Sweetest Sin(30)

Home.

The thought still soured in my stomach. At least the extra choir practices meant another excuse to get out of the apartment. I hated myself for thinking it, but I hated even more the uncomfortable, greasy, weird feeling I got being at home.

Like I didn’t belong here.

No. Like she didn’t belong here.

Mom’s shoes cluttered the entry—two pairs, weather-worn and fading. I kicked them into the coat closet. The busted hangers had dropped the winter coats onto the floor. She’d left them there. I shook them out.

A single white pill tumbled from the pocket.

It crashed against the rug as soundlessly as thunder.

I sucked in a breath, checking the other pockets. Nothing in them but lint and crumpled receipts. The pill was a loner, one lost from over a year ago.

I hated to even touch the foul thing. If she knew she had an Oxy left…

I glanced over the apartment, dark and cluttered. Newspapers wadded near the door—she said she’d take them to recycling later. I made a note to toss them out with the garbage that night. The pots from last night piled in the sink—she wanted to let them soak a little longer. I’d start on them before they smelled.

The bills piled up on the table.

She put them off. I hated them the most, so I usually did that first.

But the electric company was closed, and the landlord didn’t like calls after hours. I spent my afternoon and evening at the church and didn’t have time to sort through the finances.

Not that I could focus on anything important now.

I drowned in my own thoughts.

No.

In my own slickness.

And how horrible and sinful and delightful and amazing had that discovery been?

My body betrayed my soul, my lips their own cautious whispers, and my heart the only defense it had against an untouchable, unobtainable man. Yet I had the power—no, the control—to pull away from his arms.

I had ended the kiss, returned to the sanctuary, and looked upon the altar and the cross and the sanctity of the church without guilt for the first time in a month.

I could do this.

I could fight the temptation.

At least…in the church.

At home, in the dark, those feelings returned. I warmed in the right and wrong places.

I forced a breath and focused on cleaning the entry and living room so I could get to my bed. I had homework to do. Plus, I’d promised I’d update the food pantry inventory spreadsheet. Theirs was made in Microsoft Word and with the aid of an adding machine, and I was pretty sure my head almost exploded when I tried to work it.

I really needed to sleep. When was I going to fit it in? Between my two summer courses, the choir practices, volunteering for the festival, and working at the food pantry I had no idea where I’d squeeze in more hours for the things we desperately needed. Like sleep. And working part-time. Or full-time, like we needed. I wasn’t ready to give up on earning my degree before finding a job, especially since I knew how difficult it’d be to find any good paying work in my field.

Unless…I had to shift my career goals.

I’d taken business classes at school. Despite growing up in the church and wanting to help others through charity and social work…those jobs didn’t pay the bills. The overdue bills.

And the debts.

Dad’s lingering funeral costs.

College.

I bagged the trash in the living room and groaned as the garbage overflowed.

How did Mom ever manage this on her own?

The answer was obvious—she didn’t. Not when she was still high and drinking or after the year she spent sobering up.

No one had said it, no one had even thought it, but I knew how it would look if I admitted to only moving home once Mom got clean and times were easier. But it was Dad who said to leave. He told me to focus on my education, my career, my life.

So I didn’t end up like her.

The woman sharing my home wasn’t the Mom I remembered. She wasn’t the woman who raised me. She was better now. Human again, instead of the raging animal sneaking drinks and stealing pain medications.

And yet…I still panicked. I still checked. I still waited for the day she’d make a mistake and reveal that the past year of sobriety was a lie.

I was tired of sneaking into her bedroom and peeling the bottle from her hands, just so I could check to see if it was a beer or…

A bottle of water.

Good.

Why was it I could kiss a priest and yet feel more guilt for doubting my mother’s sobriety?

I cleared her nightstand of the extra bottles and magazines. Mom didn’t wake up, snoring in a twin bed. It wasn’t ours. She and Dad had shared a hand-crafted bed. I never asked where it ended up, lost and ruined. It’d meant the world to him, that bed.

He was an honest, generous, loving Catholic man who lived for his family and showed that love through his trade—carpentry. He’d made most of our furniture by hand.