July 26. Midsummer.
Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago to the day was six years. Six years he has been gone. Vagabond. Dead. I don’t know. I am not entirely sure how to feel about it. I have moved on, I think. It is clear he is not coming back.
Good riddance.
I went back to the family house today. It is not something I usually do without good reason. Those doors loomed high above me. They were painted pitch black. They were blue the last time I saw them. How long ago was that? A month? Several?
It doesn’t matter. I knocked on the door. One. Two. Three. I waited. The shouts of the people on the street drain into an echo as the doors were opened into a hall that was as wide as it is tall; I stepped inside and, despite the ceilings towering high above me, my shoulders tensed and pressed upon myself. as if I was being crushed beneath the weight of all the years of animosity that had seeped into the walls.
My boots echoed across the white marble floor as I stepped inside. I knew if I had looked down, I would have been able to see my reflection. The doors shut loudly behind me.
“May we take your cloak?”
“No,” I had said. “I will not be staying long.” As I spoke, I heard the two maids depart from the foyer as quickly as they had arrived. Father had a new pair every month, it seemed. I did not bother to learn their names after I was seven winters old. It was not worth the effort on my part, to get attached when they left as quickly as they had come. I continued further into the house.
Curtains were drawn over every window. It was terribly dark. I was not surprised at the fact. Even when I stepped into the long dining hall, the only source of light and warmth was the hearth at the far end of the room. Mother had kept the house dark after he was gone. It was her son, after all, but it was not her only son.
She looked to me first - Mother did when she heard me walking down the room towards them. She was dressed in black. She always was. A black dress. Black gloves. A black veil was strewn over her face. I could not see her eyes, but I remembered them well. They were also black, and oh, so cold.
Father did not look up from his spot on the floor; kneeled over at the foot of my mother’s chair, and he tossed closed letters aimlessly into the fire to be burnt and done away with it. Not a thing written to them could console their pain, their loss. He had not looked at me once since the day I had to come home and tell them he is gone.
“What is it you want?” Mother asked. Not a greeting, or a welcome. She never bothered to ask me how my day had gone, nor did she offer a thought on my recent promotion. Why should she? What does it do for her, but offer a bitter reminder of what her younger son could have been?
“Father had his birthday yesterday, did he not?” I replied.
“Why do you bother to show up at all if you are a day late?” She spat back at me. “Do you not know that we are grieved enough? Think you we wish for your petty condolences or your thoughtless congratulations? It is another year we are without him.”
.
..
…
“You are right,” I said and felt myself begin to laugh. I tilted my head back and laughed, and I only laughed harder when I saw the confusion cross my mother’s face. Father finally turned to look at me; his eyes were not red from tears of grief, but from the bottle he had nursed as he did every afternoon. I sighed, and then spoke again. “Here is what I should say to you both - choke.”
And Mother began to scream.
And Father began to yell, but I heard them not.
I just laughed.
And then I left.
Good riddance.
