Marilyn laid in her bed for hours. It was all she could do. She had been thinking about a lot. About the years she had spent with Paul. Her parents divorce. The fact that she hadn’t seen her father in years, and hadn’t even remotely thought about the man in weeks. She should go visit him. She should at least know where he evens lived. Disappointment suddenly hit her, hard. There was so much to think about, and she didn’t want to think about any of it.
A slamming echoed through the house, which Marilyn immediately recognized as the front door. There was a hole in the main hallway where her mother had repeatedly slammed the door open time and time again at all hours of the day and night. The slamming was followed by heavy footsteps, and Marilyn could tell that there were more than one.
“MARILYN!!” her mother’s screeching voice called out from the house. “MARILYN I KNOW YOU’RE HOME!”
Marilyn sighed. She didn’t want to see her mother now, or really ever.
“MARILYN I HEARD WHAT HAPPENED.”
That’ll do it. There was no way she could ignore the woman now. She tried to put an image of her mother out in the hallway in her mind. It wasn’t hard. She’d be stumbling drunk, and probably had been for hours. Her mother wasn’t a fun drunk either, and never was. She slurred her words and stumbled her steps right into anything she wanted. If she was lucky, her mother might even have cocaine remnants on her nose.
Marilyn reluctantly got up and made her way to the living room. Veronica Reed was a lot of things, but got by mostly on just one. She had an athletic body and face that turned heads wherever it went. What was underneath, however, was not nearly as attractive.
“Mom, hi,” Marilyn said stiffly, stopping in the doorway.
Her mother looked up from her already rolled joint. “Marilyn hi. Stop being so tight. You’re too tight for your age.”
“Did you want me something?” Marilyn said, devoid of emotion.
“I did, I did,” Veronica replied, holding the joint up to light it. “I heard something.”
Marilyn already knew what she was going to say.
“I heard about Paul.”
There it was.
“I heard Paul killed himself.”
Thanks, mom. Marilyn wanted to attack her.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry and that I’m sorry about Paul being dead,” Veronica managed against the alcohol’s haze. She exhaled smoke, beginning to fill the poorly ventilated living room.
Marilyn swallowed. She didn’t have a proper response. “Thanks,” she tried to say, but it came out mumbled and contorted.
“Loss is hard. Life is hard. Sometimes you’ve just got to forget about, you know, all the things that are hard and just make them easy. That’s really just kind of what it’s about. Making the hard things easy.”
Marilyn needed to go. She could stand to be in the same room as her mother for more than a few moments, and this was a particularly irksome instance.
“Like, take the divorce.”
Don’t mention the divorce.
“That was hard for me.”
No it wasn’t. It was your fault.
“But I got through it, and so did you. We’re both here and we’re doing fine. Life goes on.”
Stop talking. I can’t stand to talk to you.
Veronica took another hit. The pot was beginning to get to her. “Does that make sense? I hope I’m making sense.”
YOU ARE READING
After Death
General FictionWhat would you do if you knew there was an afterlife? That's the question residents of Longview, Connecticut face in this tale of graduation, falling out of love, falling in love and moving on.