by Kelli Walker
I clocked her freshly manicured nails and I felt myself shoot through the roof.
“You are the most selfish, hot-winded hypocrite I have ever known in my life!” I roared.
“Tina, darling. I believe we should-”
“Oh, no. You don’t get to control this situation. You don’t get to put a pin in it and deal with it when we’re not in public eye. You might have them fooled into thinking you’re the perfect little mother and wife, but here you sit giggling over your third glass of day-drinking while your husband lies dead on a slab,” I said.
“Tina, we really should-”
“You pawn all this funeral shit off on your daughter who can’t even roll her ass out of bed because she can’t stop crying about the death of her father, and all you’ve got to say to me is a comment about how I look? A daughter in mourning can’t even shower herself, and here you sit with freshly manicured nailed and a glass of wine hammin’ it up with the crowd!”
“Tina, calm down,” she said.
“Calm down? Calm-... are you fucking serious right now, Mom? You’re the biggest bullshit excuse for a wife there ever was. Instead of you planning this stuff for your own damn husband, you’ve contracted the work out to his daughter!”
I took a deep breath as I felt a hand come down onto my shoulder, and I turned my head to take in Kevin’s face. He was looking around at the women sitting at the table, and it was then I noticed what was going on. They were looking at my mother as if they had just seen a ghost, and my mother was dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her cloth napkin.
In all the years I’d grown up with my mother, I’d never once seen her eyes redden, much less water.
“Michael’s dead?” someone asked.
“Theresa, when did he pass?” another one asked.
“How in the world are you even standing, you poor thing. What do you need us to do?” yet another piped up.
But all my mother did was raise her gaze back to me, even as her friends bombarded her with questions. She slowly stood to her feet, her hazel gaze unwavering as I slowly backed up from the table. I felt Kevin stand behind me, his strong chest giving me support as my knees grew weak, and my fatal mistake finally registered as my mother cleared her throat.
No one knew my father was dead yet.
“You haven’t… told them, Mom?” I asked.
“Mom? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was speaking with my daughter. I thought I was speaking with Michael’s,” she said.
“Mom, I didn’t-”
“No, you didn’t, Tina. You never really do. I’m well aware of what you think about me, and whether you enjoy it or not, you’re more like me than you realize. No, I have not told anyone of your father’s death because I knew people would want details. Decoration suggestions, thoughts about food, dates and times… and I had none of it squared away,” she said.
“Mom, they could help you. Help us. You don’t have to-”
“Do this alone? Dump it on you? Be selfish and unrelenting about the death of my husband? Tina, I simply couldn’t bring myself to tell them yet. Regardless of what you might think of me, I do have feelings,” she said.
I watched as she grabbed her purse and got up from her chair. One of her friends grabbed her wrist, trying desperately to get her to stay, but all she did was slide out from her grasp and step up next to me.
“Don’t worry about the caterer appointment. I’m about to head there myself,” she said.
“Mom, I can’t take care of it,” I said.
“Not in those clothes, you can’t,” she said.
“We all have different ways of grieving,” Kevin said behind me.
“And it would behoove Tina to keep that in mind once she realizes she’s not the only person who’s lost someone in this scenario,” she said.
“Mom,” I whispered.
“Kevin,” she nodded, ignoring me. “Always nice to see you. Will you be at the funeral?”
“We all will, yes. Michael was a good man, and he deserves our respect,” he said.
“Good. At least someone understands that concept,” she said before she locked eyes with me again.
“I will see you back at home, Tina. Kevin, don’t work too hard. Wouldn’t want to miss anything,” he said.
I was about to come to his defense before his phone rang in his pocket. He pulled his phone out and held it to his ear before he stepped away from the chaos, and all I could do was watch my mother as he walked away. She held a grace to her step that I could never hold during this situation, and the way she held her head high communicated a type of strength I hadn’t ever seen in her until this very moment.
I heard my mother’s friends get up from their seats as they began to hug me. They were telling me how sorry they were for my loss and rubbing my back to try and soothe me, but the only thing I felt was annoyance. I wanted their hands off me. I didn’t want their empty apologies or their suggestions for the caterer or their decorative ideas for the funeral. I didn’t want their sympathy or to listen to their stories of the memories they had of my father.
And I realized in that very moment why my mom hadn’t told anyone yet.
Because she didn’t want any of that shit either.
I felt tears crest my eyes as my chest began to heave for air. I could feel their hands on my back as the terrace slowly started caving in on me, and I looked around desperately for Kevin. He looked so far away and his cell phone looked like it was about to swallow him whole, and Maddie’s tits grew to the size of watermelons before they reached out for me.
I felt my head spinning as I stumbled backwards from the crowd of women gathered around me, their voices chattering in my ear as I tried to scream above the noise.
I needed Kevin. Or Maddie. Or Spencer or Brit. Brady or Mom, or my father who was dead. I needed someone to root me to the ground. I needed someone to reach out and pull me from the pit that had opened up underneath my feet. I needed someone to catch me before the bowels of my own personal emotional hell swallowed me whole and never spat me back out.
“I’ve gotta go,” I choked out, stumbling away from the women as I ran across the terrace.
The blaring red sign with the one word I needed flickered in the distance. The exit sign was just within my reach as I threw myself around the banister and ran down the steps. I could hear Maddie calling out behind me, a desperation in her voice I’d never heard before, but the cars were honking and their tires were coming to a screeching halt and suddenly I was thrust into a world I didn’t want to live in.
A world where my mother gave a shit and my father had no more life to give any shits.
My feet ran me across the road while cars dodged my running body, and I stumbled onto the sidewalk as I continued to run. Sweat dripped down my back as my vision began to tunnel, and I darted off into an alleyway as Maddie’s voice faded into the background. I clamored over a metal fence, dropping to the ground on top of a bunch of cardboard boxes.
And that’s when the sobbing kicked in.
The chest-heaving, soul-piercing, screaming sobs of a daughter who had just lost her father. Who had just embarrassed her mother. Who had just accepted her reality.
I got up to my feet and continued running. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore, and then I caught a taxi cab and told him to drive. I wanted out of here. Out of the city, out from underneath the lights, and out from underneath my mother’s hand. There was a reason I never came back home. Thousands of reasons that flooded my mind with memories as the city lights passed me by and exchanged themselves for an open road.
I watched the scenery pass me by as my eyes slowly slid shut, the roaring of the tires underneath the yellow cab lulling me to sleep as one last tear rushed down my cheek.
In my dreams, my father was tossing me in the air while I giggled. In my dreams, we were picking strawberries and eating more than what made into the basket. In my dreams, he was rubbing my feverish head and helping me each chicken broth so my throat would feel better.
<
br /> In my dreams, he was walking me down the aisle as I walked towards my future husband.
Towards Kevin.
The man my mother could never accept when he forgot about the dinner he promised to attend in order to meet my parents.
And I fell asleep to the smoky-mint smell of my father’s morning ritual as I leaned up against his leg and smiled.
Chapter 37
Kevin
By the time I got off the phone with Spencer letting me know they were on the airplane and headed this way, I saw Maddie run down the the terrace after Tina. I leaned over the balcony and saw Tina dashing into traffic, and I called out her name to try and get her to stop. She was running as if her worst fear was chasing her, but all I could do was watch helplessly as Maddie tried to catch up with her.
I watched Tina disappear down an alleyway while Maddie was still searching for her, and I took off running to try and get Maddie’s attention.
“Maddie! Maddie! She ducked into the alleyway!”
“What!?” Maddie roared.
“The alleyway!” I yelled, pointing.
By the time I got to Maddie and we turned the corner, Tina was gone. I saw a fence at the end of the stretch, separating the other road from the alleyway between the two buildings, and I saw no sign of Tina. The only feasible answer was that she jumped the fence to continue running, but after that I had no idea where she could possibly be.
“Who was on the phone?” Maddie asked.
“Spencer and them. They’re on the plane and headed back from the island. They’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t think Tina needs to be staying with her mother anymore. It’s toxic, she was right,” Maddie said.
“Her mother’s just grieving differently,” I said as we started jogging back to my car. “Tina doesn’t get it because her emotions are finally spilling over, but her mother copes with stress by retreating into herself. There’s a good chance her mother’s crying in private, but her mother will never show that to Tina. She feels she has to be the strong one now, especially since her rock is gone.”
“Since when did you become a psychologist?” Maddie asked as we approached my car.
“Since I started trying to figure out why the fuck Tina is the way she is,” I said.
“You really love her, don’t you?”
The question stopped me in my tracks. I looked over at Maddie as she was poised to duck into my car, and I drew in a deep breath before I nodded my head.
“I do,” I said.
“Then, let’s go find her before she really gets herself lost. Any idea where she could be?” Maddie asked.
“There are a few places around town that hold special memories for her for different reasons. I’m gonna try those places before I start to panic.”
“I’m already panicking,” Maddie said.
“I know. Which is why I’m trying to put mine off. Now, hang on.”
I saw tears dripping down Maddie’s face as he careened out of the parking lot and began racing around town. The first place I could think to try was the bakery across from Central Park. That was a place her father took her all the time when she was a child. She’d never admit this, but she was always terrified of going into Central Park. Her father watched the news a great deal, and all the stories about things that happened there at night really spooked her as a child. But, she still enjoyed the way the park looked and how the leaves would change colors with the seasons, so her father would bring her to the bakery to have a treat while they watched people in the park from the windows.
“Let me go see if she’s inside,” I said.
I walked into the bakery and pulled out a picture of her to see if anyone had seen her. My heart sunk when they shook their heads ‘no’, but I had a few other places I could try.
My next stop was M&M’s World in Times Square. Her favorite candy was M&M’s, but she always picked them out by color first. She would eat all the brown ones, then all the red ones, then all the blue ones. She’d do that for whatever package of M&M’s she was eating. She was always entranced with the buckets of M&M’s in the store that were already sorted by color, and she’d buy canisters of each color just so she could revel in the satisfaction of not having to sort them herself.
But, when I got inside and showed them a picture of Tina, they said they hadn’t seen her either.
My next shot was the suit shop her father always went to. Whenever her father would get fed up with her mother, he’d take Tina and go to the shop. He’d get himself measured for a new suit while Tina tried on the hats and oversized shoes on her feet, and it was his way of expelling stress while getting Tina out of that environment. She told me this story one time of how she got tangled up in one of the fabric rolls they had hanging on the wall, so the tailor offered to make her a little suit to match her father’s since he would have to discard the fabric anyway.
Her mother absolutely hated it, which was probably why she adored it even more.
But, yet again, no one in the suit shop had seen her.
I had one more place I could try, but it wasn’t going to be easy for me to go inside. The closer we got to the restaurant, the guiltier I felt for missing that damn dinner. Back in college-- when Tina and I were officially dating-- her parents had invited me over for dinner. Not a simple dinner at their place where their chef cooked and we sat silently around their table, but the type of dinner where they made expensive reservations at one of the top restaurants in the city just so they could meet me. It was the kind of place that had multiple pieces of silverware and you really needed to know your royal place settings in order to navigate the meal.
They had invited me to get to know me-- to meet the man who was courting their daughter-- and I’d gotten so lost in my studies that by the time I looked up from my book I was two hours too late. I had flown into town and booked myself a hotel just so I could meet her parents that weekend, and I fucking missed it because I had my damn nose in a book.
Her mother never forgave me after that. Her father eventually came around, though I still don’t think he was a fan of mine. But, her mother? Never. She held it over my head, and it created so much tension between the two of us and kicked up so much back home that Tina began drinking. We never talked about going to see her family again-- even though I wanted to try and make it up to them-- and she lost herself in the parties and the booze and the late nights.
I felt partially responsible for the degradation of her relationship with her family in college, and the moment we pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant the guilt began to eat me alive.
“You alright, Kevin?” Maddie asked.
“I just hate this place is all,” I said.
“Why do you think Tina would be here?” she asked.
“Honestly? It’s the only other place I’ve got to look, and I’m not yet willing to say we should call the police. Just… give me a second.”
I walked into the restaurant and showed the hostess a picture of Tina. She passed it around the waitstaff, and one by one they all shook their heads. Even the smells of the restaurant made me nauseous with guilt, and I stumbled out of there as quickly as I could before tears sprang to my eyes.
Where the hell was Tina?
“Kevin, we need to call the police,” Maddie said as I got into the car.
“Go ahead and get them on your-”
At that very second, Tina’s name came scrolling across my phone. My eyes widened while my fingers began to tremble, and I almost dropped the phone to the floor before I picked up the call and put her on speakerphone.
“Tina? You there? It’s me and Maddie. Where are you? We’re gonna come get you, just stay put.”
“Hello?” a man asked.
A man.
On Tina’s phone.
I felt my blood run cold for a split second before he began talking again.
“Hi there. My name is Raul Feliz. I’m a cab driver with the city of New York. There’s a woman in my car. She’s dressed in
, uh-”
“-black sweatpants and a tank-top with a yellow short-sleeved cardigan?” I asked.
“Yes. She’s asleep in my backseat. We’ve been driving around for a while. She kept mumbling something about getting away and finding her father?”
My heart broke in that very instant as a tear leaked down my cheek.
“Her name is Tina. She’s just lost her father. Where are you? I can come get her,” I said.
“If you want me to just take her home, or back to a hotel, I can. She’s been asleep for a little while, but I kept driving because I felt back for her, honestly. She was sobbing when she got into my car,” he said.
“It’s been a rough day for all of us. Do you have your GPS ready? I’ll give you her home address and you can meet us there. I’m ready to pay you as well,” I said.
I rattled off her address before I breathed a sigh of relief. I hung up the phone and raced back to Tina’s house, and the two of us waited until the cab driver pulled up behind us. I peeled myself from my car and dashed over to the cab. I was so relieved when I saw Tina breathing easily and sleeping soundly in the back of that car, and the only thing I could do was scoop her up into my arms.
“Maddie, could you pay the cab driver? I’ll cut you a check,” I said.
“Sure, not a problem.”
I carried Tina into her home while Maddie settled the tab, and with every step I took her body curled into me even more. Her face was puffy from crying and she was snoring because of the snot clogging her nose. Her body was trembling with what was surely a nightmare, and I held her as close as I could get her before I found my way to her room.
It looked exactly as I remembered it to be, and I had to take a second to reorient myself before I placed her into her bed.
She didn’t make a sound while I tucked her in, and I smoothed my hand over her forehead before I kissed her goodnight. This was the first time since all this started that I’d seen her truly peaceful, but even during her deepest sleep I could see the stress etched in her features. I knew what I needed to do in order to lift some of this burden from her body, but I didn’t know how she would react once she figured out what I was doing.