When I hear Daddy’s car pull up the driveway with Mama later the next day, I am reluctant to get out of bed. The blare of his horn nudges me from under the covers, and I throw the blanket off and greet them by the front door. Daddy comes in first, kissing me on the top of my head and whispering, “Don’t bring up E.J. I don’t want to upset her more than she already is.” I wish everything weren’t always about Mama.
We are finishing up dinner when she says she has an announcement to make. “Can we go in the living room and talk?” Her face is blank. I can’t tell where this is going, but my legs direct me across the kitchen and through the living room, where we are surrounded by family pictures of better times.
The two of them sit on the couch, huddled together, closer than I ever remember them sitting. Dad’s arm is around Mama’s shoulder. She’s leaning against him for support. I am in my special spot, the single chair to the left. I’m watching her carefully and thinking she looks better, but when I hear what comes out of her mouth, I know she’s really gone crazy.
“An institution!” I cry out. “You’re leaving?”
She stares down at her hands when she should be looking at me. “I think it’s for the best.”
“You think it’s for the best?” I blurt out. Then I turn to Daddy with accusation in my eyes, “Did you know about this?”
“We talked about it on the drive home. Jules, it’s temporary.”
“Six weeks,” she adds, perking up again.
“That’s great,” I fume. “You think narrowing it down like that makes any sense to me? I don’t get it. None of my friends’ mothers leave them. They don’t do that. They stay.”
“Your mama needs help,” he says.
I begin playing with the threads dangling from a new hole in my jeans. “Fine,” I mumble, “but why does she have to leave? Can’t she get counseling from home?”
Mama looks as though she’s about to change her mind. She clears her throat a little too long. “We’ve tried it that way before, Jules, and it didn’t work.” Then the defeat wears off. Or she’s just reciting what the doctors forced her to swallow. “This is different. It’s a place I can get extensive treatment without the pressures of home.”
“You mean without me around,” I say, furious. “What’s so horrible about being here with us?”
This is when Daddy swoops in to protect her. “Watch your tone with your mother, young lady. You don’t speak to her like that. There are things we can’t expect you to understand at your age. You can be mad, but you won’t disrespect your mother.”
I have been bound up with bristling feelings for years. This news, along with E.J.’s undoing, has popped a hole in me, and my bitterness is bursting forth.
Throughout all my mother’s episodes, I have always been attentive to her needs. I have been conditioned to put hers before mine. I have straightened my room and made my bed regularly so it’s one less thing she needs to worry about. I have washed and dried dishes so the piles wouldn’t topple her. I have encouraged her to take walks outside with me because I was told the vitamin D and sunlight would be good for her. I thought the changing leaves would open her eyes and fill her heart with beautiful things. I foolishly believed that the fresh air would wipe out the bad stuff. I have hugged her. Tightly. As though through the force of my arms, she would feel whole. I have willed that she would not be able to be sad in my presence because my love would be enough. When none of that worked, I tried laughing with her. We sat through marathon sessions of Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler movies.
I did everything I was supposed to do. And all she had to do was care about us enough to get better. If she really loved us, she would have gotten the help she needed.
“How can you be so selfish?” I cry out. “This is so unfair!”
He chimes in again. “What’s unfair is that you’re hurting. We all are. Your mama’s making a commitment to get better because she loves you, loves us.”
“I just don’t get why she needs to leave. Can’t she go back to Babs or Lois or one of the other mind mechanics?”
“I told you,” she says, straightening up in her seat. “I need specialized treatment.” Then she begins a monologue, her hands clasped together as if they are holding her upright. “Jules, I’m not well. This is not some passing virus that a round of antibiotics will heal. I’ve been too afraid for too long to get to the root of it. I couldn’t leave you before, not when you were a baby, not when you were so young. But now it’s time.” She stops herself while what she’s saying sinks in. It forces me to face her sad eyes and the hopefulness she’s counting on to get her through this. “I know you’re angry at me, and I can accept it. I haven’t been the perfect mother. But I’m going to work through this, and I promise you—I promise you, Juliana—we’ll be better and stronger for it.”
Her speech is convincing, and I’m slowly backing down. It’s futile to argue with her about this. It’s not as though she’s in my day-to-day life anyway. I have learned to get by without her. Sophie and Nicole, the twins, call it benign neglect, but I know her laissez-faire parenting style has more to do with her being damaged.
“I’m ready to make changes,” she says, this time raising her voice, but my mind drifts to other things, like how I will explain her absence, where the hell E.J. is, and why this is happening to our family. “I’m ready to do what I have to do so I can be a better mother to you. I just can’t do that until I fix the broken parts.”
“Is this genetic?” I ask.
“Watch yourself, Juliana,” says Daddy.
“I’m serious,” I say, the concern seeping through my words. “Is this something that’s going to happen to me?”
Her outstretched palm stops him from saying anything else. “It’s a good question. I don’t have the answer. I would think by now you’d know. I started having symptoms when I was a lot younger than you.”
“Why didn’t you get help back then?” I ask. “My God, our lives could’ve been so different.”
“What are you saying?” she asks.
“Stop it, Juliana,” he pounces again.
This is when my mother has had enough, and she collects herself and heads for the bedroom.
Daddy turns to me and his eyes are lit up pissed.
“I know you’re upset about E.J., and the timing isn’t great for your mama to leave, but you’re being too hard on her,” Daddy says.
I have to laugh—because if I don’t, I will throw a lamp across the room. How long have I wished for a mother? Not one who lived in our house and snuck wine into her water bottle and thought I didn’t notice. Not one who bought tons of clothes and shoes she’d never wear off the Internet so she wouldn’t feel so empty all the time. And not one who stayed home 24/7 because she was too afraid to drive a car. Marlee’s mom was the top litigator in the state and barely at home, but when she was, they spent all-out quality time together. Sure, I had a mother who was perpetually present—too much, if you ask me—but being around her was no different from being alone.
I finally say, “It’s the other way around. Mama’s being hard on me. She always has been. I know she’s sick and we have to support her and accept her. But I just want my mom to be like my friends’ moms. My boyfriend’s in trouble. He could get shot and killed. Is it wrong to want my mother around? Is that too much to ask?”
“Come here,” he says.
“No,” I say, shaking my head.
“Jules.”
My father can always get me to do things I fight hard against. I stand up, hugging E.J.’s jacket in my arms, which does not go unnoticed under his watchful eye. When I take the seat next to him, he wraps his arm around me and pulls me close. “How can I explain to you how much your mother loves you? Did you know that when she was pregnant with you, she didn’t have these demons at all? She was a different person because you were inside of her.”
“That sounds creepy.”
“C’mon,” he says, playfully giving me a little push. “Go easy on her. She’s
doing her best.”
“I don’t remember it ever being normal,” I say, though I have been trained to keep these feelings at bay.
“No families are perfect. We’re all just imperfect people who can’t give up on one another.”
I sigh and tell him, “I wish it were different. That we were different.”
He hugs me hard, and I know what I’m asking is too much for him to give. He has already provided more than most fathers ever could. He has given me the love of two parents.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ABBY
It is late, and Juliana is locked in her room sulking while Ryan and I attempt to sort out my departure. “Are you mad that I’m leaving, too?” He’s rummaging through a bedroom drawer and doesn’t answer.
“Did you hear me?” I ask, draped across our white sheets.
He turns away from the dresser and whatever it is he’s searching for, and apologizes: no, he hadn’t heard what I said.
“You’ve been awfully quiet. Was that performance for Juliana’s sake? Are you okay with my decision?”
Instead of leaning against the dresser, he perches himself atop of it. I’m not surprised that he passes up joining me back in bed. I am used to the way he flees the house at dawn to clear his head through physical exercise. Keeping his distance allows him time to process things.
“God, you look happy,” I bark at him. “Or relieved. I can’t tell. Why are you just sitting there?”
“Abby, what do you want me to say? I’m happy you’re getting the help you need, but I’m not happy you have to leave us to do it.”
“Right.” I laugh, as we both realize the irony in what he’s saying. I’ve been checked out for years.
“Baby, this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It’s been hard, for you, for us, but you mostly, for a long time.”
“You’re being kind.”
“Heck, I’ve suffered. We’ve all suffered.”
“Are you giving up on me?” I cry out, feeling the separation wedge a space between us.
“I’m fighting for you, Abs. Even if it means we fight. If this gets you better, I’ll do whatever it takes.”
A montage of Ryan playing the hero reminds me of the reasons I must go. He is picking me up from the mall because I can’t catch my breath, and I’m having what I believe is the third heart attack of the week. He is hugging me in our bed while waves of panic ripple through me. He thinks he can push the waves back to sea, though I know he can’t. But he tries. He is looking me in the eyes when I’m in the throes of a depressive episode, and he is telling me how beautiful I am—not just outside but inside—and how he wishes I could see in myself a fraction of what he sees. And then there’s the time we were flying to Dallas for the weekend and the turbulence got so bad—I was sure we were going down. The vodkas weren’t the best decision. He had to carry me off the plane.
My mind is traveling along the Haywire Express while Ryan strides across the room and gathers me in his arms. I feel his misgivings against my chest. It’s nice that he cares as much as he does, but sometimes the love and concern make me feel worse.
“Think about all you can do in my absence,” I joke. “You can play poker with Wayne, watch ESPN uninterrupted, order in pizza every night.”
“Babe,” he says, smoothing my hair away from my face, “it’s not nearly as fun without you.”
But I know he is lying. I have held Ryan back for as long as I can remember. What started as a mistake has grown progressively worse. Sometimes the guilt consumes me. I wish I could be a better wife, a better mother. My handicaps prevent me from doing normal things that most women take for granted.
I reach across the bed and beyond the overstuffed pillows until I find the Cold Creek brochure stuffed in my bag, and toss it his way. Ryan fingers the pages and pretends to read the fine print. None of this could make sense to someone like him. Terms like comprehensive treatment and continuity of care are a foreign language, though I see his eyes remain on the cascade across the cover.
“You can go horseback riding and do arts and crafts . . .”
“Are you making light of my going to the cuckoo’s nest?” I joke, sidling up to him, watching the pages written about my future temporary home flip through his fingers. I lean in closer, taking a breath of him through my nose and holding him in my lungs.
I never thought I would marry the love of my best friend’s life. Sitting beside him, feeling his taut body against mine—it excites me and shames me as it has for the many years of our marriage. Ours was not a coupling that formed effortlessly, the way theirs did. Which is why when I feel these stirrings, the desires to touch his body, I retreat. Ryan used to complain that I would never initiate sex. “I can’t,” I would tell him. “I like when you take control. I like knowing you want me.” That would arouse him even more, and we soon found some mutual gratification in his taking charge and my come-hither disguise. We circled around each other in this pretend dance, and most of the time it worked.
My memories of Lauren and Ryan were locked away in a vault, in the hiding places I avoided and fought to forget. It was years before I could stop comparing the way he would look at me to the way he had absorbed himself in her, or how he’d love me but not always like me.
Remembering can tantalize and torture. Ryan’s lips graze my neck, and the stirrings I had tried to quiet are awake and alive. My body reacts to his. It’s okay, I tell myself, giving him permission by way of spreading my legs wider. He’s the initiator, the match to my flame.
“I’m going to miss you,” he whispers in my ear.
“Lies. All lies,” I say, smiling.
He is on top of me. He is peeling off his shirt that he had just minutes ago put on. I am always surprised to see his body and the meticulous way he has kept it firm and toned. I run my fingers along his forearms and back. His skin is warm to my touch.
When Ryan wants me, I become a woman under his influence. He laces his fingers in mine and leads me somewhere out of my body, where I am no longer myself. I could cup him in my hands and drink him in, feeling him pass through my veins until I explode.
An imminent good-bye makes me want him deeper and harder than I have in months. I fear my absence will harm us in more ways than the physical. I move against him to remind him of what he will be missing. My eyes close, and I am whisked away. He is making it impossible to think straight.
“Baby,” he says. “Baby, it’s okay. We’re gonna get through this . . .”
I see their picture again, and I wish it away. And like the times before, it lingers. Close enough to remind me, close enough to punish me.
Ryan was Lauren’s boyfriend in our first year at Davidson College. They met in Psychology 101—the irony of which was not lost on any of us. Professor Warsing was the most iconic teacher at Davidson. Though the class was required—a step up the requisite ladder for freshmen—students clamored to attend her moving lectures. That particular day she was discussing mood disorders: the biological and interpersonal factors, as well as environmental stressors that can lead to a devastating crash. Lauren burst into our dorm room, incensed about a debate she had had with one of the smug frat boys who sat behind her in the class.
“This guy stands up and says everyone has a choice. He said we can choose to wake up and see the world as a victim or wake up and—what did he call it?—be normal! Can you believe someone can be so small-minded? Really? As though someone wants to be depressed?”
Our friendship was too new for her to know of my secret suffering, so Lauren had no idea that she had just tapped into my psyche and given it a comforting hug. It was a sign that I had finally found my person, the one who would understand me as others before never could. A lightbulb went on inside of me. It connected me to Lauren at once. I loved her, and I loved watching her fall in love.
Their bickering continued all through the spring semester of freshman year. Having been banished to Professor Parco’s class (“O Crap” spelled backward, and a fair assessment of his lectur
es), I was not privy to the banter, but every Tuesday and Thursday, Lauren shared detailed recaps of the boy who altered her philosophies and refuted her belief system.
I will always remember the perfect alignment of minutiae that led me to answer his knock at the door on a day when I was supposed to be in History of Educational Theory and Lauren should have been sleeping late before her literary analysis class. His knock was so mild it barely nudged me from sleep. Then it became stronger and louder.
“Dr. Horney, I know you’re in there,” he hollered at the door. I lay there thinking about Horney, the psychoanalyst known for challenging Sigmund Freud’s theories about women.
I peeled the purple chenille blanket off my legs and jumped from the bed. Grabbing the gray Wildcats sweatshirt I had thrown over the chair the night before, I tugged it over my head and stretched it long enough to cover my bottom. In one or two hurried strides I was across the room and at the door.
“Who’s there?” I asked, clearing my throat to rid it of the gurgle of sleep.
“Who wants to know?” he replied.
And so marked the beginning of my foray into the intrinsic force of Ryan Holden. Four words ridiculously innocuous and demanding, yet I obeyed him and answered: “Abby. Abby Coleman.”
“Is Dr. Horney there?”
“You mean Lauren?” I asked, rolling my eyes and catching my disheveled reflection in the mirror against the wall.
“The girl who told the entire class that I have womb envy? My teammates are having a field day with this.”
I was immediately impressed with Lauren’s choice. Davidson was the thinking-man’s college—smart football players attended.
I unlocked the door. What I saw on the other side stayed with me too long: confident smile, smooth jaw, deep stare. His long body draped across the doorframe, his hair a mess of indecision. The gleaming green of his eyes clasped on to mine, and I was certain there was a future for me full of babies and trips to the Outer Banks in their glare.
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