I try to protest—I don't want her to be exhausted, the state program at the Extension is both cheap and well regarded—but she shushes me into silence as if I were one of her young patients.
"I'm going to help you attend that fancy ass college," she says firmly. "And there's nothing you can do to stop me."
Chapter 2: Laird
"Hey man," says Deegan O'Neil, holding a silver flask. "Want some?"
"Christ," I say, trying to sound at least mildly scandalized. "Are you actually offering me a drink at my own mother's funeral?" Damn it, I keep forgetting and saying funeral. I can practically hear Mom's soft, cultured voice correcting me. It's not a funeral, sweetheart, it's a celebration of life.
Deegan winks and grins wolfishly. "I've got weed, too." I know he does. He got stoned before, during, and after last night's Swamp Bowl. Neither one of us actually played. We let the second string guys have their shot at glory.
Deegan waggles the flask again. I look at it and think about the hot, easy warmth it could give me. After a few pulls, I could pass through this insane nightmare of a day without even noticing all the sharp edges that will surely cut me. I shake my head. That's not how I'm going to play it. Not today.
"Thanks but no thanks," I say. "My head's already fuzzy enough."
"Have it your way, man." Deegan takes a long swallow from his flask and tucks it back into his jacket. His face pinks up quickly, then slowly reverts to its usual deep tan.
I look around for a small but curvy strawberry blonde wrapped in a white bandage dress, but I can't see her anywhere. Damn it again.
"Any idea where Ember went?" I ask.
Ember is my girlfriend. My beautiful, funny, untamed girlfriend with a heart-shaped ass that fits perfectly in my two palms. She left about half an hour ago to hit the little girls' room. Or so she said. She's a free spirit with the rare ability to immerse herself completely in the moment. The downside is that she's really impulsive and does a lot of stupid, inconsiderate shit.
Deegan pauses and then shakes his head. I wonder if he knows something I don't. I tell myself I'm being paranoid.
"Do you mind looking for her?" I ask.
"Not at all, man. I'm on it." His voice cracks with relief. As I watch him go, it occurs to me that he's really cleaned himself up for this event. His long hair is slicked back and secured in a discreet pony tail. He's wearing a suit that covers all his tattoos except the one that spells FEAR in Japanese kanji on his neck.
Formal events are totally not his scene, but I'm glad he came, and I'm grateful he didn't show up looking like a carnival sideshow.
I feel a light tap on my shoulder. It's Tricia, a short, plump woman in a black, gathered pantsuit that my mom would have called suburban chador. "Are you ready?" she asks. "Or do you need a little more time?"
I take a deep breath of cool, over-conditioned air and survey the crowd outside the industrial glass doors at the other end of the atrium.
My father's supposed to be with me, greeting all these random guests that Mom invited on one of her morphine highs. But, as usual, he's nowhere to be found. He left around ten for a business brunch with some guy who owns a startup software company in South Dakota. He said not to worry, that he'd meet me here before the memorial started.
As I expected, and dreaded, he's still a no-show five minutes after the memorial was scheduled to begin. Ever since my mom got sick—really sick, hospital sick—Dad has buried himself in his work and a series of barely legal girlfriends, each more vapid than the next. It was me, not him, who logged time at Mom's bedside, feeding her cherry-flavored ice chips. When I told her how sorry I was that Dad was being such an epic, gaping asshole, she smiled at me and took my hand. "Your father loves me in his own, imperfect way," she said. "He's just not strong, like we are."
Tricia taps my shoulder again, this time a bit more insistently. "Well? Would you like to wait for Mr. Conroy?"
"No, no," I mutter. "Let's do this thing."
Tricia says something in Spanish into her headset, and the doors open. A flood of people, mostly women wearing black and white dresses, converge on me, their heels click-click-clacking like hungry mandibles.
I scan the crowd and dull, heavy disappointment settles into my chest. Ember and Deegan aren't there.
/////////////////////////
My mother never cared much for tradition. And she always hated funerals. So she left instructions in her will that, in lieu of a memorial service, there would be a Black and White party in her posthumous honor at the Mangrove Center, a starkly post-modern conference venue where she liked to hold charity events.
She could only bring herself to work on the guest list when she was high on pain meds. For obvious reasons, it was heavy on friends and light on DNA. Dad hates his family—he calls them a bunch of whining parasites—and Mom was the last survivor of a tribe ravaged by cancer and bad luck. I try not to think too much about this last bit, and what it may bode for my own future.
Because Mom had a twisted sense of humor and a deep appreciation for camp, her final event is hilariously macabre. Before she died, she commissioned a full-sized sculpture of herself in ice and artificial snow. It's here today, suspended from the ceiling, and wearing a black-and-white, asymmetrical dress. Even slowly melting, she looks better than most of her friends.
I take a deep breath and try to ignore the tears gathering behind my eyes. My mother would have loved this crazy, swirling spectacle. Elegant people in black and white eat Beluga caviar on toasted Wonder Bread. Oh-so-flattering pictures of her greatest charitable triumphs flicker by on a twenty-foot high digital wall. Waiters in white shirts and specially made checkerboard pants ply the guests with cocktails made of champagne and stout beer. They work hard to make sure no glass remains empty for long.
So far, about ten people have offered me their drinks. I keep saying no. Tomorrow, I'll get shitfaced. Wasted. Incoherent. But today I'm going to suck it up and keep my shit together. I want to end this day as someone my mother would have been proud of.
To that end, I stay stalwart at my station, which is beside a giant computer monitor asking guests to make donations to one of several charities in my mother's name. At the hospital, she called it the ultimate charitable guilt trip, coughing out a long, wheezy laugh. My job is to record guests' pledges without breaking down into a sodden mess of blubbering grief. Easy, right?
I'm thanking a woman about my mother's age for donating to a local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving—and thinking horrid thoughts like why are you still here when my mother is ashes in the wind—when Tricia sneaks up behind me. She's holding an onyx tablet and stylus; her hunched posture makes me think of a vulture.
"Um, excuse me?" Her voice, full of guilt and foreboding, puts me immediately on my guard.
"Yes?"
She purses her lips and looks nervous. "Your father. I need to speak to him. Soon."
Of course, even today, everything comes back to Dad. My head buzzes with anger, and I will my voice to remain even. "Look, Tricia, I have no idea where my father is. Probably at a business meeting. I've tried calling him several times, as I'm sure you have, and he doesn't pick up. It's probably easier if you just ask me whatever it was you were going to ask him."
She shakes her head so her jowls wiggle. Her mask of compassion slips ever so slightly, revealing weary impatience. "I was going to have your father do this, but..." She pauses and then steels herself to continue. "I'm sorry to ask you this, but could you go through this list of expenses and approve them?"
She hands me the tablet, and I see it's a detailed invoice that catalogues everything down to the last slice of Wonder Bread—exactly the kind of thing my father doesn't give two shits about. If he were here, he'd probably say something like, "Get that fucking thing out of my face. I'm sure it's all fine. Just tell me where to sign." But he isn't here. It's just me. And I just hate the idea of making mistakes, especially today.
"OK, I'll do it." I handle the stylus gingerly, as if it
were a knife.
/////////////////////////
My mom's celebration of life, like all her parties, is taking forever to wind down. Mom—the ice sculpture, that is—is almost entirely melted. Stragglers are holed up everywhere. Some are the college-age sons and daughters of Mom's friends, getting hammered on free drinks. Others are middle-aged couples running down the clock on their babysitters. A few older women I recognize from Mom's various charitable committees may actually be remembering her and reminiscing about special moments from her life.
As I predicted, my father still hasn't showed. Asshole.
I want to tell Tricia to shut everything down. I need it to be over. Soon. But first I want to find Deegan and Ember. I leave the donation table satisfied that everyone who was going to bleed some green has already done so. Even from the grave, my mom is an ass-kicking fund raiser. Her guests have pledged more than five million dollars in her memory.
I walk quickly across the atrium, pass through the front doors, and emerge into a carefully landscaped parking lot. It's full of green islands, flowering shrubs, and quaint little benches. It's exactly the kind of place where Deegan and Ember would go to get discreetly fucked up. I see a cluster of flowering trees—something rare and tropical that I can't quite recognize—and a small cloud of smoke. I head towards it.
As I get closer, I see a blond man in a gray business suit with his arm around Ember. Deegan is standing off to the side, puffing away. His posture is visibly uncomfortable. Ember and the man—who is in his forties with a long, ropy build and the kind of chiseled face girls seem to love—make a striking, golden couple. She leans against him and giggles. He pulls her in for a playful embrace.
"Dad," I call to the man in the suit with his hands all over my girlfriend, "what the fuck are you doing out here? You missed the entire funeral."
"Laird," he says in the smooth, liquid voice that parts investors from their money and women from their clothing, "it was a celebration of life, not a funeral. Your mother hated funerals. You know that."
"I hate funerals, too," adds Ember, twisting her neck so she's gazing into his eyes. "How do we know death is so bad, anyway? Maybe it's just nature's way of setting the soul free to wander the universe."
Dad gives Ember a squeeze, and she rests her head on his shoulder, eyes closed. "Exactly," he says. "I'm confident Maureen would not have begrudged me some time with these wonderful young people."
Deegan looks at me and rolls his eyes. I know this sick-making tableau isn't his fault. I'm sure he tried to drag my dad and Ember out of this very secluded corner of the parking lot. But eighteen-year-old Deegan—tattooed bad boy wanted by half the girls in the senior class—is no match for my father.
I look at Dad and shake my head. "You should at least make appearance. C'mon," I say, walking as fast as I can back to the Mangrove Center.
Deegan hurries to keep up with me. His mouth is moving, but the buzzing in my head is all I can hear. I think he's murmuring something like, "Dude, I know the score for sure. I stayed with them the whole time. Nothing happened, I swear."
I groan inside. He means well, but Deegan just doesn't know Dad like I do.
/////////////////////////
It's almost midnight, and there's a party at Deegan's house, because life goes on, right?
Dad's on a plane to New York City. It's where he does a lot of business and where he keeps his townhouse-slash-fuck pad. After the memorial, I barely spent ten minutes with him. He cleared out the stragglers with a simple yet eloquent announcement and then excused himself to take an urgent business call. When I followed him outside, he put his call on mute, shook my hand, and told me to go home without him, that he'd be heading to the airport. Heartless fucker.
Now I'm driving Ember to Deegan's house. We're a study in hostile silence. She stares out the window, actively avoiding my gaze. I keep my eyes on the road, watching the mile markers tick by. I try to lose myself in the hypnotic sameness of the landscape—the waxy looking shrubs, the palms, the pastel houses. It doesn't work. My head is burning with anger. All I want is for Ember to answer a single question.
Why?
"Enough with the silent treatment. What the fuck were you doing with my dad today?" I ask, my voice tight and quiet. Ember ignores me for a few beats, and my hands grip the steering wheel harder and harder, until my knuckles are white stars. Finally, she turns to me with cold, defensive eyes.
"I went outside to get some air, OK? You know I've hated funerals ever since I saw Nana's open casket. I went into the parking lot to sneak a joint, and I just bumped into him. He was sad. Really broken up about your mother. He needed to talk to someone, so I talked to him, alright? I thought that's what you would have wanted."
The buzzing in my head gets louder, and my eyes sting and water. I want to tell her that what I'd wanted—what I'd really, really wanted—was for her to stay by my side at my mother's funeral or celebration or whatever the fuck it was.
Instead, I say this: "You know, he does this all the time. You'll hear from him in a few months, when you're about to turn eighteen. He'll take you out to dinner a couple of times and then fly you someplace cool and urban. Or maybe someplace warm and tropical. Whatever you want. You'll tell your parents you're going on college interviews. He'll fuck you senseless for a few days, ship you home, and send some kind of a courtesy gift—maybe a lavish bouquet of flowers or, if you're really good, those fucking Louboutins you're always drooling over. And then you'll never hear from him again."
Ember says nothing. Her face is a painted, opaque mask, and her eyes are trained on the horizon. I really should just shut up. But I don't. I take a long, deep breath and continue. "You know, he started doing this—fucking around with barely legal girls—when Mom got sick. She said it was his fear of death that drove him to it. I think he's just an asshole."
Ember still stares her zombie stare. She won't engage, won't argue. It's not too late for me to shut my mouth and cut my losses. I could still apologize and attribute my harsh words to grief. But the static in my head is deafening. My voice gets low and mean.
"Sometimes, girls he's been with show up at the house, looking for him. When they find him, he calls their parents to come get them. Then he gets a restraining order. If they show up a second time, our security guys call the police. I thought you were better than that, but I guess not."
Finally, her mask cracks and steams. She reacts with all the hot fury reflected in her name.
"I can't believe you think I would—how exactly did you put it?—fuck your father. I'm your girlfriend. Or, at least, I was your girlfriend. You keep telling me what a bad guy you're father is, but I think you're the sick one."
Now it's my turn to stare out the window. I watch the road signs whip by. This is probably the worst day of my life.
Ember clutches at my arm. Her long nails dig into my flesh. "Why don't you pull over and let me out of this fucking car! I'll walk to Deegan's party! Just let me out!"
We're driving past a gator-infested culvert. There's no way I'm going to let her out here to stumble around in the dark. "That's ridiculous! You're wearing high heels. You can barely walk in them. I'll let you out when we get to the party. We're practically there."
Ember yells in my ear. "I said let me out now!" She reaches over and grabs the steering wheel, pulling it to the right. "Now! Now! Now!"
We struggle, and the car swerves. I'm so focused on removing her hands from the steering wheel without hurting her that I don't notice the stop sign, or the white Ford Escape, until it's too late.
Chapter 3: Amity
I am dreaming of my future, perfect life at Adams college. My stammer and limp are magically gone. I have witty conversations with pretty people in cozy cafés. The air is crisp, dry, and tasteless—the polar opposite of central Floridian air. And there is foliage. Lots of foliage.
"Amity, wake up, honey! Wake up!"
I feel a rough hand on my shoulder and inhale the minty sour scent of beer imperfectly masked
by mouthwash. It's Dad. I roll over, open my eyes, and push myself into a sitting position. Dad looks awful: unshaven, red-eyed, and stoop-shouldered. He's wearing a white T-shirt decorated with condiment stains.
"What's up, Dad?" I ask warily.
"It's your mother. She didn't come home last night." His lips quiver. He's close to crying. He's also obviously drunk.
"Are you sure she's not working an extra shift at the hospital?" Sometimes Mom will work around the clock, napping between shifts. I think of her promise to help me pay for college and feel a twinge of guilt.
"Yes, honey. She told me this morning she was working a double. She said she'd be home by eleven at the latest."
I ask the next obvious question. "Did you call or text her?"
"Yes. She's not picking up or texting back."
I frown. Mom is typically ultra-responsible. She has to be when she's at work—people could actually die if she screws up—and I guess it just bleeds over into the rest of her life. Dad looks distraught. Tears are gathering in the corners of his eyes.
"I'm sure there's a good reason," I say, trying to convince myself as well as my dad. "She could have a critical case. Maybe she's monitoring a child in a long, complex surgery."
Dad shakes his head and locks his droopy brown eyes onto mine. He's about to burst into loud, drunken sobs. "Can I ask you something?" His voice is tremulous.
"Sure."
"Is your mother having an affair?" When I let the question dangle in mid-air, he rushes to add, "If you say yes, I'm not going to do anything crazy. I just need to know, OK?"
I nod slightly and think over what he just asked. My gut reaction is to say no in the strongest possible terms. But then I remember my freshman year of high school, when Dad was getting blackout drunk, and he and Mom were fighting all the time. Mom took Xanax like they were candy. They were legitimate—her doctor prescribed them for stress and she never took them at work—but she told me later she'd had a problem. When I reacted with shock and disbelief—Mom was always the stable one—she said, "Everyone has problems. It's just that some people are better at hiding them than others."
Amends: A Love Story Page 2
