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“Simon.” She gives a curt nod as she steps around me, not even looking at me while she continues down the hall. I start to stop her, but what for? It’s selfish and stupid.
I walk down the hallway to my office and start to prepare for a meeting with one of our PR people this afternoon. They want updates on the project, and I want to make sure all my ducks are in a row.
I’m just settling into work when my phone rings. I recognize the number and groan. It’s the number to Send Prison in Surrey where my mother and sister are both serving their sentences.
It has been years since this number has shown up on my caller ID, but it is imprinted on my brain. But now, I don’t know who they are calling for. My mother or my sister. As I answer the phone, a sense of being pulled back to a place I don’t want to be, that I’ve worked so hard to escape from, overwhelms me.
“Yes. This is Simon Phillips.”
“Mr. Phillips, we are calling about your mother, Mrs. Susana Turner.” Says the custodial manager, who always calls, as if I don’t know my mother’s name. As if I could ever forget it.
“Yes, what about her? What’s she done now?”
My mother had always been a violent woman who was addicted to several substances. It was her addiction that led me to have to grow up so fast, it was her violence which led to me step into the role of protector of my siblings—one I failed at miserably. And ultimately, it was the dangerous combination of the two that put her in prison for the rest of her life.
“She hasn’t done anything, Mr. Phillips. She died. This morning. We wanted to know if you’d like to collect her remains or if you’d like us to make arrangements.”
He says this like he is telling me she ate cornflakes for breakfast. My stomach drops to my knees. I drop my head on my desk. “Come again?”
“Mr. Phillips, she had been ill for the last two years and passed away this morning.” He continues as though he didn’t just give me life changing news.
“Neither you nor your brother have been here in over five years, but we are required to inform next of kin. You have eighty-four hours to decide how you’d like to proceed.”
I don’t say anything. Kyle and I stopped visiting our mother a long time ago. She has been a distant memory, a painful one we don’t dare look at too long.
“Mr. Phillips? Are you there?”
“Oh. Okay…” I am confused and scared. I am also aware I am not feeling anything close to grief or even sadness. My mind shifts immediately to Ashley.
“I know she is not on your case load, but do you have any word on our sister?”
“Ah… your sister. She is not a model prisoner. She is currently in our maximum security wing due to an altercation with another inm
ate. She also refused to see your mother. I understand you haven’t been to see her either.”
There is no recrimination in his voice. I am sure he is used to people being forgotten by their families once they are incarcerated. We have tried to see Ashley, but she has refused to allow Kyle and me onto the approved visitor’s list.
“No, we haven’t.” I respond. I feel weary. “Thank you for the call. I’ll need to speak with my brother.”
I hang up and stare at the wall. The rest of my day is shot. I won’t be able to get any work done with everything I’ve got to think about. And I need to talk to Kyle.
I sit there and think of my mother. She was never good to us. But she is the only parent we ever had. And as I think of Kyle and Ashley and Henry and how much we have all lost, my heart feels unbearably heavy.
September 18, 2014
I am a master at hiding my emotions. By the time I was fourteen, my sisters were already away at school, and I was living with my mother whose one emotional state seemed to be “okay”. The one time I’d attempted to express my anger and despair, she had told me I shouldn’t speak of my father that way. So, I stopped talking and instead, wrote everything in my diary.
It turns out it was all very good practice. Seeing Simon, the day after he basically threw me out his apartment was salt in my already gaping wound. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing it though, and I did my best to sound totally indifferent when I stepped around him and continued down the hall to my office.
When I got to there and sat down, I’d never been more grateful for my chair. My legs were actually shaking. What was it about him? Why was it that for the first time in my life I was feeling something I had only ever read about for a complete asshole? Why couldn’t it be someone who felt the same way? Why couldn’t anything be easy?
Shaking myself out of my pity party, I text Cara to see if she could meet for lunch. She texts back almost immediately that she can and needs to talk. I am glad—I need something to get my mind off of the disaster that is`1` my Simon situation.
The bustling lunch crowd at the trendy Italian restaurant we chose is loud and boisterous. But Cara and I find a quiet booth in the back of the restaurant. She orders a glass of wine before our server has even finished seating us. Cara never drinks during the week day because of rehearsals.
“Spill, Care. What’s got you drinking at this time of day?” I ask, leaning in with a smile on my face because I already know it’s nothing terrible. My friend is an artist and has the temperament of one. If something is truly wrong, she would have greeted me with a story and tears right away
“I’ve been offered the role of Etoile with the Paris Ballet.” She says with a look more baleful than happy.
