Page 44 of Inked & Bloodbound
“She did. She had a great big lily done for you when you were little. It was so lovely. Said it was worth the pain.”
“Yeah,” I say, dipping the bread in some gravy. “I remember, butthere was another one, wasn’t there? On her shoulder. A number six or something?”
Pat’s fork freezes in midair, and he swallows. “There was,” he says slowly. “What’s on your mind, Lilypad?”
“Just the anniversary,” I say. “It’s bringing up a lot of stuff for me. You don’t happen to know what it meant, do you? The six? She never told me.”
He avoids my gaze. “It was her lucky number, I think,” he says as he fidgets in his chair. “Always loved the number six. She did.”
After that, we eat in silence. He clears the plates, and neither of us speaks for a while. Talking about Mom is easy—she’s in everything we do, everything we are—buttalkingabout Mom is hard. I meanreallytalking about Mom, about the reality of her and not just the safe, sweet version we feel comfortable with. That shit is damn near impossible.
I dry the dishes as he washes, both of us with our hands busy, standing side by side, avoiding our reflections in the darkness of the kitchen window. From the small speaker in the kitchen comes “Whiskey in the Jar” by Thin Lizzy, filling the air. I look up and see Pat’s eyes glassy with unspilled tears.
“I miss her so much sometimes,” he says quietly, handing me a saucepan.
“I do, too,” I admit, “but I think it’s different for me. I remember the bad stuff mostly. Sometimes I think I remember the good, but I’m never really sure if it’s a memory or a fantasy.”
Pat slows his pace, rotating a wet plate around in his hands mechanically. I glance up at his reflection, and his head is bowed. I know he doesn’t want to talk about this. Getting Pat to admit that Laurel wasn’t a saint, that she was a malignant presence who destroyed herself and nearly destroyed us in the process—that will be tough. I used to think he was protecting her legacy for me, but now I think it’s for him. He needs her to be canonized in death so that he can better live with his own choices.
I’m tired of it.
I clear my throat and say the thing I’m not supposed to say. “Shewasn’t a good person, Pat. I’m sorry, but she just wasn’t. She was an addict, and addicts are liars, cheats, and frauds. I know it wasn’t her fault, and I know a lot of it was the disease, but she abandoned her kid and made a living stealing from other people. That is the definition of a bad person.”
He slams the dish down into the soapy water and turns to face me, the lines of his face pooling with tears. “Don’t you dare talk like that, Lily. I won’t have it. Not after all she’s done for you. For us.” His tone is harsh, but his eyes are pleading.
But I will not stop. This feels like opening the seal to a long-forgotten jar and releasing the festering odor inside so that it can be cleaned—a long-overdue catharsis.
The words tumble out of my mouth, sharp and strained.“All she’s done?Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? She might have been a lot of fun for you, but she was an awful mother to me, and you know it. She broke every promise she ever made us. She picked drugs over me, Pat. Every single time.”
Pat’s shaking his head defiantly, head bowed, hands clutching the edges of the sink.
I twist the knife. “You were in love with the idea of her. The twisted fairy tale of the musician and the chaotic manic hippie who pool-hustled and card-sharked her way around the country. Uprooting her family every few months because she’d pissed off the wrong gang of thugs.”
“It wasn’t like that?—”
“It was exactly like that. Even she knew the truth of what she was. That’s why she ended up drinking and drugging herself to death.”
“You don’t understand, Lil. She was different. She was in a lot of pain.”
“So was I!” I roar, angry tears welling. “I needed my mom.”
Pat reaches out and tugs me to him, and swiftly wraps me in an awkward, tight hug. It’s so fast I barely register it, and I resist at first before I surrender and let go. I’m not sure when it started, but I realize I’m sobbing and wailing against the scratchy wool of his cardigan,my breath barely filling my lungs as he strokes my hair and shushes me.
We stand there for a while, swaying in the kitchen, the music humming in the background punctuated by my little hiccups as I get my breath back. Eventually, he kisses me on the top of my head and wipes his tears away.
“I’m so sorry, Lil,” he says, his hand rubbing and patting my back with the kind of reassuring firmness you’d use to soothe a baby. “It must be so hard for you. I shouldn’t take that away from you. Whatever you’re feeling, you should just feel it. It’s not my place to minimize. Your feelings are valid.”
I look up at him and sniff. “‘Your feelings are valid’? Where did you hear that?”
“Therapy.”
“Really? I thought you always hated that stuff.”
“Alright, you caught me. It’s from Dr. Phil.”
It catches me by surprise, and somewhere from deep in my chest comes a burst of laughter, replacing my miserable shrieks with a joyful cackle. Pat laughs, too, wheezing and wiping his eyes all over again. We clutch each other still, our heavy shoulders heaving until they eventually slow, then settle.
“I’ve a chocolate cake in the fridge,” he says with a grin. “Fancy a slice? I’ll make us a nice tea to go with it.”