Page 84 of The Problem with Falling
My fucking mother.
She stood there in the kitchen as if she weren’t a ghost who’d just barged into my grandparents’ home. I hadn’t seen or heard from the woman since she walked out of my life when I was twelve years old. Yet now there she was, on the day of PaPa’s funeral, saying, “hi, son.”
Did hell just freeze over?
Was I hallucinating?
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I repeated because those were the only words that could shoot out of my mouth.
I stood in front of Grandma slightly as if to protect her from the daughter who broke her heart all those years before when she walked out and left us all behind.
To my surprise, Grandma didn’t seem nearly as shocked by my mother’s presence. “I told you not to come today,” Grandma scolded my mother. “You swore you wouldn’t.”
Mom tugged at the sleeves of her black dress and bit her bottom lip. “I know, I know. I just couldn’t miss this. He was my father.”
My eyes darted back and forth between Mom and Grandma. My mind buzzed with confusion as I stared at the two of them. I looked at Grandma, feeling hurt, betrayed, livid. “You’ve been in contact with her?” I asked, pain soaking through my words. “You’ve been talking to her? For how long?”
Grandma parted her lips to answer me, but instead, she shook her head and turned toward Mom. “You swore you wouldn’t come.”
“He was my father,” she repeated, this time the words irritating me more than the first time she’d said them.
“He was my father!” I shouted, gesturing toward her as if she had lost her damn mind. How dare she claim PaPa as hers after she broke his heart? She didn’t know it, but I sometimes heard him crying over his daughter. Worrying about her safety. Mourning the loss of a daughter who was still living. How dare she show up to his funeral to mourn his death as if she had been there when he was living? My chest burned with anger the longer I looked at my mother because she looked like the best parts of him. In her eyes, I saw PaPa. In her frown, I saw him, too. But he wasn’t hers. He was mine. “He was my father, he was my mother when he had to be, and he was my friend when I had none,” I choked out. “How fucking dare you show up today and act sad for a man you abandoned? For a family you left behind.”And for the little boy who begged for you to come back night after night after night.
Mom parted her mouth to speak, but no words were produced.
Tears kept streaming down her face, but I didn’t care.
She had no right to be fucking sad. She could’ve spent the past decade loving PaPa, but instead, she left. What did that say about her?
“I-I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have come here,” she said, hurrying out of the room.
Grandma raced her hands over her face as her overwhelming emotions grew stronger. But I still wasn’t up to par with how she didn’t seem beyond surprised by the first-time arrival of her daughter, who had been in no contact with the family for over eighteen fucking years.
That was when reality set in for me.
It wasn’t the first time they’d seen one another over the past eighteen years.
“What’s go-g-going on, Grandma?” I asked, feeling sick to my stomach.
“I’m so, so sorry, Theo. She wasn’t supposed to be here. I told her not to come today.”
“Today,” I cut in. I narrowed my brows. “You’ve seen her recently?”
She frowned and nodded, no longer able to hold eye contact with me. “Yes. We have.”
“We?” I questioned. “Who’s we?”
“PaPa and me. We’ve been seeing your mother—”
“She’snotmy mother,” I corrected.
“Yes, well… Christina has been visiting us both for a while now,” Grandma said as she leaned against the kitchen island.
“What?”
“She’s been seeing him ever since he got sick. Twice a week.”
“Bullshit,” I said through gritted teeth. “There’s no way… He’s been sick for two damn years!”
