Kyle (brainoverbrawn) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-08-06 08:24:00 |
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Seeing her mother was never easy, though Maria made a point of coming to the home at least once a week to do so. Even the days when her mom was mostly lucid, like she was today, it was a lot. It was hard, sometimes, to reconcile the woman who she saw these days with the vibrant, brilliant woman that had raised her. She took a breath, looking at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, and sure that she wasn’t about to cry, she unlocked the door and walked out to the main lobby.
Seeing Kyle here shouldn’t have been so unexpected, though it still was every time she did, and she had to brace herself for talking to someone that she knew. But she did it, and the smile she shot him didn’t carry a trace of any uncertainty. “Hey Kyle,” she said cheerily. “Are you coming or going?”
The thing about Maria was that with anybody else she could hide what this place and seeing your parent deteriorate in front of your eyes from everybody else but not Kyle. Mostly due to the fact he was living through the exact same thing so he knew all the tricks of the trade as far as pretending that everything okay went so when she greeted him with that he had a feeling that not all things were roses. Of course as close as they’d gotten since high school he wasn’t Liz or even Guerin so he figured he’d let her have her moments of pretending like this place wasn’t completely soul destroying.
“Just going actually, dad was feeling tired so I figured I’d let him rest. You?”
He signed his name out on the visitors log and idly noticed just how many times he’d been in the last week.
“Same,” Maria said, sparing a glance back toward her mother’s room. “If I wanted to have time before I had to open the bar, I thought it was best if I leave now.” And Maria needed time after seeing her mother before she was in the right mindset for dealing with drunks. “Did you want to grab a drink?”
“Sure,” Kyle said with a nod of his place. “Your bar or somebody else’s where you don’t have to serve the drinks?” He knew which one he’d pick if he had a choice.
He passed the lady behind the desk the visitor book and offered her a smile before turning to look at Maria
“I’m easy either way.”
“Let’s go to the Pony,” Maria said. The alcohol was freer there, for one, and for another she was guaranteed to not have to deal with the general public. Maria shot a bit of a smile at the woman behind the desk as well, and then headed outside. “Want to take my car?”
Kyle shook his head as he rummaged out his keys. “Nah, I’m good. Got my own, but I’ll meet you there.” He knew where it was after all and he’d been in Orange County for long enough that he had a really good sense of direction and bearings. Definitely important when the traffic went crazy at times.
And with that he headed in the direction of his car.
Maria didn’t make it to the Wild Pony very long before Kyle did. She’d just had time to unlock the front door and make her way to the bar before Kyle walked in, and she gave him a smile and turned to the bar. “What’s your poison?”
Kyle made sure to lock up his car and trailed into the Pony, feeling as though it had been forever since he’d last set foot in it. Work kept him busy, sometimes too busy. And honestly the last bar he’d been in had resulted in him basically losing his mind for several hours so maybe just maybe he was giving them a wide berth.
“Uh… good question,” he admitted with a chuckle as he slid onto a stool and shrugged out of his jacket. “I’ll take whatever the bartender recommends because let’s be honest if you want the best then you ask the expert.”
“Rum and Coke, coming up,” Maria said, mostly because it was what she was planning on drinking and it was easier to just mix two of the same. Besides, it was the kind of drink you could sip if you weren’t looking to get drunk.
She finished mixing the drinks and slid Kyle’s in front of him. “How’s your dad doing today?” she asked.
Kyle curled his fingers around the glass that was slid in front of him and regarded it for a moment as he worked out the best way to answer that question. “Good days, bad days, but I know I don’t have to tell you that. Today was, well, it was kind of a mixture of both. He had some lucid moments and then they were just gone.”
He shrugged his shoulders and took a sip from his glass, knowing that he didn’t need to explain the emotional toll it took seeing your parent in such a state to Maria considering she was living through the same nightmare.
Sometimes he wondered if it wouldn’t be kinder just to put his dad out of his misery.
Maria gave Kyle a bit of a sympathetic smile and took a sip from her own glass. There was something especially painful about having a lucid conversation with your parents only to watch them slip into their illness again. She knew that as far as things went, she was pretty lucky, even if doctor’s still wouldn’t give her mother a diagnosis. At the very least, her mother was in a better state than Kyle’s father, even if she did go off about crackpot conspiracy theories and everything else. At least she’d never forgotten who Maria was. Yet, at least.
She reached forward so that she could give Kyle’s hand a bit of a squeeze. “He’s lucky that he has you, you know.”
Kyle had been staring rather intently into his drink as if it held all the answers to every question the universe had ever posed when he was distracted by the feeling of Maria’s hand on his own and that was enough to pull his attention.
“Pretty sure I’m only doing what any decent son would do for their dad,” he offered with a tight smirk before he simply swallowed a mouthful of his drink. “And your mom?”
“Oh, you know Mimi, she’s lively as ever,” Maria said. “Today was actually one of her good days, so I can’t really complain about that.” From the corner of her eye, Maria caught sight of the large analog clock that was on the far end of the bar and frowned. “I need to start cooking if I want to have time to eat before we open up,” she said, a little apologetically. “Did you want me to whip something up for you too?”
Kyle did remember Mimi and how she was which made it all the more difficult he imagined for Maria to watch her change and become somebody she no longer recognised. It was tough, some days were better than others, and then there were the days when your parent looked at you like a stranger and punched you because you were in their room uninvited.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said with a shake of his head as he downed his drink. “I’ll grab something on the way home.” Last thing he wanted to do was put Maria out and have her fussing over him when honestly she needed to do that for herself.
He rose to his feet and rummaged out his keys. “Let’s try not to let the only place we see each other be that home, yeah? Call, text, whatever. Even if you just want to say hi, how you doing?” Kyle paused, frowned a little, and then let out a small chuckle. “But without the Joey Tribbiani overtones.”
And with a parting smile Kyle headed out to make his way home.