Closure

This is a story about forgiveness.

The night she graduated college, Cerys was supposed to go to Marion’s, the coffee shop she’d worked at for the past four years. She’d gotten a job there right away so she’d have money to pay off her rent while she studied at the Penn State Berks campus, and it had basically become her second home.  Her coworkers and manager had long ago worked their way into her life like extended family, and they wanted to celebrate her achievements before they lost her to the “real world.”  Cerys had agreed with a bounce in her voice, all the excitement at the prospect of beginning her life making her itch, and she practically skipped down the block from her apartment to the shop to see the people she’d come to love. 

Pushing the door open was such a familiar action.  The springy May air of the little city dissipated in the quick transition of outside to inside, the weighty aroma of coffee grounds overpowering the humid pollution.  Like most coffee shops, it was dully lit, had locals’ paintings of houses or fields or colorfully abstract shapes hanging in old frames from floor to ceiling on every wall like they could make you forget, and it smelled like coffee beans and happiness.   After breathing in, the antsy feeling that had been making her heart race eased, her pulse slowing. 

She would hate to resign there.  It was a place of utter comfort, a corner of the world that she had made her own.  She’d spent thousands of hours there, making so many lattes and croissants she could gather the ingredients and throw them all together with her eyes closed and her feet tied together.  You know, if she had to.  And if she wasn’t working, she’d be there anyway, studying for exams, working on papers and thriving on the best coffee in Eastern Pennsylvania.  Her manager, Joey, a balding man in his mid thirties that smiled with his whole face, was never surprised to see her and always seemed to have her favorite peppermint latte ready and waiting.  She’d gotten so close with him especially that she rather thought of him as an uncle; the uncle that gave you a hundred dollars on your birthday and pulled quarters out from behind your ear at family reunions.  Cerys didn’t want to quit and get a “real” job.  She had a degree in communications now, a degree she’d worked very hard for, but she didn’t want anything to actually change.

She was trying not to think about it or how familiar an action it was to push open that door, or how the sound of the jingle-bells on the opposite side was one of her favorite tunes, when she walked in to Marion’s that night.  Instead she had plastered a grin on her face to match the dress she’d worn for the graduation ceremony, stiff as her upper lip. 

But when Joey said, “Surprise!” and she saw her older siblings, Spenser and Celeste, beaming at her from a table in the middle of the room, come all the way from where she used to live in Massachusetts to congratulate her, the smile instantly became a real one that used her eyes as megaphones.  “Oh God,” she said and her eyes started tearing.  She rushed forward, holding the two of them against her like she could make it feel like home again.  It had been years since she’d seen them, and there was a void in her bones that an embrace couldn’t fill, no matter how warm or happy. 

After all the food and cheek kissing and trying, after the shop had closed for normal customers, Joey was tidying up and Spenser, Celeste, and Cerys were sitting and catching up, reminiscing.

“Do you remember,” Celeste started, her face red and Pacific Ocean eyes watering from the laughter, “when you were, like, six and I was ten and Spenser had to babysit us and you decided that would be the perfect time to discover Mom’s tampons?”

“Oh Jesus,” Spenser said, covering his face and shaking his head while Cerys burst out laughing so hard her coffee almost came through her nose.  “I was only sixteen…”

“And you asked what they were for…”

Cerys’ words came out in between her gasps for air.  “And Spenser… Spenser said they were Christmas ornaments!  Oh God, Christmas ornaments!”

“I was only sixteen!”

“And as soon as he turned his back we started hanging them on the tree!”

“Oh God, my abs…”

“And when Mom came home, she wasn’t even mad.  She said we forgot the Stayfree star at the top and proceeded to make one with her pads!”  Celeste was rubbing her cheeks, Cerys holding her stomach, all three of them hooting and trying to breathe around their laughter.  “Oh jeez, and when Dad came home and saw…  Oh.  Dad…”

As high as the atmosphere had just been, it dropped as quickly as a broken heart at her sister’s words.  “Yeah,” Cerys said, looking down at her coffee mug, her smile fading.  “Dad…”  The silence was an endless ocean between their reunion, cold and swimming with bloody memories.  Regrets.  The old clock in the corner ticked, gravity making each vibration of the second hand fall as heavily as death on their chests.

Spenser broke the silence.  “You can come home, now,” he said, voice quiet.  He’d always been very handsome.  His dark hair and blue eyes had gotten him into so much trouble when he was in high school.  It wasn’t a time that she could remember specifics about, as he was ten years older than her, but she remembered many different girls, many different names, and lots of different times that he’d come home with Celeste snickering behind him because he’d been slapped �" again.  But as much trouble as he’d gotten in, he’d also been able to get almost everything he’d ever wanted.  “Mom doesn’t blame you anymore…”  Cerys looked him in the eyes, so blue and genuine and like her mother’s that she almost believed him.  Almost.

“You know that’s not true.  Not really.”  He looked down at the last bitter, lukewarm dregs of his coffee, confirming it. 

All the happiness of earning her degree and being with the people she loved, in the place she loved, had drained out of her.  “Look, Rissie…” Celeste said.  “We miss you.  A lot.  Seven hours is a long haul to visit as often as we want to see you.”

“Sorry.”

Spenser sighed and leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms and looking at a spot on the table.  His voice was quiet.  “What are you hiding from?  It’s not Mom, so what is it?  Memories?”  Cerys was silent.  “Your mind’s not something you can ever escape, no matter how many miles you put between yourself and home.”

“I’m not hiding from anything,” Cerys said, standing up and gathering their coffee cups to wash them in the back, trying to get away from the accusations and fool herself a little longer.  Truthfully, she knew what was real and what was a façade.  Reality visited every night in the nightmares of pretzel knotted metal and screaming and tires sliding on dead earthworms and March ice. 

“Then why don’t you come home?”  Celeste stood up and followed her sister.

“I can’t exactly call Dekalb home, can I?  I’m not welcome there.”

“Cerys, stop.  It’s been four years since Mom’s even seen you �" don’t you think things have been put in perspective for her?”

“She loves you, Riss, she never stopped,” Spenser said.

Cerys set the coffee mugs on the counter by the register and massaged her temples, her back to her family.  The last time she'd talked to her mother had been the summer after her senior year of high school, short conversations to make sure she was set for college so far from home.

“Do you have everything?” she’d asked, her tone clipped like it was painful to speak to her youngest daughter.

“Yes.”

“Well… good luck.”

Not drive safely.  Not goodbye.  Not “Call me if you need anything.”  No closure.  Just good luck.

The thing was, she’d never blamed her mother for the cold attitude.  As far as Cerys was concerned, she deserved less.  She deserved to have been thrown out of the house on her a*s.  She deserved to wander the streets of New England, cold and alone…  It was no surprise whatsoever to her that her mother could barely look at her in the few months she still lived in Dekalb after the car accident that killed her father.

Cerys had been the other driver.

Blinking back memories she’d almost escaped from, she turned to face her siblings again, not meeting their eyes.

“Why don’t you guys go back to your hotel?  It’s getting late and you’ve got a long drive tomorrow.”

“Riss…”  She really had missed them.

“I want you to go now.”

“Cerys!”

“You know, I think it’s time to call it a night, folks.”  Joey came out of the back room, drying his hands and nodding towards the door with sorry eyes.  Cerys averted her gaze so she wouldn’t have to watch Celeste’s dark ponytail swinging out the door or Spenser’s remorseful shuffling.

“Thanks, Joey,” she said once lock had clicked behind them, gathering the coffee mugs again.

“Hey,” he said, easing her white-knuckled fingers from their ceramic yellow handles, “don’t mention it.” 

Cerys sank down into a seat while Joey went to the back.  She listened to the water run and breathed deeply, smelling the coffee beans but not catching a whiff of happiness on the air.  Her lungs felt like fall leaves, brown, shriveled, dead in her chest, only hanging there because the wind hadn’t caught them quite yet.  Her bones ached from the burden of regret.  She’d only looked over at him for one second, taken her eyes off the road for an instant, but that was all it took for the light to turn red. 

Joey’s hand on her shoulder made her jump through time, back to the present.  “Cay,” he said.  “Are you alright?”

When she faced him she could see his bovine eyes were truly concerned.  She felt blessed to have met him; to have someone in her life who had come to care about her so much.  But what was she supposed to tell him?  The truth?  She’d never be alright because she kept pushing herself into these corners of aloneness, as if shrouding herself in darkness would make up for a life taken.  She couldn’t tell him that.  She couldn’t say it out loud, and even if she could, she knew what he’d say.  It wasn’t your fault, the weather was bad, the tires were old, the airbag was delayed, it was all just bad timing �" she’d heard it all before.  From Spenser, from Celeste, from the police, from everyone but her mother. 

“I think I’m just tired.  Cranky.  It’s been a long, exciting day… that’s all.  I think I’m going to grab a cup of tea to go.”

Perhaps it was because of her bloodshot eyes, or the tangible fatigue that coated her from the roots of her hair to her dragging feet, but for whatever reason, Joey believed her.  He nodded and squeezed her shoulder.  “If you want to talk, you have my number.”  He slipped away to get her a cup with hot water and a chamomile tea bag and then she walked home. 

She entered her apartment, taking whatever solace she could in the sounds of people moving in the rooms above and around her, pretending she wasn’t alone.  The answering machine was blinking red frantically, a message begging to be listened to.  She pressed play and turned to sort her mail.

“Congratulations, Cerys.”  Her mother’s voice was just as she’d always remembered it; the voice that whispered promises of a beautiful future to lull her to sleep when she was a child, the voice that had been in her ear the first time her heart was broken, with a warm shoulder and a hand to smooth her hair.  It was the same voice that had grounded her when she got caught with weed and the wrong kind of friends in the basement, the one that had called her name to come to dinner for the first eighteen years of her life.  The voice that had keened so sincerely over her father’s grave.  It was that voice, that patterned breathing, defeated and empty, which came from the speaker on her answering machine.  The sound made her freeze in the middle of opening a water bill.  She turned her head and clenched her jaw and stared… just stared… “I’m… proud of you.  I miss you.  I wish…  Honey, give me a call if you can… I’d really like to talk to you.”

Cerys stared at the speaker for a moment before she slowly pressed the button that erased the message. She took a sip of her tea and walked down the hallway to crawl into bed where she would lay awake all night, wishing the sun would just rise already.