Tryst Six Venom

by Douglas, Penelope

  I haven’t eaten in two days. I can’t stop thinking about her. If she called right now, I would rush to her wherever she was for just a chance at one more night.

  God, I miss her. Why can’t she be more patient? Why can’t she give me that? Why does anyone need to know? How was she so willing to give me up over me just wanting her to myself for a while longer? Was it too much to ask not to be rushed?

  Just be understanding. Just love me. I loved her so good. It should’ve been enough.

  Forgetting my bag in my car, I trudge through my front door, not noticing anyone or any sound as I traipse up the stairs with a weight almost too heavy to carry on my shoulders. I enter my room, close the door, and head over to the bed. I collapse and roll, pulling the comforter over me as I bury my head inside.

  I’ll get over it. First loves never last anyway. I knew it would hurt when it eventually happened.

  It won’t always feel like this.

  But the idea of Liv getting over me makes the tears stream harder and faster. I hate this feeling in my stomach. I hate the thoughts whirling in my head like a tornado of someone else making love to her and dancing for her and waking up to her.

  I hate it so much my mind starts to tilt, and I’m angry. Even though I broke up with her, and this is all my fault, I’m angry with her so much that I want to fucking make sure no one compares to me. That she’s miserable forever, unable to forget me. No one else will be able to make her happy. No one will feel like me. She should’ve waited for me.

  I don’t know when I fall asleep, but when I wake up, the sunlight streaming through my windows is gone, and the room is dark. I blink my eyes, my head still aching, but I register voices. The ones that woke me up.

  “Get out, then!” my mom yells. “Get out! Run to her.”

  “It’s not about her!”

  I sit up, my eyelids heavy and tears dried on my face as I listen from inside my room.

  “I’m not even in love with her,” my dad says. “Goddammit, Regina!”

  “Just leave!” Footfalls hit the stairs. “All you care about is yourself. You’re always gone anyway.”

  “And you’re here?” he retorts. “Is that what you think? I can’t do this anymore! I’ll be back for the rest of my stuff.”

  Something breaks, a door slams, and I hear a car start.

  I throw off the covers, bolting from the room. “Dad…” I pull open my door and race down the stairs, seeing my mother standing in the foyer as headlights skim from one window to the other outside.

  I run to the door, open it, and leap out into the driveway as his taillights speed farther and farther away.

  “Dad!” I cry.

  No! I hurry to my car, reach inside, and pull my phone out of my school bag, dialing his number.

  “Baby, no!” Mom calls out.

  But I shake my head, all the rage and despair and heartache pooling into a fucking boiler inside my gut, and I can’t stop myself.

  He left me. He didn’t talk to me or say goodbye or…

  I head back into the house, walking and not even paying attention to where I’m going, only that my mom stumbles after me in tears.

  I hear the line pick up, and I’m speaking before he says a word. “Don’t come back.”

  “Clay…” he whispers, and I can hear the tears in his throat. “Baby, I…”

  “Clay, baby,” I mock. “I…uh, uh, uh…God, enough!” I roar. “Just say you found a new life, and you don’t want us anymore! Just have a fucking backbone! I hate you! Say it, so we can finally be free of you! Say you don’t want us anymore!”

  My eyes burn so hard I can barely keep them open, but I feel good for a hot minute, having someone to take this out on.

  “Listen to me,” he says.

  But I don’t. “Don’t come back,” I grit out. “We were always this weak, weren’t we?” I head up the stairs. “Without him, we’re nothing, and pretty soon, it will be as if he never existed!” I rip Henry’s portrait off the wall in the hallway, my mother sobbing behind me. “As if we never were a family!”

  I cry so hard, but I can’t stop myself. I drop the phone, charging down the hallway and pulling all of our pictures off the wall, the glass in the frames crashing onto the floor.

  “Clay, stop!” my mom begs.

  “It was always a house of cards!” I hiss. “Because we’re weak! We were always weak!”

  I was always weak, and now I’ve lost everything. I wanted to be perfect and for what? For this?

  I growl, taking our family portrait—the last one with Henry in it—and slam it onto the floor, the whole thing shattering.

  My mother grabs me, but I flail, running away. “Leave me alone!”

  I scurry down the stairs, out the door, and past my car, racing into the night. I don’t know where I’m going. I have no money, no phone, but I don’t care about anything anymore. I don’t care if I never come back. I gave up the one thing that made me feel alive—made me excited for tomorrow—and with her I could’ve withstood anything.

  But now, everything is foreign. School, my home, even my skin.

  I run until the air in my lungs hurts, and I can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears on my face, but when I stop, I realize I’m in front of Wind House.

  I head around the back, down the small incline at the side of the home, and up to the back door. The hall light glows inside, and I don’t know what time it is, but maybe she’s in there. I’d forgotten my keys and everything.

  I knock hard, hoping there’s work tonight, despite the fact that I’m actually wishing someone has died so I have something to do.

  I knock again and again, ready to crumple onto the ground, because I can’t keep my legs under me.

  The door opens, and Mrs. Gates stands there in her scrubs. I gasp in relief and try to push past her.

  But she stops me. “Clay, no.”

  I wipe the tears on my face. “I can handle it. I’m fine.”

  She doesn’t know what’s wrong, but she can see I’m upset.

  I try to veer around her, but she fills the doorway. “Clay…”

  “Please!” I plead, pushing past her. “I need to be here.”

  “Clay, it’s a child,” she rushes out as I pass.

  I stop, staring at the floor but not seeing it.

  Children don’t come through often, but when they do, she makes sure I’m not present. Maybe it’s because of Henry. Maybe it’s because she knew my parents weren’t aware that I come here, and the death of a child, even ones I don’t know, will be hard.

  I don’t turn around to look at her, merely raising my gaze to the steel double doors ahead. It feels like my heart is floating in my chest as my stomach roils.

  I keep walking, hearing her rush after me. “Clay, please.”

  But I ignore her. Pushing through the doors, I enter the room and see the boy, a small body outlined under a sheet.

  He’s uncovered down to his stomach, and something spills down the drain, but I don’t look to see what.

  I walk over.

  “Clay…”

  I know she’s worried, but I don’t know… Maybe I’m just too numb tonight to be scared anymore. I need to do this.

  Approaching the boy’s side, I see his wet, brown hair slicked back, his jaw slack, and his eyes partially open, the brown pupils foggy.

  She’d just washed him. Water still runs down the drain underneath the table, and his palms face up at his sides. There’s dirt under his nails and scratches on his forearm, probably from playing with his cat or dog.

  A lump grows in my throat, always finding this part hardest of all. The evidence of their lives. Bruises, skinned knees, old scars, chipped nail polish…

  A tear spills over as I look down at his skinny arms. “He’s, um…”

  “Like Henry,” she says, seeing what I see. The coloring is different, but they’re about the same age. Ten or eleven.

  “What happened to him?” I ask her, still letting my eyes roam for any evidence of v
iolence.

  “He drowned,” she replies. “He was swimming at the Murtaugh Inlet. Got swept into the current.”

  It isn’t unheard of. We swim a lot in Florida. Drownings happen.

  The hard part is that it’s not a quick death. He would’ve been aware with every second that passed that help wasn’t coming.

  Like Henry.

  “His brother was making out with his girlfriend in his car and didn’t notice for ten minutes,” she whispers, her throat thick.

  I almost feel sorry for him, too. A mistake that will haunt him forever.

  And I’m here. Alive. Healthy. Continuously making problems worse, because I act like I don’t have a clue.

  I smooth back his hair, everything at home forgotten for the moment, because somewhere out there in town is a devastated family who will never see their son smile again.

  I draw in a deep breath and swallow the tears that want to come as I raise my eyes to Mrs. Gates. “Embalming?”

  “Yes,” she tells me. “There will be a viewing on Thursday followed by cremation.”

  I nod and pull the rubber band off my wrist, sweeping my hair up into a ponytail. “I’ll take the lead.”

  We work for the next two hours, not talking other than her instruction here and there. I can’t look him in the face when the needles go in, feeling the bile rise, because it’s hard not to see Henry on the table. We prepare him to stay preserved until the funeral, and I’ll come back in a couple of days to take care of the cosmetics and dress him, but the embalming process takes longer with me here now, because it’s like the first time I’m doing it all over again. What mattered most to me with Henry was that Mrs. Gates was gentle with my brother. I take extra care with this one.

  “Did I ever tell you that I lived in New York for a time?” Mrs. Gates says across the table.

  I meet her eyes as we work.

  “I loved it.” She smiles a little. “Too cold, but it was a lot of fun. That’s where I studied to become a funeral director.”

  I think I knew that, but I can’t be sure.

  She shuts off the machine. “It’s one of the best schools in the country for mortuary science.”

  Mortuary science?

  “I can get you in,” she says. “If you want to go.”

  I stop, locking eyes with her. My first instinct is to laugh or scoff. I can’t tell people I’m an undertaker. It’s not romantic like an actor or an artist, or heroic like a lawyer or a doctor.

  But then, most people haven’t seen what I’ve seen here, either. Mrs. Gates is there during one of the most important times in a person’s life.

  “You have a strong stomach,” she tells me. “You empathize. You care. I think the best people to help us say goodbye are the ones who’ve had to do it themselves.”

  I keep working, listening.

  “You know what these families need.” She drops tools to the tray, picking up another one. “Funerals aren’t for the dead, after all.”

  They’re for the survivors.

  The idea is ridiculous. Everyone will laugh.

  My grandmother would have a cow.

  But then, I look down at the kid, Mitchell Higgins from the name on his file, and know that tomorrow I could be him.

  If not tomorrow, next week. Next year. Five years from now, because no matter when, it is coming.

  “I know your parents want you to go to Wake Forest,” she says, “but if you decide your life should go a different path, I’ll sponsor you.”

  Sponsor me?

  “You work here on vacations and give me two years after you’ve gotten your degree,” she tells me, “I’ll pay your tuition.”

  NEW YORK. WHY does the idea of being that close to Liv make me so happy? I can’t follow her. I gave her up, and being that close will only make it impossible to move on.

  And worse. Being that close and knowing she’s moving on will be unbearable.

  I can’t go to New York. Wake Forest is perfect, actually. It’s halfway between home and her, not an easy distance to either. I need to let her be. Just like she asked me to weeks ago.

  I walk up my driveway, seeing lights glowing from inside my house, and I know I’ll find my mom sitting at the table, waiting for me.

  Not so much because she’s worried, which any other parent might be since I left my phone in my room hours ago and she couldn’t get a hold of me, but because it would look bad to go to sleep with an angry, teenage daughter out this late.

  I step inside the house, the clock chiming one in the morning as I lock the door behind me.

  But as I would normally stomp up the stairs and try to hide in my room to avoid her, I find myself listening for her.

  I hear nothing.

  I drift from room to room, looking for her, a lot calmer than I was hours ago.

  They weren’t always like this. I keep forgetting that. When my brother was alive, we were pretty happy, actually. My parents are disappointing, but when I remember the parents Henry knew, I miss them.

  A painting has been ripped off the wall and lays on the marble floor face-down, a vase with roses shattered next to it amidst a puddle of the water that was inside.

  I head up the stairs, seeing their wedding pictures broken on the floor of the hallway, as well as the destruction I wreaked before I ran out. I find my mother in her closet, gowns, shoes, and blouses strewn everywhere as she leans back against the dresser in the center of the room, holding a large bottle of Evian between her bent legs.

  She meets my eyes, and I’m stricken for a moment.

  She looks like me.

  Uncertain. Deflated. Too many feelings and no way to put them into words.

  Young.

  She wears a pair of cream-colored silk boxers with a white cashmere sweater, her hair a mess and black around her eyes from crying.

  Not the usual masterpiece she’s been the past few years.

  She holds up the nearly empty Evian bottle, and I notice another, drained and laying among the clothes. “I thought champagne would be the answer, but…”

  “‘Carbs are never the answer,’” I recite our motto.

  I walk over and slide down to sit beside her, my back against the dresser.

  “I’m still deciding,” she sighs. “So stand by.” And then she downs the rest of the bottle.

  I stare at her, wondering if she ever had any idea this day was possible. When she bought her wedding dress, or when they bought this house, did she know there was no guarantee? That someday she’d end a pregnancy, because she couldn’t stand to raise another child and love something so hard and possibly lose it? That her husband would give up, his heartbreak making him hurt us when hers just made her hurt herself?

  She gazes off. “I don’t know how she did it, Clay,” she tells me. “For years, I’ve been trying to crack your grandmother’s secret.”

  I listen.

  “I mean, I would wake up the day after Thanksgiving when I was little,” she continues, “and the house would be completely decorated for Christmas already. I would go to sleep on New Year’s Day and wake up with it all gone again.” She smiles to herself. “It was like magic, how she got things done, as if she had a wand and never needed to sleep.”

  Does my mom know that’s how I see her, too? Somehow, she handles everything.

  “Perfect wife, perfect mother,” she murmurs. “Perfect house, on time for every event, always looked impeccable, and that woman can schmooze a room full of Norwegian investors without speaking a single word of Norwegian, or a room full of good ol’ boys who think America’s decline started with a woman’s right to vote.” She pauses. “She could do all that, Clay. I can’t do any of that.” She turns her head toward me. “I mean, how could she do all that? She would never have let me see her like this. Like you’re seeing me now. What was her secret?”

  I feel my lips press together for a split second before they open. “Mimi was having an affair with the old sheriff.”

  Her eyes narrow on me, and she cocks her
head ever so slightly as her chest caves. “What?”

  I nod. “For thirty-four years,” I say. “They used to meet out at Two Locks.”

  Her mouth falls open a little, and I can see the wheels turning in her head as her eyes go from confusion and disbelief to realization.

  “That’s how she did it, Mom.” I keep my tone gentle. “That’s how she put up with Grandpa and a life she didn’t love.”

  She sits there, and I watch the news play out behind her eyes as the dots connect. “How do you know this?”

  “She has his letters hidden in the mantel in her room.”

  Looking back now, that’s what Mimi was telling me at Fondue with Father. How people like us, born with the duty to perpetuate this ‘empire’, have a responsibility to not follow our hearts. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have what we want. We just need to keep it a secret.

  She knew that, because that was her life. She considers herself noble for denying herself a man she really loved, because let’s be honest: a thirty-four-year affair was love.

  She raised her daughter to commit to unhappiness, and they raised me to keep my chin up and my mouth closed, as well.

  “Perfect doesn’t exist,” I can only manage a whisper. “It never did.”

  My grandmother may or may not have had choices, but my mom does.

  And so do I.

  In twenty years, I could be sitting here with my daughter, realizing I’d lived a lie for a life that made me miserable, and given up the one person who fed my every breath. I’ll realize how I’d ruined my life with such a massive mistake.

  I stare at my mom, tears filling my eyes. “Mom?”

  It takes her a moment, still lost in thought, but she looks over at me.

  “I have to talk to you,” I tell her. “I don’t want to trouble you right now, but I need to say something. I need to say it now.”

  It’s not the right time, but there will never be one. I clasp my hands together, looking down as I try to find the words.

  “What is it?” she asks when I don’t say anything.

  I open my mouth but close it again, not sure how to word it. I search my brain for the gentlest words—the easiest way—to explain it, but all I see is her losing her mind again and ready to hide in this closet the rest of the week, because she’ll feel like she failed. But I need to talk to someone. I need to say it out loud, and this is so hard, because I need my mom, even if she’s just going to make this about her. I’ll be able to see the disappointment all over her face.