#self.002

It was particularly quiet when Quinn stepped through the door of her mansion. There wasn’t the quaint stir of the maids cleaning, or the cook firing up a dinner she’d hardly eat -- it was eery, it wasn’t right.

The sole sound of her Cheerio sneakers tapping across the granite floors sent chills down her spine. A normal occurrence, and sound, but the dread clawing at the pit of her stomach was hardly normal. Even for a mansion filled to the brim with God complex’s, and a heavy dose of fear deeply sewed into the Fabray women -- it still just wasn’t right.

Hesitantly she takes the last few steps to around the corner to peek into the kitchen. Eyebrows knit, then expel upwards in shock, and slightly....scared. “Mother?” Yes, her mother was in the kitchen, a sight no living, breathing person has ever seen until now.

Her upper body is sprawled over the counter, a fork mucked with cake, icing, and what she presumed was a few dribbles of her ‘tea’ mixed into the stomach turning concoction. One hand is perched up, holding Mrs. Fabray’s head upwards. Blonde hair usually molded into perfection is sprawled out. Some bursting upwards through the slim gaps between her fingers, chunks falling into her face, and even a few string of bleach blonde strands have sticky white icing hanging heavily from the tips. It’s a disaster, and Mrs. Fabray’s blue eyes are glazed over with tears and red veins pronounced from what Quinn safely assumes was an afternoon of crying, Quinn knows disaster is only the beginning of what her mother looks like, and most likely feels.

This had to be about the night before. A normal evening of awkward tension, thrusted into a chaotic event where her mother actually spoke freely; well more liked yell. Cheating, vases crashing, and Quinn having to sit their, pitted in the middle, and left to clean up the mess; or in other words, her sobbing mother.

Quinn comes back from reflection of the night prior.

“Are you going to answer me, or should I let you get back to eating your feelings like a fat girl?”

Harsh, but she only grants her mother the ‘honesty’ she’s always been so kind to pass down to her. In fact, Mrs. Fabray practically molded Quinn’s lack of eating, and forever turbulent relationship with food. So really, as shocking as it was for her mother to be in the kitchen, it was her fisting cake into her mouth that was the real shocker.

“Your father’s having an affair.” She slurs, Quinn sighs, rolling her eyes. “You don’t care?” Mrs. Fabray perks up a bit more, dropping her hand that’s holding up her head so she can sit up. “You’re just like your father, poor girl.”

Quinn’s eyes cut to her mother, lips once lip locked at the seam rip apart, jaw dropping to the floor; how dare she.

Quickly she closes her mouth, reconstructs her usual cold facade and tries to bury the sting from her mother’s words. The pain doesn’t go away though, it burns, sparking, and further igniting the pain -- being hurt, such a worthless state of feeling, she thinks. Frustrated, she looks to her mother, “Better then you.” She quips, with a cold stare.

Her mother laughs, plunging the fork into the cake and drunkenly slides off the chair to grab the vodka. Quinn watches her, humorless chuckle gallivanting from her lips. “So this is your plan? Father’s cheating, or so you say, and you’re response is getting fat? Goodness, it makes you wonder why father would ever stray.” She muses sarcastically. Brushing past her mother to grab a bottle of water out of the fridge.

Mrs. Fabray takes a gulp from her vodka. Staring at Quinn, “remember when you were ten and I came home from your father’s premiere party because I was sick. Y-” she’s cut off by Quinn, “You mean to drunk to function, so father sent you home? Barely.”

Judy smirks, taking another drink, Quinn got her sass from her, Mrs. Fabray thinks happily.  After that moment, she continues on like her daughter didn’t just interrupt her with another low blow jab. “Like I was saying, I came home early, sick, and you were in our room. You had my Vera Wang gown on, and every piece of jewelry your chubby fingers could get a hold of. You looked ridiculous, but so happy. I’m pretty sure you barely fit in it even then, you were still hideous, but I’d never seen someone so beautiful in my life. It wasn’t because you have probably thousands of dollars worth of Tiffany’s on your neck, or you were hollering my favorite Cher song, but because you were happy. You weren’t tainted with this worlds or your father’s expectations of perfection. Or shoveling food in your mouth in hopes you would miss your father’s usual five minutes of shitting on Lucy with senseless jokes, or locked in your room away from us. You were so beautiful, happy, and pure, that I fell in love with you all over again.” Her head was resting against the refrigerator, a smile lazily dangling on the older women’s lips. “We danced that night together, in my room, singing, laughing, playing. You loved me that night, I could feel it, and I’d never felt so accomplished in my life because for the first time in awhile I felt like a mother -- the one you deserved. Have you ever loved me again, since, Lucy?”

Judy’s smile was still there, but it was faltering, trembling to beam brightly as her eyes were fogged with tears again. Mrs. Fabray’s voice was once speaking in delight when she replayed the memory in her head for the millionth time, but as she got to her question, it sounded more like a plea.

Quinn was taken back, her fingers grip around her bottle of water was loose, and her other hand was gripping the counter she had turned to half way through her mother’s spiel. She was bubbling with annoyance the whole time, but beneath that treacherous feeling, Quinn was yearning to feel that again; happy, but most of all, loved. Her head was tilted down, and her heart was beating rapidly. What did she say? The cold hard truth, that no, she didn’t love her mother -- she resented her, along with pitied her. How could she love a women so....weak. Love a women she feared maybe one day she could become. Drunk 24/7, barely mobile without her father’s controlling her every breath, and dependent on a man who didn’t know how to love anyone else, but himself? Never.

“Maybe you should stick to scotch, it makes you far less weepy, and annoying.” She says, words hurtful, and tone cold. She picks up the water, and turns on her heels to walk away, but she stops just short of the corner. Freedom is literally a step away. Stepping out of this kitchen brimming in the pathetic tension of her mother’s short comings, and endless troubles, but something stopped her. A conscious? Mother’s whimpering vibrating in her ear drums? Or the fact, that memory was one she has never forgotten, and had her clinging to fact she didn’t hate her mother, not even a little bit, not at all. But loved her, just was forever mourning the women who was buried the moment she fell into her father’s web of lies, and she only got to see every century, thanks to one to many drinks, and not one fuck to give.