My mother was particularly prone to detail. On this night she wore the same exact thing she wore twenty-five years ago, the night she met my father. The black dress she wore was skintight and if you got close enough, you could see the skin straight through the material. She still had the same body shape as she did as the day she bought it. She wore a pair of high heels that she bought on vacation in New York. There was a strap that wrapped around the ankle that added that mysterious Bond girl sex appeal.
The only thing that she had different was the way she wore her hair. She had it rolled into a bun. She always wore her hair up as soon as she started to see streaks of gray. The gray stood out because she had very dark brown, almost black hair. It made her feel old even though she looks the same as she did the day she was able to put on a white dress and marry my father.
In the oven there was a whole chicken baking to perfection. Green beans, black beans, and rice were cooking on the stovetop. And there was a small ice cream cake for the two of them to share,
The only thing that was missing was the presence of my father. She had the table set and ready. She even set the plates that have been sitting in one of the cabinets for many years, waiting to one day be used. She even placed the silverware in their proper places to waste a bit of time. On the left side of the plate were a table fork, the fish fork, and the oyster fork all in the order of decreasing size. On the right side were the table knife, the fish knife, and the soupspoon. She did this ate every seat at the table even though there were only three people eating. We weren't even having fish.
She sat at the table in silence while I joined her. The food had grown to a point where in order for it to taste good, it had to be micro waved. Then he finally came home. I saw the headlights shine through the living room windows as he pulled into the driveway. Through the silence that filled the room, you could almost hear the key as it passed through the grooves of the lock. He opened the door and stood in its frame. By the tiny wrinkles he created around his mouth and his sunken eyebrows, you could see that he felt bad for making us wait. Bu t there was something more and he closed the door.
He told me to go to my room but she said that I didn't have to if I didn/t want. She said I could stay and whatever he had to say would be necessary for me to hear whether I understood the situation or not. He said that what he was about to say wasn/t an easy thing to admit. He told her that there was another woman. And the reason why it took him so long t get was that he was out trying to call of their relationship.
I guess they had thought that I was too young to understand these types of things. I'm old enough to program the time on a VCR. I don/t know that much about relationships or even women, but that I understood. She stood from her seat and began collecting the dishes and the silverware. She placed them into the sink and washed them even though they hadn/t been used or even dirtied. She took up all the food and through it aware even though no one had eaten.
After that my father left the house and didn/t see him until the next day. My mother went upstairs to the room she and my father share. She took off her dress and placed it into the dirty clothes bin. She loosened the lace of the heels and placed them into the original shoebox that she had purchased them in. They sat in that box at the base of the closet, worn but only once in thirty years. She slid underneath the cover of her bed and slowly drifted off to sleep. I decided to go to bed as well. I was still pretty hungry after not eating dinner. Along with it being far from the time I normally get to bed, I didn/t sleep well.
The next day, I rode the bus home from school. She was late to taking me to school that morning and she didn/t even come to pick me up. My last period class is Language Arts. The room faces the parking lot where I could usually look out and see her sitting in the car reading or smoking cigarettes. There were few things that people didn/t know about her, but smoking was something they definitely didn't know. When I 'd get into the car you wouldn/t be able to tell that someone had been smoking because of the over powering fruity scent of her perfume.
But on that day, I didn/t see the car in the parking lot. After class let out, I went and looked all over the parking lot to see if she had parked somewhere else, but she hadn/t. The bus ride was strangely silent from what I remember when I used to ride it. I usually like to read when I ride the bus, but I remember I was never able to because of all the noise. I finished reading a book called 'Catcher in the Rye'� which was assigned to us in class.
After a while my eyes began to hurt and I put the book back into my backpack. When I looked out the window I saw that we were already in my neighborhood. I look toward the bus and I see one kid after another peek their head above the seat in front of them like a prairie dog sticks its head out from its burrow. I look along with them but now I can't see because everyone is standing. I let the window slide down and I stick my head out. Out in front of my house there are multiple police vehicles with their emergency lights flashing.
The bus driver tells everyone to take a seat and they all begin to talk amongst themselves. They know that what/s going on ahead is happening at my house and they all begin taking quick glances in my direction. They knew it was my house because I was the only person who gets off at this stop and for a few moment you/re able to see where the person is going when they get off.
The bus stopped and opened its door. I stepped off and looked at the driveway that leads to my house. There/s an ambulance with its rear end directed toward the garage door with two EMT/s pushing a gurney toward the ambulance. It had a large whit sheet covering what was on the gurney. The sheet appeared to be new since you could see the creases where it was folded. The sunlight made it seem like a brighter white than it actually is.
Along with the departing faces of the children on the school bus, neighbors that we all knew closely gathered around as the thin strand of yellow caution tape held them back. It/s exciting to see a dead body being wheeled from a house where a seemingly perfect family lived. All they want to know is what happened.
I saw my mother leaning up against the car in the garage. The car was a mid nineties Ford Thunderbird that was practically in perfect condition besides a busted motor mount and the almost undetectable dent in the fender.
She had a cigarette in one hand and didn/t seem to care if anyone saw her. She was wearing a baby blue bath robe that I hadn/t seem before and slippers that looked like bear claws that I bought her for Christmas one year. She wasn/t crying, but her eyes were red and puffy as if she just finished.
There wasn/t any of that yellow caution tape that you usually see in movies. There were officers blocking off sections of the gathering of people that began to form. Whenever the officers turned their backs the children would make silly faces at them. They would expose their teeth and tug on their ears. They would stick out their tongues and wiggle them about and the officer would turn back and the children would look as if nothing happened.
Seeing my father lying on a gurney with a white sheet covering him didn/t sadden me as the way I had seen in other people, or in the books that I read. I kept telling myself that he/s dead and'�nothing. These people would feel some sort of void within their chests like a lung had been removed. They would cry whenever someone would mention their loved ones name, or they would pick up some small thing around the house and it would conjure up some treasured memory of that person. I didn/t think of any of that when I saw him being put into that ambulance. It made me think of what it felt like to die.
The crowd parted and allowed the ambulance to pass through. After it left the driveway, the head officer ordered the crowd to disperse. After a few members of the mob felt that there was nothing else interesting to see, they began to make their way back to their homes. After about ten minutes there wasn/t anyone in sight.
When the officers finally had control of the situation, two of them came up to my mother and told her something. She pointed in my direction and the officers nodded as they looked in my direction. She took one last drag from the cigarette; she threw it to the ground and put it out with her bear claw slippers. The officers put her in one of their cruisers then one came walking toward me.
He was young and well built. His face was shaved and his hair was short. He looked as though he had just gotten out of training. When he stood before me, I realized that he was much taller than I thought. I had to look up to see his face while I barely reached the base of his chest. He told me that I had to come with him. I didn/t say anything and I just walked along side of him.
On they way to the police station, he asked me all sorts of questions. He didn/t ask me about how I was feeling or anything too personal. He just asked me what school I went to and what kind I of things I was into. I answered these questions with the least amount of talking. He went on telling me stories about how he and his wife were trying to have a baby. All of this aside, the rest of the ride was quiet until we reached the station.
I wouldn/t find out until later that night that my father had killed himself. He had sealed himself in the garage while the car was running. They told me that they found his body hanging out of the driver side window possibly a failed attempt at saving himself. They didn/t say it like that of course, but they probably would have if they could.
The funeral was held two days after he was found dead. There weren/t that many people who attended the service. There was my mother and my grandparents from my father's side and a few friends from my father's work that met a few times before. There was also a woman that no one had known. My mother and I kind of had an idea considering my father's confession a few days before. My mother decided it was vest not to talk to her.
Yet again, watching all those sad people cry for someone they barely knew, I still hadn/t the urge to cry. I asked myself what is sadness. I couldn/t figure out what I was feeling at this time. I could feel some kind of pressure on my chest, but I couldn/t tell you why. I read what was etched into the headstone and I thought, 'Maybe this is sadness. Yeah that/s it.'�

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