Hope Forever [Mathilda's Funeral Celebration]

i should not be left to my own devices
they come with prices and vices
i end up in crisis
(tale as old as time)
- taylor swift, anti-hero


Birdie lingered outside of the banquet hall for a long, long time, long before the ceremony was set to begin, long before any of her family members began to turn up. The cigarette between her fingers burned perfectly down to the nub, and she shook the ash off her sleek black boots before tossing the butt to the pavement and grinding it with her heel. So, this was how it ended. Not with a gunshot, or a bomb, but with Pierre knocking on her door to tell her their mother had died in an accident.

She had pressed for details. The details were embarrassing.

If she was being honest, she wasn’t sure why the family had gone to all this trouble for Mathilda’s funeral. It wasn’t as if anyone liked the old hag. They could have tossed her into the ground and been done with her without any fanfare, but no, they all had to dress up and make nice with her corpse to keep up appearances— and for who, exactly?

Birdie let out a heavy sigh and went inside, the dregs of her family now beginning to trickle in. She’d left Leland at home, or rather, she’d asked him to stay home, mostly because she knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut, which she appreciated, but she also wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, which wouldn’t happen if her husband was yelling comments after every other word of every speech. She took her seat closer to the back, crossing her legs and tugging down the hem of her black dress.

Blackston spoke first. God, that boy was a disaster. She remembered the months he lived in her spare room with a quiet cringe. Pierre followed, and she regarded her brother with a careful eye. Before he showed up at her doorstep, they hadn’t spoken in quite some time. She wondered if it was some sort of side effect of a bruised ego, or if he was just enjoying civilian life too much to bother with her.

She was out of her chair as soon as his speech ended. With a stern hand placed on Blackston’s shoulder (“Get it together, kid, she can’t hear you from here.”) and a much kinder one on Cici’s (“Hey cutie, love the jacket.”), she passed her eldest brother in the aisle and made her way to the front, punctuating her journey with two sharp claps.

“Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you, Pierre, for that… rousing speech.” She leaned forward, gripping either side of the podium. “It only makes sense to follow the oldest with the youngest. Since our dear, dead mother always expected us to follow the precedent Pierre set, I’d like give my own fun little anecdote about the witch.”

Birdie thought about the woman she was all those years ago, too depressed to leave the house, mopey and overly acquainted with red wine. She didn’t know who that bitch was anymore. The time for sadness was long over. Now, it was only time for revenge.

“I’ve actually compiled a short list in my head of all the things our mother might call you on any given day.” She cleared her throat. “Whore. Bitch. Slut. Useless— usually proceeded by one of the first three words. Disappointment— that one almost hurt the worst, but you would get used to it. See, as I got older, I realized that our mother purposely set us all up for failure so she would feel better about her own miserable life.”

She looked out over the crowd of her family, the people who both shunned her and embraced her, who couldn’t stand her and would always come to her defense, no matter what. She’d never felt so much love for them as she did in that moment. “So I think we should all take great pleasure in the fact that we’re going to lead much happier lives now that the old bitch is dead and torturing the devil in hell. If anyone wants to do shots when this is over, come meet me at the bar.”