Page 26 of Heathens
The music is loud, the bass urging me on.
I order two more doubles and smack down another twenty. It’s half my weekly stipend, but right now... right now I can’t think of taxi fares and food, utilities, and laundry. Right now, I just want to feel nothing.
Lift my hand, shoot, swallow, repeat.
I'm eight shots in now, and I still don't feel numb, but I decide to hold off. Six months ago, this would've been my appetizer, but now, my tolerance is lower. I haven't had a single sip since that night in Notre Dame. I wasn't an alcoholic. I didn't need the liquor. I needed not to feel. I needed to forget about my mom, how my life was directionless, how I was in a dead end relationship. Before she got sick, I was just an average, twenty-something guy who liked to fuck and party.
And then I found God.
You’re going to make a terrible priest. Julia’s words lurch through me.
I haven’t spoken to her in months.
Closing my eyes tightly, I shake my head and put my face in my hands.
Gone.
My mother—she’s gone.
I never wanted grief to run my life. In fact, my mother made me promise that it wouldn’t. That I would continue on with my life. It might be easier if it came in regular waves, which it doesn’t. There is no rhyme or reason, no rhythm or beat. Since her death four days ago, my life has been lived from a slow-paced bubble, enveloping me completely. Altering my mind, my world.
Ripping me up and tearing me down.
I’m holding her hand tightly as she gasps for air. Seeing her struggle, holding her as she coughs up more blood, comforting her... I know right then and there that it will happen today.
“Salem,” she whispers in a mixture of French and English. She was born in Scotland and we all lived there for a time before moving to a suburb of Paris for my father’s job. Her mind is... almost gone. She confuses her languages a lot now. “I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to die.” Her words are barely audible, and I fight to keep my voice composed. My brothers and father have run out for a few medical things, and I pray she’ll hold on long enough for them to say goodbye. I was the only one who couldn’t leave her. The sensitive one, my dad used to joke. Mom’s favorite. She’d never admit it. Not out loud.
I nod. “I know.”
“I’ll wait for you,” she starts, her frantic eyes finding mine. “Up there. I’ll find a tree—one of the big oak ones you boys used to love so much. I’ll wait for you all. One day, one day we’ll...” she trails off and coughs weakly. She never even smoked, and cancer found her lungs. “There are other plans for me, right?”
I nod vigorously. “Yes. God has big plans for you, Mom.” Ever since I started seminary school, she’s been asking me all sorts of questions about the afterlife, God, sin, and redemption. I try to assuage her every chance I get. For her sake, and for mine.
“I need to know that you’ll be okay.” Her eyes search mine, the panic evident.
“We’ll be okay. All of us. We’ll take care of each other.”
“Promise?” Her voice is like that of a child, so innocent, so hopeful.
“Always.”
At that word, her face transforms from worried to serene, almost ethereal. Untouched by cancer.
An angel with the wings of peace.
Then she takes her last breath, and I howl loud enough for all of Paris to hear.
The priest that oversaw her funeral recited a few lines from the bible, and my oldest brother gave a eulogy.
“And while this is a pain that all creatures who are born must face, it does not make saying goodbye to your mother any easier to do.”
The room begins to sway, and I feel like a part of me has been amputated. I haven’t lost my mother—I’ve beenunmothered. She did not go willingly. I did not say goodbye willingly. It feels like a wrenching, violent severance. Standing suddenly, a pair of cool, small hands find my own, steadying me. I turn my head slowly.
She’s blonde, petite, and curvy. Cocking her head, she bites her lower lip as she assesses me.
“Are you okay?” Her French is stilted, and her accent... Russian.
“No,” I answer honestly. I don’t know if she means my grief-stricken, unhinged demeanor or the fact that I probably smell like the bottom of a bar mat.
