24
BRANDON
A fter casting a glance over the people filling the den, I turn my eyes to my mom. “Have you seen her?” My mom’s tear-filled eyes lift from the potato salad she’s spooning into a dish that’s so overloaded, several chunks of potato and egg sit on the glistening counter of the mega kitchen in the mansion her husband bought with money I’m certain isn’t clean. Unlike my father, her life hasn’t simply continued since Joey’s death. She only crawled out of bed today to attend his funeral and cater his wake. Once it’s all said and done, I’m reasonably sure she’ll crawl straight back beneath the sheets. She’s as lost as we all are. No one saw this coming.
My mom’s voice is as faint as a whisper when she says, “Give her time, BJ. We’re struggling, so I can imagine how hard this is for Melody.”
“That’s why she needs to let me in. We should be leaning on each other, not pulling away.” I tighten my jaw when my words crack. “I saw her standing at the back of the group, but she acted like she couldn’t see my request for her to join us.”
A notion I hadn’t considered enters my mind when my mom says, “She’s angry, BJ. Not at you but at the fact she lost her father all over again. Joey kept his memory alive. He kept everything…” I can’t understand a thing she says through the gut-wrenching sob ripping from her throat. “She’ll come back… we’ve just got to give her time.”
“I don’t know if I can. I’m struggling without her.” That killed me to admit, but I am. I can’t wrap my head around anything that has happened the last week. It feels like I hit the peak of the rollercoaster, and I’ve been screaming through a terrifying hairpin ever since. This isn’t the life I signed up for, none of it is, but it would be a shit-ton easier to wade through the heartache if I had Melody at my side.
“BJ…” Realizing no amount of words will fix this, my mom wraps her arms around me and hugs me tight. Her tears wet my dress shirt, and they encourage mine to flow.
We stay huddled together in the middle of the kitchen for several long minutes, only breaking when my father reminds us that only the good die young. “Come on, Barb. Pull it together. We’ve got hungry guests waiting.”
A little ray of sunshine breaks through the heartbreak clouding me when my mom signs for him to fuck off. Because he never took the time to learn how to communicate with Melody, he has no clue what her gesture means, and how impacting it is for me. Joey’s death has floored us, but like all true heartache, we’ll use the grief to come out the other side stronger. I just need Melody to give me the chance to assure her of this.
Annoyed about our silent but highly visible laughter, my dad grumbles under his breath before he returns to his ‘waiting guests.’ The swinging door separating the kitchen from the living areas of the house has barely stopped swinging when our voiceless laughter turns boisterous.
“He’s such a moody old bastard. God, why couldn’t I have seen it years ago?”
I bump my mom with my hip. “Because you had to wait for Joey and me to show up first.”
A big inhalation lifts her chest. “That’s true,” she murmurs before squeezing my hand in hers. “You were both too wise for your age, and thankfully took after my side of the family.”
She laughs at my agreeing nod before guilt for being happy smacks into her. It snaps her mouth shut and glosses her eyes with sadness instead of happiness. I’m feeling guilty too, but I’m aware she needs to smile as much as she needs to cry, so it doesn’t affect me as diversely. Grief is a funny thing, and it has many stages. Laughter is one of them.
After several long seconds staring out at space, my mom’s focus shifts back to feeding the two hundred plus people who traveled from near and far to bid farewell to Joey. Her ashen face whitens even more when she notices how much potato salad she has wasted. She’s on the board of many charities endeavoring to feed the hungry children of the world, so she hates unnecessary wastage.
When she moves to the sink for a cloth, I enclose my hand over hers. “Leave it. I’ll clean it up.”
“Are you sure?” Her watering eyes bounce between mine when I nod. “You’ve always been a good boy, BJ. You and Joey were such good kids.”
When her voice cracks during her last sentence, I pull her into my chest to hug her as tightly as she did to me only five minutes ago. “I won’t stop until I find out what happened to him, Mom. I swear to you, I won’t.”
“Oh, honey, he committed suicide. There’s nothing for you to find out.”
The unmovable grief in her voice pricks my eyes with fresh tears. “I don’t believe that, Mom, and neither do you. You know Joey wouldn’t do this. He’d never hurt you like this.”
She doesn’t reply, but her silence speaks volumes. She knows as well as I do that there’s more to this than we know. I’ve just got to stop putting my search on the backburner.
“Why don’t you head up to bed? I’ll get everyone fed, then come check on you once they’ve left.”
Her eyes twinkle with thanks before she brushes her lips against my cheek. I hear her murmur how Joey and I were such good kids before she disappears down the long hallway that will take her to the master suite. Once she’s out of eyesight, I gather up a bowl of potato salad and a bag of bread rolls then move into the den where Joey’s wake is being held.
His true friends are huddled around the coffee table sharing jokes and looking lost. Our family members who never really knew him are keeping Phoenix occupied, and my father is in the corner of the room, smoking a cigar and drinking gin like his son didn’t just end his life. He’s mourning, the groove that hasn’t smoothed between his brows the past five days reflect this, but he isn’t mourning like a normal father would. He’s not reminiscing or telling stories about when Joey was a kid as he wouldn’t know any to share.
Instead, he talks about himself and his aspiration for Congress, then glares at me over his crystal glass when I slam down the bowl of potato salad onto the dining table before tossing the bread rolls into his chest. “Lunch is served!”
I can see in his eyes that he’s dying to bite at the bait I’m throwing out, but since there are men in this room more influential than him, he keeps his frustration on the down-low. “I hope everyone’s on the same liquid diet as me.”
His fat, pompous friends laugh at his joke. I glare at him. He truly sickens me.
When Aunt Rhonda and Maree fill the pretentiously large twenty-seater dining table with the food I forgot, my father orders me out of the room without a word spilling from his lips. He doesn’t care if I haven’t eaten in days. He just wants me gone.
Happy to use his dismissal to my advantage, I make a beeline for the hallway that leads to my room, only altering the direction of my course when his undivided attention returns to his special guests.
