger against my temple in mock thought. “That’s right, you called her a zombie. You hear that, Mom? You’re a zombie!”

She can hear me fine, yet I still shout. Everything is falling apart around me, and like Samson, I want to be the one to wrench the final pillars.

“So, what now, Dad?” I ask, waving my arm at him. “You going to find some twenty-year-old to fuck while Mom slowly kills herself?” I spin toward my mother, marching around the table to bend down to her level, making sure I have her eyes when I say, “What about you? You going to waste away to nothing, become a bag of bones like Ray?”

Her eyes focus on me then, fire behind them, and she strikes me, fast and sharp across the cheek.

I rear back, placing my palm there, more in shock than pain. Whether I deserved the slap or not, my eyes fill with tears.

And that’s it, the last straw. The final tug of the delicate string holding my family together has unraveled, and I’m shattered.

Dad’s abandoning ship.

Mom doesn’t care. About anything.

Which leaves nothing for me.

I scrub at my eyes, wiping the tears to clear my vision as I grab my bag by the door and press the tip of my car keys into my palm. Mom cries behind me as I sprint out of the house without another word.

The family I knew doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve spent so much time and energy fixing something that, in the end, is unfixable.

I jump in my car with no particular destination in mind and drive. Memories of my family inundate me, rushing into my veins, clouding my eyes, filling my ears. I’m flooded with my brother’s voice cheering me on when I finally skateboarded down the street without falling. My mother laughing as my father knocks into her bumper car at the fair. The embrace of my brother’s arms around my shoulders when Jimmy Lei broke my heart in eighth grade. My parents holding hands as they walked in front of me through a park. My father twirling me around during the daddy-daughter number at my kindergarten dance recital. These memories are few and far between, but they’re embedded deep inside me, and they’re all that surrounds me.

They’re all that is left among the ash. Only memories.

And I know I need to leave.

I can’t stay.

CHAPTER 27

“Cass?”

I lift my head to a faded orange and purple sky, realizing I must’ve cried myself to sleep. After driving aimlessly, tempted to hop off the exit to the city, I turned around and headed to the only place that feels like home anymore. But Vince wasn’t here, so I sat on his stoop, even as Gracie barked from somewhere inside. That was hours ago.

Now, I swipe at my eyes and notice he’s wearing the socks I bought him for his birthday last week. We had cake and ice cream at his mother’s house, and he hugged me when he opened the package of socks with the faces of famous people on them. He’s got George Washington on, peeking out from under his pant leg as he sets down bags of groceries. His eyes search over my body as if to make sure I’m physically unhurt, then he hoists me up off the step to embrace me. “What happened?”

“Everything,” I say into his shoulder.

He squeezes me tighter and drops quick, comforting kisses all over, the top of my head, my temple, the crook of my neck, and then he waits for me to let go. I breathe in the sterilized scent he always brings home from work that doesn’t come off until he showers and changes into the paint-stained sweats he usually puts on.

When I finally back away, he unlocks the front door and ushers me inside, one hand on the back of my neck, the other carrying all the grocery bags. We settle into our normal routine without speaking. Since I always complain how cold his house is, he bought me a ridiculous pair of sloth slippers, and I slide them on as he slinks upstairs. I put away the groceries, packs of meat, veggies, my favorite cereal, dog treats, and more of his shampoo.

I toss Gracie a treat before bringing the shampoo upstairs. I open the shower curtain without asking. “You need this?”

Normally in this situation, he’d make a lewd comment, but he only accepts the bottle with a single, “Thanks.”

Heading down the hall to the bedroom, I flop onto the unmade bed and throw the comforter over me. All the should haves, could haves, and would haves filter through my brain, and I wonder about the different possibilities of my life, if and what would be different if Ray hadn’t died. In the end, though, I think no matter what I might’ve done, I would’ve wound up here because my brother died.

Here, meaning, this fucking upside-down my life has become and not Vince’s house.

Because I never could have expected him and his quiet confessions about how long he’s waited for me in a million lifetimes.

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