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“You really shouldn't be drinking that,” Arthur muttered, eyeing the highball in his wife’s shaky hand. She was on her third for the night, all following their usual after-dinner brandy. The cigarette between her lips quivered at his comment. Ash dropped onto her shoe with the motion, unnoticed.
Angela sighed. “Well, the doctor said my past miscarriages were just from stress. Maybe you need to recognize that the Lord wanted Clark and Clarissa to go to Heaven early. Lucky them, they didn't even inherit Original Sin!”
And neither did the rest, except for Clay, her precious only living ever. So much for miracles, Arthur came to realize. That boy was the most important thing in her life, more than their trips to the fair or visits to the old church she attended in youth. Everything was Clay this, Clay that, and maybe it was bitter for Arthur to care the way he did about being second to his son, the useless little thing he helped create. Yet he can't help wondering if things would be different with any of the previous accidental deaths singing along to hymns with Angela on the way to church instead.
Ol’ Gunny hangs in the study like a reminder of everything wrong Clay has brought onto his family. He locks eyes with its barrel from afar and throws back the rest of his bourbon, an endless baptism washing away the sins of what he remembers. The liquor is strong down his throat, not as smooth as usual, for some reason.
Orel had just run along back to his bedroom after his lesson not to build effigies of Biblical figures, even if he thinks he's just recreating how they died for educational purposes, because flaying a cloth doll is still a sin against Jesus’s apostles. The kid’s ass hasn't gone a day without welts in so long Clay doesn't understand how he has the energy to go out and play with his friends. When his own father smacked him, made it hurt, it meant something. Whatever Orel got out of it, the same attention Clay sought or some deeper, base pleasure that Clay didn't shake out of him, surely he understands why Clay does what he does.
Funny, Clay thinks, how the last thing he ever wanted to be was someone like Dad. The bruises don't heal. They just sink down into the soul.
“You coddle that boy too much.”
“And you're too hard on him. Let him believe in those made-up commandments if he wants; he's the only son you're gonna get. God blessed us with that sweet boy and all you do is ignore him.”
“I don't ignore him.” Arthur thought for a moment. There was one thing that always brought him and his old man together out in nature, but Angela wouldn't like it.
Clay doesn't attend his father’s funeral. He doesn't tell Bloberta or the kids the old bastard even bit it, because why would he. If he wants to blame Clay for Mommy’s death, then let him carry that weight on his shoulders all the way down to Hell.
That Sunday, Reverend Putty preaches something Clay must have heard a thousand times in the past, though he's too hungover to recall it in the moment. Orel sits intently as always, and Bloberta keeps Shapey in line enough for them to go without too many glares. “And you know what Ruth did, even when her lucky, lucky husband died? She stayed with Naomi through the famine. That, my friends, is the importance of family. You don't even need to be blood-related! These ladies didn't care that their bond broke; their suffering actually ended up bringing them good fortune too. ‘Cause when Ruth married Boaz, well, down the line, we got King David, would you look at that! So I leave you with this—always, always care for your family, whether they're kin or through marriage. You never know what that love can do. Amen.”
“Amen,” Orel repeats, eyes glossy with unshed tears at Putty’s ever-so-wise words. Clay only realizes the service is over when he feels the boy tug at his sleeve. They're the only two left in the building. “C’mon, Dad,” he says, “Mom and Shapey are already at the car.”
“Right, right, kid.”
“Hey, Dad, um,” Orel starts, once they rise from their pew, “you meant it, when you said you love everyone enough, right?”
“Of course. You should know I love you, or else I would've put a stop to your hijinks long ago.” Family, he thinks, suppressing the urge to laugh. What a waste.
Mommy died two years and three months ago and the quiet final breaths she gasped out sometimes cry through the kitchen curtains with the wind. Clay just couldn't think of it as his fault, not when she had so many other precious onlies ever that she killed with her drinking and smoking and ungodliness of being around Dad that much. Clay hoped he never tried drinking. It would probably just take him back to feeling like both his parents in one screwed-up manchild. At fourteen, some of the kids at school had already picked up the habit, talking about replacing vodka with water when their parents went to bed or even getting to have a glass of wine at the dinner table. Clay couldn't imagine drinking with Dad. But maybe, just maybe he could steal from Mommy’s old liquor cabinet, if only to see what reaction it would spark.
His face still burned where Dad last backhanded him. Some argument over Clay getting a job at the nearby corner store, or something. It hardly mattered, and Dad hardly left a mark. Clay liked it best when he could see the proof that he was enough, was worth whatever his father would give him in the prolonged absence of his mother’s love.
Not worth it. Yeah, right. Mommy showed him how much he was worth, up til the very end when he learned the truth. Dad deserved to show him something too, no matter how hard Clay had to ask for it every time.
Clay stares at the ceiling. Across their divider, Bloberta rolls over in her sleep, breaking up the silence of anything but their combined, uneven breaths. She used to remind him of his mother, at least for that single perfect first night. Once upon a time, she would drink and dance and feel human, not like some absent neat-freak. But that changed too quickly. All she wanted was a husband, someone to help. Clay, sure, he was just there. He never asked for this. But it’s his to break and fix and break all over again for Bloberta to handle like she loves doing so damn much.
“Hey,” he mumbles just loud enough for her to pick up the noise.
“What do you want?”
He goes silent once more. He doesn't really have much to discuss with her. Not unless they're arguing, but they're both too tired for that right now. “Uh, nothing, I guess. Just… help. You like to help.”
“Clay, I can't help you. No one can.”
Clay stared at the ceiling. Twenty-five years old and he still couldn't get over that night. The paramedics just took her away. Dad didn't even let him see her under that white sheet that hung over her like she was a ghost already gone up to Heaven with all the other special brothers and sisters he hated so much. But they had to be in Heaven, since they didn't kill her like Dad said he did.
The funeral felt like he truly did shoot through his chest. Mommy didn't look like herself, all dolled up to resemble a caricature of the woman he loved. Dad didn't cry. Dad only looked at Clay when he talked out of turn. Such was the new normal.
At least he was closer to the life he wanted now. He had church in the morning, his blue suit hung up all nice in his closet. Someday he could keep things that simple: a job better than his current dead-end that Dad still wouldn't approve of, a collection of Bibles each with their own notes and covers, a thoughtful reverend to listen to each Sunday morning. Man, that would be something. The same peace and quiet, in a house rather than his cramped little apartment. Mom would’ve been happy for him. That mattered more than anything his dad had to say.
His father taught him only one real lesson. Pain is love. Pain makes you worth it. He gives that pain to himself, really, he thinks behind a bottle of scotch, always has and always will. What is a bruise but a bloodrush of attention, something to prod at and watch fade until it comes back in full force?
That night, when he fell, he fell for Bloberta only literally. He said it hurt. Those early days together were nothing but a haze of drinks and hurt patched up with her motherly help, all she knew she was good for, even before Orel.
Clay knew then why it really hurt him. Under the dizzy headache haze of his first time waking up still drunk, he could feel his father’s fists raised at the dinner table or in the car, at Mommy’s grave or in the den when he wasn't allowed there. He rarely missed the man himself, but that never stopped him from missing both his parents’ displays of attention.
Bloberta turned cold as her hands in only a day or so. Maybe they both carried a piece of each parent somewhere inside them they never wanted to find.
“My mom wouldn't want you covering her cross with your flowers.”
Dad smacked him upside the head and it felt like her hugs. They rode home from her grave in passing silence. And Clay went to his room, and read his Bible verse, and refreshed his mind on the Lost Commandments, and had a silent dinner alone in the kitchen, Dad in the den. And someday it will bite him back, he knew that much.
He just had to stay sober and pious, like Mommy would want of him. He just had to be worth it enough for Dad to remind him of what he had done and what he had failed to do.
What he has done and what he will always do. The clink of glasses and thick haze of smoke. That's all Mommy. The rest of him be damned. He just can't give off the same love he watched disappear underground. Clay loves everyone enough, in the only ways he knows how.