“Afterward, our youngest son, Tierney—” Mother paused to smile at him “—who spent much time with his grandfather during his formative years, will make the official Terrebonne family toast to Milton’s passing.” She beamed, then leaned forward to whisper—sharing an aside with the whole room. “Tierney’s taken his death quite hard.”
He couldn’t object to the lie, because he was still reeling from the sudden recollection: he was supposed to prepare some kind of speech. Motherfucker. A toast to send the old bastard off in the style he was accustomed to or some shit. Probably shouldn’t call him that when I’m talking.
His mind raced, but everything he dredged up about the old guy was hateful, or mean or just fugly. He couldn’t tell everyone that the reason he’d spent so much time with the dick was because Grandfather wanted to suppress any deviant behavior that might rear up. Couldn’t share how controlling the old guy was, or how Tierney himself had become the drunk, friendless, abhorrent, disgusting fuckwad he was today under that bastard’s guidance.
Could he? “Christ,” he muttered.
“I knew it,” Gina whispered in his ear, reminding him she was there. “You didn’t prepare a toast, did you?”
He glared at her.
She nodded once, compressing her lips. “Just listen to what other people have to say, and rephrase the good shit.”
Oh, yeah. That’d work, wouldn’t it? “You totally deserve that Christmas bonus,” he told her. She smiled but nudged him toward the front of the room.
Listening to people talk about Grandfather didn’t help. Brain whirling, he kept hoping they’d throw out something to trigger his own gilded memories of the prick, but all the things the guests said about Grandfather were useless. Maybe he should make up some gilded memories? That might be best, because the pronouncements about what an upstanding citizen the dude was, and how he’d lived by a strict code of ethics made him want to puke. Same with the stories from Tierney’s great-aunts about the old guy saving puppies from gunnysacks thrown in rivers as a boy or some shit. Had to have made that up. Tinkling laughter followed a few of the stories, but Tierney wasn’t getting the jokes. He was too full of other emotions to experience humor: anger and head-pounding hatred and confusion.
Gonna be hard to put a good spin on thinking he was a controlling, manipulative bastard. But Tierney could, couldn’t he? That was what he did—he’d told Dalton that the first time they really spoke. Told him he was the manipulator, the glad-hander.
The one who concealed his true self to meet the world’s expectations. Courageously, just like the old guy, right?
Suddenly a whole future unfolded in front of Tierney’s vision, superimposed on top of this ballroom full of well-dressed and superficial mourners. Some kind of alcohol-fueled nightmare mirage, where he forced himself to marry, have kids, keep up the facade in an effort to enforce a dead man’s “strict code of ethics.” A world where he became the same kind of douche bag as the old guy, and passed on the pain to future generations.
“. . . one of the bravest men I knew,” someone said. Was the dude talking about him or Grandfather? Which one of them had died? “Stalwart in his beliefs. He didn’t brook cowardice in anyone, and was never shy about calling others out over their own craven behavior.”
Mother. Fucker.
Tierney’s imagined future popped like a bubble as something came unmoored inside him. Some part of him that knew how to stop that hell from happening and he had to. He couldn’t live like that. He’d kill himself first.
I don’t wanna die.
Things began shifting all around him. The colors went dark, then bright, and shapes changed. A conglomeration of triangles and circles turned out to be a guy standing nearby. Smells got loud and the expressions on people’s faces tasted different. All his senses seemed to be realigning themselves.
It was kaleidoscopic. And fucking disorienting. He blinked and then found himself moving toward the front of the ballroom. Gotta do it. Gotta do it. Gotta do it . . .
Do what?
He stumbled, catching himself with a hand on a large potted plant.
“Is everything okay, sir?” a passing waitress asked.
“Fine.” Tierney took one of the glasses of champagne off her tray. It was necessary . . . but why, again? ’Cause I gotta make a toast. A semihysterical giggle escaped him, and he slapped a hand over his mouth. Keep it together. Be coherent. Just a little while longer, then he could lose it, and no one would give a shit.
And he’d be free. Of that future, and this shell and all the stuff that made his life shit.
Another blink of time and he was nearly there, bumping into people but carefully protecting his champagne. Couldn’t let it spill. Can’t lose a drop. Very important. Not that he could say why.
Because I have to give a toast.
“Here he is, right on time.” His mother’s voice. She smiled at him, face flushed, beckoning him forward and leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Give your grandfather the farewell he deserves,” she whispered in his ear before stepping back to make room for him at the microphone.
“Oh, I will,” he promised. Tierney faced the room and the crowd went wonky, like a fish-eye lens. A little claustrophobic. Have to fix that. “’Scuse me, can you hold this a sec?” he asked a lady near him, handing her his champagne. Then he took the mic off the stand, shoved it into his suit pocket, and climbed on the table, foot only slipping once before he managed to stand up.
Turning quickly made his world tilt (it had been doing that a lot lately) but it was all right, he caught himself with a step back and a minor pinwheeling of the arms. Over the building murmur of voices someone hissed, “Tierney, what are you doing?”
Gina. He ignored her, holding up his hands for silence as he faced the mourners. “Hello there,” he said, smiling easily. He felt lighter. Like he could float on up out of here at any second. As soon as he was done speaking. “My champagne?” He held his hand down and the woman gave him his flute, smiling back at him. Maybe his own was infectious? It felt infectious.
Then he caught the hardening of his father’s features, and it hit him that some people might be immune to the infection. He fished the microphone out of his pocket with his free hand. “Um, I’ll make this short ’n’ sweet, how ’bout?”
A rustle from the audience was the only answer. Am I really doing this? His throat felt suddenly tight, as if his tie were strangling him. Tierney yanked at it, pulling it down, and as air flowed easier into his chest, so did a sense of knowing. Knowing what to do. Only way.