Justin Young was the master of toasts. The picture of a good man as he waved his wine glass and tipped it toward where the fireworks had just been. He was all sleepy and sloppy, mumbling about Independence Day and his family, and how both of them were glorious things. Obviously, it didn’t stop there. “Pasta. Sex. Wine… Truly, never met a finer thing in life. Right Honey?” he said and grabbed his wife’s hand. She was all blonde hair, swept up like clouds and dainty silk strands that fell around her face. “Ah, nope. Look at the face of the woman next to me. My wife.” Georgia Young smacked her husband on the lips, shutting the wonderful man up before he said something unrefined.
“My J’s drunk, Kaia,” Georgia said. “Doesn’t know when to call it an evening or shut that beautiful mouth of his.” And then she shot me a look, laying on the apology thicker than necessary. I’d survived far worse methods of parenting— hell, this was practically Disneyland for me. I was in for the ride as long as they’d have me— or for as long as I could hold myself together.
The way the Young parents looked at each other— I couldn’t describe it. It just sparkled all the merry same as that giant rock on her finger, and I couldn’t help but feel I wanted to be crushed by it.
“A drunk poet set on loving you. And your cooking. The whole, every yard, my love.”
“Pa, that was the least poetic, damned trite thing a non-poet has ever said.” My boyfriend laughed. “Abrams, what was it that I said the other day? In the car.”
“Those were song lyrics, hotshot. Not poetic or original, in fact,” I supplied to my boyfriend who made for a terrible singer, but a one-of-a-kind lover. “The shit’s creek one landed harder.”
“Because I taught him it,” Justin said. “I’d sail up shit’s creeks and give you both my paddles.”
“Sweet fuck all. Throw me under the bus, Pa,” my boyfriend said in the middle of ducking a rogue rigatoni. “Nice one.” He hit Justin with the finger, then his mother with a crooked smile that said, sorry mom. Georgia let things fly, like her husband’s rigatoni bullets. Cursing wasn’t on the menu.
“Yeah, and Justin also taught our boy the sailor’s language,” she said. “That man of mine met my mother, and called me a ride, all in the same breath. I mean sure, your father wasn’t wrong. But sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph— I’ve never seen a woman clutch her pearls so hard. Not since he nearly traumatized my Jesus loving mom and had me half-ready for confession before our first date.”
“And that, Georgia, is why the window is there. Not for fun, but functionality.”
Sure, I was smiling behind the rim of my beer, but whatever a person was supposed to feel when they grinned big and drank large, was something I never quite understood. Mine was all muscle, all force and fraudulent. Honestly? The only explanation was that I didn’t have all the tools in my tool box. Going through the motions didn’t come easily, didn’t come in this depressed package, which blew.
“Disgusting,” Tuck said and speared a potato. “You both are detriments to my relationship. No one here is a ride. Not you. Not me. Not you,” Tuck said, pointing at me with that very large potato. “Well, yes, you. But—ah shit. Don’t listen to me, baby. Don’t listen to them for fucksake.”
Ah shit, put it perfectly. Whether or not I paid attention to his parents’ banter, all wrapped in love and dripping with affection, my chest still felt like it was being ripped apart; a different sort of pain when your heart cried, but your eyes didn’t. It wasn’t about their words— it was how they looked at each other, how they just were. And yeah, it cracked something wide open in me, something ugly and raw, because my whole life I’d spent wishing my parents could’ve gotten it right like that. The Youngs, they were the unprescribed reason I hoped my last breath was a sigh of relief. Pills didn’t do it quite like that. Therapy didn’t glue your parents back together even if you paid in pounds for it.
And relief, sure as shit, was a lie when it came in the form of a blade across my skin, just one cut, deep enough to finally end it— hit a vein, carve into my composite of guilt and bleed it dry.
I learned at an early age, to battle depression was to take the sharpest weapon you could find and protect yourself from the person that was you. My hands were capable of doing wrong— committing crimes even. If it were someone else I turned the blade on…the world would call it violence.
I skated my fork over my plate. Watched a flicker of candle light stretch over the china’s white edges and then snap back to my heap of uneaten pasta. I was at a point where anything was better than looking at his family; even when all they did was look after me. My eyes refused to even face their manor, the spanish style, sprawling house that was notched on a knoll about fifty years up. All those lights, pocketing the place with shafts of gold, between that shaped ivy rich people used to appear richer. Even with all the Young members, sitting around this wooden table, it still managed to look so full—their house. Brimming with memories and love and the meaning of a home that I never really understood, despite having a grand total of two of them.
He didn’t realize it, but as my boyfriend’s hand anchored itself to my thigh, squeezing, he unconsciously worked to tug my thoughts back to the table and him, the boy I loved too much for my own good. “You’re leaving me hanging, Abrams. What happened to ‘I can drink seven. Watch me, Tuck,” he mimicked and was unfortunately, absolutely right about my sorry ass— my beer was empty.
My chest felt pretty fucking hollow too. But before I could respond, my stud was swinging his leg over the wooden bench, knocking over the sheepskin fur and clambering out from the table in three not so swift moves. A rower, capable of taking on any tide, yet beer was a whole different type of current; making Tuck lovely to admire in all his wiry limbs and 6 ‘3 frame that looked so boy-ish now.
When my rower left the table, leaving me alone with his parents, I decided that curling inside my own skin sounded pleasant. It wasn’t a great, uplifting feeling, to sit around people who loved each other without limit. Not when it made me feel envious and tug down on my sleeves, fiddle with the hem as though it was an anxious habit of mine— not this shitty way to swallow a shameful urge.
There was something terribly intimate about being understood, seen in ways that weren’t sexual or in front of this grand facade I had built to appear always delightful. A ray of sunshine, sure.
The first time Tuck brought me over for dinner, it was the first time in my life that I had been surrounded by three smiling people at once— warmth radiating through them like the sun breaking through a damn storm. Something inside me had shifted with the sight. An ache and a wonder, both which I had sunk into my core and been shoved at my chest, heavy and bittersweet, crushing the air from me.
I felt that warmth now, settling over my head where Tuck’s chin rested. “None of that. You hear?” Yup. Heard him, loved him, hated myself no less than twenty times that. “Fourth of July and the worst company possible, but I’m grand. You’re grand. You’re here. None of that bullshit.”
“My head’s with ya, baby. Right with my heart. You got me.” Every word was weighted in truth. Still, they felt like a winter gust coming out of me, cold and empty. Felt similar to when the authorities rang my phone three weeks ago, bringing on this snow storm of unforgiving wind, spearing through my clothes and my heart. Wasn’t a pleasant call— the fucking most horrifying one ever honestly. My father was dead and I was expected to shore up the strength and see a life without him.
He was a dad to my brother first; before he was a soldier in Vietnam— drafted just weeks before his wedding, before he ever got the chance to be a husband. When he came back, my pop slipped his wedding ring on the same hand that pulled a trigger, and it was the soldier in him that raised me. Our home in Maine became a battlefield, where we both fought our battles. Waged our own wars. His in the jungle of Drang Valley; mine in the trenches of my own mind, because apparently lacking the happy cells meant you were constantly wrestling for them.
Eyes returning to the table, it was just Tuck and Justin. Both of them staring towards Georgia’s who was walking up their hill, phone pinned between her shoulder and ear. That, being how I—we— saw her most days, I knew on the other line was Carter, Tuck’s younger brother who was fighting harder battles than us all.
Leukemia wasn’t just the infestation of cancer beneath the boy’s skin, it was a sadness that infected all of the Young’s hearts. Somehow weaved itself into mine while I was shaving Tuck’s floppy brown hair last week. It all but fell with tears neither of us were brave enough to address. I supposed crying ruined that whole image of strength we tried to keep up, and if that wasn’t some fucked up psychological bullshit, all the money my father once spent on therapy had been a bad fucking bet.
There was a moment of silence. One where I couldn’t help but see it as a telephone pole, teetering on this thin bottom, wires live and cracking with energy— Georgia Young carried the weight of her son’s pain on her back. She wore it as though it were a damned badge of honor and she was the champion, weathering out the storm, come high or hellwater. Something about that woman…
My phone went off. And the sound was a hellish siren that tore through my thoughts and cleared the road for my mother. Justin didn’t seem to notice. Tuck’s eyes latched onto mine and words were in there— he could see the way it cracked me open and how my hand automatically moved to answer it, even as my mind screamed at me to stop. It’s all good, Abrams. It’s grand. You’re grand.
Piss down my back and tell me it’s raining because that was a load of shit.
I could do nothing, but nod it off. Act as though my mother hadn’t spent my whole life breaking me down. See, this call wasn’t from a mom asking me to be home at a reasonable hour. And to be utterly transparent, it never was, never would be. My mother liked to say depression was a stain. And every time I sat on that woman’s couch, I wondered if it wasn’t my depression that darkened her and her fiance’s estate across town, but if it was me. Of course it was, who was I kidding?
The daughter her pedestal didn’t have room for. That spot was for my brother in the larger bedroom with his golden child trophy and his head over a computer where he inhaled JavaScript like it was cocaine. He got high off the thought of riches while I got high off taking too many antidepressants or hurting myself. Yale made my brother a genius to my mother; depression made me not worth a mere sliver of her love or her sympathy. She had taught me to ride a bike and how to hate myself.
But I was a big girl with shaking hands and a bloody organ that tried to rip out of my chest or break a rib getting there. I pressed the phone to my ear. Gathered several plates and scraped my strength from where it remained in tatters, finding a barrel of pain where my courage should have been. Great.
“Hi, mother.”
“Kaia.”she said, my name was a dead weight in her mouth. “How are the Youngs?”
A question to ease me in— soft, harmless— just warm enough before she swung at me with that guilt hammer and left everything in me cold and far fucking away.
“Fine. Grand. All is good and well,” I said, marching up the small hill, so lost, and headed towards the only place that felt like home.
“It’s been eight days,” she mused. “Eight. Since you’ve been home or even called. And I guess I just imagined you’d want to spend the summer with your family. In your home.” That funny word for what one would use to describe her house, that cold, modern estate, that balanced on her fiance’s wallet and bordered the eastern shore.
“You’ve survived without me,” I said.
“I’ve survived without you for a long while, dear. Whatever girl I raised in that old house with your father— she’s left. Wandered far, far away from whatever love or care she had for her mom. Doesn’t want to come back because she’s too far gone. Isn’t that right?”
A part of me wanted to turn back. That was the part which longed for my stud’s arms and the safety net he offered as he wrapped them around me. In that life, his friends, Nashy and Chuck, helped fight my battles. My frontlines, my sidelines or cheerleaders; whatever you call them. And I was this big dope for not realizing it until my father’s funeral because it wasn’t my mother’s embrace holding the pieces of me together. It was a wave of love and support, smelling of boy-ish energy and loyalty.
The other part of me used my hip to nudge open the side door, closed it on that possibility, and used my right hand to stop Jonesy, their rescued mutt from throwing me on my ass, while I coaxed her to the island. It was cluttered with more chrysanthemums than I could count on my damn fingers. Everything had their damn charm here. Even this stain who even Jonesy licked up with love.
Still… didn’t know what to say to my mother. Oftentimes her words felt like bullets. Machine gun in her hands, puncturing me with guilt, just waiting until everything that held me together for the last seventeen years splintered, and spliced, and fell in front of her like puzzle pieces. She wanted to be right; and right was admitting that something inside me was wrong, that only she could fix it.
“Well? What are you doing, Kaia?”
“The dishes,” I said and hunched over the sink to turn it on. To do anything with my hands but strangle the woman through the phone. “I’m doing well, in fact. No plastic forks or knives in sight and I’ve had a handle on it all for three weeks now. I’m not a monster, mom.” And not fucking stupid.
“Good for them. They’ve got a step daughter doing their dishes because she sure as shit doesn’t do mine. What would your father think of you today? Who would he see if he looked at you, huh?”
My blood went cold. Someone had tossed a damn ice bucket over my head. Down to my very toes, every single one of my muscles froze; my vertebrates turned into blocks of ice that felt so close to crumbling. I would have preferred that. Instead, it was the plate in my hand which slipped— slipped and cracked into the porcelain basin, shattered into all these shards in the exact way I pictured myself right now. Only this time, I had broken what was not mine to break.
“A couple weeks back I emailed the Relief Recovery Center because I can’t keep doing this with you. I refuse to lose myself helping you because you’ve clearly lost yourself. Lost who you are.” She might as well have smacked me.“Throwing your sad self at this boy and his family as if they’re God. He’ll break that heart. Just know that, dear. And when he’s gone, it’s my doorstep you’ll be at.”
Numb. Fucking gone, staring at those glass pieces. Eyeing up their edges. Standing there, so packed with anger and betrayal, wanting— needing to just—my knees buckled with this weight I was so tired of carrying. She shoved me down and down again, a straight kick of her foot into my ribs. It fucking chipped away at my sanity and my stability in recovery.
Sure, I was an addict. Would always be one and the thought of fighting those urges for the rest of my life was a depressing thought, but I was three weeks clean. Some days it felt like I was starving myself. Others, that I was itching for a way to make my depression just fuck off. But I was doing it damnit.
Balancing on this cliff that had me seeing nothing but relief at the very bottom of it.
“My boy has no plans of hurting anyone’s heart, Jane.” Before I could so much as turn around, my phone had went off and vanished. “I think we’ve all had perhaps a long day and it would be best to cool our heels until tomorrow.” Someone patted me on the shoulder and while I looked at those broken pieces of china, I didn’t know if it was Georgia’s hand or the devil’s who loved to get close when I was at my breaking point. “Right, Jane? Tomorrow, should we say?”
And just like that, the heel of my mother’s foot was off of my damn chest and I could breathe. I came to the conclusion that some things were miracles and others were just Georgia, the angel that she was.
“I, uh,” Fuck me. She deserved a pat on the back, not me. “I’m sorry for breaking that.”
“They’re Justin’s mothers.” She shrugged. “I’ve been trying to get rid of them for some time anyways and if they all had somehow landed in that sink, I wouldn’t shed a tear, love.”
Unable to muster up the courage and say a simple thank you, I opted for swallowing the emotional steel blocking my throat. I didn’t expect her to walk over and start drying the plates after she’d handed my phone back, but the good woman seemed hell-bent on playing the saint and not stopping anytime soon. “She’s just— I mean, she means well, you know.”
“I know what she is. I’ve known what she is.” Georgia took another plate from my wet hands and it wouldn’t surprise me if the woman wiped my drool in the process. “Did my Tuck ever tell you about my brother, Henry?”
“Shit—ah.” Mentally cracked myself on the head. “Sorry. Cursing. No, he never said.”
“He used to be a football player. A good one when I was in the eleventh grade and my job became watching him walk on that field and walk off it. I cheered in the stands in place of our father. I watched after my dear brother the way he would have. And God, it hurt me, but Henry was hurting himself. So, every night once he emptied his pockets, showed me the absence of pills or baggies or just proof that he hadn’t fallen off the wagon again, he could come sit at the table and eat with me. I thought it made me terrible, like he owed it to me to be clean but—”
“Well. That day, it was his team’s last game and my brother told me he was going out with some friends— a party on the beach, he said. Just once, I went home with a speck of hope. But I was still in that empty house, lying awake in bed for a call that eventually did come.”
Henry and you saw the same finish line. Just different roads to the same impending end.
“Losing a brother the year after losing our father, was one thing. But seeing his body, understanding that pain could manifest in ways that went unseen— that was worse. I was young and always looking at his eyes and never these,” she said while careful not to touch my wet long sleeves, but gesture towards them. “I’m not here to tell you to lay your pain on my boy. But, I’m here to tell you that he’ll love you no less. He’d come with lanterns looking for you even in death, my dear, and that’s why I can wholeheartedly tell your mother my boy is good for it. It’s your damn hellish succubine of a mother who’s going to suck that sweetness out of you.”
“Did you—” Nearly fell off that cliff just from disbelief. The good woman cursed and I smiled. “Oh, my husband’s taught me many things. And when the sailor’s language is necessary, I’m not one to shy away from it,” she said with a sad smile. “You’ve hung the stars in my boy’s sky. Let him see you in that true light of yours, Kaia dear,” the only woman who ever listened to my truth and hugged me for it, said. She wasn’t my mother, but every bone in my body was telling me to crawl to her just so she could reshape them, reshape me, make me less broken and better. Here I was, folding like a deck chair, having grown a bloody conscience, all sentimental and pathetic, but what else could I do?