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He’d always been bad at saying goodbye.
It wasn’t just a feeling, or a fleeting thought that came and went like his mother’s soft smiles. Mordecai dealt only with facts, and this was one of them. His mind gravitated only around pure certainties, and no matter what surprises or novelties life threw his way, he never strayed from his orbit. This kept him grounded, and it kept him alive.
So yes, Mordecai wasn’t fond of goodbyes. And like all undeniable facts, it had its roots in personal experience.
He knew it all started with his father.
He was dying. He had been dying for a while, actually. Mordecai was only 11 but he was already accustomed to the stench of death because it overflowed from his father’s room into their tiny apartment, it followed his mother around as she paced back and forth caring for her bed-ridden husband, it clung to Rose’s clothes after the little girl kissed their father good night. It smelled of laudanum and stale air.
Mordecai didn’t really know how to handle his father’s stroke. His mother was too ashamed to tell him outright that they had no money for the surgery necessary to bring his father back on his feet, but Mordecai was already overly aware of that fact, almost as much as he was aware of how that meant his father was doomed. Isaac Heller might as well have been dead already, it made no difference in the young boy’s mind.
That didn’t make it any less conflicting for him, though.
Certainties used to be comforting, but he was now very bluntly confronted with a most uncomfortable situation. It almost felt like… A physical pain. Like a pressure building up just behind his eyes, constant, pulsating, turning every day into a passing blur.
His father was dying, and all Mordecai could do was watch.
But watching meant he would have to acknowledge this unpleasant reality, so he compromised by choosing to avoid his father’s room entirely. He poured every drop of energy in his young body into anything else that didn’t involve facing the looming door to his parents’ bedroom. He distracted himself by helping his mother take care of baby Hannah, he looked away whenever Esther asked him if he’d come read their father a story, he retreated to bed purposefully early so he wouldn’t have to hear Rose pull their mother’s hand towards their father’s bed and kiss him goodnight. For the first time in his life, Mordecai didn’t know how he could make himself useful, and it hurt.
The night his father died was like any other. Mordecai had been reading a book when his mother tapped him on the shoulder.
“Mordecai, your father asked for you. Will you go see him after you’re done reading?”
Her voice was so gentlr it almost felt like a whisper, weighed down by months of exhaustion, and Mordecai let the guilt of his response crush him way before the words even left his mouth:
“Actually, I’m not feeling too well… I was just going to head to bed. Could you let him know I’ll see him tomorrow?”
When he scurried into the small bed he shared with his two sisters, he wondered why it suddenly felt too large for him. He asked himself how it suddenly felt so lonely, why the tears welling at the corners of his eyes wouldn’t at least deign him with the relief of rolling down his cheeks, and why the suffocating feeling in his chest wouldn’t wreck his frame with a liberating sob. He wanted to cry. But instead he fell asleep plagued by the overwhelming sensation that something inside him was broken.
The next morning was like any other. Except it was different, because his father was gone. Somehow, Mordecai felt like he knew even before getting out of bed and hearing his mother’s timid weeping. It was irrational, but the knots in his gut and the pressure in his chest spoke their truth, and the truth was he didn’t have a father anymore. Somehow, he still couldn’t bring himself to cry.
Two months after Isaac Heller died, it was Hannah’s turn.
As his only remaining family cradled her tiny body, joining their sobs, all he could think about, once again, was how dry his eyes were. He felt sorry, of course. He was sad his baby sister had died. He hadn’t had a lot of time to know her, since she was only an infant, but when he first saw her after she was born, he had instantly decided that he loved her unconditionally, the same way he loved Esther and Rose. Hannah’s death devastated him.
So why couldn’t he bring himself to look upon her corpse?
Why couldn’t he join his family in their sorrow?
Why couldn’t he mourn her?
Her funeral was as small as it could get. The only people attending were himself, his sisters, and his mother. Her coffin was so tiny, he could hug it the same way he used to hug Hannah herself, when she was still alive. She was to be buried next to her father, of course.
What truly puzzled Mordecai was that after they lowered his baby sister into the ground, he didn’t have any idea what to feel anymore. The familiar feeling of being lost slithered into his heart and took shelter there, confusing him, so much so that he didn’t even know what to say when his family took their time in saying their goodbyes between helpless wails.
“My sweet baby… My baby girl… I love you so much.”
His mother’s voice was the only thread anchoring him to reality, and he realised that he really, truly, didn’t know what to say to someone who was gone. He didn’t want to say goodbye. So he didn’t.
Years later, when he realised he had to flee from New York, the truth was he could have stopped by to hug Esther and Rose one last time, to kiss his mother’s cheek. He could have told them that he knew his heart was only useful when it beat for them. He could have let them see the blood dripping from his nose and tell them that all this time, he was only trying to do right by them. They could have finally seen the tears flowing down his cheeks past his askew pince-nez, and know that he would come back.
But Mordecai dealt only in facts, not false hopes.
And he’d always been bad at saying goodbye.