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Tess
March 2005
I hate dresses.
I hate how vulnerable they make me feel. That I can’t run in them. Climb trees. Play ball. Change a tire. Be myself.
But my mother loved them. I don’t think I ever saw her wear pants. I’m not sure that she even owned a pair of jeans.
She was beautiful and kind. She had a temper and loved springtime. She loved cats and hummingbirds. She made a mean red sauce and loved surprises. She cried a lot—almost as much as she laughed. She let my father name me Tesla, even though she had her heart set on Maria, after her mother.
And now she’s gone.
I’m sittingon the Gilroy’s back porch, in a dress I hate, listening to a houseful of people whisper and cry over platefuls of church casserole, about how much they loved her. How missed she’ll be. How lost my dad and I are without her.
I can’t cry.
My mother is dead.
We buried her today, and I can’t cry.
I sat in the front pew of the church and stared at her casket, draped in flowers we can’t afford, listening to the priest talk about salvation and everlasting life. About how my mother is waiting for us to join her in heaven. My dad sobbing quietly beside me. Mary Gilroy’s hand on my shoulder, comforting me from the pew behind me while she cried for the loss of her best friend.
Staring at that casket, my eyes were bone dry.
They still are.
The screen door squeaks behind me and I brace myself. Wait for one of my aunts or the neighborhood ladies to come and offer me a tissue. A plate of jello salad. A shoulder to cry on. They all want to know how. What happened. How a woman barely into her thirties could die so suddenly.
Someone sits down beside me.
I know right away it’s not Mrs. Gilroy. It’s not a neighborhood lady. It’s not even Henley, even though I know she’s here somewhere with her mother and brother.
The person sitting next to me on the porch steps is too big to be a woman. Smells like fresh-cut grass and clean-smelling soap. Even though I know he’s trying to give me space, I can feel the impossible width of his shoulders pressing in around me, my own shoulders pressed somewhere between his elbows and his shoulders.
Declan Gilroy.
I have no idea why he’s out here. Probably as sick and smothered by the crush of people inside his house as I am. He’s sixteen. Even on a Sunday afternoon there must be a thousand things he’d rather be doing than sitting vigil at his next-door neighbor’s funeral.
I do my best to ignore him, which is hard considering he’s roughly three times my size.
“When I was in the fifth grade, I faked a stomach ache at school to get out of a history test.” His voice, low and deep, draws my gaze to his face. His dark blue gaze is aimed at the hummingbird feeder hanging from a tree in the backyard. “My mom was busy with Con—took him to the doctor or something—and couldn’t come get me, so the school called your mom.” The corner of his mouth kicks up in a flash of a smile, so quick and brilliant I feel my breath catch in my lungs. “Sophie took one look at me and knew I wasn’t sick. Instead of calling my mom or taking me back to school, she took me to the movies.” Now he looks at me, his smile fading into something worn and sad. “I really liked your mom.”
“She killed herself.” No one else knows except my dad and his mother. When people ask how, he tells them she had an aneurysm and Mary helps him lie. But that’s not what happened. “My mother committed suicide.” I say it again when he looks at me like he doesn’t believe me. I don’t know why I tell him. Maybe because all of his memories of her are good ones and it feels like a lie. Maybe because even though we’ve been neighbors my whole life and our mothers were best friends, Declan and I don’t know each other. Not really. “I came home from school and she was in the tub.” She left a note on the bathroom door addressed to me.
Hummingbird ~
Don’t open the door. Call Mary. She’ll know what to do. I love you. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. Please don’t ever doubt that. This isn’t anyone’s fault. I’m just tired.
Love you forever ~
Mom
I opened the bathroom door.
“She must’ve done it right after I left for school.” I whisper it, my gaze fixed on the row of buttons holding his dress shirt together. “Used my dad’s straight razor to sever her femoral artery.” It occurs to me that straight razors are dangerous. That my mom might still be alive if we hadn’t had something so sharp in the house. “I got your mom, like she said…” The buttons on his shirt start to blur and swim in my field of vision. I’m exhausted. Haven’t slept in days because every time I close my eyes, I see my mother floating in a tub full of cold water, thick and red with blood. “She said she loved me but that can’t be true, can it?” I look up at his face, find his gaze with mine. It’s blurry. Everything is blurry. “If she loved me, why would she do something like that?” I can feel tears running down my face. Dripping off my chin. Pooling in the palm of my hand, warm and wet. I can’t breathe. My lungs feel like soggy sponges. Drowning me. “You don’t do things like that to people you love. You just don’t. She—”
I feel his arm fall around my shoulders. His huge hand closes over my arm so he can pull me close and I don’t fight it. I let my head fall into the crook of his shoulder and breathe in the smell of him. Clean and solid. My heart flutters in my chest for just a moment before it goes still and calms.
Declan doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t try to reassure me.
He doesn’t tell she loved me.
That my mother is in a better place.
He just holds me and lets me cry.