Live in Peace

“Wow, Angie, you look great.”

“Thank you, Scott,” she said with a smile before moving on across the room. She strode slowly over to the bar in the far corner, receiving a flurry of compliments along the journey. With the same, gorgeous grin, she thanked each of them just as she had Scott.

She did look great. Probably the best she ever had. Even better than that, though, was how great she felt. At 30 years old, she supposed she hadn’t felt quite this happy since she was a naive child still holding faith in the world’s innocence. That was back before she had renounced God, shoved way her feelings and began falling in love with the wrong kinds of men. Before the dark ages that consumed her adulthood was a brief flash of light and god did it feel good to see it again.

“What will you have?” The bartender asked as soon as she approached. His soft face contorted into a timid grin of pity that would normally make her self conscious, but she paid him no mind.

“Champagne,” She replied, leaning heavily forward on the bar with the excitement of a college student that had just turned 21.

His eyebrows furrowed confusedly for a moment, but the bartender shrugged and grabbed a flute glass from behind him. “One glass of champagne coming up.”

“No, sir, I want a round.”

God it felt good to feel alive.

Twirling around, Angie lifted her arms above her head and shouted, “champagne for everyone!”

She may have been happier than she ever remembered feeling, but her life still wasn’t a movie. Though she had expected the crowd of finely dressed attendees to jump and cheer at the announcement, no such thing occurred. Everyone stared blankly at her for a moment before turning back to their quiet, lifeless conversation.

“I’ll start chilling a couple of bottles and hand them out to people as they come,” the bartender murmured, his eyes wary as he handed Angie a flute of sparkling joy.

Her smile was unwavering, graciously thanking the man as she grabbed the drink and took a sip.

She turned to make her way to the other end of the room where several of her cousins sat, but a cold hand gripped her wrist, pulling her back.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A vicious voice snarled in her ear.

With a roll of her eyes, Angie turned to face her mother. “You look lovely today, mom. Probably the most beautiful you’ve ever been.”

“Stop making a joke out of this,” she hissed. For nearly sixty, Darla was extravagant for her age. How could she not be, though, when she had a husband that could buy her an army of nutritionists and plastic surgeons? “People are beginning to talk about you, Angie.”

“Then let them talk,” she replied with a chuckle. “Don’t you see, mom? We’re free.”

Her father’s sister and brother-in-law where standing close enough to hear and they each shot her a malicious glare. Angie noticed this and simply waved them off. She had never liked Diana and Curt anyway.

Her mother’s eyes squinted into analyzing slits as she looked her daughter up and down. “Did somebody give you something? Did Maureen give you one of her pills? I don’t care how poorly you feel, darling, you should never go taking somebody else’s medication.”

Maureen was her aunt who was very forthcoming about her battle with depression. In the kingdom of the Henderson’s, it was an atrocity to speak of any feeling that slighted the appearance of robust power and material worth, and Maureen was often left out of benefit parties and social galas for such reason. Angie had always liked her aunt more than the rest of her family, however, and it was because her admittance of natural human experience made Angie feel validated in her worldly views.

Life sucked.

No number of diamonds, plane tickets, pretty dresses or new cars could make the hurt go away, and Maureen acknowledged that.

“I didn’t take any pills,” she groaned. “I’m just happy, mother. Is that so hard to believe?”

Darla looked incredulously around the room and then shook her head. “Yes, it is. It’s incredibly hard to believe.”

With another roll of her eyes, Angie poured the rest of her drink down her through and turned back to the bar. “Another, please. My mother won’t be having one, so I suppose I’ll take hers.”

The bartender set another glass of champagne on the counter, but Darla snatched it away before Angie could reach for it.

Angie laughed. “Are you finally feeling it too?”

“Enough!” Her mother’s voice reached an octave she had only heard a handful of times when she was a child, and anyone within the nearby vicinity turned to stare. Just as she had always done, however, Darla shrunk, smiled, waved it off, and allowed the tension of interest to settle before allowing her feelings to resurface.

“Mother, please,” Angie state with a coy smirk, reaching forward and grabbing the glass from Darla’s hand. “You’re creating a scene.”

She began stalking off, leaving her mother dumbfounded, her hand still in midair holding nothing more than a bitter concoction of confusion and embarrassment. As if the day could get any better, now Angie was walking on air, gliding through the crowds of judgmental onlookers without the slightest of care.

God did she feel great.

“Angie,” a familiar voice greeted from beside her. She recognized it in an instant, and the air beneath her feet was promptly blown out. She didn’t want to turn to look the man in the eye, but she also didn’t want to give him the power of knowing how he made her feel. So, she turned.

Normally, the sight of his handsome, clean-shaven face would give her pause, his well-tailored suit would catch her eye, and the attention of his gaze would make her tremble. All things of the past would wash away at the glint of his smile, and she would yearn for him to call her “sweetheart” just one more time.

Not today, though.

“What?” She asked.

Clearly surprised, Ralph paused. “I-I’m sorry. Sorry about all of this.”

Was that all it took? Did she really suffer through years of an abusive relationship to find out that repentance could be achieved by simply standing her ground and maintaining her power? No… She had to make sure.

“Sorry for what?”

Confused, Ralph quickly looked around the room. “About your father.”

Instantly, she felt like a fool. A very angry, fed-up fool.

“Go to hell.”

Her ex-boyfriend took a step back as his jaw dropped. In a low, quiet voice he whispered, “what is going on with you?”

She was ready to scream at him when the pastor came and snatched her away.

She was already planning the scene her family would talk about for years to come. Throwing her champagne in Ralph’s face, she would scream obscenities at him, announcing to the world all the horrible things he had done to her. When Darla came to shut her up (as she would inevitably do,) Angie would then turn on her, denouncing her as the kind of terrible mother who uses the phrase “love isn’t always easy” when her terrified daughter comes to her afraid of her own boyfriend. She would bring the scene to a close with a gallant monologue ending in, “and what was it all for? Well, what is everything done in our family for? Reputation, of course.”

Bam. The greatest performance of her acting career would end with a shocking mic drop.

The scene would never gain an audience larger than her own imagination, however. The pastor had pulled her away before she could get a single word out, and suddenly she was standing on the side of the room she had avoided the entire afternoon.

“We’ll begin the service soon,” the pastor explained, flipping through a small notebook he held in his stubby hands. “Your mother asked me to speak with you.”

“Can we speak out in the hallway?” She asked fervently. The black box she had promised herself she wouldn’t look in was growing closer now, and she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation.

“Don’t you want to see your father, ma’am?”

She remembered her childhood nanny, Carla, asking her that once. Her father had been gone on a business trip for nearly two months when she was nine, and it had been the most peaceful summer of her existence. The days had been spent playing dolls with Carla, learning to bake cupcakes, and rolling around in the mud until her mother had screamed at her stop. Then, it all came to a crashing down when she heard a bellowing voice shouting up the stairs, “ladies, I’m home!” She had refused to leave the sanctity of her bed covers, and when Carla was urging her to go downstairs, she had asked, “but, darling, don’t you want to see your father?”

At nine, she wasn’t allowed to have a voice, but now the force that had held the key to her independence was gone.

She straightened her back and glared at the pastor. “No. I don’t.”

The stubby man paused, sighed, and then nodded his head. “I understand that these things can be hard, so I won’t force you into anything. I just thought it might be easier to tell me what you want to say if you were looking at him one last time.”

“I can say what I want to say without looking at him,” she growled.

“Okay,” he flipped opened his notebook and pulled a pen out of his pocket. “What would you like me to say during the service, then? What was the greatest gift your father has left you with?”

For a moment, she thought. What was the greatest gift her father had left her with? Was it the long scar running down her back she often told people was from a boating accident? Was it the flurry of aggressive, demeaning emails he had sent her when she broke up with Ralph, the man intended to strengthen the Henderson lineage? Was it her fear of being truly loved in a way that didn’t illicit pain?

As she gazed blankly at the black box that held the corpse of the man who had controlled her from birth, she found the true answer.

“The greatest gift my father has left me with is the ability to live in peace knowing that he is dead.”

She dropped her glass of champagne on the floor where it shattered, and she stormed out of the funeral home, a revitalizing waft of fresh air hitting her as she did so. Kicking off her uncomfortable heels, she ran into the grass, running with an energy her body had forgotten.

She smiled as her feet absorbed every prickle, tickle, and touch of the earth. Every sensation cascaded up her body and shivered through her soul, culminating in a joy so profound it resulted in a waterfall of tears.

God did she feel great.