by Kelly Harms
There is no answer for this dilemma that is my mother except the answer I chose after I graduated, which was to move far away from my family and turn the volume of my feelings about them down to a polite hum that I can ignore at any time. Jessica, who has a much higher EQ than I do, will never be able to do either of those things.
Could she?
“Maybe you should come stay with me,” I hear myself say. Jessica’s face brightens up like I’ve promised her the moon. “If you leave here with me, I’ll need you to sign something. A pledge or something that I could trust you not to do yourself any harm. And even then I wouldn’t give you much alone time. You’d still be on suicide watch in effect.”
“Ok,” she says.
“And then, when that place, the rehab center or whatever it is, has room for you, you’d have to go straight there.”
“Ok.”
“But until then, the inn is very nice and comfortable. I know a lot about antidepressants and can help you while you get used to your medications. I can keep track of your dosages and monitor your activity.”
“Ok,” she says again.
“Also. I’d need you to do something for me,” I say. “Remember how you said you wished you could live like Mia Bell?”
“That was five minutes ago.”
“So then you do remember. Well, if I’m going to be, ah, ghost posting for her,” I say, trying the term out on my lips, seeing if it feels real enough, “you won’t be able to sleep all day. You’ll have to get up, as miserable as you may feel, and come with me while I, you know, impersonate someone happy to be alive.”
She considers this for a moment. “Then . . . I’d kind of be helping you,” she says. “With your work.”
“Yes. That’s correct. You’d be a big help. I never think to take pictures of anything I do. Plus I never actually do anything. And I’m not that familiar with her, ah, oeuvre. Having you along would be a huge help.”
Jessica’s blotchy, miserable, tearstained face brightens even more. “So we could have a big Mia Bell week?” she asks.
“I’m not sure what that means, so . . . maybe?”
“It means we’d go dress shopping and have pedicures and a fancy-looking lunch and then hike up a mountain and take pictures of the view and then go eat real food that also looks good on film. Like, frites standing up in a big paper-lined cone. From a real Belgian place. Or maybe we could eat Moroccan! Then we’d hear a bluegrass band at some outdoor venue and pose all goofy in adorable sun hats.”
“No,” I say. “We can’t be in the photos,” I remind her and myself. “But the rest are actually wonderful ideas.” I shake my head in wonder. “It would have taken me hours to come up with any kind of itinerary, and it wouldn’t have been half so good as what just sprang to your mind. You’re going to be a natural at this,” I tell her. “Much better than me.”
She shrugs. “Believe me, Paige. It’s not hard to post stuff on the internet. It’s just hard to make anyone care.”
MIA
I walk into my mom’s kitchen the day after my nondate at Black Diamond Baron’s with Dewey and find Mom loading up her birthing bag and some extra stuff. An air mattress and a sleeping bag. A nylon bag in bright yellow that I think might be a tent. I am still too buzzy with that happy feeling of a relaxed evening with someone new and awesome to realize this spells danger.
“Where are you going?” I ask her.
“Where are we going,” she corrects. “Now that you’re detached from your digital tether, we’re going camping.”
“What now?”
“Surely you must have heard of it, in all your Patagonia-sponsored activities.”
I shake my head. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t care for it. I sleep in beds.”
“This is Colorado, honey. You’ll sleep on the ground, and you’ll like it. Besides, it’s part of your detox,” she tells me. “What could be more offline than a place with no electricity, no bathrooms, and no cars?”
“A coffin,” I say. “A lead-lined coffin would be more offline. That doesn’t mean I should crawl into one.”
My mother gestures grandly to the heavens. “Open yourself up to Mother Nature, my darling. Take in the lessons she has to offer. Let her stars be your backlight and her winds be your recharger.”
“Oh boy,” I say. “I’m gonna have to pass.”
My mom drops her arms and shakes her head. “Sorry. You have to go. I already told Dewey.”
“Dewey?” Last night we agreed to hang out again as soon as possible. I didn’t realize he had discussed this with my mother too. “What did you tell Dewey? And when?”
“Just now. On the phone. I told him we were taking Azalea camping. She can’t very well take herself, now, can she?”
“Dewey is letting you take his daughter camping?”
“I don’t see why not,” says Mom. “He’s known me for years. You’re the question mark here, and he seems willing to take the chance.”
“We went out last night,” I tell her. She’s not one to pry, and it drives me crazy.
“Did you, now.” It’s not exactly a question, but I’m just going to pretend it was.
“It wasn’t a date.”
“Why on earth not?” she asks.
“Because I’ve only been single for about fifteen minutes!” I say. “Plus I’m having some kind of mother-induced nervous breakdown.”
She laughs at this. “More like nervous breakthrough,” she quips, and she smiles with pride at herself even though I am pretty sure she’s the one who bought me the Luscious Jackson EP of the same name years ago. “So if you’re not dating the guy three doors up who looks like a sort of cross between a Viking and a Highlander, what exactly is your plan for him?”
“There’s no plan,” I tell her blithely. “I’m just savoring the offline experience. Hashtag no filter.”
“I would encourage you to stop saying hashtag in front of polite company,” she tells me. “And as for having no filter, when it comes to your romantic dalliances with my egg guy, please do consider using a filter. You’re on the rebound, and this is my only reliable source of chicken feet.”
“Mom, what do you do with the chicken feet?” I ask her.
She sighs. “I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t ask.”
“I’m asking,” I say.
“I eat them,” she says.
“Really!” I exclaim. “That’s interesting. When did that start?”
“When this started,” she says and points to some small wrinkles on her forehead. “I eat them for the collagen. It took some getting used to.”
I break into a grin. “So you’re saying you eat, what, boiled chicken feet for reasons of vanity?”
“That’s right.”
“Aha!” I cry in delight. “You do care about how you look! I’m vindicated!”
“Are you?”
“I am. You can preach about your graceful aging and plastics-free medicine cabinet and your ‘Mother Nature’s backlighting,’ but you are, deep down, just the same as anyone else. Willing to eat variety meats to avoid wrinkles!”
“It’s also very good for my gut biome,” she says, utterly unfazed.
“But that’s not why you do it,” I say.
Mom shrugs. “When eight hundred years old you are,” she paraphrases, “look this good, you will not.”
I smile. But then Mom catches my eye, and we both sigh deeply, at the same time. Neither Mom nor I has any natural proclivity toward science fiction, though I do remember my mom strongly advising me to read The Handmaid’s Tale when I first got my period. Looking back, that was a strange recommendation. Anyway. It was Andy who was into Star Wars.
He did not care that we weren’t remotely interested. Every Christmas Eve he put on the first one ever, the one with Carrie Fisher wearing earmuffs made out of her own hair, and Return of the Jedi, where Yoda says his classic line about being old. Andy, three years my elder, told me when I was five that the emperor was Santa Claus’s evil twin. That wa
s to explain why we had to watch it at Christmas. When we were older, he talked like Yoda anytime he needed to get a laugh out of me or say something wise but not sound preachy. I remember how when I was eight or so, the three of us went to see The Phantom Menace, waiting in line for hours for tickets at the big mall theater. I wanted to dress as Leia, of course, and begged Andy to be Luke, not Han, his true favorite. In the end, we settled on him going as Chewbacca, and when in the last hour of waiting I started to freeze solid in my white cotton nightgown, he gave me his furry paws and knit bandolier.
Mom swallows. I ask her something I always wonder about. “How much do you miss him, these days?” I ask. “Is it getting better? On a scale of one to ten.” For me it has been stuck for some time not at a ten but at a number too high for me to bear remembering him often.
She sits down wearily on the sofa, her packing forgotten. “A thousand,” she tells me. “Sometimes it almost seems to be getting worse, not better. Every year new things happen that he misses out on. Or something new comes up that I could use his help with. It was hard to pick out a dress for your wedding without him. His job was to make sure I didn’t look too hippie dippie at your school functions and the like. Six years, and I still can’t dress myself.”
My heart sinks. I try not to forget that for every memory of Andy I try to squelch, my mother lets in two. “I can help you, Mom. Or you can just wear your hippie dresses. I don’t care. I’m not sixteen anymore.”
“I just would prefer it if he were here.” She says it with an edge. Like she’s not sure if I feel the same way.
“I miss him too,” I say, pretending not to care that I feel my own way of mourning Andy has always been graded on a curve. “God, how I wish he were here now. He would have no time for Tucker.”
“Tucker would be persona non grata around here, that’s for sure.”
“Well, he still is, isn’t he?” I ask.
Mom thinks about this. “If he came by, knocked on the door, I would certainly let him in. Wouldn’t you?” she asks. “I’d offer him a drink and a chair. After all, exactly what has he done that was so bad?”
I try not to overreact. This is my mom. She is not known for mincing her words or suffering fools, even when her daughter is the fool in question. Growing up, when I wanted tact, I went to Andy. “Tucker did kind of hurt my feelings,” I point out to Mom now. “And embarrass me. When he left me at the altar.”
“Well, technically, he never made it to the altar. He gave you two days’ warning. And that was for a private ceremony.”
“Yes. Very private,” I snap. “You, the minister, and five hundred thousand of our closest friends.”
She opens her mouth to annoy me further when, thank heavens, the doorbell rings.
As she goes to answer it, I whisper, “You eat chicken feet.”
She replies just a hair louder, “Millions of people eat chicken feet. Stop being so culturally insensitive.” And then, last word guaranteed, she throws open the door. “Azalea!”
Though it is not a pretty impulse, whenever I see Azalea, I want to take her aside and fix her. Today is no different. She comes through the door in pastel-striped leggings that are too juvenile for her age and don’t flatter her body shape. On top she is wearing a too-small hoodie open over a shirt from a children’s theater company whose mascot is an ear of corn. She needs a training bra underneath but is instead wearing something that flattens her out and squeezes her around the stomach, some kind of too-short tank top. She will probably be tugging at it all day—she can’t stop fiddling with her clothes. Probably because she is uncomfortable. How I would love to take this child shopping, but I know why I can’t. She has no idea that she’s grown up so much. She has no idea she looks odd. I should not be the one to tell her.
She pulls out of an awkwardly long hug from my mom—my mom thinks we should all hug everyone for at least twenty seconds, in order to get the true stress-reduction benefits of human connection—and beams at me. “Dad said you spent last night at a dog restaurant.”
“That’s right,” I say. “We met a lot of nice dogs.”
“He said your dog had three legs.”
“He did.” I cough. First Andy, now Mike. These conversations make me miss being anywhere but here.
“What happened to his other leg?”
“Someone threw him out of a car and drove away.” I don’t tell her the car was moving. That part bugs me too much to repeat.
“Did you rescue him?”
“Yes.” Without intention, my hand moves to my heart. “Well, it’s more accurate to say that he rescued me.”
“That’s what it always says in my books!” she says. “The person rescues the dog; then the dog rescues the person.”
“Your books?” I ask.
“Humane Hannah and the Haunting Hounds,” she tells me. “Hannah works at a dog shelter, and she can talk to the ghosts of dogs, so she solves crimes with their help. There’s, like, thirty books in the series.”
My heart squeezes. I would have read that series at her age. I would have read all thirty in one summer while everyone normal was outside playing. Or camping.
“That sounds like a good series,” I say.
“I brought three in my backpack,” she tells me happily. “You can borrow one.”
Her backpack, too, is an invitation to teasing. It’s shaped like a kitten. An acrylic kitten with rainbow sparkles for fur. The eyes of the cat are hearts. It’s packed to bursting and looks incredibly heavy, but she’s bouncy enough with it on her shoulders. “I also packed marshmallows!”
“That’s wonderful,” says my mom. “But where’s your sleeping bag?”
“Oh, well, I didn’t bring it,” she says. “When Dad and I camp, I always get scared at bedtime and go inside to sleep.”
“Scared?” asks my mom, who has probably never had that emotion in her life.
“There’s coyotes. You can hear them. They ate my chicken.”
“Well, they won’t eat you,” she says. “I promise. And where we’re going, there’s no ‘inside’ to sleep in. Mia, run downstairs and get an extra sleeping bag, will you?”
I follow orders, hearing poor Azalea tell Mom she’ll just sleep in the car and my mom informing her that she will do no such thing. When I come back up, the girl’s face is the same color as an overbleached hotel towel.
“Mom,” I say. “Azalea doesn’t want to go camping.”
“No,” she tells Azalea, who is nodding. “Mia doesn’t want to go camping. Stop poisoning the well, Mia.”
“Can’t we just have a girls’ sleepover?” I suggest. “Make beet chips and watch movies?”
“We will not make beet chips,” she says. “It is not beet season. We will eat marshmallows and sleep under the stars. You two, in the car. Enough silliness.”
Knowing there’s no point in arguing, I take Azalea by the arm and try to be reassuring as I load her into the car. But I am filling up with resentment for my overbearing mom. I remember how my phone used to buffer me from her. “It’s not beet season?” I hear myself muttering. “When, exactly, is marshmallow season?”
Helpfully Azalea tells me, “Well, they’re just sugar and horse hooves, so you can have those at any time,” and shrugs.
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” I tell the poor girl, before going back inside to throw a change of underwear, a small dopp kit, and two extra blankets off my bed into a paper grocery sack that will serve as my rainbow-sparkles-kitty backpack for the purposes of this adventure. Though my mother is many things, reasonable is not one of them. But then my heart softens. After all, as Andy was fond of saying, “reasonable” may be highly overrated.
PAIGE
No better place to spend a #honeymoon than @InnEvergreen, sweet friends. Did you know they can prepare a completely gluten-free, dairy-free, grain-free, sugar-free menu for every breakfast? No need to waste a #cheatday just because I’m away from home. That’s the kind of care that makes you feel like you’re at home, only with
no dishes! QOTD: What creature comforts make you feel most at home when you travel? For me, nothing beats having clean food to start my day. If it’s your jam, there’s nothing wrong with having a bagel (singular LOL) in New York City or a perfect scone in London. But if you’d rather spend your mountain time vibrant and energized, you can skip the #carbcrash at breakfast and indulge in a nice coconut smoothie and a perfect sesame-sprinkled kale and egg scramble instead. #Nourishingandflourishing
Together, Jessica and I make a safety plan. We get a terrific worksheet from www.samhsa.gov that helps us figure out who to call and how to proceed in case of emergency, as well as how to avoid danger in the coming days together. We both put hotline numbers in our phones and put each other in favorites. I have no intention of letting her out of my sight, but even so, it feels important to be prepared.
Then a nurse sends me home from the hospital, promising someone will call me when Jessica is close to being discharged and that that process will take “at least a day.” I drive back to the inn and spend the first several waiting hours thinking, thinking, thinking about Mia, Jessica, and myself. Three people who are hiding from the world—one a fraud, one afraid of herself, and one, me, having largely lost interest. Until now.
There’s still no response on the page from Mia. I find myself wondering what I am hoping for—to be caught or to be allowed to carry on. But for practical purposes, that doesn’t matter. It’s time for “Mia” to post again; her followers are so grouchy and needy, and also they are quitting her feed in droves, due to an algorithm created by designers at Pictey to make sure new users can rise up in the ranks when old ones start to go stagnant. I don’t have Jessica to abet me yet, but I can do some of the things that will placate the masses—for example, I don’t need help to go back to the Sleepy Bear. My latte foam is styled as a sea turtle—maybe too cutesy for Mia—so I post a picture of the stained glass above the door, with sun streaming through it, and some nice thoughts about seeing the beauty in everything. I’m pretty sure it’s a paraphrase of something Mia went viral with a year or two ago, but whatever—it’ll do. It does do. Her comments fill up, faster than last time, and her follower numbers start to bounce back to where they were before her “wedding.”