Relativity

Relativity

By

Lauren Dodd

Copyright © 2014 by Lauren Dodd

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work.

No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage or retrieval systems, without the permission in writing from the author. Short excerpts from reviewers are the only exception.

Relativity

Addicted to Him

This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.

Those three words have been on a constant loop in my head for the past four days and I just can’t seem to stop repeating them, even though I know it’s pointless.

This
is
happening. I really am standing next to my father, both of us dressed like we are attending a royal wedding compared to our usual attire, with plastic smiles glued across our faces as we stand guard in front of my mother’s casket.

I hold back a sigh as I watch the never-ending snake-like line of people who wait patiently to pay their respects. I woodenly offer my hand to a woman with black streaks running down her cheeks. I wish I could match her tears because I feel guilty standing here so composed, but I think I’ve cried so hard in the last few days that I may have broken my tear ducts.

“Connie was such a treasure,” the woman sobs. I rub her shoulder, consolingly. Dad stares out into space with all the emotion of a zombie.

“We really appreciate you coming,” I tell her generically, having already forgotten her name. I never realized how many people knew and cared about my mom until today. She’s always just been Mom. I realize now how selfish it was of me to only think about her in terms of defining myself. Connie Lynn Edgecombe was not only a mother, but a wife, friend, book addict, quilter, and amateur chef. It is impossible to comprehend that someone full of so much life is gone forever. My brain just can’t seem to process it. I’ve actually forgotten she was dead a few times this week, which sounds crazy, but for a split second I really did.

The woman moves toward the casket to see the hollow-looking shell of my mother, cocooned in pink satin. When the funeral director opened the casket for Dad and I earlier, my first thought was of the empty locust shells attached to our maple trees at the end of every summer. I knew the shell in the casket used to be my mother, but I also knew she wasn’t in there anymore. One glance of her like that was enough so I keep my eyes forward, preferring to glance at the blown-up picture of her laughing, that is propped up across the room bordered by funeral sprays.

A skinny arm holding two bottles of water darts through the line. I recognize the gold charm bracelet dangling down as belonging to my best friend, Natalie. I greedily grab the waters, ordering Dad to drink and guzzling my own, while holding up my index finger to the middle-aged couple standing in front of us.

I drain the entire bottle of water and silently thank God for a friend like Natalie. She hasn’t left my side since she heard about Mom. Dad holds his uncapped bottle to his lips then just pauses. I lift it gently until he starts drinking. I realized this morning that he hasn’t eaten since the night of the accident. I don’t want to force feed him quite yet, but I’m going to at least make sure he doesn’t get dehydrated.

“Salt of the earth, I tell you, salt of the earth,” the bald man in front of me is saying, his eyes shining. I realize that they have been talking for several seconds and I’ve been dazing out. I never realized how much work it is when someone dies. All I want to do is hibernate in my room buried in my warm blankets, but instead, I have to console a bunch of strangers while my too tight dress shoes threaten to asphyxiate the blood flow to my feet.
Buried
. A shiver runs down my spine at my choice of words.

“Thank you for coming,” Dad mumbles, without making eye contact with the couple. They awkwardly move toward the casket as we turn our attention to the new crop of mourners.

“Hey, Ripley,” a husky voice says, making my stomach drop.

“Hey, Tate,” I squeak out, my knees feeling weak. Tate Boyd, all six foot two inches of him is standing in front of me saying my name like I’ve dreamed about. My mind snaps a picture of this moment, him staring at me intently, intimidated by me, instead of the other way around for the first, and surely, only, time. His normally perfectly-disheveled hair is neatly combed to the side and he has exchanged his trademark uniform of athletic pants and T-shirts with witty slogans slashed across the chest for a blue button-down shirt tucked neatly into a pair of black slacks. His black Chucks peek out the bottom of his pants and I stifle a chuckle.

Jesus, what kind of person almost laughs and drools over their crush at their mother’s funeral? I’m starting to think that grief isn’t just about tears. I feel like my internal motherboard is crashing and every emotion I’ve ever had has been playing out the last four days.

“I’m so sorry about your mom,” he almost whispers, like if he says it quiet enough she’ll pop up in her coffin and tell everyone she was just joking.

I watch him glance back at the coffin and flinch. It sears something deep inside me to know that a guy who can bench press 300 pounds and who has broken numerous appendages without batting an eye can’t stand looking at my dead mother. Suddenly, it becomes very real.

My mother is dead. She isn’t out of town for a conference or heading to Vegas to celebrate a friend’s birthday. She’s dead. Never to be alive again. She will never be waiting in the first pew after I walk down the aisle on the day of my wedding, she will never hold her grandchildren, and she will not grow old with my father because she is dead.

The realization hits me with the force of an F5 tornado. I hear myself make a noise, feel my legs start to crumple underneath me then stop fighting the blackness edging my vision and welcome it.

******

“Ripley, Ripley, wake up,” a voice urges. I hear it, but I’m fighting it. I don’t want to wake up. I want to stay in the blackness where I’m not sad. Pinpricks of light start to pierce through the black and as I come to, I realize that someone is holding me.

“Am I dreaming?” I ask, knowing I must be.

“You passed out,” Tate replies, his face pale with worry. The poor guy came to pay his respects out of courtesy and ends up with a basket case fainting in his arms.

“Ripley, I’m calling an ambulance,” Dad says, grabbing me with one hand while fidgeting with his cell phone in the other. He is so panicked that the phone isn’t even on and he’s trying to dial 911 but getting frustrated that no one is answering. I feel terrible for scaring him like this.

“I’m fine, Dad,” I reassure him, gesturing for Tate to put me down even though the last thing I want to do is leave the warmth of his strong embrace. He eases me down gently, making sure I’m completely steady before fully releasing me. He hovers behind me within arms-length to grab me again, if necessary. It makes me happier than I have a right for it to.

“If anything happened to you…,” he trails off, trying to blink back tears.

“I’m fine, Dad. I promise.” I wrap him in a hug and rub his back until I feel his heart rate calm down a bit.

I see a blur of black hair and red lips whirl into our circle like a Tasmanian devil. Natalie. Word must have traveled fast that the dead lady’s daughter dropped like ton of bricks.

“You okay?” she asks, grabbing my arms.

“I’m fine,” I reassure her, even though I wouldn’t turn down a double dose of sleeping pills right now just to disappear back into the darkness for a while.

“Mom, help Mr. Edgecombe with the receiving line. I’m going to take Ripley to splash her face off with cold water,” Natalie orders.

Natalie’s mother, looking beautifully put together as always in a black sheath dress and exquisite pearls, hooks her arm around my father’s and starts greeting the patiently waiting mourners. I’m thankful to her for being here but I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that she wishes Nat and I would outgrow each other.

Natalie starts to pull me through the crowd and out into the hall of the funeral home. Quickly, I turn around and mouth, “thank you,” to Tate. My heart drops when I realize that I will probably never be that close to him again. Then, I see my mother laying stiffly in her casket and I hate myself for forgetting about her for a second.

******

Natalie pulls me through the clogged hallway of the funeral home. I can hear people whispering as we pass by them and I wonder if people will whisper about me for the rest of my life. She pulls me down a side hallway and into a bathroom, locking the door behind us.

“You’re such a whore,” she says breathlessly. “Using your mother’s funeral to score with your crush.”

“I’ve got to use this shit to my advantage somehow,” I say, unfazed. “I really did pass out though.”

“Sure, you did. You need to play up this grieving daughter stuff. Get some swag out of it,” she says, fluffing her hair in the mirror.

I groan.

“Oh my God, was that too much?” Natalie freaks out, rushing back over to me. “I’m just trying to be normal. I don’t know what to do or say,” she admits, her face starting to crumple.

“It’s fine. You’re the only one who hasn’t checked my pulse every ten minutes to make sure I’m alive. Do you know that our neighbor came over yesterday and hid all the knives? Does she actually think I’m going to stab myself to death?” I announce incredulously.

“You better never hurt yourself. I’d fucking kill your ass,” Natalie says.

I start laughing hysterically even though I know her joke wasn’t that funny, but once I start I just can’t stop. I swear that I can feel nerves crackling inside my body like everything is about to short circuit.

“Tate likes you,” Natalie says, trying to rein me in a little bit. “I mean, even before this happened, I could tell that he was checking you out at school.”

“His arms are so strong and those lips, I just want to kiss them,” I say, swaying against the bathroom door. “And he smells like heaven.”

Natalie’s eyes lock with mine as I realize what I’ve just said. Tears I didn’t know I had left spill over my lids.

“Hey, Nat.”

“Yeah, buddy,” she says, moving closer to me.

“My mommy is dead,” I whisper, sliding down the door into a sitting position, on the floor. Natalie crouches down next to me and holds me while I sob.

******

I clasp Dad’s hand tightly as Mom’s casket is lowered into the ground. As much as I hated looking at her, lying there all plastic-looking, her hair looking wrong even though I know they tried to match the pictures we gave them, knowing that I’ll never see any version of her again is much worse. I want to cry out for them to stop, but I know it wouldn’t do any good. She’s not trapped in that fancy wooden box. She’s gone.

I hear the sniffles and stifled sobs of the people around us as Dad’s heaving shoulders bump into me. I exhausted myself in Natalie’s arms and a dull numbness is all that I have left.

People start to disperse, squeezing our arms and whispering comforting sentiments before they get into their cars and pull out of the cemetery. As soon as they pull out onto the main road and leave the greyness of the cemetery behind their lives won’t skip a beat. I wish I could be a stowaway in somebody’s trunk, anything to escape the fact that my life will never be the same.

A few stragglers, like the ladies from Mom’s quilting club, who I always imagined as a bunch of gray hairs, but are actually just regular-looking moms in cashmere sweater sets and pearls, don’t seem to want to leave us alone at the grave site. As annoying as it is to be fussed about like this, I appreciate the fact that they obviously loved Mom.

“Come on, sweet pea. Let’s get you to the church and get a warm dinner in you,” one of them says, gently pulling me away from the hole in the ground that is now my mother’s new permanent home.

I can’t stop myself from thinking how cold-blooded she was and how miserable it will be for her. Maybe I should have snuck her beloved Snuggie into the casket with her. I used to tease her like crazy about that thing, but she loved it. Then, I remember that she’ll never feel cold again. At least I hope that heaven is similar to Hawaii because I know that would make Mom happy. I can’t help but wonder if everyone’s heaven is the same or if we make our own heaven. We’ve never been overly religious with the exception of a nightly prayer before dinner.

My parents didn’t believe in organized religion. I remember my father saying that some of the worst people he had ever met went to church every Sunday, but they believed in God. They believe that if you are a good person, are kind to others, and live an honest life, God will reward you. I can’t help but wonder if maybe God would have rewarded us with Mom still being alive if we had sat on a wooden pew every Sunday morning. I shake the thought off, knowing God doesn’t do take backs.