Their Masks

Their Masks (Amelia's)

It was blissful where she slept.

There was a warm sensation on her face. She didn't know what she was seeing, but Amelia was sure that it was a dream. She knew this because it was not the first time she had seen herself as a young girl, running through the meadows with her mother and their hound, Molly, in the last few years.

But this was the first time since they begun that the memory felt warm. It was the first time since she even begun dreaming that she felt happy beside her mother's smiling face.
But it had to end when her eyes opened.

The room she was in was not her house. That much was apparent when the ceiling she was used to staring at after she woke from that fantasy was not the same.

That was when she remembered her last deeds. She was upright faster than a bolt of lightning, the move sending a sharp pain to her head.

"Stay still."

The command came from her left as a pair of hands pressed her body back to the bed. She didn't need to look in the direction to know who it was. She had heard the voice in her dreams too many times to ever forget it.

Amelia had tried many times to forget about her mother's habits. She knew that she used to sit next to her bed when she was little and riddled with many cases of illness that only the adventures life of a child could warrant.

She was sure that she had angered the woman by showing up at her house, drank and a total mess. She had come to ask for a chance to be better than her father, but that was not having the best start at the moment.

"I'm fine, Mother."

"Yes. Aside from keeling over and sleeping for almost six hours straight, you are in perfect health, Amy."

Amelia didn't mind the harsh tone her mother was using. It was about time someone in her life reminded her what if felt like to be accountable for her actions.

"I already had your driver called," Amelia's mother begun after a lull of silence, "he will be here to take you back in a few minutes."

No! That was not what she wanted. She didn't want to go back to that life. She wanted to hide here in her parents' house. She had seen the world and it had nothing but lies for her.

"I don't want to leave."

There was another drag of silence that prompted Amelia to finally turn her head and face her mother. She wished she could remember what the woman had been wearing last night. If she had been in her pajamas last night then it seemed she had not gotten a wink of sleep since she sat in that chair.

"You can't stay here, Amy. You have your own house."

She might have had her own dwelling, but that did not mean she had a home she could go back to. She lost that the very moment she had accepted to let her mother sever their ties.

"Why not? This used to be my room."

"Used to. That is a time that has long past."

Yes, that seemed like a lifetime ago to both of them. A time where everything was much simpler and the lies had not yet been uttered. Amelia turned her head back to the ceiling and after a while spoke again.

"I didn't mean I want to come live here, Mother. This house ceased to be my home since I was six-years-old. The reason I don't want to leave is that I know you will never come with me where I want to go."

Amelia chanced a glance at her mother and for the first time in years, her cool composure was wavering. She still was as distant as ever, but now there was a glint of surprise in her eyes.

"What are you talking about, Amy?"

Amelia was surprised at the lengths that her mother had gone to lie to herself. Is this how she looked when she spoke to people? Is this what it meant to forsake all reason and sense in pursuit of what one thought to be their comfort? Amelia was glad that she really had come to this place. It seemed she was the only one who could save her mother from this hell she had locked herself in.

"I thought I told you to sit still," she heard the harsh tone as she swung her legs off the side to sit upright. The woman was erecting wall after wall to block her daughter out. Amelia was sorry that she had let her for all these years.

"I didn't know why I was angry at you. I hated you because you made it clear to me that the face of a hundred dollar bill was of more comfort to your heart than mine. I won't lie to you and say that I am able to just forgive and forget that."

Amelia had never spoken candidly about her past to anyone. She never expected the first time would be to the person who had made that past dark to begin with.

"Enough," Her mother's voice was weak with fear and guilt. This was the only chance Amelia would have to speak her mind. She was not going to stop.

"I thought this was all about me. I always thought everything was about me when it came to you. I wanted to believe that you never loved anything more than me."

"Enough, Amy."

"But the truth is that you truly hate my face... and you hate it because it reminds you of the one you can't seem to stop loving even after all it has done-"

"ENOUGH!"

The chair the woman was seated on flew across the floor where it collided with the wall, leaving a significant mark. Amelia had never known her mother to have a temper. She had never, not once in the years she had known her, let her emotions make her break something. It only proved that this emotion was too much for her mother's poor heart to handle.

It was a tragic thing to happen to the woman. Her daughter resembled greatly the face of the man who misused her trust and made a fool of her every time he left the house. It was even more tragic that she could not find enough will to hate him. She loved the damn idiot too much. So she turned to the next best thing.

And what a monster she was just realizing she had become.

She had scared her daughter for years so she could have her sanity intact. She distanced herself from her offspring so that she could smile and hold hands with her husband in public events.

Every single shred of hate the woman had in her being, she threw it all to her daughter.

The tears she cried now had nothing to do with her husband. A first after many years of the act.

"Stop crying, mother. You've been doing that for too long now."

Amelia stood and held her mother in her arms. The woman didn't know how to stop crying. She had tried many times to let this love for that man out of her mind. But she couldn't. She didn't know how to.

"I cannot leave here, Amy."

Amelia knew this was going to be the case. Her mother was too deep in this toxic relationship to heal with only one epiphany. She would need time and strength to overcome the huddle she had refused to jump over for years.

"I know. That's why I won't leave you. If it's a face you need to hate then I will gladly give you mine."

Amelia understood now. She understood her meaning in this life. She didn't have to have an impact on the lives of millions so she could be deemed a great person. All she had to do was to be a great person to the few people she knew well. This was all she could do for her mother.

But there was more she could do for another mask that had devoted four years to her service.