Eva
I needed coffee. Lots of it.
But the moment I entered my kitchen, the sour stench of spilled wine filled my nostrils and my stomach roiled. I fought back the urge to heave . . . barely . . . and stepped over the puddle of wine on my hardwood floor. Everything came flooding back.
Kevin.
Why did he have to call last night? Why couldn’t he just stay . . . gone?
I wasn’t pining over him or wishing that he was still warming my bed at night like I should have. We had dated for six months, which was a record for me, and he was nice. Like boy next door, hold the door open for you, nice. He was definitely handsome with his perfectly trimmed hair and megawatt smile. Women had looked at him when we had gone out to dinner or to the bar, even with me on his arm. And because he was nice his eyes had never drifted, and he had been proud to tell people that I was his girlfriend.
Why wasn’t Kevin enough? Why couldn’t I have just let those demons of mine stay hidden? They had no business coming out to play. Especially with a straight-laced Boy Scout like Kevin. I couldn’t get the image of Kevin’s face out of my head. The look of disgust he had flashed when I had broken down last month and told him that I wanted more in the bedroom would forever be burned into my brain. I probably should have felt ashamed for asking if we could be more adventurous, if we could graduate from vanilla sex and heat things up a little, but in all honesty I didn’t, and that’s how I knew that our relationship was over.
That was what I had told him again last night when he called. I could tell that he had been drinking and I felt kind of bad that he had become a victim of drunk dialing. Since he had never done that before, I had cut him some slack and let him talk and slur his words. That was until he had started to accuse me of cheating on him while we were together. I didn’t dignify that with a response because I didn’t have to. I never cheated. But it was impossible for me to remain silent when his rambling had taken a turn, and he had told me that I must have been abused as a child to want what I had asked of him. It was then I had spit venom into the phone and told him never to contact me again. Afterward, I downed a bottle of wine by myself, something I never did, hence the horrendous hangover that I was currently suffering from and had thought about my shitty ass love life.
I had been a few sips into my last goblet of wine when I realized that my night of self-pity needed to come to an end. Kevin wasn’t to blame. He wasn’t the reason why I had been sitting on my kitchen floor, getting drunk on wine the night before Thanksgiving. He wasn’t the reason why I could never have a normal relationship with a man. There were two people to blame for that, and good ol’ boy Kevin wasn’t one of them. Pissed, I had winged that goblet across the kitchen and had watched it shatter, spraying red wine everywhere. I had gone to bed after my tantrum, not giving two shits about the mess.
Until now.
I wadded up handfuls of paper towels and sopped up the evidence of my little freakout and tossed them into the trashcan. I then made myself a pot of coffee and threw back a few Advil. I was waiting for my coffee to brew when my cell phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. With my head in my hand, I reached for it and looked at the incoming number. I didn’t recognize it, but it was a local call. It could be someone from work. Maybe one of my colleagues from the firm was calling me from a landline since everyone was off today due to the holiday. Who else would be calling me? I didn’t have any family, none which I spoke to anyway, and my best friend, Cassie, had just left for Alaska last night. I was supposed to be heading to her house for Thanksgiving dinner later this evening, but yesterday morning she had called and told me that Alaska’s sea life needed her. Apparently, some drunk captain rammed his ship into an oil tanker off the northern coast of Alaska, causing one of the worst oil spills in history. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t get to see Cassie, but I understood. Although she was an environmental attorney by day, rolling up her sleeves, getting her hands dirty and volunteering her time to help those in need was her true passion.
Someone from work needed me. That had to be it.
“Hello?”
“Hi, I was wondering if I could speak to Evelyn Burke?”
I almost dropped the phone, and I felt the bile rise in my throat. Just the sound of my full name made my skin crawl. “Who is this?”
“Um . . . my name is David Curran. I’m your mother’s husband. We were married a little over a year ago.”
“Husband?” I knew I had heard him correctly, but I had to fill the silence while the shock set in. My mother had remarried? Someone had married Marcia Burke voluntarily . . . again?
“Yes, we sent you an invitation to the wedding, but it got sent back to us. I had asked Marcia to call or email you to see if you would come but she said that she didn’t want to bother you anymore.” That didn’t sound like my mother. To give up like that . . . or be concerned that she was being a bother to her only child. No, something was wrong.
“David, why are you calling me?”
“Well . . . I . . . um . . . was hoping you would join us for Thanksgiving dinner. I know it’s short notice, but I would really like it if you could come.”
“She doesn’t know you’re calling me. Does she?”
“No, she has no idea.” David sighed.
“David, I don’t think me coming to dinner is a good idea. We haven’t seen each other in . . .”
“Ten years,” David said, cutting me off.
“So, you know? You know why I left and never looked back?”
“Yes, and she also told me how it was all her fault, that you had every right to shut her out of your life.”
“Then why are you calling?” I didn’t mean to sound like a bitch, but if David knew everything, then he would also know that there wasn’t a chance in hell I would come home for the holidays . . . unless . . .
“Your mother has cancer, Evelyn. The doctors think they caught it early, but they won’t know for sure until they get in there. She’s scheduled for surgery this weekend.”
Where was the wave of relief I expected to encounter? Why hadn’t that weight been lifted off my chest the minute I heard that my mother, that monster I had endured throughout my childhood and teenage years, had been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease?
“She’s scared, Evelyn. I think she would very much like to see you. She talks about you often, says how proud she is of her daughter, the successful attorney from Philadelphia. I’ve invited my two sons, who are around your age, so it wouldn’t just be the three of us staring at each other at the dinner table.”
Proud? My mother would never say that about me. Disgusted, appalled, disappointed. Those were the feelings my existence spawned in her. Not pride.
“You know my mother hates surprises.” And me.
“Yes, I’m aware, and that’s why I would be spending the next few hours prepping her for your arrival. She’ll be a basketcase, but it will be worth it.” David seemed like a nice guy. Or he was a very foolish one. Why else would he risk unleashing my mother’s wrath by inviting me?
“David, I appreciate the invite and what you’re trying to do. But it’s best we leave well enough alone. I don’t know exactly what she told you . . .”
“I know about Allen Jacobs.”
This time I really did throw up in my mouth a little. I hadn’t heard that bastard’s name in nearly a decade, and I just found out the hard way that ten years wasn’t nearly enough time to erase the man who still came to me in my nightmares. “Then you will understand why I can’t come for dinner.”
“She’s changed, Evelyn. I wouldn’t have married the woman she once was, the woman you knew growing up.” David sighed again. “She’s my wife, Evelyn, and she’s sick. And I know it would mean the world to her . . . and me . . . a guy you never met, if you would come.”
A leopard can’t change its spots.
There was no way Marcia Burke . . . Curran . . . could have morphed into something resembling a human being with a heart. I must have been lost in my own thoughts for awhile because David cleared his throat and said, “I’ll text you our address if you do decide to come. Dinner is at five.”
“David, I . . .”
“Evelyn, thanks for not hanging up on me. You had every right to. Hopefully, I’ll see you soon.” The call ended before I could tell him goodbye, or thanks, or kiss my ass. David’s text came through a few seconds later and I read the address.
What the hell? If my mother lived at that address, then she would have had left her beloved church and the pastor she had practically worshiped because David’s address was just thirty minutes northwest of the city, not the two-hour drive to my hometown in New Jersey. This didn’t make sense.
I was so tempted to call Cassie and have someone share in my disbelief. She knew about my past, how I felt about my mother. I had even told her about Allen Jacobs. That was how much I trusted Cassie Walsh. But I couldn’t bother her with my problems, not when she was thousands of miles away, probably nursing some poor baby seal back to health.
Frustrated, I went to see if the coffee had finished brewing, but to my horror I was met with a smoking coffee machine and a strange burnt plastic smell. This was not the morning for my coffee machine to blow the fuck up. Pissed off, I took a quick shower, changed into workout clothes though I had no intention of exercising, and headed to Saxby’s. I had noticed yesterday while I was there for my midafternoon caffeine fix that my favorite coffee house would be open on Thanksgiving. It was just a few blocks away, but it still gave me plenty of time to think about David’s phone call . . . about the woman I had tried to forget existed, the woman I couldn’t forgive, even if she did have cancer.
I was so far in my head when my thoughts were jarred by the sound of church bells. For some reason, I stopped instead of crossing the street to retrieve my much-needed cup of coffee and peered at St. Bede’s Catholic Church. It was a beautiful stone building with the most gorgeous stained glass windows I had ever seen. I had passed this church dozens of times, and its beauty never ceased to amaze me. But I hadn’t stepped foot into it, or any church for that matter, in years. And I was not ashamed of that fact.
The bells continued to chime when I noticed the Mass and confession schedules posted to the right of the large wooden double doors. I glanced at my phone and saw that confessions were going on at that very moment. I wondered if anyone saw me standing there frozen on the sidewalk, staring at a building that triggered conflicting emotions, and thought that there was something wrong with me. My feet wouldn’t move. It was as if my New Balance sneakers were superglued to the concrete. Even the familiar smell of coffee drifting over from Saxby’s across the street did not entice me. And then I felt one leg move and then the other . . . and the scent of coffee was replaced with the familiar blend of burning candles and incense.