“I don’t know.”
“So ask her.”
“OK.” I waited for him to say good-bye or hang up, but he didn’t. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.” But only if he asked and for that he would have to track me to earth and drag my
no
out of me.
“Ask her now. She’s right there.”
So I had to explain about the pizza party. Mom looked so delighted, and I couldn’t figure out how to tell her I didn’t want to go without starting an argument.
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “As long as I know where you are and who you’re with.”
I sighed. “Mom’ll take me, I guess.” Neither one seemed to notice my lack of enthusiasm. Why was I so careful not to hurt their feelings? Or was I just worried about mine?
The week we spent waiting for the party grated like rough gravel on both Mom and me. She wandered our small apartment, restless and jerky. She twitched leaves off her precious plants until I thought she’d kill them all. She scraped her nails through her hair and tugged at her clothes as if they bound her too tightly. I thought she might be less likely to go off on a binge if I stuck close by, but she got on my nerves. The only reason she left the apartment, besides work, was for her meetings. And she’d reek of that sickening perfume when she got home.
I never caught her at it, but I was sure she’d started drinking again, at least a little. Why else would she pour on perfume? But she managed to stay sober enough to fool everyone else.
Thursday night I got home from another babysitting job and found her squatting on the floor, surrounded by half-filled photo albums and stray pictures of Dad.
I saw one under the edge of the couch, and I fished it out, glancing at it before I gave it to her. Mom had taken it on our last camping trip. Daddy had been so sick by then. His bones cut through his skin as his brittle arms held me, his smile too wide in his gaunt face. I didn’t remember that trip that way, though. I sagged against the couch and closed my eyes, and the scent of wood smoke hugged me, just the way it always clung to Dad’s clothes. I felt the pebbles slipping under my feet as we walked to the beach. I remembered toasting marshmallows he couldn’t eat, and making faces in the light of the ones that caught fire. I remembered the three of us wrapped together in sleeping bags as the flames died, and how we stayed that way all night, no one wanting to let go of the others even long enough to crawl inside the tent.
Mom held another picture from the same trip and her fingers curled around it, crumpling it.
“What are you doing? Don’t ruin them.” I snatched the picture and tried to flatten it.
“Sometimes I am still so mad at him,” she whispered. “Why did he have to leave us? Don’t you ever wonder?”
“He had cancer.” Mom knew this. I backed away. She hadn’t acted this confused in weeks. “It wasn’t Daddy’s fault.”
“No, it’s all mine. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?” She looked up and I saw her tears. “Why am I the only one you hate? He’s the one who left you.”
I stood up, my heart pounding. “Mom?”
She dragged her hands though her hair, grabbing, pulling. “Sometimes I think I’m going crazy. I don’t think I can do this.” She thrust armfuls of photos back into the box. I knelt to help but she pushed my hands away, and I could only watch.
Did she want me to tell her I didn’t hate her? If I did, would that be a lie? I tried to feel, really
feel
, how I felt about Mom, and all I knew was that I wanted to cry.
“Why’d you wreck his picture?”
She shrugged. “I just got angry. I don’t think I meant to.” She peered up at me, blinking.
“You’re drunk.”
“No.” She stood and lifted the box in one easy movement, glaring at me as if to say, “See, I can still function. That proves it.” Instead, she said, “You don’t have to be drunk to ruin something.”
She carried the box back to her room, and I stared after her. I’d
expected
her to be sober. Depended on it. Now, I wondered, and wondering hurt so much. Hadn’t I learned? I couldn’t depend on her.
Mom came back into the living room before I could escape with my pain, holding out the picture I’d picked up. “You keep this. You remember him, don’t you, baby? You remember how much he loved us?”
I nodded, swallowed. As I took the picture, I wiped away a drop and wondered, whose tear?
“He wanted us to learn to be happy again. He wanted so much for us.” Mom pulled the curtain away from the window. “Happiness, health, strength. All the things he had to give up.”
“Daddy was happy.” I stroked his printed face. Wouldn’t he want me to be happy, too, and safe? Heart-safe, in a place where I didn’t hope, didn’t take any risks by depending on Mom. Daddy believed in risks. He climbed mountains. He camped in the wild. He trusted people who could hurt him. He’d trusted Mom and me. He didn’t think much of safety. Yet I craved it.
By Friday, I was so ready for that party. I didn’t want to be around the kids from the youth group, but I needed an escape from Mom. Her edgy mood had grown explosive. At times I wanted her to give in, get the waiting over with. But for once, I knew better than to tell her.
She came home late that evening and tossed an armful of library books onto the coffee table. I straightened them into a neater pile and she glared.
“When’s this party of yours?” she growled.
“In forty-five minutes.”
“You getting dinner there?”
“They said it’s a pizza party. Last I heard that meant they’d feed us.”
“Don’t start with me, Aidyn.”
I stomped into the bathroom and smeared mascara under my lashes and inside my glasses, but I heard Mom mumbling in the hall. I had to scrape the lenses with my nails to get the black off. Why did I bother? No one would see my eyes anyway.
“What time is this thing over?” Mom called through the door.
“Jackson said he’d bring me home by ten.”
“Jackson said?” Her voice rose. “I thought I was coming back to get you. Is this a date?”
“With you driving me? Hardly. He just offered to bring me home.”
“Oh, so I’m only allowed to drive one way?”
“Mom—” I yanked the door open to argue, but she interrupted.
“I’ll pick you up. I don’t want some crazy kid bringing you home.”
That would have been funny if it hadn’t been so scary. “You just don’t want me to go.” Well, I didn’t either. Better to pick a fight now than to get there and be miserable and alone. Then, as the silence stretched, I realized I was right. “I might as well stay home. That’s what you want, and you always end up getting your way.”
She sucked in a long breath and stared at me though slitted eyelids. I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to stay home so she’d have someone stronger than she was to keep her from drinking. How could she think I could do that? I never had before. I wasn’t strong.
“Fine!” I slammed out of the bathroom door, as mad that I’d wasted mascara as anything else. “I’ll stay home. Jackson’ll figure out I’m not coming.”
“I never said you couldn’t go.”
“No, that’s just what you want, though, isn’t it?”
She bit her lip and looked away.
I jerked my sweater over my head and threw it on my bedroom floor. “So I’ll stay home and hold your hand or whatever I’m supposed to do—”
“I don’t need you to babysit me!”
“Don’t you?”
She rubbed her eyes and seemed to shrink. “Yeah.” The word came out in a sigh. “You’re right, baby. I feel like I could use a little support tonight, but I’m not going to get it from you, am I?” She followed me and picked up my sweater, holding it out to me. “But I’m picking you up.”
“No—”
“Aidyn, I’ll pick you up.”
All I could see were horrible pictures in my mind. After hours of getting wasted, Mom would come careening down night streets looking for me. If she remembered she had promised she’d get me. If she hadn’t passed out. “I want Jackson to bring me home.”
Her lips pinched together. “Does he know you have a crush on him?”
“I don’t. I just don’t want to die tonight.”
She screamed. The sound filled my head, guttural, frustrated, like sand. I covered my ears and crouched to hide and knew I couldn’t go anywhere.
When I uncurled she’d gone.
I heard her car peeling from the carport. Even if I’d wanted to go, I couldn’t. I had to wait for Mom to get home, to clean her up. Or wait for a call from the police.
And it would be my fault. Whatever happened to Mom now would be my fault.
I’d had a week to forget that shame and fear, and it had stolen the time to grow bigger than I could handle. I couldn’t stuff it back inside. It exploded out of my mouth and scared me as much as Mom’s scream had. Besides, how could I hide from myself?
I bolted outside, charged down the stairs and stopped on the curb. What did I think I could do? Find her? I could only wait for her to stagger home with her booze, get whatever she had left over away from her, and wait until she got sober enough to listen when I begged her to stop.
I hadn’t done that in a long time.
A car skidded in front of me, and Mom reached across to open the passenger door. “Is he coming to get you?”
Relief filled my heart and to hold it in, I wrapped my arms around my waist. “No.”
“Are you ready to go then?” She acted as though nothing had happened. “Come on, I’ll take you. Where’s the map that girl sent you?”
I pulled it from my pocket, and Mom studied it before she took off again. “Did you call him?”
“Jackson? No. Why?”
“Why were you waiting outside?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe looking for you.” But the “maybe” made it a lie.
“Why?”
“Maybe I don’t want you making love to a bottle, OK?”
She drove for a long time, her knuckles white on the steering wheel, her lip caught tight between her teeth. We stopped in front of a small house, and I checked the address. Lucy’s, but I didn’t want to get out. I didn’t want to leave my mother like this and wondered what kind of sickness I had, to want the crap she put me through. But I didn’t—I didn’t.
I reached for the door handle, and she slid her hand toward me, as if she needed to anchor me. “Honesty’s a good thing, isn’t it? Thank you, baby.” After a minute she released my hand. “I don’t want that, either.”
I turned my hand palm up and let hers rest in mine. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d touched her willingly, except to clean her up or drag her someplace safer than where she’d passed out.
“Were you, Mom?” I whispered. “Is that where you were going?”
She closed her eyes. “Yes.”
I tightened my fingers. “I don’t want to go. I want to go home.”
Mom laughed, though her tears almost made it a sob. “You’re here, already. You’re staying. I’ve wasted enough of your fun, haven’t I?” In the shadows and streetlight tricks I saw more tears. “As much as I want you with me right now, I’m not going to keep you, OK?” She pulled my hand to her face, and I let my fingers curl against her cheek, slide on the loose, damp skin. “I know almost everything I’ve done has hurt you, baby, and I’m sorry.”
“I won’t have any fun.”
“Yes, you will.”
“I don’t want to stay, Mom.”
“Aidyn, I’m OK. I don’t want a drink now. I want my daughter to go to this party and have fun with her friends.”
“They’re not—”
“They are. Go on. I’ll call my sponsor when I get home, OK? Don’t start worrying about me.”
As if I’d ever stopped. “But Mom—”
“There’s Jackson. Go on, Aidyn. I’m OK.” She kissed my palm before I could pull away. Maybe I didn’t want to. “Ten, right? I’ll be here.”
My door opened and Jackson leaned down. “Hey, Mrs. Pierce. Aidyn, you made it. Great. Come on.”
I got out and tried to wait at the curb until Mom turned the corner, but Jackson hauled me up the walk and I didn’t hear her engine start until he shut the front door behind me.
6
Inside the dim room, a rug covered the wood floors between the couch and some chairs. Miguel slumped on the couch, alone, a soda balanced on his stomach.
“You remember Miguel?” Jackson asked.
I nodded. “Who could forget him?” But the Miguel at Lucy’s house seemed a different person from the clown I knew from school and church.
Jackson laughed, but his mirth died quickly. “We’ve got a tiny bit of a crisis in the other room. Shannon had a big fight with her mom, and now she’s doing the meltdown. Would you mind letting people in for us?”
Without waiting to hear if either of us agreed, Jackson left. Poor little Shannon, I thought. Poor, lucky little Shannon. She has a fight with her mother, and the whole world shores her up. I have a fight with mine, and no one knows. I wondered what Shannon would do if she had to deal with my mom.
I wandered around the room, watched Miguel’s soda rise and dip with his breathing. I edged to one of the chairs and perched on the seat. “Are you all right?” I whispered.
He shrugged. “My dad’s hitting the bottle again.” His voice came out flat, like he’s been working hard at feeling nothing, and succeeded. “Had to get out before he started hitting me.” He laughed and took a drink of soda while I froze, shocked.
Why was he telling
me
? Because he didn’t know me? Maybe Jackson, the take-care-of-the-world-guy, should have stayed. Everybody turned to Jackson. Everybody but me. I wondered what Miguel would do when he realized he’d been talking to me, or if he’d learned not to care.
“This is the first party you’ve ever come to, isn’t it?” Miguel asked. “I mean, with the group.”
So he knew who I was, after all. “Yeah.”
“You’ll like it. Really.” He laughed again, as though I ought to understand the joke. “Usually we’re a lot more fun than this.”
He stood and walked around, stretching his back and finishing off his soda. “I hate my dad. What’s the point of quitting when you know you’re just gonna start again? He never means it. Makes all kinds of promises, but he never means to keep them.”
He paced, and I couldn’t find an answer. He didn’t seem to need one.
“Sometimes I think he does that so he can knock me and Mom down, you know? ‘Cause we start to hope, and we think everything’s gonna be normal. And then, nothing ever stays good, not around my house.”