Page 52 of Fighting the Tide
“Hey, kid.How you doing?”My brows come together as I quickly sit up, my stomach flipping with unease.
“Where’s Mom?”Something’s wrong.My father has never tried to contact me, ever.I jump out of my bed, flinging blankets to the floor as I begin to pace, the long cord getting tangled around my feet.
“How soon can you get home?”He sounds so damn nonchalant, and it’s only infuriating me more that he’s ignoring my questions.
“Where is my mother, you son of a bitch?”And that’s when I hear it, the quiet sobs filtering through the speaker at my ear.It’s almost like he’s trying to cover them with the palm of his hand.I try to suck in air to fill my burning lungs, but I can’t seem to do it, and the room spins around me as I fall to my knees.My hands twist into the bedsheets I threw to the floor earlier as I manage to spit out, “Tell me,” with the last vestiges of air in my lungs.
“She was sick.”That’s when I hear it, his garbled words as he tries to force them out.“The doctor said she lasted longer than he thought she—”
“No.No.No, no!”I cut him off as I slowly crawl back to my bed, my fingers digging into the wooden floor.I scrape my way over the surface as I yell, “Shut the fuck up!You’re lying!That’s all you’ve ever done is lie to us!”
“I know, kid,” he says before a tortured gasp sounds in my ear.“I know, okay?I love that woman.I loved her so much.I thought I hated you for taking her from me.”
“Shut the fuck up!”I scream, the words ripping their way through my vocal cords, leaving behind a scorching pain in my throat.“You shut the fuck up!You’re a liar.”
“I am a liar,” he agrees.“But I need you to come home, kid!I can’t do this by myself!”His words end in a heartbreaking scream as his phone crashes to the floor, the sound loud in my ear like the crack of thunder, and that’s when I know everything he’s telling me is the truth.The one time I need him to fucking lie to me, he decides to crush me with the truth.
I drop the receiver to the floor and let my body hit the wood along with it, curling the bedsheet around me as every pent-up emotion inside floods me like a tsunami.I lay there crying and sobbing while he’s doing the same on the other end of the line, and even though we’re miles apart, we’re both connected by a simple line.The heart of a woman who loved too much for her own good.
Cancer had been ravishing my mother’s body for two years.It started in her breast and spread all over.She refused treatment and decided she wanted to spend the time she had left with quality of life and being surrounded by the things she loved.
I watch as her coffin gets lowered into the cold earth and my hatred for my father mirrors my own self-loathing.I refused to come home.I refused to see her when she was on the last leg of her life.So, as much as I want to hate the man who treated her like shit for many years, I don’t think it even comes close to how much I hate myself for not being here.
My eyes flick up to the crowd surrounding her coffin.There are some clients whose houses she cleaned, some people from high school, Avery and her parents, and beside them, a little off to the side, is Brooke.She has mascara streaming down her cheeks as her hand covers her mouth and her sobs jar her shoulders.She acts as though she knew the woman and that only makes me want to storm over there and shake her, reminding her how that woman worked herself to the bone to clean her family’s home.
So much anger rages inside me, and it only ignites hotter with the fact that my father didn’t show up to the church for the service and didn’t bother to make an appearance at the cemetery where she will lie for eternity.
I’ve been trying my best to keep it together, but I’ve just lost the only person who’s ever meant the world to me.I’ve been holding my breath regularly, then releasing it slowly, trying desperately to stave off the tears that once again want to consume me.The signs were all there and a couple of details my father provided helped build the complete picture.
She’d been so damn tired all the time, sleeping way too much.She had lost so much weight, and no matter how much I tried to force her to eat, she could barely finish what was on her plate.The day I saw my father in the parking lot with Darren, he wasn’t buying drugs for himself; he was buying weed for my mother, hoping it would give her enough of an appetite to eat a full meal.All the clues were right there in a line for me and here I am with a full scholarship and one of the highest GPAs in my year, and I still couldn’t fucking figure it out.
When her coffin is completely lowered, I drop a white rose down with everyone else, and then I turn away, planning to walk home instead of standing there another minute with any of them.I should have known better though because a few moments later, Avery is there walking beside me.She doesn’t touch me; she doesn’t say anything, but the sounds of her footsteps next to mine lends me some strength as we slowly walk through town.
It’s cold, and the wind lashes against my skin, and when I look down, I find Avery in her black dress, arms crossed over her chest as she tries to keep herself warm.I stop walking and she turns to look up at me as I slowly shrug off my jacket to wrap it around her shoulders.Avery is all I have left now, and I don’t know what I would do if something happened to her.
She accepts the jacket, wrapping it tight around her, and we begin walking again.I’m not feeling the cold as much as I should be, and that’s a sign of my dissociation, but the emotions I’m supposed to be feeling are just being bottled up deep inside.Being numb has its advantages because it’s only making certain things clearer, like her persistent cough.It was probably when the cancer had spread through her lungs, and with each breath, it was like an agonizing inferno in her chest.That was something I should have noticed, regardless of if the cough sounded like it was better, it hadn’t left completely.Her lack of eating and her clammy skin, her too-cold body were also signs.I would have pieced them together if I didn’t have such a distraction.
A distraction that wasn’t worth a damn.Brooke Eastham sucked out every bit of feeling I had inside of me, like an emotional vampire, swallowing it whole.She left me an empty husk to the point I couldn’t even recognize my mother dying, and I don’t blame her, not completely, because there I was, handing out every part of me to a girl as she was refusing it all, and still I didn’t stop.
Brooke stole every ounce of compassion and love I had inside of me when it should have been focused on my mother.
Avery’s hand slips into mine and she gives it a squeeze.I wish I could reciprocate, but everything just feels so heavy.It makes no difference because she clings to my fingers, becoming my anchor when I can’t even curl one to wrap around hers.
Twenty minutes later, we’re standing at the end of my driveway and she releases my hand as we both look at the red truck parked there.If I was a delusional man, I could almost picture my mother waiting inside with a bucket of cleaning supplies ready to push me back out into the truck to go clean some rich asshole’s home.Nothing about the outside of my house looks any different from what it did when I left six months ago, but it is.It’s now nothing more than an empty structure.Wood, plaster, nothing more.
With the curtains she made decorating the windows, the fabric a taunting reminder of the person I’ll never see again, the place almost feels like home.Despite that thought, I can’t seem to make myself feel anything.
“Do you want me to come in with you?”Avery asks, the first words she’s spoken to me today.I shake my head and begin to walk up the driveway as I feel Avery standing there watching me until I open the front door.It’s like our roles are reversed and that also should piss me off.I should be making sure she gets home okay.She’s all I have left, after all.I step into the cottage, letting the door bang shut behind me, and that’s when I smell it.Cheap whiskey and beer.
This morning when I left the cottage to go to the church, he was nowhere to be found and the truck was gone.Luckily, Avery and her mom came by and I got a ride with them.I had hoped he was already there and then I continued to hope during the day that he would just show up, but now I see what he deemed more important than the woman he claims to have loved.
That’s when the dam inside me breaks and everything comes rushing forward, quickly drowning me beneath an ocean of rage.I take a breath, my first real breath since his phone call, and I fly across the room to grab the front of his shirt, yanking him up from the couch.He’s like a hefty sack of rocks as his eyes slowly open and attempt to focus on me.He just barely gains his footing when I rear my fist back and slam it into his cheek.
I watch as he hits the floor while a roar sounds around the cottage; the noise reverberating off the walls and echoing off the tin roof.At first, I think it’s coming from him as I tense and prepare for a fight, then I realize it’s me who’s screaming as my tears soak my cheeks.He gets to his knees, panting, with his cheek bleeding from a slight cut of my knuckles.Finally, he looks up at me, and there it is, the hatred that I know has been burning for so long.“Get the fuck up, you bitch,” I growl at him as my body vibrates with murderous intent.“I’m going to put you in the fucking ground with her tonight.”
He staggers to his feet and holds out his arms, taunting me with a sarcastic laugh.“Lookatthis!”His words slur together as he stumbles and rights himself.“Here I tho–thought… you were just like her, soft and sweet… but look, kid, y–you got more of me in you than I thought.”
Then he’s coming at me and it feels glorious to slam my fists into his stomach and face as his fist hits my cheek.Nothing has ever felt so good, and when I wrap my hands around his throat, I’m rewarded with the look of fear in his eyes.
