by Tawna Fenske
Bree hands me a steaming mug and waits for me to settle into the lodge-style club chair beside the fireplace. She takes her time arranging her own mug on the soapstone coaster next to the wide loveseat the color of old saddle leather. Tucking one leg under her, she picks up the mug and blows on it, leveling me with a look I can’t quite read.
“So,” she says slowly, her eyes not leaving mine. “Were you ever going to tell us?”
“Tell you what?”
Bree rests the mug on her knee and gives me a pointed look. “That your mother isn’t here to steal our property.”
“I told you that already.” My palms are sweating where they clasp the wide clay mug, and I wonder how much my sister knows.
“You weren’t convincing,” she says.
“And that’s my fault?”
“It is, actually,” she says slowly. “You let us run with that theory because you liked it better than the truth.”
There’s something about the word truth that sends a painful rattle through my bones. I swallow hard and look down into my mug. “What’s the truth?”
Bree is silent for so long that I finally look up. I wish I hadn’t. Her eyes are clouded with sympathy so fierce it makes my throat close up. How long has she known? An hour? A few weeks?
Maybe her whole life.
“Your mom’s not a greedy bitch who came to steal our ranch,” Bree says slowly. “She’s an alcoholic.”
Alcoholic.
That word hits harder, the force of it like a brick to the chest. It’s not like I haven’t heard it a thousand, a million times in my own head.
But I’ve rarely said it aloud. Not even to Sarah, though she probably guessed. We never talked about it, not even when she begged me to open up.
For the briefest second, I consider arguing. But there’s no point. Not the way my sister is looking at me.
“Yes,” I say softly. “My mother is an alcoholic.”
Bree nods once and lifts her tea to her lips. She sips slowly, not taking her eyes off me as she rests her mug back on her knee. “How long have you been covering for her?”
I don’t answer, mostly because I can tell she knows.
Too long.
Forever.
“It hasn’t always been bad,” I say. “We’ve had long stretches where she’s totally fine.”
“It’s a disease, Sean. It’s never totally fine.”
“You think I don’t know that?” The words come out like a slap, and Bree presses her lips together.
“Sorry,” I mutter, raking my hands through my hair. “I just—I’m not reacting well today.”
That’s the fucking understatement of the year. I think of Amber’s face in the barn, the crestfallen look in her eyes as I hustled my mother away. I think of how horribly I handled our conversation afterward, the stupid things I said in my urgency to escape. To get away fast before all the secrets came tumbling out like pennies from a shattered piggybank.
I’ve never hated myself more.
Bree clears her throat. “So you’ve been covering for her.”
“I couldn’t say anything.”
“Because she’s famous or because she’s your mother?”
“Yes.” It’s the answer to both questions, and Bree knows that. “She’s a high-functioning alcoholic.”
“She masks it well,” Bree says. “So do you.”
That’s hardly a skill I want on my résumé, but it’s true. I’m the master of covering for my mother. King of the co-dependent relationship. Damage Control Sean.
Only I’ve failed miserably now at the one job I’ve done my whole life.
“I’ve begged her to get help,” I say. “Twice she went to Betty Ford, but she never stayed more than four days.”
Bree frowns and twists her mug in her hands. “Don’t I see her swilling wine on her program all the time?”
I nod and look down into my own cup. The clay is warm in my hand, but I can’t bring myself to take a drink. “That’s part of the problem,” I say. “Her whole shtick is wine and food pairings. How do you keep that going when you’re not someone who knows how to stop at one glass?”
“You find another career.”
“Good idea,” I mutter. “I’ll wait here while you go tell her that. Let me know how it goes.”
Bree lifts an eyebrow, along with her mug. She takes a long sip. “Okay, so it’s not that easy.”
“You think?”
“Don’t be a dick, Sean. I’m trying to help.”
She’s right, I am being a dick. I’m not used to having anyone else know my secrets. I feel exposed and embarrassed and horribly, horribly ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“I know you are.”
Neither of us says anything for a long time. I finally take a swig from my mug, letting the liquid burn all the way down. My throat is tight and itchy, and I can’t get comfortable in this chair.
“I wanted to tell you,” I say softly. “So many times over the last year. Longer than that.” I shake my head, hardly believing the words coming out of my mouth. They’ve been bottled up so long. “It would have been nice to confide in someone. In you or James or Mark or—”
“We all would have supported you, you know.”
“I know. But you already hated her.”
“We never hated her.”
I lift an eyebrow, and Bree stares back at me, then gives a nod of concession. “Fine. She’s not my favorite person.” She sets her mug down and leans over the space between us to rest a hand on my knee. “We still would have helped.”
“You can’t help someone who won’t admit there’s a problem. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“You’ve been carrying this around a long time.”
My throat tightens again, and I consider chugging the whole mug of tea to keep from feeling like I’m choking. “It would destroy her if it got out.”
“It’s been destroying you,” she says. “Keeping that secret? That’s no way to live. No way to build relationships.”
The words sting, mostly because she’s right. It’s never been easy, not with Sarah or any of the other girls I dated.
But it’s never felt like it did with Amber. I’ve never wanted to tell someone, to usher her through the carefully guarded door and show her all the battered, dingy furniture and holes in the drywall. The ugly scenery of my real life. No one but her has ever come close to seeing that.
I picture her eyes again, that flash of pain, followed by something more heartbreaking.
Resignation. Like she knew all along this would happen. Like she always knew I’d end up hurting her.
My throat is so tight I can hardly breathe, so I draw the mug to my mouth and inhale warm bergamot vapor. It’s a fragrant steam bath for my face, and I close my eyes to sink into the sensation.
“Why’d you break up with Amber?”
I open my eyes and lower the mug. “She told you that?”
“No.” Bree lifts her own mug of tea. “But I had a hunch, and the look on your face confirmed it.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” she says, smiling a little. “You’re just mad that you’ve spent your whole life glossing over the bad stuff. Shoving it all in a jar and screwing the lid on tight. And now someone shows up and dumps the whole thing out on the table.”
“I panicked,” I say. “I just—I went into damage control mode, and I started saying stupid shit. Things I didn’t mean.”
Anything to escape that moment.
Bree barks out a laugh. “You’ve spent your whole life playing hide-the-truth,” she says. “Are you really surprised to discover you lack some basic communication skills when something bad happens?”
I frown at my sister. “Is this supposed to be helping?”
“Sorry.”
I shake my head, shifting my mug to one hand so I can rake my fingers through my hair. “It’s like I’ve spent so long covering for my mother that I forgot that’s not the only priori
ty in my life. Or even the most important one.”
God, why didn’t I figure this out sooner? Before I fucked things up beyond recognition.
“Your mom has to face her own demons sooner or later,” she says. “Now’s as good a time as any to let her do it.”
She’s not wrong. God, I hate that’s she’s not wrong. I stare into my tea, wondering if there’s anything more infuriating for a brother than a sister who’s right.
“It’s my fault she went off the deep end,” I say. “If I hadn’t let her get to that wedding—”
“You can’t make this your fault.” Bree sets down her mug and folds her hands in her lap. “She came here because she’d hit rock bottom. You’re her safety net.”
I wonder if that’s true. Is there a reason my mother showed up here, on my front porch, on the property that once belonged to her family?
“You’ve always been her safe place to land,” Bree says. “You’ve been a good son.”
It feels nice to hear that, but it’s hollow praise. I want to be more than just a good son. That can’t be my defining role. My defining relationship. Not anymore.
“I need to be more than that,” I say. “More than the guy who spends his whole life following in her footsteps and making sure she doesn’t fall down.”
There’s more to life than that. I had a glimpse of that with Amber, and I threw it away like an idiot.
“Your mother has to help herself,” Bree says. “You can’t fix this.”
I close my eyes tight again, wishing this weren’t the truest thing I’ve heard all week. The second truest thing.
“It takes work to decide you’re going to love someone even when things aren’t as perfect as they were in your head.”
My own stupid words come back to haunt me. I do love my mother, even when it’s hard as hell to do it.
And I love Amber. More than anything.
When I open my eyes, Bree is standing. She wipes her hands on her skirt, then steps closer. “I’m going to go now,” she says. “Seems like you could use some time alone.”
I set my mug on an end table and stand up. Bree steps forward again, linking her arms behind my neck. She hugs me so tight it’s almost painful.
“Thank you for rescuing me,” I murmur. “For coming to get my mother without question.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
“And thanks for calling me on my shit,” I mutter as she steps back and regards me with a knowing look.
“Also not a problem.” She offers a weak smile. “You’d damn sure do that for me.”
She turns and walks out the front door, leaving her mug behind on a coaster.
I don’t know how long I sit there in silence. One minute? Ten? I’m wondering if there’s any way to salvage the situation with my mother. With Amber. With everything I’ve done wrong in this whole mess.
Gordon Ramsay ambles into the room with his tail held high, the tip of it twitching with irritation. He surveys the scene like a homeowner inspecting the exterminator’s work, wanting to be sure all the cockroaches are gone. I set my mug aside and pat my lap, surprised when he saunters over and leaps onto my thighs with impressive dexterity. For a three-legged cat, he’s got mad skills.
“Hey, buddy,” I tell him, stroking a hand down his back. “How’s life?”
Gordon responds with a rumbly purr, head-butting the back of my hand as his front paws knead my thigh like a bowl of biscuit dough.
“Good Lord, are you sure that thing doesn’t have fleas?”
The cat looks up and growls as my mother walks into the room. She’s changed from her party dress into a pair of velvet leggings and a long silk top in pale blue. Her face is bare, and she’s moving gingerly, but her shoulders are squared, and there’s not a hair out of place.
“Mother.” I clear my throat and nod toward the loveseat. “Want some tea?”
She glances at Bree’s mug, which has a faint splotch of pink lipstick on the rim. She lifts her chin. “That’s quite all right, thank you.”
“Have a seat.”
I expect her to argue. She does hesitate, but eventually lowers herself onto the loveseat, arranging her flowy shirt like it’s the train of a ball gown. Her posture stays straight, like she’s expecting to be escorted off the premises at any moment.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
She looks at me like she’s trying to figure out the trick question. “Fine.” She presses her lips into a thin line. “Fine, thank you.”
We sit in silence for a moment, me trying to summon the right words, my mother staring down into her lap. Maybe she senses something’s different this time, because she looks down for a long, long time.
When she meets my eyes again, her expression is unreadable. “Look, I know you’re upset that I showed up uninvited, but I—”
“That’s not what this is about,” I interrupt. “I don’t give a shit about you crashing the wedding.”
“Darling—”
“It’s about your drinking,” I snap. “It’s always about your goddamn drinking.”
My mother sucks in a breath like I’ve just slapped her. I pretty much have. I’ve never spoken to her like this, not ever. Not when she showed up drunk to my high school graduation. Not when she missed the ceremony for my James Beard award, too hung over to get out of bed.
She stares at me as the big copper clock behind me rattles off the passing seconds.
By the time she speaks again, the defiance has leaked out of her voice. “I thought I had it under control,” she says softly. “I never drank at all on weeknights. I kept it to a minimum on the show. But then—”
She shakes her head, and there’s no need to fill in the rest. There’s always a “but then.” There always has been.
I stroke my hand down Gordon Ramsey’s back, earning a rusty-sounding purr. “Is the show really on a planned hiatus for ratings sweeps?”
She hesitates, then shakes her head. “No,” she says softly. “No, it’s not.” She clears her throat. “I’ve been suspended. They’re talking about bringing in another chef unless—unless something changes.”
“With your drinking.”
She nods and looks away. “I thought coming here might help.”
“How?”
She shrugs and looks down at her hands. “This place,” she says softly. “I thought if I could—” She stops there, gaze still fixed on her knuckles. “Did I ever tell you about my cave?”
The conversational detour shakes me, and I take a second to respond. “Cave?”
“Here. On this property. When I was a little girl. Did I tell you about it?”
I shake my head, ignoring the buzzing in the back of my head. “You never wanted to talk about this place,” I reply. “Not even when dad left it to us and I tried to ask you questions about it.”
“Right.” She takes a deep breath and looks up at me. Her eyes are filled with so much pain it makes my chest ache. “I suppose I didn’t like being reminded of where I came from. Who I was before.”
There are so many questions whirling through my head, and I don’t know which one to ask first. Who the hell is she, and why did she suddenly decide to remember?
But that’s not what I ask. “What cave?”
My mother takes a breath so deep her shoulders rise. Her gaze is fixed on her lap again “There’s a cave on the north side of the property.”
“I know.”
She looks up, startled. “You’ve seen it?”
“We talked about using it as a wine cellar.”
She laughs, but it’s a hollow, brittle sound. “Wouldn’t that be fitting.” My mother clasps her hands in her lap, and it seems to take a herculean effort for her to meet my eyes. “I spent so much time there as a girl. I used to play house.” There’s that hollow laugh again. “It was just me, and God knows I didn’t have any sense of what a normal family looked like. But I could pretend.”
My throat gets tight as I picture it in my mind. My mother as a girl,
sitting cross-legged on the cave floor, arranging her tea set for her imaginary family. I imagine her barking orders at a tidy row of teddy bears, insisting they mix the cocoa just so. I see her with a red crayon in one hand, drawing hearts and happy stick figures, playing tic-tac-toe by herself.
It hits me then. “You.” The word comes out hoarse and whispery, and I clear my throat. “The pictures on the wall. They’re yours.”
“They’re still there?”
I nod, dumbstruck to realize what I should have figured out long ago. “I used to look at those when I was a kid. I thought they were messages just for me.”
Is it my imagination, or are her eyes turning glittery? She nods and dashes the heel of her hand against her eye. “Maybe they were,” she whispers. “A message from eight-year-old me to eight-year-old you.”
Or twenty-seven-year old me. How did I not catch this before?
My head spins as my memories rearrange themselves, the building blocks shifting to accommodate this new information. I’m still trying to process it, but there’s time for that later.
“You need to get help,” I say. “Professional help, for as long as it takes.”
“I know. I realize that now. I just—” She takes a shaky breath. “I wanted to see you first. I thought that might change things. Might make it better.”
“Did it?”
She shakes her head, and this time there’s no mistaking the glitter of tears in her eyes. “No. I mean, it’s been good seeing you.”
“It’s been good seeing you, too.”
I’m surprised to realize I mean it. My mother looks so fragile, so broken, sitting there with her hands on her lap and a trickle of tears running down her face. I reach out and put a hand on hers, and she looks up at me. “Mom.”
If the word surprises her, she doesn’t show it. Just swipes at another tear running down her face.
“I’ll be there for you,” I say. “Whatever you need, I’m there.”
“You always have been.”
“But I can’t cover for you anymore,” I say.
She presses her lips together. “I understand.”
“I’m serious about you getting professional help.” There’s a grit in my voice that I barely recognize. “Inpatient treatment. You stay the full term until you get better.”