Tina

I had no idea where my mother was. It was the day before the funeral, I was stuck next to the phone fielding last-minute phone calls for funeral plans, and she was nowhere to be found. Bernie was now starting to worry-- which never happened in this household-- and every time I tried to step away from the phone it would ring again.

“Can we unplug that damn thing!?” I asked.

“Would you like me to take the calls, Miss Tina?” Bernie asked.

“Yes. Just confirm whatever they’re saying on the other end. I’ve gotta go track down my mother,” I said.

“Have you tried her cell phone?” Bernie asked as the phone rang.

“I’m about to go try it now. That’s gonna be the caterer. Make sure there aren’t any peanuts in anything. Spencer has an allergy,” I said.

“Anything else?” Bernie asked.

“Two separate dozen long-stemmed white and yellows roses.”

“Got it, Miss. Now, go find that mother of yours,” he said.

“Do you have any idea where she might be?” Kevin asked.

“There’s only one place she could he if she’s safe. My family has a cabin up north. We don’t use it much, it was mostly for my father to retreat if home became too much. You know, living with the constant fighting that was me and Mom.”

“I can only imagine,” Kevin said. “You know where it is?”

“By heart. But, it’s gonna take us a couple hours to get up there. You don’t have to go if-”

“You’re not going alone. Come on, we can pick up food on the way there,” he said.

My hands trembled in my lap as the city gave way to nature. The sun was blanketing everything in a painted hue of yellow. The trees were alive and breathing, soaking in the sun while breathing out the beauty of their existence. The busy strip malls gave way to rolling hills and pastures. It was a side of New York I rarely ever saw, and I soon remembered why I adored the few trips I had taken to the cabin.

I saw a doe and her children standing on the side of the highway as we blazed by. The leaves were blowing in the crisp wind as Kevin fled down the highway, and I leaned my head against the window and sighed. The earth seemed so alive. The hills seemed to sing and the trees looked as if they were breathing. The animals were chattering with one another and birds were flying overhead in droves.

This was my father’s favorite drive to make, and he always took the long way so we could relish it.

I’d made this trip three times with my father when I was growing up, and each time was uniquely different. The first, however, will always be the fondest to me. My mom and I had gotten into a massive argument about a boy I was dating when I was fourteen. She wanted me to come clean about having sex with him after she caught us kissing, and my father told me to pack my things. It was the only time I’d ever witnessed my father calling her a ‘terrible mother’, and I could remember the fiery look in her eye as if it had happened just yesterday.

My mother was never really the same after that fight, I don’t think.

It was fall and the air was cool. The leaves were changing and the highway was lined with the likes of reds and yellows and browns. The leaves crunched underneath the tires of the car as we rode up to the cabin, and we spent the entity of my spring break sitting by the fire, reading, and talking about the boy I was dating.

I never did have the guts to ask him why he called mom a ‘terrible mother’, though.

“You okay over there, Tina? Any turns I should be making?” Kevin asked.

“Not for another twenty or so miles. Just stay on this highway.”

It was an easy drive, but an easy drive meant I had time to think. Time to think about how the earth seemed to continue turning even though my world had come to a screeching halt. Time to think about the life the earth was breathing while my father was cooling in a morgue. Time to think about what the hell I was going to do with my father’s company.

I’d have to train Maddie to keep running mine so I could move back home and take it over. At least for now.

I kept directing Kevin towards the cabin and was instantly filled with relief when I saw my mother’s car in the driveway. For the massive home I grew up in, the log cabin really wasn’t that impressive. It was an average sized home-- three bedrooms and two baths with a half bath. We didn’t really upkeep the grass seeing as it sat back off the main road a couple miles, and the dense foliage kept the sun off the home for the most part. When you take into account what my parents could’ve afforded, it struck people as odd that my father would own something so secretive and quaint.

But, what they didn’t know was that the opulence we lived in was a direct result of my mother. My father had always been frugal, never wanting to boast of his wealth. It was my mother who was always doing that for him.

I climbed out of the car while Kevin threw it in park and slowly walked towards the porch. I could see movement behind the curtains, a shadow fluttering behind the scenes, and I braced myself for the inevitable anger that would descend when Mom realized I was here. If there was one thing she hated, it was people coming to look for her whenever she took time to herself.

But, the funeral was tomorrow, and with the way things were going I wasn’t quite sure if she would show.

I slowly opened the front door to the cabin as it silently swung inwards, and the sight I laid my eyes upon was one I would never forget. My mother-- the stubborn, icy, strong-willed fighter with rules that never wavered and a smile that was never seen-- was hunched over one of my father’s pajama tops. She was pressing it to her face as her shoulders shook with her sobs, and in that very moment I saw my mother for who she really was.

A grieving widow who longed for the warmth of her husband.

I felt Kevin walk up behind me. I could feel his curiosity getting the better of him before his breathing stopped altogether, and I knew in that very moment he was just as shocked as I was. I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I wanted to slowly back out of the house and give her space. The space she’d given me.

That’s what she had been doing when I woke up alone and ate breakfast alone. That’s what she was doing when she talked to me through the door but never opened it to embrace me in a hug.

She was giving me time to process and to emote. To cope the way I felt I needed to before we had to pull up our big girl panties and settle his estate.

And here I was, barging in on her during the moments she needed to herself.

“Mom?” I asked.

She sniffled hard before she wiped her nose, but she didn’t turn to look back at me. Her shoulders stopped moving and her sobs stopped echoing out into the log home, but she didn’t make a move to look over her shoulder.

“What’re you doing here, Tina?” she asked.

“Stop it, Mom,” I said as I walked into the house.

“I give you all the peace and quiet you could ever be afforded to process the death of your father, but you can’t even give me a few days to myself after planning his own funeral to think,” she said.

I walked towards my mother while she continued to talk. She told me how selfish I was and how I needed to turn around and walk away. She told me she’d be there for the funeral and how it was preposterous to think she’d be anywhere else. She raised her voice and leapt to her feet when she found me at her side, and my eyes connected with hers the moment that word flew from her lips.

“You ungrateful little child. I give you the world and all you can do is-”

In that very moment, I threw my arms around her. I locked them behind her back while she struggled to get out of my grasp, and I slowly began to understand my mother a bit more. We would always be different and she would never be perfect, but in this very moment we had one very big thing in common.

We were grieving over the loss of the same man.

“I’m here, Mom. You don’t have to do this alone,” I said.

She struggled against me, pulling and thrashing as tears barreled down her face. I could feel the weight she had lost underneath her baggy clothes as I held her closer to me. I could feel the loss she was physically experiencing over my father’s death and I closed my eyes so I could memorize her.

Memorize her in this very moment if I ever dared to call her an ice queen again.

Then, after a few minutes of struggling, my mother collapsed into my arms. Her head fell to my shoulder and her tears soaked through my clothes. I slowly moved us to the couch before Kevin helped me sit her down, and I pulled her as closely into the crook of my body as I could possibly get her.

“I can’t bury him, Tina,” she sobbed. “I-... I can’t watch them do that.”

“You have to, Mom. It’s the only way you’re gonna get any kind of closure,” I said.

“I can’t,” she said desperately.

“I’ll be there with you. We’ll both be there-- Kevin and I. And Spencer and Maddie. And Brit and Brady. They’re all here, and we’re all going to be there to do it together,” I said.

“I’m not strong enough to do this for him,” she said, sniffling. “God didn’t put me on this earth equipped to do this. I was supposed to go before him. I wasn’t supposed to live a single day of my life without that man.”

My eyes flickered up to Kevin and for a split second, I felt like I knew what she was talking about. Kevin was pushing my mother’s snot-stained hair back behind her ear, but I was too busy studying his face. A face I’d come to know over the past decade and a half. A face I’d looked at many mornings after enjoying nights of endless passion. A face I’d come to trust with the most intimate parts of my life.

And then, that face looked up at me.

“We’ll stay here tonight,” he said. “And then we’ll all go together to the funeral in the morning.”

My mother sat up and wiped at her nose before she settled back into the couch. Her hand came to her head, no doubt nursing a wicked headache from the sobbing she’d just endured.

“I don’t even have clothes here for the funeral,” my mother said.

“I’m sure we can find something in this closet of yours up here. I think you forget about the entire wardrobe you’ve got in that room upstairs,” I said. “I could find something to wear from that, and I’m sure dad’s got something here Kevin can wear.”

“Oh, no no. I’ll go back and change,” Kevin said.

“I think you’d look good in one of Michael’s suits, to be honest. You could pick one out and take it with you. I’m sure he’d want you to have it,” mom said.

“I couldn’t possibly do that, Mrs. Theresa,” he said.

“You can and you will. Out of all the things Michael ever said about you over the years, the thing he harped on the most was your height. He rarely encountered men who could look him in the eyes. He enjoyed that about you.”

“He did?” Kevin asked.

“He really did,” mom said.

“Mrs. Theresa-”

I could tell what was coming. I knew the dinner had flown to the forefront of Kevin’s mind. After years and years and years of growing up and making mistakes, that just seemed to be one he couldn’t let go of. It was one dinner with my parents he was invited to he forgot about. So what? He was studying in his hotel room, for crying out loud. You can’t fault a student for forgetting a dinner because they have to study.

“I need to tell you-”

“Kevin, you really need to let that dinner go,” mom said. “If you really want to, we can talk about it at a later date. I swear, you’ve been carrying around that memory more than any of us have. Give yourself permission to be human.”

“To be honest, Mrs. Theresa, I thought that’s why you hated me,” he said.

“No, sweetheart. I hated you because you were with my daughter. That’s a mother’s job, to criticize every man that walks through that door on her arm.”

“The last time I saw you, you called me a classless animal,” he said.

“I knew you were feeling my daughter up underneath that table cloth, Kevin. I was young once, you know. I know those tricks. Michael and I pulled them many times in front of his parents just to see what we could get away with.”

I laughed harder than I’d ever laughed in my life as Kevin’s eyes grew wide. His jaw unhinged while I wrapped my arms around my stomach while the memory came wafting back. That’s exactly what he had been doing. He’d been trying to get me to fuck up the conversation just for shits and giggles while those fingertips of his danced up my thigh.

Holy hell, my mother knew about my sex life.

“Would you like me to start a fire, Mom? I think we could all use a strong drink after that revelation,” I said.

“Yes. Fuck. A drink would be nice,” Kevin said.

“He adored you, Kevin. He really did. Take one of his suits. Any one of them. They’ll simply be donated anyway,” mom said.

“I’ll try some on in the morning,” he said.

“Tina? You want to choose the wine, honey?” mom asked.

“Is that code for ‘can you open it and pour it, too’?” I asked.

“Possibly. The corkscrew should be on top of the fridge.”

I poured us all a very tall glass of wine while Kevin stoked up a fire. It was going to be a long night of talking, that much was for sure. But, I had a feeling that-- when this was all said and done-- I’d emerge with a new outlook of my mother I never expected to have.

I just hoped we could all afford each other the same luxury before the night was over.