Tina

I marched over to my mother at the table and I slammed my hand down onto the top of it. Everyone stopped laughing and her friends whipped their heads towards me, but I didn’t care what they were staring at. The only thing I could see was my mother and the smile that was slowly sliding off her face.

Her ungrateful, conniving, selfish little face.

I watched her look me up and down, clocking every single thing that was probably wrong with my outfit before her eyes raked back up to mine. I was bracing for it. The comment was inevitable. The comment about how the hell I could go out in public like this and how I should put myself together better.

And then, like clockwork, her lips peeled apart.

“How in the world can you possibly leave the house looking like that, Tina?” she asked.

“I’m not sure, how the hell could you leave the house with that smile on your face before dad’s body is cold in the morgue?” I asked.

Her face set itself into stone as she swallowed hard and I leaned my palms into the wooden top of the table. Here she was, with her friends and her wine, giggling and talking like she didn’t have a funeral she was planning. Like she didn’t have a husband she just lost. She was pawning all this shit off on a daughter who couldn’t fucking peel herself out of bed while she laughed with her besties at a table for lunch.

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.

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.