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Her mom used to have a nice voice, before the drinking.
Olivia could remember, if not in detail, the nights she had spent tucked against Serena’s side. When she would clumsily climb onto her mother's bed, book in hand, and ask to be read to.
She remembered her voice, melodious and smooth, lulling her to sleep. It was never about the story, really, just the books themselves. Her apparent interest in reading and books made her mother look at her more warmly than usual, made her voice kinder, softer. Made her look at that little girl with looks so different to her own, and call her mine.
Her mother’s voice changed. Slowly, gradually. Becoming deeper, raspier, and was slurry more days than not. Olivia quickly learned to gauge her mother’s ever-changing moods by the sound of her voice. Slurred meant hurtful words. Nearly incoherent meant dodging flying objects. When her voice was stern and cold it meant Olivia had somehow let her down. Serena’s eyes would search her then, as if looking for something, someone, hiding away in her daughter. When her voice went flat and distant, Olivia learned to make herself invisible. Sometimes her mom would just stare at her, eyes empty. She never called her mine, then. She rarely did anymore.
Olivia knew early on that her birthday was not something to be celebrated, and she quickly learned not to ask about her father. Questions such as who he was, where he was, what he was like, and why he didn’t want to see her, were soon only expressed in the pages of her diary. Reminders of her father, her birth, of her existence, ended with her mother pulling out a bottle out of one of her many hiding places, and drinking until the child in front of her no longer resembled a monster.
She spent the evening of her thirteenth birthday next to her mother on the bathroom floor, reeling from what she’d learned, what she’d realized. Finally understanding why her mother couldn’t look at her without reaching for a drink. She had sat there for hours, holding back her mother’s hair (so different from her own. Her own must be like his ) as she’d puked and puked and puked until she passed out on the tiles. Words like attacked and rapist and monster and father and beast had poured from Serena’s mouth and had crashed down on Olivia like physical blows, reducing her sense of self to little more than a broken down wreck.
By the time she was sixteen she could barely remember her mother speaking to her in any other voice than the deep (often angry), raspy slur it had become. They hardly saw each other anyway, and that was… fine. To avoid the drunken rages and the sour stench of alcohol and vomit, Olivia spent as much time away from home as she could. She hadn’t needed her mother in a long time, and she had Burton now, anyways. Where Serena was distant or drunk or both, he was warm and funny and attentive. Unlike her mother, he actually loved her. And unlike her mother, he actually wanted her around. So when he proposed, she had said yes.
She hadn’t even planned on telling her mom. She had hoped to gather her belongings and be gone by the time Serena came home from work. But she had already been there, passed out on the couch. Olivia had quietly made her way into her room and had started packing.
“I’m leaving.” She’d said when her mother came stumbling into her room halfway through, bottle grasped in her hand, then repeated herself when Serena just looked at her, eyes glassy and red rimmed.
“Leaving?” The gravelly rasp had contrasted sharply with the clinking of the vodka bottle against the doorframe as she cast her hands out in question. “Where to?”
Olivia had stood observing Serena. Her mother, her mom. She’d gotten used to calling her by her first name, like Burton did, distancing herself from the woman who’d given birth to her. She’d hesitated for a moment, unsure of how much to reveal, how much to risk, before deciding she might as well tell her.
“Burton proposed. I said yes and I’m moving in with him.”
Years later, she still recalled the fury that had widened those green eyes, the shattering of glass, the smell of vodka, the way her mother had lunged at her with that broken bottle. She recalled how her mother’s body had felt beneath her boot as she’d kicked her back into the wall, twice. Recalled the fear and anger that had gripped her, the adrenaline that had rushed through her as she grabbed whatever items she’d already gathered before running out the door as fast as her long legs could carry her. Above all, she recalled her mother’s voice, screaming, raging, claiming her as her own for the first time in many years. Mine , she had raged, the sound clawing its way past her damaged vocal cords in a rough exclamation. How had that voice ever been able to lull her so safely to sleep?
She learned to find some comfort in it, once she got older. The rasped out words weren't so mean anymore, and once they stopped living together, once Olivia, more often than not, was only a voice over the phone instead of a visual, physical reminder of the worst moment of her mother’s life, they found that they could get along. Olivia felt tolerated, at best. But that was more than she’d gotten from her mother in a long time, so she took it and was grateful. And if she didn’t think about it too much, she might almost call it feeling loved.
She had missed the last call she’d gotten from her mother, her last words to her daughter redirected to her answering machine hours before Cragen had called her into his office to tell her the news. Dead. Fallen down. Drunk. He had ordered her home, so home she’d gone. She played her missed messages on autopilot, her mind feeling as numb as her body as she shed her coat and tossed her bag onto the kitchen counter. The recorded breathing stopped her short. It was little more than hoarse huffs of air, crackling slightly on each exhale, but instantly recognizable as Serena’s. The breathing became a deep, rumbling hum, deeper than it had ever been, before the voice uttered a low and confused “‘Livia?” As if she was the one answering the phone. The sound of breathing returned, and Olivia held her own breath until her lungs burned and her head pounded. I’m here. She answered in her head. There was a faint sound of clinking glass in the background, as recognizable to her as her mother’s breathing.
“My ‘Livia.” The voice said, followed by more breathing, the sound of liquid pouring. “I’m… I’ll call you back.”