by Holly Brown
But now that motherhood is staring me in the face, I find myself blinking. Dr. Kroy made it sound like it’s frightening even for normal people, the ones with role models.
I put my hands in Rob’s silky hair and lift his head. “I’m sorry,” I say with a smile. “I’m kind of preoccupied.”
“You have a lot of schoolwork?”
I should say yes. That would obviously be the more respectable answer. But I want an honest marriage, one in which I’m accepted fully, cysts and all. “I got another e-mail from Miranda.”
A shooting star of exasperation crosses his face before he nods, once again full of understanding. “What’d she say?”
I tell him. He already knows what I wrote to her. I showed him before I sent it, and he laughed and said, “Well, okay then.” I like to think that what he meant was I’d never send it, but I like that you’re ballsy; I like that you’re you.
He also knows that Getaway.com won’t let me rewrite my review to include quotes from Miranda’s e-mails, the ones that expose her for the elitist prig she is. I’d have to delete my current review and write a whole new one, and it would go through the same approval process as the first, and the woman I spoke to on the phone (after being on purgatorial hold for more than ten minutes) advised me that “ad hominem attacks wouldn’t be permitted.”
Like she even knows what “ad hominem” means. She’s probably reading it from a script. I bet whoever wrote the script didn’t even know what it was. It’s the kind of verbiage that when placed before “attacks” confers faux legitimacy.
It’s not like the Getaway.com rep even knows what it is I want to say. I don’t yet know what I want to say. But my problem is that the longer the review is, the harder it will be to maintain the interest of the reader and to be taken seriously. So I won’t be able to supply the full context; I’ll have to synthesize my dealings with Miranda into something relatively pithy, and then she’ll get to respond to the new review, and of course, she’ll point out all the supposed holes in my story and make it sound like I’m spinning things in my favor, which, in fact, is what I’ll be doing. It’s what we’re all doing, all the time.
“By now,” Rob says, “you must have expected Miranda to say those things. It sounds just like her, only more concentrated.”
“Sure, but it’s still obnoxious.” It still stings. My parents are classless. I’m supposed to be the fruit that rolled far from the tree, all the way to San Francisco. Well, Oakland. I couldn’t afford San Francisco.
“It’s meant to be obnoxious. It’s meant to bug you.”
He’s right. Miranda’s hit a bull’s-eye, and she’s done it by being entirely predictable.
“That pisses me off more,” I say.
“You’re pissed off at me?”
“No, no. She’s got me pissed off at myself. For being bugged. For giving her what she wants.”
“So stop giving her what she wants.”
It’s that old joke: “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” “So stop doing it.” It comes so easily to Rob—not doing the things that hurt. I feel like some kind of freak. Is it the way he’s looking at me, or am I just imagining that? Nothing’s felt okay since Miranda got in my head.
So stop letting her in your head, that’s what Rob would say, like a punch line.
He reaches over and strokes my cheek. I don’t like when he touches the skin of my face. I’m always thinking of the bumps he might be feeling, and about the oils on the pads of his fingers, how he might be causing a new pimple right this second. It sucks the eroticism right out of the room.
I’ve never told him that before, because I don’t want him to feel constrained. He should be able to touch his wife wherever he’s moved to do so. So I guess I’m not 100 percent honest with him all the time. I need to look out for him, too. It’s not like I’m alone in this marriage.
“Time to forget,” he says softly, “about Miranda,” and then he leans in and kisses me, his tongue gentle and probing. He ratchets up the intensity, and I mirror him, but without much feeling. Well, without much sensual feeling. No, that’s not true either. Anger is a sensual feeling. There are few things more visceral, really.
I don’t know who I’m angry at anymore—him, or her, or me. He’s the only one who I know with certainty doesn’t deserve to be on the list.
I think he can tell I’m not into it, but he’s still pushing me. Do I play along with him, fake it, for lack of a better term, in the hopes that I’ll start to authentically feel? And what if I don’t? I don’t like to stop things once we’re far down the road; it seems rude. Then I’m stuck playacting, and I prefer not to do that. Not with my husband. With previous boyfriends, sure, but Rob and I are different.
A blow job, maybe? No, it’s a Tuesday night. Who gives blow jobs after they’ve been working hard all day? On a weekend, I’d finish him off like that. Hand job, that says weeknight.
He’s kissing me, and I’m kissing him back. There’s reciprocity, but not mutuality. He’s driving the car, I’m along for the ride. This is the kind of foreplay Salina was imagining when I told her my sex life was fine.
I pull back, just a little, and I’m not sure what I’m going to say. He’s breathing heavily, about to proceed to the next level, to go down on me, maybe, since the tit kissing was such a bust earlier (no pun intended).
“You okay?” His voice is a little rough with desire, and I do like when he sounds like that.
“I’m just—still preoccupied.”
“Stop thinking. Start doing.” That’s not the sandpaper of desire I’m hearing, it’s full-on irritation.
He’s right to be annoyed. I’ve let Miranda take up residence in my mind, so much so that I’m talking to Rob about her when we should be having sex.
Then it comes to me: I’m avoiding sex with my husband, and I’m using Miranda to do it.
That is so messed up that I pretty much leap on top of him, mounting him like a stag. We will have sex tonight. I’ve got no choice, really.
12
Miranda
I’m visiting Grandma later. Is there anything you want me to tell her?
Anything at all?
Maybe just send her your love?
I texted Thad hours ago. His lack of response hurts—not on my behalf, but on hers. Through all his problems, my mother consistently showed him unconditional love. For his part, Thad was always respectful to his grandmother, even kind. When I observed them together, it was with pleasure, but not always without envy.
I flip over my phone for a quick check, just in case I missed his return text. Normally when I’m with people, I turn off my cell, but with my mother, I place it facedown. That makes me sad, realizing that she’s in another, somehow lesser category of personhood. But as if to reinforce this, she’s not even looking at me, or at my phone. Today she remembered I’m her daughter but she’s shown no interest in engaging with me. That might be worse than being forgotten entirely.
It’s a pretty day, though, and a lovely garden. There’s lots of purple and white, lavender and daisies and hydrangea, in hedge-lined beds. If you walk the path of stepping-stones, you arrive at a fountain. Though my mother is actually in decent health physically, she opts to walk as little as possible. She never glances at the nearby birdbath and its colorful inhabitants.
My mind wanders a lot when I visit my mother. I feel guilty about that, I know I should focus and keep the conversation going, but sometimes I think, What’s the point? She vacillates between not knowing who I am and not caring. But at least today she’s calm.
She’s getting state-of-the-art care, has a whole treatment team, and still, calm is the best I can hope for. Her psychiatrist says that in addition to the dementia, she’s showing signs of “agitated depression.” I’ve Googled that term, and there’s so little agreement as to what it means that it’s practically colloquial. I’m a doctor’s wife, I don’t need colloquial. I like medical terminology, a definite diagnosis, so I can find out about all the best treatments.
Or Larry can.
“Agitated depression” seems to be a catchall for the fact that some days, in addition to seeming confused, she’s surly about being confused. Sometimes she’s actually aggressive. My formerly mild-mannered mother, once a faultless paragon of class, physically attacked another resident last month. I was called, she was sedated, and they’ve added a benzodiazepine to her medication regimen since. I know benzodiazepines are highly addictive, but I didn’t even protest. I was just glad they didn’t toss her out, the way the rehabs used to do with Thad.
They’re called residents, but really, they’re patients. My mother started out vibrant when she moved here after my father’s death. She was grieving, of course, but she was in her own apartment, in independent living, making friends, joining clubs, taking classes. Then she rapidly worked her way down the chain: from independent living to assisted living to skilled nursing, and finally, to rehabilitative (though it doesn’t take Google to realize that she’s not being rehabilitated, and the word “living” was dropped along the way). This is the final stop. Well, not the final. Death would be final, but she’s never leaving here, and she’s never improving either.
They take good care of her. She’s always neatly dressed, her thinning silver hair glossy and brushed, and her face, which appears to lose muscle tone each day, is clean of all food particles even now, when I’m here right after lunch.
Sometimes I wish I could catch the staff doing something wrong. I wish they were failing to administer her medication, that they weren’t encouraging her to exercise her mind and body, and then I could say, “Aha, she could be doing better! I just need to find her the right place, the right care!” I could go into a flurry of research and advocacy, and there would be hope. We could change her prognosis. But by all accounts and observation, the care is excellent. It’s my mother who’s sinking. She’s the Titanic and they keep her decks swabbed.
I remember when she first arrived. She was living on her own for the first time in close to fifty years. Heartbroken over my father, but so game, so willing, so participatory. I once found her in a common area doing Wii bowling. She gardened. She was in two different book clubs, fiction and nonfiction. She took a class in postimpressionism and another in Thai cooking. She was learning Italian, and how to meditate. Ironically, so much of it was to stave off the memory issues that hadn’t revealed themselves, and now look where she is, despite all that brain exercise. Despite a life lived with kindness, decency, selflessness, and above all, love. So much love. This was a good woman. She must still be, somewhere inside.
Yet here she sits, practically inanimate, in the center of an English garden with the daughter she’s tolerating with an amiable enough expression because it’s one thirty and she had a benzodiazepine just after lunch. I time my visits to coincide with her most recent dose. The idea of her suddenly screaming and attacking me—it’s too much to bear. Best to be proactive.
There’s no chance of me relaxing today. I haven’t heard back from Dawn and, given how provocative my last e-mail was, it’s particularly disconcerting. The Dawn I’ve come to know wouldn’t take a shot across her bow without responding. And if she’s not responding by e-mail or by text, then it may be by some other mechanism. Oakland isn’t such a long drive.
Why did I write back? What was I hoping to accomplish? I kept thinking how Dawn should end our correspondence, stop the madness, but why can’t I?
Maybe she already has. Her silence says she’s done with me.
Why do I feel the oddest sort of disappointment at that thought?
I just have to hope that I successfully countered all her accusations in my rebuttal on Getaway.com. People shouldn’t take her seriously once they read what I have to say. I’m the one backed by twenty-seven positive reviews; she has no one to recommend her. Please, let the reservations pour in. I have a son to support.
It never occurred to me before that his age is the precise number of positive reviews. That has to be a good omen.
I just need to know Dawn hasn’t ruined me. One new booking, that’s all I ask.
I hear an incoming text: Moving again. My roommate was using. Bad scene.
I can’t help but think of the parallels that exist between Thad and my mother. They both suffer from progressive diseases. Neither of them can manage a job. They rely on others to meet their basic needs. She has no hope of rehabilitation, and in my darkest moments, I don’t think Thad does either.
He’s about to ask me for money, I can feel it.
With Grandma right now, I text back. We’ll talk later.
Tell her I love her.
I will.
I’ve got a lead on a new place. Just need help with the deposit.
Later.
You want me to be in a sober living environment, right?
My whole being brightens as I tell him, If you move into a sober living house, I’m happy to pay for that.
That was one of Larry’s prerequisites for allowing Thad back into our lives. It wouldn’t be immediate, the reentry, but this could be a great first step. Soon I’d be able to stop all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense, and Dawn’s review wouldn’t matter anymore. Not that Larry would want me to pay for it, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
“It’s Thad,” I tell my mother when I finally catch her eye. “He sends his love.” I’d call her look quizzical if it contained any curiosity.
I’m going to be living with a guy who’s two years clean.
My stomach tightens. I meant an official sober living house. Not just a house with a sober person in it.
I hate those places. I hate 12 step. So preachy. But I am clean, Mom. I swear it.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Even an addict could be telling the truth.
Will you help me? Please?
I look at my mother, who is looking down, never at me, and I think of Thad’s tweet from yesterday (amped in the Amphitheater #bringyourfriends), and even a cursory Google will tell you that the Amphitheater neighborhood in Tucson is full of drugs, crime, and vacant buildings, and tears prick my eyes because he knows I check his Twitter feed and he doesn’t care because he doesn’t have to, because he knows I’m a slave to the fear that hitting bottom will mean death and the hope that this time he’ll change, and his father’s cut him off and I never will, I’ll always say the same thing eventually, he’ll wear me down and so I might as well just say it from the start, I might as well say it now . . .
Yes, I’ll help.
13
Dawn
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Professor Myerson enters the classroom, not a minute too soon. I was getting more and more discouraged with each job listing. If you subtract the stapling, somehow every job listing boils down to sell, sell, sell. Is that all communication is good for?
When I first enrolled at the college, I spoke with an academic adviser (“call me Mark”). I knew I wanted a degree, and to stop working in retail, but beyond that, it was all pretty fuzzy. Mark asked a lot of pertinent-sounding questions, listened carefully to my answers, stroked his patchy beard contemplatively, and then declared, with an appealing level of certainty, “You should be a communications major.” He said it would give me the broadest base from which to find a career, and that it was an obvious match for my skills. Much later, I learned that he was Salina’s adviser, too, and he’d told her exactly the same thing.
The irony is, he’d accidentally pegged me. I began to like school for the first time in my life. The Art of Communication, Argumentation and Debate, Persuasive Communication, Principles of Interviewing, Gender in the Media . . . it sounds cheesy, but I felt like I was finally finding a voice that people could respect. I got so caught up in learning that I managed to forget my real goal—to rise above where I’d been, to pass—and now here I am, bumping up against the uncomfortable truth that life is ultimately mercenary.