WARNING: Language
Nothing really shocks you when you're an outlet; an outlet for pain, an outlet for misery--but when you're the switch, you're a deliverer of all these things. My mother sits across from me, a switch in the making.
Our father daughter weekend in the mountains was a romantic coup; a concealer for betrayal coated in lust for something slightly better than what one currently possesses. My fingers dance nervously against my thigh as I relive the moment I watched my father take his last breath for a woman with whom he shared a pillow and a piece of his shattered heart.
My mother knew of this and had decided to let my father follow through with his foolish plan to surrender to the heavy drum of his heart and the stiffness of his cock, but fate, as it is known to do, intervened harshly. A single tear drifts down my cheek at the truth he could not just tell me. My father was buried so deep in his deceit, so far in the fairgrounds of lying that he could not tell me a simple truth and it cost him his life.
I wish I could thank Rosalie for pulling him from the edge, yet a part of me wishes she had encouraged him to jump. He would have bled at the bottom, perhaps cried out in agony and regret, but at least he would have had what he needed to mend or sever the things that lead him to the edge in the first place. Instead, he punctured his own purpose with love and twist the blade until he painted the roads he thought Mother Nature had grown over.
The something about Nathaniel Christopher Witherson was that no one could truly get to his core because it was taken from him by the consequence of simply being alive. Rosalie spent the better part of her love on him, tirelessly trying to dig her way through him. She didn't believe a man could be coreless, but he proved that even a woman like her, a distinguished woman of the law, could be wrong about her intuition.
"I--a part of me really loved your father and wanted him to be happy, even if that was without me,"
My mother pours herself another room temperature drink, looking confused at the bottle's nearing emptiness.
"She meant something to you too. Don't try to put together a puzzle with half the pieces, mom. I heard the two of you and--I felt the way you once felt about each other," I explained to her.
"You felt it?"
"Am I wrong? You and Rosalie were lovers, were you not?"
A rainy afternoon brings my mother underneath the awning of a local coffee shop; the stench of my father's primal wants still staining her clothes as she returns from a moment of passion that was becoming a rarity with her husband. Seeing no end to the downpour, my mother enters the shop, instantly taken by the aroma of crushed coffee beans and freshly baked scones. She squeaks to the front counter, orders a black coffee and a strawberry scone, gazes around at the slice of peace she found in the town she has spent almost two decades in.
As she sat near the window, she watched each droplet cry against the glass with delicate misfortune. Rosalie gently enters the shop, shaking her umbrella at the door before proceeding to the counter. At first, my mother paid her no mind until she noticed a familiar linger on her skin, a lingering scent she had smelled on her husband all but an hour before.
Before she knew it, my mother had approached Rosalie and directly questioned her about knowing my father. The way in which Rosalie's cheeks reddened in embarrassment somehow eased my mother's anger and she found a soft fondness in the way Rosalie tried to explain that she meant no harm and thought that my parents were separated. For reasons even unknown to my mother, she opened up to Rosalie, telling her about her previous affair with Barry and how her marriage has slowly become one in name only. The two women bonded over the need to be satisfied, the need to be wanted by a man who wanted nothing more than a moment of satisfaction.
"We oddly became friends even though I know she was still seeing your father. It was--refreshing to be completely open with somehow about everything I felt was wrong in my life. I honestly had not felt such comfort since before you were born and I haven't since," my mother says lowly.
"She brought you comfort and love and understanding and you brought her to death's door. Why? How could you do something so barbaric?"
"I made the mistake of making a friend instead of confronting your father about his affair with Rosalie. Whether or not you understand this Teagan, she was dead the moment I smiled at her and call it what you want, but I did what was best. For all of us," she replies.
"Did you love her, mom? Did you--did you ever care about her?"
My mother inhaled for what felt like the first time in years as Rosalie held her shaking body against her own. Rosalie's presence brought my mother life and her kiss sent her back into the soils in which she was sprung. To my mother, Rosalie was the most elegant poison she had ever encountered and a jealousy arose in her blood as she lost moments with her beloved so that she may be with her husband; a man with no appreciation for true beauty. Being of sound mind and broken heart, my mother put a stop to her affair with Rosalie, severing her only tie to a world without pain.
Rosalie pleaded with her, begging her to leave Nathaniel so that they may be what Nathaniel wanted for himself and Rosalie, but my mother couldn't fathom breaking a mirror she had spent so many years putting back together. She thought of the thick cloud of judgment that would forever crane itself over her if she left her husband for someone with whom she has not been through real war with. In her mind, it was best for Nathaniel to have Rosalie so that at least her pride and image would be left untarnished.
"You gave her up for your pride. The one person who understood you," I scoff at my mother.
"She didn't know the first thing about me, Teagan."
"She knew more than dad! She knew more than me! We made you fucking miserable and you had a chance to be happy with someone who would've taken the time to love you. I may be young, but I'm not stupid enough to let an opportunity like that skate past me," I argue.
"Yet you gave up Ezekiel for what? Your pride?"
"This is different. Ezekiel never begged to stay with me, he didn't promise the world, he didn't fight for me. I wasn't what he wanted at all and you know that. You lied to everyone, including yourself because if you were alone, at least your image was untouched. Very typically of you," I confess.
"Well, if you're done cauterizing the wound I just reopened for you, perhaps we should talk about what's going to happen next," my mother replies.
"You don't have to tell me to not mention the body in our backyard. I'm pretty aware of what that'll mean if I do," I say snobbishly.
"You need to act normal, Teagan. Go back to school, focus on graduating, and call me if the police approach you again. Do not talk to Dr. Stentz. In fact, don't talk to anyone really. You're already a recluse, so no one will find that suspicious."
"I'm worried that this is familiar ground for you," I say.
"We all bury someone, one way or another. Mine was just literal."
From the porch to the sidewalk, I am already soaked from head-to-toe. My socks slosh inside of my shoes and I cross my arms over my chest to keep in some warmth. It's hard to imagine myself feeling anything but this deep dread that I am feeling in this moment since the universe keeps guiding me in this direction. I hadn't realized my father's place in my life until I no longer saw his face at breakfast or smelled his horrid cologne when I got home from school. It was the little things I didn't think I would ever miss that are tearing me apart seam-by- seam. Perhaps it was the little things that kept me from being an unwilling advocate in death's fucked up game.
The road ahead of me stretches out on the flatness of the small town of Marblehead. This one road is dazzling with freedom, even when the sun doesn't shine upon it. Trees with leaves of all colors bend over the sidewalks and into the street. When the breeze is just right, the trees shake their branches and nature rains upon the street no matter what time of year. Now, in this downpour, the trees sit there in a quiet shiver as their leaves cry with the sky.
I walk in silence, listening intently to the raindrops that hit like hurricanes against my ear drums. Adrenaline fuels through my body and all of my senses rip through their limits; the world inhales slowly around me. My knuckles are whitening with each passing moment.
Unlike anything or anyone else in my life, I have been able to withstand me, contain me, and calm me. Even my own mother cannot find the words to soothe the hurt, the actions to cease the pain; instead she hides behind forced gratitude, "cutesy" monnacers like "sweetie" and "honey," and the illusion that pain fades quicker when it is avoided altogether. More accurately, she hides behind the iron curtain of pride that seems to justify her wrongdoings.
Soft summers and hard winters. Between the trench and no man's land, I find a terrifying peace. There I am and at the same time I am not; this place is a strange mixture of misery and realization that my flaming veins or chilled mind will not change what has been ripped from me. Death's blanket, it keeps me cold on these rainy August nights.
My head is heavy with the war, slit open by dirty secrets, and filthy with thoughts so clouded that the forecast for my mental space spells nothing but a slight peek at the sun. Even with all this burden, I'm ultimately weakened by my emotions, my inability to heal from what happened and what I fear must happen in the future.
I presented myself strongly in front of my mother, but two people are dead because her and I would rather push our ugly down instead of let it see the light of day. My cheeks are salted by my tears, seared by the burning I feel within them. I cover my mouth, trapping the hastened gasps for air at bay as my chest expands beyond its bounds to house the flood. This overwhelming wave of emotion is my fault. I let it all build up, I pushed it all down until I got here, right fucking here, crying like the pain is brand new again. Was shoving it down supposed to help me peel the skin back and heal? All I can feel is the pain as I pick at my emotional scabs, waiting for myself to crack open.