holiday syndrome

8. the church

"has the world gone mad"

gif: marley + mora 

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     MORA Greenwald had very few faults, even when she was raising two girls who were destined to fall apart. Perhaps her ignorance to conflict was a fault itself, but Marley had never really seen it as such. Every time that Marley found herself angry with her mother, it was always deflected back to Mack, no matter what it was. Over the years Marley had found it easier to let go of every single argument or disagreement with her mother in the fear that one of the those 'fights' would be the last time Marley spoke to her.

     Nothing was more terrifying than looming death, especially when it wasn't your own. And for the past two years, Marley had learned that the hard way. As Mora's body succumbed to the cruelty of death taking home inside her lungs, Marley had let death haunt her as well. She thought she could keep it from her mother who seemed more detached every day, but some things about her mother just didn't fade.

     "You never told me about your trip, honey," Mora whispered to Marley. She was leaning towards her daughter with her body awkwardly angled out of the wheelchair. There was a special corner of the church that was accessible for those in wheelchairs to sit and see the mass clearly.

     "It was a month ago, Mum, I thought I mentioned that it wasn't that exciting." She tried to stay quiet, not wanting to risk bringing attention to themselves. Marley found churches to be stiff and uncomfortable and stayed away from them as often as she could.

     She wasn't quite sure what it was about that month, but her mother had been begging to go weekly. Marley had to suck it up and endure the overly obsolete language of the sermons while pretending to stay awake. Once upon a time she had been religious, but the more she got older the more religion seemed to weigh her down with guilt. She didn't have time to deal with more guilt than she already felt over the tiniest things. What Marley feared most of all was that someone was watching her make a billion mistakes and knew that she was a failure in so many ways.

     Her mother gave her a pointed look and then look back to the altar, giving her daughter the cold shoulder.

     "Bloody hell," Marley whispered under her breath, despising the saying unless she was incredibly irritated. Something about churches really set her off apparently.

     "It sucked, it sucked a lot," she whispered in her mother's ear. Mora smiled and seemed pleased to have gotten something honest out of Marley. "I'd rather just stay at home than travel. It's safer and less complicated."

     "Your sister loves travelling," Mora suggested easily, as if she was implying Marley and Mack were the same person. She did that more often than Marley liked to think about, grouping them together like being siblings made them automatically similar. Other than a little bit of DNA, Marley and Mackenzie shared nothing more than bitterness.

     "Mack loves a lot of things that I don't, make no mistake."

     Looking at her mother's face, Marley instantly wondered if her snarky tone had caused the look of pain. Her next thought was that it was chest or the twisted ankle from falling out of bed a couple weeks ago. She may have thought of herself far too often, but she spent a considerable amount of time worrying about the state of her mother. Sometimes it wasn't even the pain, it was the way her mother seemed to constantly check out of her own mind, like her body was a shop front and inside there were nothing but boxes packed with contents Marley had no access too.