“I can guess what you’re thinking; there were always presents for birthdays and Christmas. We always went back to Trinidad at least every other year, mostly for Carnival.” Holding her gaze, Sam said his next words with a truth Lux couldn’t ignore. “Those gifts came from mom and me. The man was so lost in his own world he didn’t even remember your birthday.”
“I don’t bel...” Breaking off, Lux realized she was about to do exactly what she had just been accused of. Instead, she swallowed her denial and raised her chin to indicate that he continue.
Leaning forward in his seat, Sam looked at his sister and smiled. With that one small movement of his facial muscles, the older brother who, in the past had always looked after her so well was back.
When she was young, no matter what, Sam was always there to dust off her knees or pull her out of a scrap. Even if she was the one running her mouth, he always took her side.
As her mind wandered, she realized the only comparison she had of the way he treated and took care of her, wasn’t their father, but Josh. They were similar in so many ways; she was momentarily thrown as she looked between them.
“Hang in there Luxie, I know it’s hard but you need to hear this, baby.” The sound of his voice whispering in her ear caused her threatening tears to pool in her eyes. Lifting her limp hand, Josh pressed a kiss against her palm and held on to her hand.
“Luxie, I loved you and mom, but I was just a kid looking to help my dad. I needed his support, but he couldn’t give it and I ended up doing things I shouldn’t have.
The day before he died, I confronted him. I told him he was a piss poor excuse for a husband and father, and that he should get the fuck out of our lives because I was tired of mom and me looking after his grown ass. I never thought he was going to take me so literally.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Sam,” Rachel intervened rubbing his back for comfort.
“I know that, but if I could take back the words of my final conversation with him, I would do it. I’d say, ‘I understand, dad’. I’d say it because I now know how much the circumstances of our lives shape us. I finally know how difficult it is to drum up enough courage to blindly step off a path into the unknown when we’re lost.”
“I know honey, that’s why we’re here, we’re going to do it together,” Rachel reassured him.
Lux watched their interaction and it broke her heart a little. She didn’t know Rachel’s story, but for her and Sam to have found each other, and from what the others said, she had an idea they inhabited the same world.
“Our father owed a lot of money. In the beginning, he was a viable candidate for the loans he received from the bank. By the time I was thirteen, I became aware of the escalated arguments between our parents. Then I started noticing that furniture was disappearing from the house, and mom wore her jewelry less frequently.
By the time you started school, mom had a part-time job that she tried to hide. I didn’t understand why she didn’t want anyone to know. I remember her saying some nonsense about, keeping shame from our door. Damn, Caribbean people say the stupidest things sometimes!” Sam shook his head as though recalling his feelings at her words.
“It’s not stupid at all,” Aviva broke into the conversation for the first time. “My mother was the same way. They sometimes say things in such an unsophisticated way we sometimes miss the point. It’s about maintaining the status quo, especially for what one has worked hard to acquire.”
“Our mother was a homemaker for God’s sake!” Sam argued.
Lux saw Jason pull himself up from a reclining position as though he were preparing himself to wade into the conversation. The rub of his wife’s hand on his thigh seemed to stop whatever he was about to say, but he maintained a watchfulness that surprised Lux. He appeared to be ready to pounce if he didn’t like Sam’s tone.
“It seems to me, Samuel that you may want to take a moment and reevaluate that statement,” Aviva proposed.
Lux couldn’t help smiling as it appeared to her that Aviva wasn’t that dissimilar to her when it came to voicing her opinions.
“It was pride, pure and simple. Our lives were falling apart and all she was concerned about was what people would say if she couldn’t keep up with them!”
“You could be right, I didn’t know your mother, but demeaning her efforts as a stay at home mom, or for wanting the best for her and her children isn’t fair. Let me ask you a question, when your mother met your father, was she just sitting on her arse waiting for a meal ticket or was she making her own way in life?”
“Her family was well off but she worked,” Sam admitted.
“Like I said, I didn’t know her, but it seems to me she brought something to the marriage. From what you’ve said so far, she was a good mother and when things went wrong, she didn’t cave in, she went out and found a job to contribute to the household. Plus, she looked after the home, seems to me she was doing her share.”