But I didn’t see either of them, and it sent my vision spiraling into a fit of red.
I stepped off the stage and made my way toward the bar. I wanted to thank the strange woman for toasting to my brother and maybe talk with her a bit about the man she had toasted. But when I got to the bar she was gone, save for the empty IPA bottle sitting where her elbow had been.
“Want another one?” the bartender asked.
“Actually, give me a rum and coke real quick,” I said.
One rum and coke turned into three, and pretty soon, I was ordered an Uber to come pick me up. I had no business driving anywhere right now, and there were two people I needed to have a very stern conversation with.
It was time all this bullshit ended.
The Uber pulled up to my parents’ place, and I waved the guy off. I wobbled up to the front door and took a deep breath, and then I began knocking furiously until someone answered. My father whipped the door open and looked at me, his nose slightly crinkled as if some dirty, stray dog had just run up onto his pristine porch. His eyes took on the tattoos I hadn’t covered for the memorial gathering, and I pushed by him when he didn’t step over to let me in.
“Where the hell were you two?” I asked.
“Home. You smell like a bar. You good, son?” my father asked.
“Don’t play coy with me. You knew what tonight was,” I said.
“We know what tonight is every year, sweetheart,” my mother said as she came around the corner.
“Then why in the world weren’t you there? It’s your son we’re celebrating, for crying out loud,” I said.
“And why would you be celebrating him? He died a junkie, Bryan. You don’t celebrate the life of a junkie.”
The cool way my mother said that boiled my blood. How in the world could a mother cast out her son like that? How could a mother not grieve over the loss of her own fucking child?
“Besides, I had the boys over for some cards. Couldn’t cancel on them, could I?” my father asked.
“You couldn’t cancel your card game to come to the memorial service of your dead son? Do the two of you even care that he’s gone?”
“Don’t you dare say those words to me,” my mother said. “You have no idea what we’ve gone through.”
“Not much, by the looks of things. You cleared out his room and threw out all his stuff. You don’t come to the memorial services. Hell, you weren’t even there when we put him in the ground.”
“It’s not our fault John wasted his life away and died a junkie,” my father said.
“And that somehow excuses you from not burying him?” I asked.
“Funny. I thought we were talking about the memorial service,” my mother said.
“No. Right now we’re talking about how selfish and psychopathic my parents are to not even grieve over their damn son.”
I felt a sharp crack against my cheek as my mother’s panting rang heavily in my ears. I swallowed hard, turning my head back to meet her fiery gaze. Her eyes were wide, brown like John’s, and swimming with emotions I couldn’t pinpoint in my drunken state. My father stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, staring at me with the almost-black eyes that looked back at me every single morning.
“It makes the family look bad, and you know it,” my father said. “Having a son that dabbled in what he did—”
“John was clean and you know it,” I said.
“Not clean enough to keep it from killing him,” my mother hissed.
“Can you not set aside your reputation just once to come memorialize your son? Believe it or not, there was more to him than his heroin addiction. There was laughter and goodness and memories and friends. People he touched. People he saved. People he counseled. People he loved and wanted to start a family with.”
“The only thing your brother loved was that needle in his arm,” my mother said.
“Shut up,” I said, growling.
“The only thing your brother loved was seeking out his next high,” my father said.