Mother

This is a one-shot story kinda thing, so it is pretty short and thus should be finished in a sitting. Yesterday, I spent till midnight finishing it, so don't expect much. Also, it is the first tragedy I wrote, and thus give as much feedback as you can. Thanks!

Mother

“Arystar, you back?” Catherine asked, her hands busy on the computer, busy working on her next assignment. Ten seconds later, she lay flat on the sofa, fast asleep. Sitting on the couch of the elegantly carved marble table, she was using her laptop to write, with a couple bottles of beers empty beside it. She works as a writer, publisher, and in the morning as an event organiser as well. Apart from the frequent usage from the alcohol, she is a great mother.

“Mum, you still haven’t done dinner yet? And why do I even bother to ask her?” I said, swinging my bag onto the floor, feeling mildly irritated. As usual, she would always be absorbed in her work, and forget dinner for the family. Rolling up my sleeves, and grabbing the apron, I walked into the large kitchen, where I was greeted by a humming Stephanie. Stephanie(also known as Seth) is my older sister, now in university studying biology. She returns home during a few of the weekends and as it seems, today was a Friday.

“Give me that pan. You trying to what, kill us with a crappy omelette?” I sighed, removing the frying pan from her hands, and before the egg is cooked, throw in some pepper, salt and a couple of crushed tomatoes into the pan, finishing it nicely before serving. Unfortunately, I am the cook in the family, even though I’m only 17. The responsibility fell on me when I was old enough to realise that there was a reason why either the food was badly done, or there was takeaway. When the food they cook were served to guests, they literally fainted after taking the first bite. It was that awful. But that was before I stepped in. And the reason why only we could take it was because we had it all our lives.

“Like always, you could finish an omelette in under three seconds.” Stephanie half-sighed, and I gently shoved her out of the kitchen, donning an apron and starting on the rest of the dishes. For the soup, I was feeling lazy as well, so I just added cream of mushroom into the pot, with extra mushrooms and some conditioners, and I snagged some grilled chicken wings that was about to be eaten by Stephanie (she’s a glutton, by the way) to form a dish of sweet Japanese rice wrapped in grilled chicken strips. I also boiled spaghetti instead of cooking the usual rice, and simply added in chilli, celery leaves and some cheese. Even for simple dishes, it took around half an hour to make and clean up, and night was already visible from the glass panels in the house.

As the dishes were in glorious display, all of us waiting for our mother to sober up, Lilynette stepped in. As a excellent sports student,(and a very poor academic one) she is usually late for dinner, and eats twice as much as me. She sat down for dinner just as Mom started looking around for aspirin for her hangover. After quick coughing and gagging in the kitchen, (like all of us, she has problems swallowing tablets. It seems to be hereditary) she emerged, looking fresh-faced once again. “Oh, now we really have all of you children. Let's start.” she started to wolf down the food, and all the other girls did so too, with equal ferocity. (sometimes you really wonder if they are girls.) Welcome to the family of the Vixens.

By now, you would be very happily wondering where did our dear father go. Our father has been missing from the past ten years, in a trip that had rumoured to kill him. He is Arche Vixen, and if he is still alive, he would be around 38 years of age. His picture (our father never did like picture-taking, so it was hard to find one of him), in black and white, was hanging next to the television. It was surprisingly recent, taken only weeks before his disappearance. I was only seven then, and me and Lilynette, as twins, had only remembered very little of him, as he was doing overseas assignments most of the time by then. But as infants, us both remember the lessons he taught us with playing basketball, and there was much enjoyment. Up till now, I am still playing it, and is even a starter in the school team. But, unlike my father, who knew what he was going to do, I always have no idea. I guess this is part of being young, and old at the same time. We can certainly think, but we cannot do much about the thoughts.

Once again, as the effects of aspirin wore off in about an hour, the usual time the dinner, the ensuing cleanup of the area and a bath later, Mum fell asleep on the couch again, lost in the world of drinking again. She was continuing a story that my father wrote, although with not much success. There are frequent times when my mother tried to ask me to continue the story, but I’d always rejected her, due the fact that the genre my father writes (romance) is not my type.

“Get yourself a girlfriend,” my mum would always say. “Then you will know what love is.” It always seem like an absurd question, but now… it seems to be tempting me a little.

Carrying her up two flights of stairs and pushing open the first room, I dropped an unconscious mother on the king-sized bed, and covered her with a snowy blanket, before lightly closing the door. Just before it was closed, she called out ,”Arche?” (I was always known to look like my father, even without the ponytail he has, and something like her calling for my father has happened before)

I straightened a little, and walked into her room once more, holding her close to me, and kissed her. With a voice deeper than mine, muttered words of comfort and love to her. Although it seems to be quite weird, but such situations are handled and done, and she ends up not talking about it, thinking it was just in her dreams. At moments like these, I see the true side of my mother; she was busy continuing the legacy my father stirred up in the writing world, and although all of us were devastated at the disappearance of my father, she took the brunt of it. She buried herself deep in alcohol while working hard at the same time, and even for me, it is hard to accept the fact that he just disappeared and left a void in our lives like that. She worked so hard, not just to ensure we have food on the table, but also to let all of the world know what our father did. It is a tough job to do, especially when you are drunk half the time and working the other half, but she did it. All of us are so incredibly proud of her.

She looked old and fragile when she slept; she was petite to begin with, but stress took its toll and turned most of her silky blonde hair to fine white ones. Wrinkles, or laugh lines, as she always said, were appearing more and more frequently on her face, a face that was set to look girlish for life, now had the signs of age poured all over it. Sometimes, it pains all of us to see her like this, tired and drunk or in a hangover. She might not look like it, but all of know age is catching up on her. She used to tell us about the crazy lifestyle (includes: archaeology inside ancient Egyptian tombs with traps trying to kill them at every corner, trekking to mount Everest for fun and without oxygen tanks, to the South Pole, covering the back and forth journey within twenty days, scaling famous buildings without safety equipment, etc.)she and our disappeared father had, which sounds hard, but fun. One memorable speech she had was ,"He said he was going to die at forty, and I'm going with him. I'd agreed, and by that that time, we would be sitting around like old fools, recounting the stuff that we had done. And like a story, I'd ask him whether he would have changed any of it, and he would answer no, that all of these times are too good to give up."

All of us grew very fast after our father left, to take up the major space he left behind. He used to run a one-man show in the family, doing all of the cooking, cleaning and arranging much of the fun outdoor events. That is the reason why we ate crappy food for two years, before I could learn how to cook. Yet, there was always this part which none of us could fill; and it was his charisma. Even now, I could still remember his sharp wits and frozen-cold jokes. From time to time, the girls would break down, the ‘without my father’ thing, especially Seth, as she was the closest of us to Dad among us three. Somehow or another, I did not miss him at all. I did not know what particular reason there was, and even though I don’t hate him at all, it is strange to feel a person missing, yet do not miss him. I went into bed, confused and tired, and fell asleep quickly.

The next day was a Saturday, so we took this chance to get our weak (and getting weaker) Mother out in the sunshine to play basketball. It seems to be the only recreational activity we do as a family, but all of us are great at it. All of us totally underestimated our mother, who has been secretly running supermarathons when we were not around (yes, she is that crazy), and as usual, won all three of us together hands-down. She cannot win our father, which makes all of us wonder what kind of level he is at, and whether anything short of a plane crash or a nuclear bomb could make him disappear.

Three hours later, after all of us lay panting under the sun, we were exchanging stories on what happened on the court elsewhere, as it was always a long time before all of us could get together like this again, and we had all sorts of funny stories appearing. Then, trouble came in the form of a distant explosion, followed by security alarms blaring. We live in an isolated place, and our father installed a extensive security system two days before he left on that fateful day. In the past, he always took care of any thieves that managed to stumble upon this place, making it as if he knew it was not coming back.

Turrets of large machine guns appeared from large shrubs, or simply from the ground, and they were directed where the explosion came from. All of us took up a stance; other than basketball, martial arts were also a part of training in our family, also done by our father. It is a weird family, having all of us learning martial arts and having machine gun turrets as defence equipment. Thankfully, they fire rubber pellets, unless they meet seriously armed enemies. I took up as vanguard; of course the guy’s going to protect the girls, right?

The enemies never did stand a chance. The trees were defensively planted, and thus creating single routes for them to come in, and turrets are placed at inconspicuous places, an they shoot to knock them out. Five minutes later, the police arrived (yes, the system calls the police as well), along with uncle Lance, followed by aunt Celine. They are friends of both our father and Mum, and are helping in guiding us. For instance, Seth lives at their house when studying at the university, as it is closer than us. They have no children of themselves (yet), and they treat us like their own. When they were all smiles at seeing we are all safe, my mother fainted.

After all the hullabaloo of the process of sending her there, she got warded into the hospital. The doctor took me, Seth and Lilynette aside and told us that other than the quitting of alcohol, she also needs to stop most of the stressing work, or else her strain would get worse, and if she faints like this again, her life would be in serious danger.

All of us thought about it, and we all decided to take on the main task of writing, in addition to the housework that me and Lilynette share. We also thought of ways to reduce her load suggest ideas, help out during the holidays with the organising, and most importantly, start the hunt of our father.

Two weeks into the hunt, Mum was released, and we surprised her by officially taking over the writing for her. All of us will do a draft, chat and start with the actual thing when the storyline is ironed out. She was so happy she shed tears, something she did not do ever since Lilynette and I graduated. It was actually a great idea, and many of the loyal readers came up personally (without the security alarms roaring, of course) to see us and thank us for the work, which was better than Mum’s. (what do you expect, with three people writing something.)

Two months later, when all of us got into the rhythm of juggling writing and studying, and just at the eve of Father’s disappearance anniversary, something revelational happened. My mother discovered a letter by our father, written just a day before he left for good. Inside the letter, it reads,

Dear Catherine, Seth, Arystar and Lilynette,

By the time you take to find this letter, I would not have been in your world for a very long time. Truth of the matter is, I was sent away to fight a secret war. It is not very convenient to tell you all then, as it is still a national secret. I deeply regret not saying a real goodbye, especially you, my dear Cat. This war could take a long time. Five years? Ten years? Twenty? I do not know. All I do is to ensure that I survive and make it back home, seeing all of your faces again. You all must live on too, living it out without a father to set the curfew and whack you in the butt when you get naughty. But, I myself might not keep to that promise. I am aging faster than normal already, and I am paying a hefty price for the times when I was a reckless young man. But I would have never traded one second of it, because of that, I met you, Cat, and we had Seth together. I was so proud, holding her tiny frame in my hands, thinking that heck yeah, I’m a father! At that time, we defied odds and gotten married, even though half the world was objecting, we did not care. You children are the most wondrous things that ever appeared in my life, and also you Cat. Without your constant purring I could have never made it to becoming a real writer. There are so many things you all are here for, it is unfortunate I will not be there all the time.

Please do not worry, and live life to its fullest. Be who you really are, not who they want you to be. There will definitely be a father and husband, standing in the corner, wearing a T-shirt and Bermudas, standing at the side, waving at you, encouraging you. And to Cat, please, go on to live. You are a wonderful woman, don’t just be stuck with a man not being able to come back. Although if I do, the guy is going to have a hell of a time… literally…

P.S.: if you read this two months after I left, it is safe to eat the chocolate. Really.

Teardrops fell on the yellowed piece of paper as we read it in Mum’s trembling hands, where after that, all of us cried together, cried to the lonesome night sky, as we might have already lost a father.

Two days later, my mother fell into a coma.

It was the worst thing that could happen, after the leaving of our father. The shock from the letter took apart all that was remaining of her, and she was just sleeping there. All of us took turns to sit there next to her, not caring about our studies anymore. All of us only wanted her, our mother to pull through this, and wake up for all of us. I miss the days where I wiped after her vomit, picked up empty beer cans flooding her room, her wishy-washy ways at home, and the crazy things she'd do. Now the house is as silent as a coffin. (wait, ain’t there anything else? Using ‘coffin’ is a bad omen) Diagnosis showed that Mum had a brain tumour, which kinda explained why she had fainted that day. The doctor told us that she could be like this for life, or she could wake up, and die soon after. It was not a choice for us to make, but the doctors said removing the tumour would meant taking the risk of erasing her memories away, and then all of us fell silent. So, the next time we see her, it would really be the last. All of this, is too quick. Much too quick. None of us can take it. Even with taking special leave from the school, the stress from losing a loved one hanging over our heads is just too much to bear, and Seth and Lilynette were crying themselves to sleep almost every night.

Just twelve hours after she was hospitalized, a middle-aged man with long, white hair and flowing footsteps, carrying a large haversack with just one arm, limped slowly into the room, stopped in his tracks in front of her bed for a while and quickly held her in his arms. Before I punched him in the face, I realised the similarity of our facial features; he was our father. At long last, the man who disappeared for ten years came back.

“Dad?” Seth asked.

“Yes. Unfortunate, isn’t it?” he said, voice shaking. After even a war, my father’s voice was shaking. It is hard to think what is going through his mind. Just three hours after the family was at last, reunited, she miraculously woke up. Everyone sprung by her side, but she spent five minutes hugging our father. It was the last five minutes she will ever spend. She died in his arms, with a peaceful smile on her face, the most beautiful one all of us have ever saw.

It was a sad moment, and especially a big blow to our father; imagine his pain when he finally got to see his beloved, and she died in his hands. All of us were tearing madly; and I was of no exception. It was only Dad, who was with her final journey, not crying. Only when her face was covered, the whole thing hit him, and like the old man he looks, he started sobbing madly; for all of us here lost our pillar of support.

It was hard for all of us to accept Dad, especially since he caused Mum’s death indirectly. But, all of us never did care that much, as he returned home, and for all of us, that is what mattered most. And for that five minutes, all of us were back, together, as a family. We fulfilled Mum’s dream of gathering the family together, even if its for that short five minutes.

For the funeral, my dad and I did the eulogy. He finished his part of her earlier years, which moved everyone to tears at least twice. Even after ten years fighting in a war, in a eulogy, he still knows how to move a crowd. When it was my turn, I adjusted the mike, and started.

“Everyone here can remember that my mother did many wondrous things, including giving birth to Seth, me and Lilynette. But, she was weak. Weak from giving birth to us, weak from taking care of us, weak without the support of our war-bound father. But, she shines through this weakness, and showed the true strength within. She was always drinking, yet she still wrote stories in continuation for my father. She still went to work. Whenever she was drunk and fell asleep of the couch, I will carry her up to her bed. When she dances around like a drunk, I steady her and comforts her to sleep. When she pukes on the floor, I clean up after her. It is not that I like doing this, but now, if given the chance to do it, I will do it proudly, for she has given her all, and I should not be of any different. I am not here to let you all remember about all the wonderful stuff she did. We all already do, and it is etched in our hearts. But now, as well, let us etch a picture of her drunk and asleep on the couch, with tousled long hair and a laptop on her. While we embrace her strength for carrying all of us through the hard times, let us also remember the other side of her, the side where she shows her weakness, for that is the true reason, we love our Mother.”.