Their LA bed is warm but Bette’s heart as she lays beside her fianceé is warmer. The whirlwind of the day - arguing with their daughter and getting engaged - rests heavily upon Tina’s lips, and Bette traces every dip of her frown, committing them all to memory, and she waits patiently.
While stroking where her engagement ring meets her finger, Tina finally meets her eyes, and Bette inhales sharply. Tina is quiet for another heartbeat, until she sighs.
“Angie hates me.”
“No,” Bette shakes her head and props herself up on her elbow. Tina’s hair, golden in the low lamplight, spreads like a halo across her pillow and Bette’s heart breaks at how crestfallen her angel looks. “No, she doesn’t. She just… doesn’t understand.”
“She’s angry.”
“Of course she is, baby, she’s bound to be. But you’re her mother, she doesn’t hate you.”
“Promise?”
Bette presses chaste kisses to Tina’s cheeks until she feels a grin break through like ivy, existing despite all odds. “I promise, Tina.”
They fall asleep, limbs entangled, and Tina’s dreams are empty glimpses of things she thought she’d forgotten.
Lodged in her throat is a whimper as hands too similar to her own grasp her thighs, and her eyes brim with hot tears. Her fists curl in the sheets, fearful sweat beating on her forehead, and finally her eyes slip shut. The thumb on her thigh inches closer but she doesn’t dare to move. The last time she did, handprints lingered violet and every time she moved she felt digging nails. Darkness is daunting and her small bones ache with filth. She doesn’t understand why this is happening, why her sister always approaches in the bleak night, why her soul floats away like the red balloon from a carnival, and why every night it bursts.
When she awakes with a scream, Bette holds her until the tears cool on her cheeks and tremors stop haunting her body.
“I’m sorry,” Tina sobs and Bette combes her fingers through her askew hair calmly, shaking her head.
“No need, baby. Let it all out.”
After the longest week and a half of Tina’s life, Angie finally comes around, fidgeting with nerves.
“Hey, honey,” Tina greets with a smile, ushering her into the kitchen for a mug of hot chocolate.
“Hey, mom.” Voice quiet, Angie settles into her chair at the dining room table and folds her legs beneath her. “I’m… sorry I wasn’t there for the engagement. Shane told me.”
“Shane told you?” Tina shakes her head and takes her usual seat across from Angie, and though she smiles still, she can feel it fraying. “It’s okay, it’s not that big of a deal.” The shower shuts off and Bette pads across the landing upstairs. “Maybe we should wait for Mama B to come down before we talk, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Angie sighs, and it feels like all the oxygen in her lungs dispels. “Okay, we can wait.”
Their terse silence breaks sporadically by Angie scrolling through TikTok and Tina dancing her blunt nails on the table surface, and absently, Tina laughs at how impatient they both are.
Angie’s video pauses. “What’s so funny, mom?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tina muses, calming once Bette’s footsteps sound on the stairs. “Before she comes in, Angie, is there anything you need to tell me?”
She hears Bette pause in the living room and Angie opens and shuts her mouth wordlessly. The afternoon sun filters through the window, casting the dining room in a golden glow, and Tina’s heart chokes at how tears glitter like stars in her daughter’s deep brown eyes, a celestial cathedral of fear. Angie looks half-dead with her slumping skeleton and the life draining from her cheeks, and Tina is momentarily stunned by how alike they wear their pain.
“Anything I have to say,” Angie strains, “I want to say in front of both of you.”
Tina untangles Angie’s hand from her phone and clasps it just as Bette claims the chair next to her, adding her hand, still warm from the shower, to the pile.
“My girls,” she coos. Angie groans, rubbing subtly at her damp eyes, while Tina laughs, basking in the words. “Are you ready?”
Tina and Angie glance at each other, and when it’s clear Angie’s tongue is marble and unmoving, Tina nods. They pull their hands away but Bette and Tina’s slot together, molding together like clay.
“Angie, I…” Tina pauses, glancing at Bette. Bette nods and smiles encouragingly. “Do you remember what we told you about my family?”
“You told me…” Angie’s face scrunches, features twisting in wry remembrance. “You told me that your mother’s dead, and you don’t speak to the rest of your family.”
Tina nods, hair tickling the back of her neck. The image of her sister’s hand wrapping around her throat floods her mind, and she rubs it, ridding the phantom feeling. “They were all staunch conservatives, and my father had several affairs during my parents’ marriage. It was… an unhappy household, to say the least. I think I was fifteen when they finally got the divorce, but the whole thing is fuzzy, I don’t even remember my father’s name.”
Hazel eyes fall to the tabletop and Bette rubs the back of Tina’s hand tenderly. Angie’s stare burns, and Tina shifts, jaded, finally relinquishing her family jewels.
She remembers a man with grey hair, unkind eyes and a perfect smile. The only time she remembers seeing his facade crack was when she was six and caught somewhere she shouldn’t have been, his hands on the thighs of her second grade teacher - but the memory always shifts, and sometimes she’s eight and it’s her French teacher, other times she’s ten and it’s the woman who runs her Sunday school classes. There is always an opaque fog muddling her memories of her hometown.
“I’m so sorry, mom,” Angie says, voice aquiver.
“It’s not your fault, honey.” Finally, Tina meets her daughter’s eyes. She reaches across the table to brush aside a curl casting a shadow across her cherub cheeks. “Please, don’t apologise. I lived with him my whole childhood, but it felt like I never knew him. I…” Pulling back to the safety of Bette, Tina swallows the acrid bile in her throat. “I didn’t want you to feel like that with us. That’s… that’s why this is so hard for me. I wanted you to know me, but I didn’t want you to know my hurt, either.”
That is the martyrdom of motherhood, Tina has slowly realised over the years; to bleed is to shield.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“You’re my daughter, Angelica, yes I did.” Tina says, honesty bleeding from every atom. “My older sister Cassandra-”
“-Cassandra and Christina,” Bette interrupts, lips flicking sourly. “You have to appreciate the alliteration.”
Tina huffs, caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “My grandma used to say that.”
An apology flickers athwart Bette’s face and Tina shakes her head dismissively, as unneeded as her parents’ love.
“Bette, baby, it’s okay.”
Angie sighs again. This is the kind of unconditional love I want.
“My grandparents always preferred my sister. I hated her.”
“Why?” Angie asks, eyes widening, surprised by her own questions. Tina is grateful for the unintentional question.
“She…” Tina trails off, falling silent. Bette tilts her chin and presses a silken kiss to her jawline, comforting and encouraging. “For three years, starting from when I was eleven, I think, we used to play this… game.” Recognition causes Angie to inhale sharply, and it feels as if knives are attacking her lungs. Tina looks up to the godless sky, jaw working. “Yeah. She took advantage of me, and she abused me. Which is why you’ve-”
She swallows roughly and Angie’s hand joins the pile.
“-Which is why I’ve never met her,” Angie finishes.
Bette wipes the tears from her beloved’s eyes and she’d sacrifice herself on a bloody altar to extinguish her pain.
“Yeah,” Tina whispers, syllable cracking. “We don’t- we don’t, um, talk anymore. She thinks I’m going to hell for loving your mom, which is ironic, as she took my…”
“Virginity is a social construct anyway,” Angie chokes out, and the laughter they all share is fragile.
“But, baby,” Tina’s face falls flat but there’s no denying the glimmering anguish, the way in which her features clench and her lips shake. “That’s why I got so… so defensive over you, when I found out that creep put his hands on you. I didn’t mean to yell at you, I, I just-”
She closes her eyes, trying to shut out the image of her older sister and her horrible looming face, her vile snarl, and her viperine eyes. She was always too close, even when they were classrooms apart, and Tina would always choke when she’d catch a glimpse of her in the hallways, or the bathrooms, or the lunch halls. Nowhere in her judgemental, unforgiving town was safe.
Reopening her eyes, Tina tries to smile, tears trailing mascara down her cheeks, and finally, her strong heart breaks like glass, shattering against the pavement of her ribcage. “I couldn’t stand to see him do to you what Cassandra did to me.”
Angie gets up from her seat and the chair scrapes discordantly against the floor, and she hastily climbs onto Tina’s lap. No matter how old she is, she’ll never outgrow the comfort that the steady thump, thump, thumping of her mother’s heart brings. Tina holds her tightly, wraps her arms around Angie’s waist and hides her face in the crook of her neck. Tina breathes in, filling her lungs with the aroma of their undying love, and finally, she sobs.
“Mom, I-” Angie clings desperately and Bette soothes up and down her shaking back. “I’m so sorry, I- I didn’t-”
The apology hangs in the air until Tina can control her breathing. Her waterfall of tears stains Angie’s white shirt. “I’ll- I’ll get you a new one,” she gasps, finally pulling away. “Angie, I need you to tell me: did he do anything to you?”
“We… We had sex,” Angie begins, and she feels Bette’s hand freeze out of sympathy, “but I, I, I was careful, and then- Bella and I, we had an argument. I told him to fuck off the next day, and I blocked his number, but I-”
Tina pleads for her silence quietly, cooing, “it’s okay, honey. Let it out.”
Angie chokes on a sob. “I hate him, mom. You were right, he, he took-”
“You don’t have to say it,” Bette whispers.
Angie shakes her head, curls tickling Tina’s neck and she sobs into her mother’s shoulder. They stay there - body against body, seeking comfort in weary bones and tired souls - until the well dries and Angie’s throat goes hoarse with her crying. Bette quietly gets up from her chair, pours three glasses of water and flicks the kettle on, leaving Tina and Angie for a moment to soak each other up.
With the tray of drinks, Bette brings back a plate of cookies and a box of tissues to the table.
Angie slips from Tina’s sturdy lap to sit atop the table. She takes a deep breath, clicking her nails against the cool glass of her drink, and clears her throat. “He took advantage of me, didn’t he?”
Bette and Tina share a silent look and nod in heartbroken tandem.
“I’m sorry, Angelica,” Bette whispers.
“But we’re here,” Tina nods, voice quiet, too. “We’re here for you. And- I know what you’re feeling. It doesn’t feel real, does it? It feels as if nothing has happened.” Taking a long sip, Angie shakes her head no.
“I feel… numb.”
“And you will,” Tina whispers. “You’ll feel disgusting, like you want new skin, and it’ll suffocate you like smoke. But then, with our support, and Shane’s, and Alice's, and Bella’s, one day, you’ll feel better. You’ll find that you can breathe.”
“You promise?”
Tina presses a kiss to Angie’s crown. “I promise, baby. And Mama B and I will be here for you every step of the way.”
“No matter what,” Bette echoes, handing her daughter a cookie. Angie bites into it and Bette smiles at the vitality that creeps back into her cheeks.
“I love you guys.”
“And we love you,” Bette and Tina say at the same time. A beat passes, and then they all erupt into laughter.
“You two are disgusting,” Angie laughs wetly. “Disgusting and- oh my God! You’re engaged!”
Tina laughs and Bette ducks her head, suddenly bashful.
“She proposed to me while we ate burgers, Ange.”
Bette wags a finger in Tina’s direction. “I’ll take the ring back.”
“Mh,” Tina creeps from her chair and presses a long kiss to the corner of Bette’s mouth, ignoring Angie’s disgusted yells in the background. “No you won’t.”
“You know what we need to talk about?” Bette twists Tina and wraps her arms around her fianceé’s waist, pushing aside blonde tresses and resting her chin on Tina’s shoulder. “We need to talk about our daughter and her roommate.”
Angie’s eyes widen. “What is there to talk about?” Her high voice is unconvincing even to her own ears, and her cheeks warm.
“She likes you, baby. I saw it in her face,” Tina grins. “I wrote the book on the ‘Falling in Love With a Porter’ face. I know it like I know the back of my hand.”
“Porter-Kennard,” Bette corrects and Angie rolls her eyes, gagging dramatically.
“Point is,” Tina insists, moving her face away from Bette’s attempt to pepper kisses across her jawline, “she likes you, Angelica.”
“How can she not? She’s our angel.”
Angie’s eyes widen a fraction more - if it’s even possible, but she cannot help her bubbling laughter. “Moms!”
Once laughter subsides, cracking the hanging concrete of the melancholy atmosphere, Tina smiles softly. “I love you, Angelica. Please, never forget that.”
Angie inhales and nods her assent. “I love you more, mom. Thank you, for everything.”
“I’m your mother, baby. It’s what I do.”
Bette pokes her face out from the side of Tina’s neck, brushing tendrils out of her face to grin. “Just to check: does this mean Shane and I can launch our three step plan to ruin this man’s life?”
Angie throws a balled up tissue in her direction and Bette laughs cheekily. “Well, that’s not a no. Shane’ll be thrilled.”
Tina nudges Bette and they laugh as a family.
For the first time since the divorce, Tina feels warm, truly, undoubtedly loved, and at home.
There is no place she’d rather be.