The Night After the Wake

Georgia feels awkward standing in a kitchen surrounded by sympathy casseroles. Despite this being the same kitchen she grew up in, standing at her mother’s side as she cooked the Sunday roast, on her tiptoes, trying to mix the chocolate for cookies, resisting temptation to eat the batter itself, she feels herself a stranger here. The room is the same, unchanged through decades, never remodeled, the same familiar feeling of home, but Georgia feels different. She tugs self consciously at her black Alaia dress, turning her Manolo Blahnik clad feet inward towards her. She feels strangely overdressed for this kitchen.

This was the home of plaid flannel pajamas and hand sewn church dresses. This had not been home to Georgia for ten years. New York City changed her, piece by piece. She did not feel it happen, but she looks at herself in the dark reflection of the bay window, and she barely recognizes this version of her—more so--these unchanged walls in this familiar house don’t recognize the person she’s become.

She wishes she could be like her father, locked away in a study, away from the onlooking sad faces of mourning. She does not have the same excuse, because her world did not fall apart in the same way. Instead she stands awkwardly in this place once familiar, leaning against the stove, chewing casually on a cookie.

Something isn’t quite right about it. The taste, almost the same, but missing something—a key ingredient. Georgia looks up as her younger sister enters the kitchen, carrying dirty plates, looking so homely and put upon that Georgia herself was almost offended.

She understood the connotation. Susan stayed. She stuck it out through to the bitter end, and therefore she had superiority in her grief. What could Georgia say? After all, she was the one who left when her mother had spoken those ill-fated words “If you don’t like living by my rules, you’re free to leave.”

The next chunk of cookie goes down hard as she thinks about that moment. They were not the last words—those were reserved for polite phone conversations. Surely it was the typical, how are you doing chatter, but those were the last words that mattered.

So she tries to bite her tongue as Susan flips the faucet on with a sigh, faced away from her sister. She begins to clean the lingering food off of the nice china.

What a waste of the nice china this night has been.

If Georgia was politer, she would offer to help, take a rag and begin to dry the sud-soaked dishes, just as they had done when they were girls. But Georgia had never been polite, and she didn’t feel like a part of her own family anymore.

It was the little moments, when the mourners had been here before, as they stood in circles talking about her mother in ways she could never understand. They all had such wonderful stories, anecdotes from only the month before. Susan laughed at these earnest stories. She understood their meaning, she was there when those you-had-to-be-there jokes were being made. Georgia was a hundred and fifty miles away. A short car ride, but in these moments it felt more like a million.

She didn’t know her own mother at all.

She tries to find words to say to her sister, who she felt had ignored her for most of the night. She was busy, Georgia assured herself, making the rounds and making the plans. Those had always been Susan’s best qualities. Meanwhile, here was Georgia, actively trying to remind herself that this was not about her.

Whatever petty self-indulgent words her tongue could form were swallowed by the remaining chunk of cookie. She let the slightly-more bitter-than-she-remembered taste crumble down into her throat.

“You forgot the brown sugar.” She said casually finally placing what had been missing from the mouthful. Susan stilled at her place by the sink. The water ran needlessly, the only noise in the now empty house.

“Why did you come back here?” Susan finally spoke, her voice low, a measured attempt to stay polite. Though Georgia wasn’t sure why Susan’s false nicety remained, even when no one was around to behold it.

“Why wouldn’t I come back?” Georgia argued. “She was my mother too.”

Susan laughs, tossing her wash rag almost violently on the counter. At last, the politeness was gone. “That didn’t stop you from leaving, did it? Even after she got sick? I was the one who was here, I was the one who took care of her and dad, who in case you hadn’t noticed is barely holding it together right now. I was the one who cooked and cleaned and did everything. And now you show your face back here and that’s the only thing you can say?”

Georgia shakes her head softly. How long had Susan been holding that in?

“What a perfect saint you are. Would you like a medal?” she hadn’t meant that. Cruelty was always Georgia’s first line of attack. Luckily for her, she was standing in front of the one person who knew this all too well. Despite looking away for a moment to blink back tears, Susan ignored the comment, returning instead to the dishes in front of her.

But Georgia felt petty. Why did Susan get to let everything off of her chest, and Georgia was just supposed to swallow it down? “She was the one who told me to go!” Georgia screamed to the room itself, if not to her sister.

“Keep your voice down, Dad is asleep.” Was the only reply.

“I was trying to be something. I was never going to be able to do that here in this dead end town.”

“Don’t you think I ever might have wanted to be something too?” Georgia’s rant dies in her throat at her sister’s tired words. Because the truth was, she hadn’t thought about it. Susan was always the quiet, soft spoken one, seemingly resigned to her fate as a spinster homemaker. It had never occurred to Georgia that she might have wanted more.

“You had every opportunity to leave too.” She offered lamely.

“Someone had to stay.”

“Don’t put that on me!” Georgia whispered sharply, consciously lowering her voice. “I didn’t force you to stay. You made that decision on your own. You’ve always been so obsessed with being the good kid. Of being reliable and stable. You did that to yourself.”

“Oh I suppose I should be more like you then, huh?” Susan whispered turning toward her sister with an accusing point of her finger. “Just do whatever I feel like. The sad part is that even though you’re failing at the one thing you claimed you needed space to do, mom was always secretly proud of you for leaving. You earned her respect and the most I could get was her pity.”

Georgia didn’t know how to respond to that. It’s true that her mother always believed that she could be a writer. It’s true that she encouraged her on that path. But Georgia remembers the disappointed look on her face when she brushed past her toward the door. She remembers the frustrated tears through the bay window as she tossed her duffel bag into the trunk and drove into the horizon.

“That’s not true.” She argues, though she can’t find the fight in her words.

“You have always been selfish and oblivious. And you were always her favorite. And it might be petty but I hated you for that, for a really long time.”

No further words were spoken. Susan turned the water off and disappeared into the living room. Georgia stood stuck like a statue, as she heard soft footsteps disappear up the staircase.

She tries to sleep, but insomnia finds its victim once again. Instead she grabs a soft pack of Marlboros and her coat. For a moment she stops in the kitchen, almost thinks to light the cigarette there, but instead she traces the familiar path to the old barn.

She wonders why she’s stood there, shivering in a coat that was only meant to look nice. There is no one here anymore who would tell her she had to smoke outside. “Old habits.” She muses to her only company, a grey speckled barn owl high upon the rafters. The owl stares down with judgmental yellow eyes.

“Tough crowd.” Georgia muses, setting her Marlboro alight and relishing as the toxins hit her lungs.

She is startled at the sound of the barn door sliding open. She turns to see Susan, heavy winter coat wrapped around flannel pajamas.

“I thought I might find you out here.” There is no judgment in the words, but Georgia reads into them anyways.

“Those things will kill you, you know.” Susan joked softly, sounding every bit like the unspoken elephant lingering in the room.

“I’m quitting.” Georgia lies casually, tapping her finger on the soft cigarette, watching the ash fall away. “No you’re not.” Susan responds bluntly. Georgia does not argue. You can’t lie to the person you grew up telling all your secrets to.

If life were more melodramatic, they’d have this argument here and now. Tears would flow as curses spat back and forth upon their dead mother’s grave. She almost wishes they could have the fight, thinks maybe it would be cathartic.

Instead Susan reaches silently for a cigarette and Georgia says nothing as she pulls the cheap neon lighter from her pocket igniting the flame.

You don’t smoke. She thinks this but does not say the words out loud, for fear of breaking the spell. She doesn’t even allow herself to feel smug as her sister chokes on the smoke in her lungs, unable to breathe the nicotine back out into the cold night air.

The coughing subsides and a stillness falls upon the two sisters. They take a cold comfort in the quiet cooing of the grey owl perched high into the rafters.

Wise eyes pierce through unspoken barriers, an all-knowing guardian. For a moment, Georgia allows herself to believe in reincarnation. Thinks this the only explanation for the weight of this silence.

“You were right about the brown sugar.” Susan confesses, breaking the heaviness. Georgia nods accepting the surface level apology, though she does not miss the subtext.

Their mom had only taught one of them that recipe, a fact not lost on either sister.

“You were wrong about me being the favorite.” Georgia offers, because she can think of nothing else to say.

Susan smiles, rather she grimaces and turns to her sister with broken eyes. “No I wasn’t.” she speaks ever so quietly. “But thanks for saying it.”

Tomorrow she will fly back to the city, and she's uncertain when they will speak again. But for a brief moment two sisters made strangers by time were, by their shared silent grief, made to be sisters again.