The next thing I know, my aunt calls down saying it’s time for dinner and my dad is home. I drag myself back up the stairs. It’s weird because while part of me feels like I’m still buzzing, another part is so heavy I can barely move my feet.
“Are you okay?” my aunt asks me with a furrowed brow.
I just nod. “I’ll change clothes,” I mumble as I head for my room. But once the door is closed to my room, I go for my stash of pills. But this time I don’t know which one to take. It’s like I’m so numb, I can’t even figure out what I need. More energy? Less pain? To sleep? I’m tempted to take a handful, but my dad just got home. I haven’t seen him for two weeks. I can do better than this.
I take two pain pills and struggle to peel off my sweaty dance clothes. Then I struggle even more to get dressed, just sitting there with one leg in my jeans and the other one still bare.
Finally Aunt Kellie knocks on my door, saying it’s time for dinner.
I blink at my strange-looking image in the mirror, pull on my jeans, and tell her I’m coming. Then, feeling hazy, like this is a dream, I make my way to the dining room and sit in my regular place. At least I think it’s my regular place. My head is kind of spinning now.
“Are you all right?” my dad asks with worried eyes.
“I don’t... know.”
My aunt comes over and puts her hand on my forehead. “You don’t look well, Cleo.”
“I... I’m tired,” I mumble. “Too much... dancing.”
“She’s been dancing a lot lately, practicing for the recital,” my aunt tells my dad. “Probably overdoing it.”
“You look like you’ve lost weight.”
I just nod at Dad, but the motion makes me feel woozy, and I think I’m about to fall out of my chair or vomit. “I... I... don’t feel too good.”
“Come on.” Aunt Kellie helps me to my feet. “Let’s get you back to your room. I’ll bring your dinner in there.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat something,” she insists.
Soon I’m sitting up in bed and there’s some food on a tray in front of me. I poke something brownish with my finger, then lean my head back and sigh.
“Something is wrong with you.” My aunt bends over and peers into my eyes.
“I’m just tired.” Her eyes are narrowed, studying me like I’m a bug under a magnifying glass. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were using drugs, Cleo. Your pupils are dilated and—”
“That’s ridiculous.” I attempt a laugh, but it sounds more like a cough.
“You’re not taking drugs,
are you?”
“
Of course not.” Now I close my eyes. “I’m just tired. And sad. My mom died,
remember?”
“
Yes. My sister died, too.” I hear her leave, but when I look up, I see she left my door open. I want to get up and close it, shut her out, but my legs feel like they’re encased in thick mud. And I am so tired... dizzy... fuzzy... blurry.
Later that evening, after it’s dark outside, my dad comes into my room. He removes the tray of barely touched food and just looks at me. His eyes are red and puffy, like he’s been crying. “I shouldn’t have gone on that business trip. It was too soon to leave you alone like that, Cleo. I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?”
I blink and stare at him. Does he really think this is his fault? Seriously, his fault? If only he knew.
“My work has taken me away from my family for too long,” he continues. “And now it’s taking my family away from me. Too much to pay for too little return... bad investment... risky business.”
“Huh?” I’m trying to understand what he’s saying, but it doesn’t quite make sense.
“My work took me away from your mom—” His voice breaks. “If I’d been home, she’d probably still be alive.”
I nod, taking this in. “Yeah... maybe so.” But I know it’s not true. And I cannot admit the part I played.
“And then I left you alone, and Kellie says you need me to be here.”
The guilt is burying me, suffocating me. I want to tell Dad I’m sorry, that it’s all my fault, confess everything, but it’s like I’m frozen, stuck. I can’t speak, can’t think, can barely even breathe.
Dad takes my hand in his. “I need you to get through this, Cleo. And I want to help you. I’m going to cancel my next consulting trip and just—”
“No,” I say quickly. “You don’t need to cancel your trip. Not for me.”
“But look at you.” He wipes his wet cheeks with his hands. “You are falling apart. Aunt Kellie is really worried about your health, sweetheart. So am I.”
“I just need some rest. I’m tired; that’s all.”
He nods. “Okay. You get some sleep. We can talk about this tomorrow. Aunt Kellie wants us to go to church with her in the morning, and I think it’s about time we went back. Your mother would want us to go to church. I was foolish to stop. Foolish and selfish. I’m sorry, Cleo. I’ll do better.”
I don’t respond... just close my eyes... wishing this to be over.
“And then, after church tomorrow, we’ll go to the cemetery.”
“The cemetery?” I open my eyes.
“Why?
”
He sniffs, then wipes his nose with a tissue. “It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow. We’ll take your mom some roses. Pink roses. Her favorite.”
“Oh...” It feels like a bag of stones is on my chest, pushing the air from my lungs.
“You rest, honey. We’ll do better. Tomorrow’s a new day.”
“Yeah... tomorrow... Mother’s Day...”
My dad leaves the room, shutting the door.
I sit up and struggle to breathe. My heart is racing again, yet all I’ve been doing is lying here. I take not one but two sleeping pills, hoping to slow things down. But as I lie here, I wonder if these drugs are killing me. And why should I even care?
T
his morning I get up and tell myself that I’ll quit these pills today—once and for all, I want to end this madness. But the thought of attending church as well as visiting my mother’s grave—on
Mother’s Day
—undoes me. My good intentions are tossed aside, and I succumb to the lure of the contents of a Ziploc baggie. As I take both a pain pill and an amphetamine, I feel weak and pathetic and hopeless.
As a result, I feel numb and dazed and barely present during the church service. The music and the words go right over my head, floating around with the dust particles that sparkle in the sunlight. It all just whooshes away. All except for one part of the sermon that somehow sticks.
“God has the heart of a mother. Like a mother, God’s love is unconditional. Like a mother, God’s forgiveness is complete.”
Although those words must be meant to comfort, they cut me to the core. They burn and sting and taunt. I find it impossible to believe that they are true. And it takes all my self-control not to scream and run out of here. Instead, I dig my fingernails into my palms until I’m sure they must be bleeding.
“Are you okay?” Aunt Kellie looks down at me, and I realize that she and everyone else are standing. My dad is in the aisle talking to Dr. Richards, our dentist. Maybe he’s making an appointment for a checkup. Uncle Don has already made his exit.
“Cleo?” My aunt peers curiously at me. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Just not feeling too good.” I slowly stand, trying to look normal.
She puts her face close to mine. “You don’t look too good.”
“Thanks,” I say with sarcasm.
She links her arm into mine and escorts me down the aisle and toward the door. Once we are out in the parking lot, she gets a somber look. “I’m very concerned about you.”
I just shrug, blinking into the sunlight. Then I turn away from her, focusing on a search for my sunglasses in this cavernous bag. I find them and slip them on, hoping this will help to keep her from studying the condition of my pupils again.
“I want to talk to you,” she says in a serious tone. Then she looks around, and seeing others coming into the parking lot, she seems to change her mind. “But not here. We’ll talk at home.”
“Why don’t you go home with Uncle Don?”
“Because you need me more than he does right now.”
I want to protest this, but my dad is approaching. Like Aunt Kellie, he questions my health, and I assure him I’m fine, just tired. I consider begging out of the cemetery visit, but this will only raise more questions and suspicion. Dad stops by a florist shop, but seeing they’re closed, he goes to a grocery store instead.
“I haven’t told your dad about Trina’s phone call yet,” my aunt informs me as we wait for Dad to emerge from the store.
I don’t respond.
“He seemed so upset about you last night; I didn’t want to add to his stress.”
I want to question just how much she added to Dad’s stress in regard to me. Because I’m certain she was the one who planted those ideas in his head last night—suggesting that he’d neglected Mom and me and was somehow responsible for all our problems. It seems like something she would do. But I don’t get the chance to say anything because Dad is on his way back to the car.
“No roses.” He hands a mixed bouquet to Aunt Kellie. “But these are pretty.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “These are pretty. And look, there are some tulips in here. You know, Karen loved tulips. Maybe even more than roses. But you can only get tulips in the spring.”
I want to yell at her now, to tell her to shut up about the stupid tulips, but somehow I manage to keep my mouth shut. And soon we’re at the cemetery. I’m not sure if it’s the pills I’m taking or if I’m going insane, but for a while I think it’s the day of my mother’s funeral. Where is everyone, and why is her grave all covered with dirt and sod now?
I stand about ten feet away from the grave as my dad kneels and lays the flowers by the headstone. He remains there on his knees, and I wonder if he’s praying... or maybe he’s talking to my mother. Is he telling her he’s sorry? Telling her that this whole thing, her untimely death, is all his fault?
My dad stands and Aunt Kellie loudly blows her nose in a hankie; I stay rooted to the ground, longing to get away from this place. Without speaking to me, Dad turns and walks away. Then Aunt Kellie follows. And I am left standing here.
I should follow them, but for some reason I feel frozen. And I want to say something—like I almost believe my mom is really here and can actually hear me. Even though I know better.
I open my mouth, but no words come out. Instead I hear this horrible, awful sound—like the howl of a mortally wounded animal. I collapse in tears, dropping to my knees with my face to the ground and falling completely apart.
I’m not sure how long I remain in that position or how my dad and aunt got me to the car. But while I’m in the backseat, crouched in a fetal position, I realize that I’m no longer in the cemetery. I’m still sobbing, but I can hear the sound of voices: my dad in front and my aunt back here. And although I can’t make out the words, I suspect they are talking about me, trying to decide how to deal with this. But when I hear my dad mention the hospital, I sit up.
“Don’t take me to the hospital!” I shriek.
“But you’re so upset,” he says. “You need help, Cleo.”
“Not the hospital,” I plead. “I promise, I’ll be okay. Just take me home, and I’ll be okay.”
“But you’re not yourself,” my aunt tells me. “Something... something beyond losing your mother is wrong.”
“How do you know what’s wrong? You’re not me.”
“We can see you, honey,” Dad says soothingly. “You are acting very strangely.”
I bury my face in my hands and cry uncontrollably again.
I wish I were dead, I wish I were dead, I wish I were dead.
The next thing I know, I am being helped from the car—but we’re not at home. We are at the hospital. With my aunt and my dad on either side of me, supporting me between them, I’m being guided toward a set of doors with a sign that says EMERGENCY above it. Fine. Maybe I am an emergency. Let them see if they can fix me.
It’s not until I’m alone in the examining room with the doctor that I consider just telling the truth. Really, it would be simpler. But the doctor, who seems awfully young, also seems busy and distracted, and I suspect he has more urgent patients to attend to, probably with problems more serious than a crazy teenager.
“I understand you’re having an extremely difficult time dealing with the loss of your mother,” he says quietly. “And I’m no expert in grief, but I do recommend you get into some kind of grief therapy. We have a list of resources.”
I just nod, wanting to get this over with. “Thanks. I’ll do that.”
“Your father is worried that you might want to harm yourself. He said you were saying that you wished you were dead. Is that right?”
I blink. Did I really say that out loud? “I, uh, I don’t know. It was just so painful being at my mother’s grave... I guess I kind of fell apart.”
“That must’ve been rough.”
“And it’s Mother’s Day, you know.” I sigh sadly. “I think it was just too much emotion to deal with.”
“Well, we don’t really have any reason to keep you here.” He reads what I assume is my chart. “You were pretty stressed when you got here, but you seem fairly rational now. Grief does strange things to people, but it’s not usually a reason to hospitalize someone. So tell me, how are you feeling now?”