Love Me Broken (36 page)

I shrug, only my shoulders are so limp I think I shrug more with my mouth than with my body. A look that says,
Whatever, it’s fine with me.

She has her own cup of tea, and she takes a tiny sip of it. I can see the steam still rising out of it. She swallows, and then looks out the window for a moment. Then she looks back at me, her face hard with concern. Her cup drops to her lap.

“Erica,” she says, “I don’t even know where to begin to apologize. I feel like I’ve been asleep for the past year, when I know I should have been here for you. You shouldn’t have had to go through this alone.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t think she expects me to.

She runs her finger over the rim of her cup. “Losing Conner was such a shock. There’s probably no way to be prepared for the loss of your son, but—I still can’t understand it.”

She takes a long sip of her drink, and then looks up at me. “When I got that call, thinking I had lost you, it woke me up. It made me realize how much there is still left to live for. I feel guilty saying that. It feels like I’m saying that I’m forgetting Conner, and I’m not. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life.” Her voice becomes firm. “But Conner didn’t die to take life away from us.”

She shakes her head, and then looks out the window. “I just don’t want to see you fall into the same trap I did. I know it feels terrible, to lose someone you love. It’s hell. And it’s never going to stop hurting, not really. But I also know that you can’t face it alone. Ignoring life doesn’t make it go away.”

I look at her blankly. My mind is saying,
But Adam isn’t gone yet. I haven’t lost him yet
. Even though, in a way, I have. I want to cry. But I can’t. I can’t move.

My mother sets down her drink and takes mine from my hands. Then she puts both hands on my shoulders, so that I face her. “It’s okay to feel, Erica. You’ve been through a lot in the past year, and now this. It’s okay to let some of that pain out.”

She pulls me close to her, in an embrace, and starts to rub my back.

But I don’t feel comforted. I feel smothered. All this sympathy is too little, too late. I’m not ready to forgive my mother this easily. She can’t just walk back into my life after making us all feel like crap for the past year and expect things to be perfect again.

But mostly I’m not ready to feel. Not yet. Not this much.

Because feeling is admitting that I’ve lost Adam. And I’m not ready to believe that. Not yet. I—he can’t die. I can’t lose him.

I feel my eyes water and I push my mother away. She’s hurt, I can tell, but I need to be away from her right now. I say the first thing that comes to my mind.

“I have to feed my cat.” And I exit the room without looking back at her. Even though I can feel her eyes on me the entire way.

I run down the stairs and grab a can of cat food from the cabinet. I’ve already got the lid off the can by the time I’m in the garage, and then I close the door behind me, probably a little too loudly.

“Pete,” I call out. I can hear the emotion bubbling under my voice, like water rushing under a river’s frozen surface. I try to steel myself against it.
“Pete!”

The damn cat won’t come out from his hiding place. I set the food down in the center of the garage and lean against the side of the boxes.

“I need you to come out,” I tell the cat. I peer behind the boxes, and there’s Pete. He looks up at me like he not only understands, but openly rejects my invitation. “I’m not asking, Pete. Come out.”

When he doesn’t budge, I push against the boxes, trying to scare him out. He cowers and hisses, but doesn’t move. I grow frustrated.

“Fine. Let’s do this the hard way.”

I start lifting boxes off the pile, and place them so close along the opposite wall that there’s no gap for Pete to hide between. He doesn’t move until I lift the last box and set it with the others. I turn back to him, seeing him small and vulnerable in the corner of the garage. He has nowhere left to hide. His orange fur is sticking out as he arches his back, trying to make himself look bigger.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell him. “I’m trying to
help
you.”

He does not agree. I look at him and my anger cools. I feel absolutely miserable. “What am I doing?” I look down at the frightened little cat and feel ashamed of myself. “I’m sorry, Pete. I thought—I thought I could take care of you. But I can’t.” I nod, realizing this. “I just hurt people. I hurt everyone I love.”

I shake my head. “Not anymore.” I look back down at the cat. “I’m setting you free, Pete.” I can hear the rain outside, and that pang of guilt hits me again. “It’s raining. Just like the day I found you.”

I let out a deep sigh, and move to the back of the garage, where the switch to open the garage door is.

“Good-bye, Pete.” I press the switch. “I’m sorry.”

The garage door rises, and I pick up the tin of cat food, planning to lure Pete out one last time. But as the door lifts up, it reveals a set of feet standing in the driveway. Like a curtain lifting, first I see a set of women’s calves, then legs, then her body drenched with rain. By the time I see the face, I already know who it is. It makes sense in a way.

I put down the cat food and step outside. We stand facing each other, neither one of us noticing the rain that streams down our hair.

“Hello, Rachel.”

Her face is white and dripping wet. But she doesn’t shake. Her body looks exhausted, like she’s just completed a long, never-ending marathon. She’s wearing the same clothes as before, the hunter green top and dark pants. They’re several shades darker now because of the rain, and I realize she was probably wearing this when I called her. I remember she’s a waitress. She must have been at her work when she got the news. I wonder absently if she finished her tables. If she got fired.

“Hi, Erica,” she says, and we stand for a minute just looking at each other. I actually feel a bond between us: we have Adam in common. She is the only person who could possibly mourn his passing as much as me. “I’m leaving,” she says without preamble. “Adam won’t listen to me, and he’s made it very clear he doesn’t want me with him at the end. I’ve decided to respect his wishes, only because I know I won’t be able to change his mind.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why can’t you? I don’t understand any of this.”

“It’s because of his father,” she says simply.

My eyebrows go up in confusion. “He’s never mentioned his father,” I say.

“No, I don’t imagine that he would. Adam’s father, my husband, died twelve years ago. He was diagnosed with Stage Three lung cancer fourteen years ago and told he had six months to live. There was never a chance of beating it. We all knew that. But he fought long and hard to spend what time he could with his family. Adam was terribly young then. He never knew his father healthy. All he knew was someone who scared him, someone who never existed except as a figure of death. And later, as a legacy of debt that left both of us reliant on others throughout his childhood.”

I try to process this, to picture Adam as a scared little boy. It’s a hard image to reconcile with the Adam I know. He was always so fearless around me. Was that an act? Was he secretly frightened the entire time we were together? And the thought of Adam in pain hurts me. I want to help him. I want to comfort him. And then I remind myself that I can do nothing.

Rachel is quiet again, looking at a patch of bushes by the side of our garage. “Last April Adam collapsed,” she says finally. “We had been to the doctor a few months before that. Adam had developed a cough and was given antibiotics for pneumonia. He took the pills and we had all forgotten about it because the cough went away, and life went on. Then last April he was running laps in gym class, and became lightheaded. You know Adam—he ignored it and kept on running.  He ran until he—” Her eyes look distant, recalling something she chooses not to say. Then she shakes her head. “So we went to the hospital. I remember he was very quiet as they drew his blood and took x-rays. Then they sent him to a specialist for CT scans. He was trying to be brave, even though I knew what this reminded him of. He was thinking of his father.” Her forehead wrinkles, and I think tears are coming from her eyes, but I can’t tell with the rain. “He was barely two weeks past his eighteenth birthday when he was diagnosed. The doctors—” her voice cracks, and she puts her hand to her forehead in a fist, touching it lightly on her brow until she can go on. “The doctors were surprised he was still breathing.”

She shakes her head and looks up at me, her eyes filled with bitter anger. “We couldn’t believe it. When the doctors suggested chemo to shrink the tumor before surgery, Adam lost it. He screamed at them. He told them he didn’t smoke, that he ate right and worked out. That they were
wrong
. He screamed until he started coughing.”

The rain lightens slightly to a fine mist. Little beads of rain are stuck to the ends of Rachel’s eyelashes as she looks away from me.

“We had a big fight,” she says. “I asked him if he wanted a second opinion, that we should know our options, but he refused. He said it was all a big mistake. I tried to tell him that we can’t ignore this, that if it’s cancer we can’t wait. But he said it didn’t matter either way, because he wasn’t doing treatment. He was eighteen and an adult, and I couldn’t make him.” She shakes her head. “I kept pushing. We yelled some more and then went to bed. The next day I came home from work and—” she puts up her hands “—he was gone.”

This is too much for me, and I have to take a step back. I run a hand through my wet hair and watch the rain collect on the driveway, forming little rivers to the gutter.

Adam. All I can think of is Adam, but I don’t know what to think. There was so much more to his story than he ever let on. Why didn’t he tell me?

But I know why. He knew I would try to stop him.

Rachel puts a hand on my arm, drawing my attention back to her. “I came here to thank you,” she says. Her eyes are wide and insistent. “I never thought I’d see my son again, and you gave me one last chance to say good-bye.”

“You’re leaving?” I ask, even though I know she already said this.

She nods. “It’s what he wants. He’s a stubborn boy. He’s like his father in that respect. He figures if he has to die, he should get to die on his own terms.” She shrugs. “I guess I get that. I don’t like it, but I get it.”

“But you’re his
mother
,” I say. “You can’t just give up.” I can’t imagine my own mother allowing Conner to die without a fight. She practically tried to follow him into the grave.

She looks at me another moment, and then walks away without another word. She steps right into the middle of the puddle that has collected at the end of the driveway, crosses the street without looking back.

She’s given up on him. I can’t believe she’s given up on him.

Maybe, says a voice in my head, maybe she knows it’s a lost cause. Adam is going to die either way.

“No!” I say, my eyes squeezing shut. “He can’t die!”

I stumble back into the garage and collapse on the floor.

“He can’t. He
can’t
.” My wet clothes stick to me and are quickly growing icy. Goose bumps have broken out on my arms, and my muscles start to shiver. I don’t make any move to get up, to dry off. I simply sit as the water drips away from me, and I try to think of a way to save Adam.

I can’t help him. I realize this all at once. I can’t help him. He’s going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m going to lose him.

I wish—I wish it were me that died that night. Why couldn’t Conner be the one who lived? He was always so much stronger. Everyone liked him more. Conner would have been fine. He would have known how to help my parents through their grief. He would have made things right.

But not me. I can’t help anyone.

I lean down and sob into my hands. Someone else would have been able to help Adam too. Not his mother. Not me. But if he had met a different girl, someone like Nicole who could get men to do what she wanted, he would stay alive. It was because he met me that he will die. It was—

There’s a scraping sound next to me. I open my eyes groggily, and look over to see Prickly Pete eating from the cat food tin. I collapsed right next to it without even realizing.

“Good,” I say. He should have a last meal before setting off on his own. It’s obvious that I can’t help him. He hates me. “Good boy,” I tell him.

He looks up at me, his face so close that if he moved an inch forward, his whiskers would be tickling my nose. His green eyes are focused on me, and I’m too exhausted to be scared. He licks his lips, and then lets out a tentative
meow.

Then, when I don’t respond, when I don’t even look his way, he steps forward and presses his head against my side. I’m sitting with my legs crossed, and he nuzzles his head along my body, then both knees. I hear a rumbling, and I realize he’s purring.

“Pete?” I ask, turning toward him with surprise. And at my voice, he meows again and steps into my lap.

He is light, but the feel of his weight against me is nice. Has he forgiven me? Had I not tried enough? His tail flicks slowly at his side and he looks out, watching the rain.

Very carefully, I lift my arm and stroke the fur behind his ear. He closes his eyes and leans against my touch, then lies down in my lap, his front paws dangling over my legs. He is letting me touch him. After all this time, he is letting me touch him. Just when I was about to give up.

I draw my hand slowly down his body. He purrs again.

And I start thinking.