Marie sat on her balcony looking out across the desert, a cup of coffee going cold in her hands. She'd gone back and forth in her mind a lot over whether to go to the "funeral" or not. She did like the idea of yelling at Walt's coffin, but was concerned that she would be more likely to break down and become speechless. In her mind, that would mean he got the last say, and she couldn't handle that.
So she sat. And she waited.
...
Eventually Skyler realised that Flynn's legs were shaking and that she must be leaning on him too strongly, so she pulled him back to the chairs at the edge of the room and they sat down. "Can we talk about the good times?" she asked.
"W-what good times?"
"From before all this.. family board games night. Bacon numbers. All those trips to the science museum."
"N-no. My memory of...all those has been r-ruined by what he did."
"That doesn't mean it didn't happen. It doesn't mean that we weren't happy then."
"I-it was a lie. It obviously meant...nothing to him if he can...just piss all over it like that."
Skyler shook her head. "That's not true. Do you think about them, though? Do you think about how he used to be?"
"No. I think about how w-we used to be and...how much we l-lost."
"Yeah, I think about that. I envy you. For being able to sustain that anger. I could never keep that up. Now all I can think of is how he used to be."
"It's l-like he became a d-different person. I don't...understand it. He was a cr-crazy pathetic asshole."
"Do you remember the talking pillow night?"
Flynn's jaw hardened. "Mom, I didn't come here for you to...tr-try and make me go...wishy washy. I came to y-yell at him. That's it."
"I'm genuinely asking you. I envy your anger. I envy your strength."
"Well it's really simple, y-you...think about all the...horrible things Dad did to a-all the people you love, and...th-then you want to scream."
"For the people I love, I just blame myself. For others, the horrifying facts that get thrown at me by the DEA and the news, it makes me feel physically sick, and this feeling spreads throughout my whole body, tingling and blood pounding and panicking, and then it goes away. It goes all foggy in my mind and I forget about it. And then all I can remember is how much I love him."
"I can't think about...the things he did to other people much ei-either. Because...they're too awful. B-but I think about the things he did to us."
"He didn't mean to hurt us."
"Really? H-he didn't mean to...hurt Uncle Hank?"
Skyler almost said no, but then she remembered about the blackmail, which Flynn still didn't know about. And so she was silent.
"I really loved Uncle Hank." Flynn's eyes moistened.
"You really loved your dad too."
"Yeah I did, I really did, a-and he betrayed us. The fact that..I love him m-makes it feel even w-worse."
"Yeah I know."
"And he's just c-copped out, he's just quit life without...giving any of a chance to - without…" Flynn's voice broke. "I didn't even get to see him. H-he was at our house l-like 10 minutes before...I got home. A-and he...didn't even s-stick around to...see me."
"The police were coming."
"Yeah, because you called them a-after he...left. If he'd...just stayed, y-you wouldn't have called them, I know y-you wouldn't."
"Would you have? If you'd walked in and found him there?"
Flynn shrugged. "Depends if he was….threatening you with a knife o-or not."
Skyler's eyes snapped shut, and she put her hand to her forehead. "I pulled the knife, Flynn." she said. "That was me."
Flynn began to cry. "You de… you were def- defending us, a-and he just threw you on the f-floor and…"
Skyler put her arms around him.
"What kind of a man d-does that?"
They gripped each other and sobbed for some minutes. Skyler's own trauma was pulsing through her body, but she had to set the record straight. She made several false starts where she began to speak and then was prevented by sobs. Finally she managed to utter a gasping plea, her voice high and weak. "Don't remember him like that," she said. "P-please." Her voice shook. "It was...we-we both panicked in the same moment and it was like… it was like an explosion. And I guess it had been building up from everything that happened before, I know it had been for me, but in that moment the shit hit the fan and I snapped...and so did he. We shouldn't hav- I can't believe we did that in front of the two of you, it-" Skyler broke down again.
Flynn held her as tightly as he could. "Mom, it-it wasn't your fault, he th-threw you to the ground."
"To get the knife! He was trying to get the knife off me!"
"He didn't n-need to th-throw you...to the ground to do that. H-he didn't'...n-need to lie on top of you and...push you into the floor."
"We both snapped, we both panicked. It had been building up for a long time, you didn't see that part but..."
"W-what I saw was...a man who threw his wife to the floor b-because he didn't like being told no. Th-then he picked up his...i-infant daughter and r-ran away with her because...she was the only one who couldn't s-say no to him! And he was...j-ust like that, wasn't he? A-all the time."
"No he wasn't. He didn't mean to hurt us."
"He could never...be told no, he always got his own way, all-all the time! Even in his...death he got his own way, w-with...no thought to the consequences for...us!"
Skyler continued to cry.
Flynn's message tone went off. It was Marie. "How's it going?"
"I'm angry and Mom's sad. So pretty much as expected," he texted back.
...
Marie put her phone down and crossed her arms. Much as she did want to be understanding and support Skyler, it was quite hard for her to see her going to pieces over the man who had caused her own husband's death. Marie had wanted to kill Walt for what he had done. And she wanted her sister to be relieved that he was dead. But it wasn't that simple. She did know how much Skyler loved Walt, and that's why she was the one who had been hurt the most by him. Dave had explained in their latest session that this wasn't simple grief, that she was probably feeling a whole range of emotions for a whole range of different reasons, some conscious and some not. Most of them not understandable by Marie. Which left her feeling rather helpless. She frowned and leaned back on the couch. Then she sat up again. "Fuck you, Walt," she said, and stood up. She grabbed her handbag and headed out the door.
...
Flynn couldn't stop thinking about how hard it was to reconcile the father he had loved with all his heart to the angry and violent man who had done all this. He felt his anger slipping away, and he hated it when that happened. When that happened, he got sad. He felt small and helpless. Powerless. Devastated.
Skyler looked at her watch. "I have to go and get your grandmother," she sniffed.
"Are-are you alright to drive?"
Skyler shrugged. "I'll manage."
"I can do it."
"But then you'd have to come back here. You said you didn't want to."
"I don't know. But...you're shaking and y-you don't look ok to...drive."
Skyler looked at him. "Ok. Thank you."
...
Patricia White stood outside the arrivals section of the airport terminal, as close to the edge of it as she could because she wanted to be as far away from the people, cars and taxis as possible. She gripped her handbag close to her chest and looked at her watch.
Eventually, a beat up brown Corolla pulled up. She stepped away, weary of it, but then her grandson got out. "Hi Grandma," he said, leaning in to kiss her awkwardly on the cheek.
"You've grown like a weed!" She said.
"Thanks!" He smiled.
"Is this your car? It looks most unsavoury."
"No, i-it's Mom's." Flynn open the passenger door to let her in. "H-have you got any bags?"
"No, no bags." She didn't get in, continuing to stare at the car with a dubious expression. "Your mother's? Is it safe ?"
"Oh yeah, Mom's...very big on s-safety. It looks aw-awful but...it's fine to drive."
Patricia stepped awkwardly into the car, trying and failing not to sit on a rather obvious hole In the fabric of the passenger seat. "I thought she had higher standards than this," she said.
"She does. Dad p-pulled the rug out from under us, a-and the DEA took...everything we had, so Mom doesn't...have any money. Th-this is the best she could g-get."
Patricia looked out the window, her lips set in a thin line. "I hate airports," she said.
...
All Marie really wanted to do was go downtown, that was her favourite place for shopping and she thought shopping would be as distracting and healing as anything else right now, but she couldn't do it downtown because she hadn't been there since the day of Hank's death, and she knew that fact would distress her considerably. Dave told her that staying away wasn't helpful, and she was working up to it, she could visit almost everywhere on Central now. But not quite into downtown.
So instead she went to a large mall near her house and bought some new shoes and clothes, had a frozen yoghurt in the food court, and then went into a homeware store to see if they had those little sticky hooks you can use to hang things on walls. Since Hank had done all the DIY, Marie didn't have a clue how to hang a picture on a wall, but she figured those sticky things would be easier than nails.
She didn't like the attitude of the shop assistant she'd asked for help, he didn't seem to understand her reasoning behind wanting sticky hooks at all, and just kept pointing out flaws with all of the different kinds the store stocked. "To hang a picture as big as that you really need something better," he said. "Especially if it's framed. A hardware store will have bigger hooks, and also-"
"No, but I don't want to use nails."
He shrivelled up his nose. "A hardware store might have adhesive hooks big enough to hang what you want to hang, but I'm not sure. Either way, if they exist, we don't stock them."
"Fine. Thank you." Marie sighed and put the packet back. She didn't want her newly framed enlarged photograph of her and Hank to fall onto the floor. She started walking out of the store, but stopped by a display of fridge magnets at the end of the aisle. One had a cute picture of a smiling sunflower on it. Marie looked at it for a long while, then slipped it into her bag and walked out of the store.