by Leanne Davis
When would their mother love something enough to come out of the house?
Intellectually, he knew it wasn’t supposed to be his fault what had happened to his mother all those years ago. But in his gut, he knew he was a walking reminder of what happened to her; one night, twenty-five years ago when she’d been taken from the parking lot of a nearby strip mall. She’d disappeared for three days. She was found alive, but she’d been raped and beaten.
That night had ruined every aspect of Tina’s life. Her pregnancy had coincided with the attack. Denny was twelve years older than Tina, and Denny had fathered Sarah, why then was there ten years between him and Sarah? Sean was pretty sure they hadn’t waited that long on purpose.
Still now, tonight, his mother should be there as Denny died. As he held his sister, as his father coded before him, Sean felt a bubble rise up in his throat. It wasn’t tears. It was rage; gut deep knots of it.
How could they all have blamed him so much? Sarah didn’t want to see it, or admit it, but they had. They had all looked at Sean and seen Tina’s attacker. They relived it through him. His existence was a breathing reminder of what had ruined all of their lives. He had. He had ruined their lives.
The only family member who didn’t think that was Sarah. She bent over backwards to tell him so, and to make up for it. He saw it, he appreciated it, so he pretended he believed her. He pretended he was just fine, for Sarah.
Scott came into the room. He gently took Sarah from him. Sean watched them leave the room after she gently touched her father’s hand. He stared dry eyed at the dead body of the man who had raised him. The doctor came through, he looked at Sean for approval; finally he nodded, why not do the paternity test? What the hell would it matter? No one else needed to know either way what the results were. But maybe, just maybe, he did need to know.
Angie watched from the church pew as Sean rose up from the front pew, walked to the aisle way, then to the podium near the minister. He looked different than she’d ever seen him. He wore a gray suit, a dark blue button up shirt and tie. His hair was combed, and slicked off his face. He stood tall and lanky, young and handsome. He was dry eyed. He stood behind the podium with a surprising amount of dignity and confidence. It shocked her; she’d never seen this side of Sean. He was serious, grown-up looking as he stood next to his father’s black coffin, strewn with white roses.
Her heart beat fast for Sean. She didn’t envy him. In fact, she felt terribly sorry for him. He had to give the eulogy for his father from their family. Sarah was in no shape to do it, Scott had offered but Sean had declined the help.
He started with a brief summary of his father’s life, his birth, early childhood, years in college, where he worked for forty years, and the last twenty of retirement. Most of Sean’s childhood his father had been at home, as well as his mother. He had a strange combination of tons of parental time, but little quality, and even less interaction.
“You may notice Sarah and I’s mother isn’t here. As is well known, she hasn’t left our house in years. My father, he lived with that. He didn’t pressure her, he didn’t get frustrated with her, and he let her be. What would he say about her not being here? That’s what your mother needs, so be it. I think that was the greatest gift my father gave me. If certain things were a certain way, then so be it. He’d live with it. As we will learn to live without him. It is not however, something that is easy to accept. I hope we are able to learn to accept life as it is, with the ease that my father could, instead of fighting it to be how it should. Thank you on behalf of my father, and my family, those here and those absent, for honoring my father’s life with us.”
Sean left the panel, dry eyed, as he walked to his seat and sat down. All that she could see of him was the back of his head. He dropped his head as the minister rose and started a prayer. He’d done a magnificent job of honoring his father’s memory, while still remaining true to what his father was, and the relationship that wasn’t between them.
Except, Sean did anything but accept his father. When he was a freshman in high school they had gotten to know each other, and they’d shared one deep connection—lousy parents. Sean’s father ignored him as if he were a doorknob in the house, there, but nothing to notice or interact with. His father provided him the essentials, a house, food, clothing, but nothing more. Not a stitch of fatherly advice, of fatherly love or approval. His entire life Sean had lived with the fear of if he was really Denny’s son or not.
The Langstons were the most reserved family Angie had ever known. No one raised their voice, no one dished out the silent treatment, and none of them interacted as if they shared any connection at all. Sarah and Sean had shared that kind of impersonal, strange and cold relationship, until of course, Angie had gotten pregnant, and Sarah had finally sat up and taken notice of her younger brother as a human being. Now, as far as Angie gathered Sarah had designated herself the mother Sean had never really had.
Angie remembered Sean as a fifteen-year-old boy; for really he’d been nothing more than a boy when they had made a baby together. He had been angry, sullen, so quiet he hardly spoke hello to anyone. He hardly looked anyone in the eye. He was one of those kids who other kids stayed away from, but didn’t dare talk about because there seemed to be something lurking under Sean’s reserve that put out an energy of rage. He wasn’t shy, he wasn’t a dork, and he was someone no one messed with.
Some people thought Sean was that kid, the quiet kid no one noticed, who one day brought a gun to school. But Sean wasn’t like that at all. He was as needy, as desperate for someone to notice him, to care about him, as Angie. No one understood that Sean’s reserve was merely protecting a heart full of neglect.
She’d too been that shy. She’d been quiet, lost, seeking approval from anyone. And in Sean, she recognized the same quiet, the same need for someone that she had inside herself. And she understood in Sean his lack of desire to talk. Because she often felt there was too much pain to know what to say about it.
And now, she felt that in Sean. He was a different man than he’d been at fifteen. He was outgoing, more outwardly demonstrative, and confident. But she didn’t buy the new Sean. That he was so okay, so much fun, and such a good worker. She still saw glimpses, such as now, of the old Sean; the quiet boy who was so pained by being ignored he couldn’t even talk.
She wiped wayward tears from her eyes. Not at the death of Denny Langston, but at what she and Sean had never had: parents.
What had saved both her, and later Sean, from becoming teenage statistics or screw-ups was Scott and Sarah. Their unlikely union had brought together the two people who most cared and saved her as a teen. Turned out, later on, they did the same thing for Sean. And now, by whom Sean and Angie both needed, she and Sean were forever in the same circle of people and life.
But she wanted nothing more than to never see him again. When she looked at him she was reminded of the biggest mistake, and the biggest loss, of her life. All that Sean represented to her was the child she’d accidentally had, and then purposely given away.
Angie left before the funeral was done; she was skipping going to the cemetery for the burial. She went to Scott and Sarah’s house to oversee setting up for the reception. Sarah had manically cleaned her house. Angie had helped by staying out of her way, watching the kids, and letting Sarah clean and control, working her way through her grief. They had the meal catered, no one trusted Sarah to cook. Angie’s job was to merely meet the caterers and supervise them setting up the kitchen, and the buffet.
Once it was all set up, the house looked lovely. Food was arranged like a magazine spread; the pristine airiness that Sarah kept the house made a lovely back drop. Angie lit some votive candles and set them on the living room mantel, on the dining room table and in all the bathrooms. She loved her uncle’s house. It was beautiful. Like nothing she had grown up in. Sarah had decorated and finished off each and every room, with matching paint, nice furniture, pictures on the walls, and knick knacks tastefully set aroun
d to accentuate the high ceilings of the house and hardwood floors that stretched throughout it.
It was nothing she or Vanessa had ever had. She had no domestic tendencies, probably a result of spending her adolescence wanting nothing more than to get away from her home. Vanessa didn’t have even a candle setting out. Vanessa didn’t really clean or pick up. She remembered Scott doing most of that. And being a man, his house had looked like a bachelor’s pad. Not the classy, beautiful homey-home, Sarah had created, with little snippets of warmth set here and there, just like Sarah’s personality. She had photos of her kids, of Scott, of Angie. She had baskets of toys or shoes discreetly hidden in corners or behind chairs. Her house was just like Sarah; it looked perfect on the outside, but look close enough and you’d find the life and warmth inside.
“Look at you playing hostess. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
She whipped around when Sean’s voice came up behind her. She was standing at the living room window when he startled her.
“What?”
“The house. It looks good. Surprised my perfectionist sister trusted you with it. Not exactly your thing is it?”
“How do you know what my thing is?”
Sean stepped down into the recessed living room. “It’s not tough to know. You dress like you’re about to go attend the next save the earth project, you run from any and all commitment, including I would guess, anything as domestic as decorating or party throwing. So it surprises me Sarah trusted you to oversee this.”
“Shouldn’t you be burying your father?” Sean flinched.
Angie did too. She bit down on her tongue. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m really sorry about your dad. And what I said. But you so try to antagonize me. Why is that?”
“Because it’s so easy. You look at me like I’m the loser who took your virginity and you can’t believe you wasted it on me.”
She hated talking about that time in her life. “Don’t. Let’s not do this today, not on the day you buried your father.”
“Like he was really my father.”
“He might have been.”
“Come on, you know better than anyone that he wasn’t. He was not my father. All I was to Denny Langston was a walking reminder of what ruined his life. I was never his son.”
“But you wanted to be. And that’s what hurts you so much, that he couldn’t put aside what might have been and raised you as his son. You were not the sin, or the mistake, and Denny never gave you that.”
“And you think I treat Amy the same way.”
Angie stiffened. “This has nothing to do with Amy.”
“Everything between us has to do with Amy.”
“There is no us.”
“Yeah? Then why do you still look at me and see the boy who ducked his head from you when I ran into you at school? You won’t forgive me. I was a clueless kid. I didn’t know how to be any better.”
“I told you I don’t want to talk about this today. You’re feeling angry and taking it out on me.”
“Oh, really? That’s what I am? How the hell would you have a clue what I feel? From where I sit, you’re the one who runs from all the feelings, not me. We gave Amy up. We never knew her as our daughter. She is Kelly and Luke Tyler’s daughter, not ours.”
“Stop it. You buried your father today; I’m not about to fight with you, so please knock it off.”
“Why can’t you let her go?”
Angie turned, started to pace, and then stopped to glare at Sean. “Let her go? How do you do that? How do you let your own child go?”
“Because she’s not our daughter. I had to make peace with that years ago. I live here, they live here. Amy is happy, she has a family she adores. Why would I regret that? I couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have raised her to be that happy. I couldn’t even have afforded her. It was a mistake. And giving her up was the only thing we did that wasn’t a mistake. Make peace with that. She’s Kelly’s daughter, not yours. Amy doesn’t even want to be your daughter.”
“Doesn’t change that she is.”
Sean shook his head. He turned at the sudden noise of people entering the house. Angie looked past him, to the people converging on the driveway. Soon Sarah came in. She’d been crying, but now, she was smiling, talking to someone, probably relieved to be done with the burial. Sean walked away, and started shaking someone’s hand.
He’d never answered why he didn’t go bury his father.
She stared after Sean. Sometimes she outright hated him. He purposely evoked all these feelings in her, of failure, of regret, of hating him for being so okay with Amy, when she never would be.
She hated the way his hair sprang from the pony tail at the nape of his neck. What grown up wears their hair so juvenile? He looked like a delinquent fresh out of prison, or a hoodlum about to go jack a car. Was she supposed to like that this man knew things about her that no one else did?
And how could Sean think she wanted to remember the things she’d told him when she was sixteen years old? Sean knew things about her that she couldn’t unsay. Things she wished she could take back, but instead this pony-tail wearing, idiotic guy who was really more of a kid at times, knew every real thing about her.
This was why she hated Seaclusion so damn much. Her past sat here like a rock on her soul, and only reminded her of why ruining her future was exactly what Vanessa had expected and predicted for her. And now, she had fulfilled those low, miserable expectations.
Sean was charming when he so chose, and as the reception lingered into the afternoon, she witnessed it firsthand. He was good at taking care of all the people who wanted to share their sympathies. He shook men’s hands and tolerated women’s squeeze of support on his shoulder. His face remained open, solemn to condolences and sometimes smiling in charm or humor.
That was part of what she hated about Sean Langston; he seemed to so easily land on his feet. His father didn’t acknowledge him, his mother couldn’t leave the house, he lived in the same town as his biological daughter he’d given up, and instead of being awkward or heartbroken, he’d managed to become chummy friends with Luke and Kelly. He’d managed to make a decent living with her uncle, and seemed perfectly content and happy with how his life had turned out. He didn’t seem to put any thought, concern, energy, or worry into his life, or his future. And yet he’d managed to turn out just fine.
While she, who put all her energy into planning, plotting, working hard—working to the bone hard—had managed to ruin her entire life, career, and dreams.
She detested how easily Sean seemed to interact with the people of the town. He was one of them. They cared about him and Sarah. Where Angie was a stiff, cold mannequin with everyone, and she had no idea how to be polite or friendly, as always in Seaclusion she was awkward, shy Angie, Vanessa’s forgotten daughter. She could never shake the image or the feelings of inadequacy it evoked.
Sean’s third beer of the afternoon finally started to ease the knot of anxiety in his gut. Finally, the smile on his face started to actually feel real. He took another swig of the bottle, lowered it as he watched across the long open kitchen/living room area. There Angie sat, alone, quiet, almost obscure, and totally unconscious of being the most beautiful woman in the room. She was never aware of it, which made her that much more of an enigma. Angie’s hair came down to her elbows, long, blond, thick and straight it settled around her like a cape set over her shoulders. Usually she wore it pulled back into a French braid, or a casual pony tail. Her face was always clean, fresh, with a strong bone structure, big blue eyes, and a wide smile. She was really, truly beautiful without anything ever done to enhance her.
Today she wore a long skirt, black with big white flowers on it. Only Angie at twenty-four could wear a flowing skirt, white blouse, as prim as Sunday school teacher, and look stunning. Because she never wore feminine clothes, they looked like other women’s slutty, going-out-to-a-club clothes.
Angie wasn’t his type. He tended toward small, petite wom
en, with big boobs, small clothes, and smiling, happy personalities. Angie was anything but that. She rarely laughed, she couldn’t flirt, and she could hardly smile at a man. She was serious, natural, and completely unaware of herself as a woman.
And yet for whatever reason, he couldn’t help but be completely aware of her. He went years at a time without seeing her, but then he’d see her, and all the old feelings would come back. He’d had sex with plenty of other women, and even had a couple of long term girlfriends. And still, whenever Angie came back to town, he was right back to being fifteen, staring dumbstruck at her, right back to trying to get the beautiful, cool, self-contained Angie to notice him.
He did everything short of jumping up and down for her to look his way. He hated her coming to Seaclusion. She made him feel like the loser kid he’d once been, the juvenile delinquent hell bent on causing problems he’d started to be. She made him feel like he should want more; he should do more with his life, which was crap because when she wasn’t in town, he didn’t feel inadequate. He resented her for that.
And he hated how she blamed him for Amy.
“Who’s the blond?”
Sean turned toward his best friend, Jerry Cunnington. Jerry and he had met when they were twenty at a bar. They started hanging out, shooting pool, picking up girls together. They’d stolen a car together, scared the shit out of themselves and never done it again. Sean followed Jerry’s gaze which was on, of course, Angie.