My throat gives out eventually, and I succumb to a coughing fit. I know Gloria hasn’t left me alone in the house, but still she doesn’t come to check on me. Never once in the hours I’ve been in bed does she offer me an ounce of comfort. More than anything, I need her to tell me it will all be okay, but I know that is a lie, and lying is one thing Gloria hates to do.
When I can't stand wallowing in my own sorrow anymore, I get up and walk downstairs. I can hear Gloria on the phone in the game room. Mumbled words filter through the hall: safety, death, take her now, please, please, please. I know I should try to break myself of the habit of eavesdropping. It never ends well, but eavesdropping, it seems, is the only way I can gather information. They all see me as a child and never bother to tell me anything, especially if they think I might argue. And I like to argue. A lot. The one word that sends chills down my spine is "tomorrow." Gloria ends her phone call with, "yes, tomorrow." I pray tomorrow will never come.
I rush back up to my room, uninterested in overhearing anything else. Under my bed is a bottle of my father’s nicest scotch that Tony procured for me a while back. I pull it out and crawl into bed, drinking until I can’t think clearly enough to care anymore.
When I wake the next morning, the overwhelming despair sets in again and I drink until well into the afternoon. When my stomach revolts at the idea of more scotch, I pull myself out of bed and spend the rest of the day wandering around the house in my mother's nightgown, just looking everything over. Gloria’s packed a small bag for me: a few personal items from my room and the gun she found in the laundry room and a wad of cash she got from God-only-knows where. I ask her, without trying to be a brat, what she’s up to, rifling through my stuff. The things she puts in the bag seem random at best. I figure if she is packing a bag for me I should have things I actually need, like clothes and maybe a hair brush.
Gloria throws together some pasta for us for dinner and doesn't even bother to clean up after we were done. I start to, but she stops me. “It doesn’t matter, baby,” she says.
We spend the rest of the evening in the family room on the sofa, looking through family albums. Earlier, she was so cold and factual. But now she’s more solemn than anything. She insists on a night of bonding, which is nice, but it also feels too much like goodbye—like we’re doing something that we both should remember. It feels important.
When we’ve gone through all of the photo albums from my and Michael's birth on, Gloria pulls out an album I’ve never seen before. It’s nondescript enough to blend in with all the others, but this one has my mother's name on the spine. It’s dusty, as though it hasn't been touched for years, and from the way she’s gripping it so tightly, I guess that my father doesn't even know it’s here.
"I've wondered why you never ask me about your mother," Gloria says in a gentle tone. I have no answer for that. My father isn't fond of too many questions, and for far too long after her death, he hadn't allowed us to even mention her. I shrug, feeling guilty, like I should have asked questions and the fact that I didn't meant I don't care. The awful weight of my selfishness presses on my shoulders. I’m a horrid daughter.
"I've spent a long time deciding what I would say to you and how I would say it when you finally got around to asking me about your mother. But you never did, so consider this my gift to you, amore." She smiles at me with the saddest expression I've ever seen, sadder than even the one she wore at my mother's funeral. Tears pool in her eyes and slip down her cheeks.
"She was my best friend," she begins the story of my mother's life, telling me all about how they met in Sunday School one summer when she came up from Florida to spend the summer break with her grandparents, and eventually moved in with them full-time after her mother left her abusive father.
"Even then, she was a free spirit—wild, unrestrained, loud. Mean, too. She had so much fire, that one." The woman she describes doesn't sound like my mother. The Esmeralda I knew had been docile and quiet. She practically tip-toed around my father, and I only heard her raise her voice maybe once. But I don't dare interrupt Gloria's story, I find myself wholly fascinated.
"The last time I saw your mother," she says, holding my hands in hers with a sad smile on her face. "She said two very important things to me. The first was that no matter what, I was to keep you and your brother safe, and you trust that I'm doing that now. Don't you?" I nod, not understanding where this is going, but I do trust her. She’s all I have.