1
You shouldn’t have to open the door when your husband is dead.
You shouldn’t have to put on clothes, brush your teeth, wash your face.
You shouldn’t have to breathe when your husband is dead.
But the world keeps spinning, despite it feeling like yours has imploded. Life goes on and all that.
When you have two heartbroken, confused, and hurting boys, you have to do all of those things. You have to pretend you don’t want to swallow a handful of pills with a vodka chaser and just escape the bone-wrenching pain. You have to be strong for those boys. Tie their ties, smooth their hair, and stand beside them as their father is buried. Then you have to smile at all their friends’ parents, teachers, all the people who mean well but who you really want to punch in the face.
You can’t go punching your teenage son’s English teacher at his father’s funeral. It’s a mother’s responsibility, I guess, not to pile on trauma to your sons who are already going to need a boatload of therapy.
So I didn’t do any of those things.
I held it together pretty well, if I do say so myself, apart from drinking myself into a stupor every damn night. But that was okay, because my kids were asleep then and my sister was staying with me so if there was a fire or something, she’d wake up and evacuate the house. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t let me die of smoke inhalation.
Nothing was perfect.
Life was abjectly fucking miserable.
But I still had to open the door.
Since I did that, I could give into some of my baser instincts.
“Nope,” I said, crossing my arms and refusing to take the casserole dish being shoved at me like some kind of grief salve.
Why the fuck did people think that casseroles were appropriate to give a grieving widow? Like, sorrow for your devastating loss, here’s some shitty chicken dish.
“Excuse me?” the blonde in Lululemon and a Fitbit asked me, Botoxed face scrunched up as much as it could be.
I had missed my latest Botox appointment so I could narrow my eyes at Lorna or Lexie or whatever the fuck this twat’s name was.
“I said no,” I repeated, slower, just in case her breast implants had leaked into her bloodstream and her brain. “I don’t want another casserole.”
She smiled uncertainly, still holding the glass tray outstretched. Its smell was beginning to waft through the cover and I couldn’t decide whether it smelled like bad Chinese food or something a Polish woman might make out of cabbage and fucking Brussel sprouts. Whatever it was, I was not bringing it into my house. Especially with nowhere to put it, since my fridge and freezer was exploding with fucking casseroles.
“But it’s made with tuna and flax,” she said. “It’s good for you.”
“Ah, it’s good for me,” I repeated, nodding. “So not only do I have to open the door when I was really enjoying the one fucking day I have to be depressed in my house, but I have to pretend to like you and the good for me casserole you’re holding out because, what?”
I didn’t wait for her to answer, but by the way she was opening and closing her mouth like a fish, she wasn’t going to say anything of value.
“Because that’s what we do in a civilized society, right?” I continued, gripping the door for dear life. “You come to the widow’s house without a single idea how to approach the subject of death, and you don’t really want to delve into it. No one really wants to. But you also want to make sure you seem kind, like you’re doing something for the widow. You want to help out your conscience. So you make a casserole and think it’s appropriate to walk over here with it in lieu of anything actually meaningful. And I’m socially obligated to take it, right?” Another pause. She was just staring at me now. “Wrong.”
Then I slammed the door in her face.
My head hit the wood with a low thud and I closed my eyes. Tried to breathe through the fury bubbling up from my very core. It was all I could do these days not to put my fist through a window or hit a biker that veered into my lane without signaling.
That’s all I was these days, a giant sack of poisonous fury—simmering, bubbling up, and spitting at people like the good intentioned neighbor. She wasn’t a bad person, despite the fact she wore Lily Pulitzer as formal wear.
I was the bad person because I couldn’t hold on to social graces in the midst of my anger and sorrow. Not that I let the latter hit. That’s what the anger was for. That’s what kept me going. It was much easier to be mad at the Lululemon moms bearing casseroles than it was to be grief stricken over the fact I’d just buried my husband and my boys no longer had a father.
Yes, that was much easier.
“Mom?”
I jerked at the word like every mother did. Stood at attention. Stopped acting like a flawed human with anger issues. Put on my mom face.
I tried my best, but my oldest, Ryder, was far too emotionally smart for his age and gender. Most of the time I was proud of us for raising him so well, but right now, I wished for the surly, selfish sixteen-year-old he was supposed to be. The probing softness in his gaze and voice could possibly tip me over the edge.
“I was just checking the door for termites,” I said, trying my best to sound normal. What did normal sound like with David’s side of the bed empty? With his toothbrush sitting next to mine but never to be used again? With him rotting in a fucking coffin while I walked around topside?
Ryder raised his brows, obviously not believing me. But he was going to cut me a break because that’s the kind of kid he was.
“Termites,” he repeated.
I nodded.
“Ah, well ... as you were. But you know, termites aren’t going to eat away at anything, Mom. Our home is solid. I’ll make sure of it.”
He smiled, tried to keep his tone light, teasing. My beautiful boy. He was getting good at that. Pretending he wasn’t bleeding inside. Broken. Grieving for a father that would never again walk down the stairs he was standing on.
He was getting good at concealing his broken heart.
Better than me.
And it terrified me.
One Year Later
“What’s for dinner, Mom?” Jax asked me.
He was wearing a tuxedo.
“What do you feel like, 007?” I asked, grinning at him the best I could. It wasn’t the Botox stopping me, it was the world-crushing sorrow that made it impossible to stretch my features into anything even resembling happiness. Even though I knew better than anyone that happiness was just a farce for stupid people yet to experience anything truly horrible.
“I’m not 007. I’m Rick Blaine,” he said, furrowing his little brows in cultured disgust.
I nodded as if such a thing were obvious. “Casablanca, of course. A true classic.”
That was my son. Lover of classic movies. No Looney Tunes, Toy Story, or whatever the fuck kids watched these days. He was into The Maltese Falcon, It’s a Wonderful Life, Baby Face.
Before our world imploded last year, he’d watched them with his father. Quoted them regularly. It was their thing. But it was after the debris cleared that he started personifying such characters. Suits. Hats. Canes.
About two months after. Everything is categorized to before and after these days.
My mother-in-law thought he needed a therapist. Because, of course, old money didn’t like anyone conveying grief in such outlandish ways. In fact, you did not convey grief at all. You cried delicately at the funeral. You let all the well-wishers regurgitate empty sorrowful lines. Then you wore black for a year or so, never shed another tear, and only mentioned your loss in a cold, distant tone.