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Live?
Be happy?
Go home?
Where?
“You fucked me,” I whispered, shifting one arm out from under my head to trail my fingers over the soil on her grave, disgusted when the echo of my own hollow voice reverberated in my ears.
Clenching my eyes shut, I forced myself to remember the sight of her.
How she looked.
What she smelled like.
Her voice.
Her pain.
Her screams.
Sniffing, I reached up and wiped my face with the back of my hand before climbing to my feet.
“I’ll see ya soon, Mam.” A tear trickled down my cheek and I was surprised I could still feel. “Stay out of my head now, ya hear?”
Dusting off the soil and grass on my jeans, I inhaled a few steadying breaths before making my trek across the graveyard, not stopping until I was standing at his headstone.
One time.
All through rehab, I had vowed to myself that I would only do this once.
And then I was done.
I had to be.
The notion was the only thing that seemed to keep me sane in the early days.
My spite and bitterness had given me something to live for.
Without a word, I collected every candle, wreath, and bouquet of flowers his family had left for him and tossed them over the nearby wall.
“How does it feel, old man?” I asked, returning to his graveside and undoing the fly on my jeans. “To finally burn in hell?”
______________________
“Joey love.” She placed a hand on my shoulder, and it hurt. The movement. The feeling. Absorbing the contact. The fucked-up gentleness of her touch. “I got your text message.”
“I pissed on his grave.”
“Is that all?” With a heavy sigh, she put her handbag down on the grass and knelt at my mother’s grave beside me. “I’m impressed with your level of self-control. I wouldn’t have been able to contain myself.”
“Threw his flowers away, too,” I muttered. “It wasn’t enough.”
“No.” Sadness filled her voice. “And it probably never will be, love. At least, it won’t feel that way.”
“Thirty-eight,” I whispered, inclining my head to the small crucifix with my mother’s details engraved on it. “She was only a baby, Edel.”
“I know, love.”
