His gaze quickly sweeps across the room but freezes when it lands on me.
I swallow hard.
The same lip twitch I saw a moment ago deepens into a smirk, those damn dimples on full display. He gives a little nod and then heads out of the room.
The tension that cemented my joints in place slowly eases away, but there’s still a sea of humiliation lying in its wake.
Bates finishes our session by distributing “journals”—which are actually just the two-dollar composition books you find at the drugstore—to each one of us, with the strict instruction that we’re to write down a response to whatever prompt she provides us at the end of each class, so she can review it during the next class. Our first prompt has already been written down for us:
IF I COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT MY LIFE, IT WOULD BE . . .
I swallow a sigh.
That’s a tough one.
“Don’t overthink it,” Bates says. “It’s just an exercise that’s meant to help you explore your feelings. But you need to do it. I will be checking. Failure to complete a writing assignment will get you expelled from the program; is that understood?”
Head nods and murmured yeses fill the room.
“All right then. I’ve signed off on all your attendance cards. You’ll need to get them time-stamped at the front desk on your way out. I’ll see you again at ten o’clock on Friday. That’s ten o’clock in the morning, Holliday,” she adds snidely.
I force a smile. “Right. Ten o’clock.”
We file out of the room and down the stairs, lining up in front of the time clock—nearly identical to the one I used to punch back in my waitressing days—that sits on the corner of the information desk.
The lobby is busier than it was an hour ago, and though I can’t imagine why anyone from Mount Ivy would be here, I still keep my head low and my attention fixed on the floor.
“Seems like you made an impression on someone,” that Iris woman says from behind me as we slowly shuffle forward.
It takes me a moment to realize she’s talking to me.
“Huh?” I glance back at her. “Oh, yeah, I know. She’s definitely got a thing for punctuality, doesn’t she?”
Her dark eyes narrow, and she shakes her head. “I wasn’t talking about Bates. I was talking about him.”
I follow the point of her red-tipped finger over my shoulder toward the far corner of the lobby. Chavez is talking to a uniformed officer at the base of another flight of stairs, and even though he appears to be deep in conversation, his attention keeps shifting to me. Our gazes meet, prompting my breath to hitch against my ribs. He stares at me for a long beat before the same grin I saw upstairs emerges again, sending a fresh surge of humiliation to rise in my chest.
Inside the classroom was one thing, but please don’t acknowledge all my stupidity out here!
I quickly turn away, dragging a self-conscious hand across my brow.
“Looks to me that he likes what he sees.”
The teasing quality in her voice suggests that she’s trying to make friends with me. But I’m not here to make friends. And she couldn’t be more wrong about what she’s witnessing.
“No, it’s definitely nothing like that,” I mutter.
He doesn’t like what he sees; he’s amused by what he saw . . .
CHAPTER 9
I’m not sure I’d call it a perk, but Cannon Park, where Mom and Julie live, is only a twenty-minute drive from the police station. I decide to make the detour and pay Mom a visit. Who knows, maybe a little maternal do-gooding will act as penance for my evil ways.
Carol, my favorite nurse, is on duty at the front desk.
“Well, hi there,” she says warmly, not even acknowledging my bottom-of-the-toilet appearance. “Aren’t you a nice surprise on a Monday.”
“Hi, Carol. I was just in the city for some . . . business and thought I’d pop in.”
Business. Is that what I’m calling it?
“Well, she’ll be so happy to see you; probably think it’s her birthday, with all the visitors.”
“All the visitors?”
“Your sister’s here too.”
I push out a smile. “Julie’s here too? Great.”
“Yep. She’s with her now.”
She hands me an orange VISITOR tag that I slap against my chest while asking, “How is she?”
Her smile sags, and her head tips in that thoughtful way that answers the question before her lips even form the words.
Mom’s not Mom today.
“Gotcha,” I say.
“But she is in really good spirits, so it should still be a nice visit.”
I head down the hallway to room 119. Besides being just around the corner from the nurses’ station, this suite is private—equivalent to a one-bedroom apartment with its separate kitchen and living room—and looks out on a beautiful rose garden. Mom groused about it at first, saying it was too “fancy” for her tastes, but I can tell she really likes it, which makes me happy. All I’ve ever wanted was to provide a safe and stable environment for my family, and thanks to Dan’s generous paycheck, we can.
We just have to keep it that way . . .
The door is halfway open, so I can hear Mom and Julie giggling before I even enter the room. Like so many other traits, they share the same laugh. Where mine is sort of chuckle-y and a bit restrained, theirs is more . . . childlike. Carefree. Like in that moment, the only thing their bodies know how to do is laugh. Along with their green eyes and measurable thigh gaps—I’ve always been a little envious of that.
I smooth back my hair and give my cheeks a quick pinch for color, then push through the door saying, “Knock, knock.”
“Janie!” my sister calls out from where she’s sitting beside Mom on the love seat. “Look, Mom. It’s Janie Lou Bug!”
Mom smiles at me, but there’s not an ounce of recognition in her eyes.
I swallow a little whimper. These days are never easy.
“Hello,” she says. “What did you say your name was?”
“Jane, Mom. I’m Jane. I’m your oldest daughter.”
She nods slowly. Not out of recognition, but like she’s hoping the movement will help the name stick to her brain. “Jane. Okay. Jane and . . .” She turns toward Julie.
“Julie,” my sister says. Probably for the hundredth time. “She’s Jane, I’m Julie.”
“Jane and Julie. Jane and Julie,” she repeats. “Well, I can’t say I remember you, but those sure are pretty names.”
“Pretty names for pretty girls,” Julie says. “That’s what you always used to say.”
“Did I?” Mom asks.
I smile.
Julie laughs. “Yes. You did.”
“If you say so.” Mom shrugs and starts to laugh herself.
Carol was right. She is in good spirits today.
I set my bag down on the small dinette table and make my way over to them.
“Is it okay if I give you a hug, Mom?” I ask.
“Yes, sure.”
As we’ve been instructed, I don’t squeeze too hard or too long—our goal is to make her feel loved, not uncomfortable—but I can tell she’s a bit thinner than she was when I was last here a few weeks ago. I’ll need to follow up with Carol on my way out to make sure she’s eating enough.
Julie and I exchange a quick hug, and then I pull a chair from the dining table and sit down across from them.
“So, what are you doing here?” Julie asks. “You never come on Mondays.”
“I had to come into the city for some PTA business, so thought I’d stop by.”
The lie stings my tongue but still comes out relatively smooth.
Great.
Now I’m getting good at it.
“So, are you feeling better?” Julie asks, surveying me with a raised brow. “Dan called and told me how sick you were. Dan is her husband,” she clarifies for Mom. “He’s a doctor.”
“Oh, good for you,” Mom says.
Good for you.
She probably doesn’t remember saying those words before, either, but she has said them to me—with regard to Dan—plenty of times, and usually with a sour undertone. Despite his generosity to her over the years, Mom’s never been over the moon about Dan. He’s always been a bit too “highfalutin” for her tastes.
I can’t even imagine what she’d think of him now, if she knew the truth . . .
I smile at Mom, then turn to Julie and say, “Yeah, I got hit pretty hard. So, Dan called you?”
At this point, I’m not at all surprised to hear that Dan’s lies have made their way to Julie, but the fact that he called her just reiterates the severity of the situation. In all the years we’ve been together, Dan and Julie have never had more than a handful of conversations I wasn’t party to. Not for lack of effort on Julie’s part, but because Dan doesn’t think a lot of her. Mostly because her survival depends on regular contributions from his paychecks, though her endless string of deadbeat boyfriends and minimum-wage jobs hasn’t helped his opinion of her either. Like me, Dan values security and stability.
Stability.
Without thought, I drag my fingertips along my wrist, wishing there was a band there to snap.
“He called me yesterday morning,” Julie answers as she uncrosses her long, Pilates-toned legs and leans forward, grabbing a handful of Skittles from the bowl on the coffee table in front of her. A chill creeps across my skin. Used to be that Mom’s sweet tooth was quenched by all things chocolate, plain M&M’s being her go-to, but now she’s all about fruity, tart-y treats: Skittles, Smarties, jelly beans . . . It was one of the first indications that something was wrong with her. Turns out dementia doesn’t just steal away precious memories; it’s also been known to hijack taste buds. The doctors assured us it was a fairly common phenomenon, but witnessing the woman who used to inhale chocolate like it was pure oxygen suddenly start smacking on Starburst didn’t feel common at all. It was scary!
And five years later it still is.
“I tried to get ahold of you all day Saturday, but you never returned my calls or texts,” Julie goes on, tossing a few of the candies into her mouth. “I figured you were just pissed about me missing Ave’s game, but then Dan called and told me that you had been throwing up all night. Said you got food poisoning?”
Food poisoning?
What happened to the flu?
My gut wrenches as another lie is unwittingly added to my résumé. A lie I have no choice but to substantiate.
Thanks a lot, Dan!
This would be a whole lot easier if you could stick to one story!
I swallow hard, scouring my brain for a believable response. “Yeah, I, um . . . well, Dan and I went out for dinner with some people Friday night, and I guess I just got a bad piece of meat or something.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.” Mom presses a sympathetic palm to her chest.
Like the Skittles, the tenderness in her voice is a reminder that she’s not in her correct state of mind. That’s not to say she’s a mean person—she’s not—it’s just that she’s not particularly maternal. Never has been. Where other moms would tend to a scraped knee with a hug and a healing kiss to the Band-Aid, my mom—if she wasn’t working the late shift or out with one of her boyfriends—would tell me to be more careful and not to get any blood on the carpet.
“Did your husband get sick too?” Mom asks.
“Oh, um, no. He was fine.”
“How was Avery’s game? Was she pissed I wasn’t there?”
I have no doubt that Avery was upset that her walks-on-water auntie wasn’t in attendance, but I’m not about to admit that to Julie. Not when Avery couldn’t have cared less that I missed her game.
I shrug. “No. She seemed fine.”
“Who’s Avery?” Mom asks.
My heart twists at that question like it does every time she asks it. “She’s your granddaughter,” I say. “She’s twelve. See, that’s her over there.” I point to the framed school picture sitting on the credenza on the other side of the room. The one that sits beside a faded Polaroid image of my father, the love of her life. He passed away when I was fifteen, but he walked out on us when I was only four, so my memories of him are about as limited as Mom’s are of Avery right now. Frustratingly, though, her brain (and heart) hangs on to him as if he were still in the picture, even when she’s in her right state of mind.
“Oh my, she’s a cutie, isn’t she?”
I nod. Yes, she is.
Even with green fingers.
“Why didn’t you go to her game?” Mom turns to Julie.
As sinister as it is, I can’t help but feel a little grateful that she’s the one having to defend her actions now. We’ll see how our sweet mother takes this news.
“My boyfriend and I got invited to go backstage at that concert,” Julie says, chuckling in a way that suggests she’s probably already told her this story. “And while we were there, the water main under the building broke and the whole place flooded, and the fire department had to come and rescue us—”
“Oh, yes, that’s right!” Mom throws her head back, laughing. “You showed me the picture of you by the big fireman.” She motions toward Julie’s phone, sitting on the love seat between them.
“Yes, exactly,” Julie chortles while reaching for her phone. “Janie, you have to see this picture. It’s so funny!” She swipes at the screen, searching for the picture, while her laughter starts to ramp up. “The firefighters made us wear these huge life preservers, even though there was only like a foot and a half of water—here! Look at that.” She slides the phone across the tabletop. I glance down at the image. It’s Julie—dripping wet, though still looking like the boho beauty she is—a neon-orange life preserver wrapped around her neck, a very burly firefighter standing beguiled at her side.
A heavy sigh settles in my chest, and even though I already know the answer, I still find myself asking, “Is that Blaze?”
“Pfft. No, that’s Jamal. Blaze turned out to be a total loser.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes.
The guy named Blaze turned out to be a loser? Shocking.
“He started crying when the fire truck showed up,” she goes on over a growing laugh. “Can you believe that? He was like a two-year-old, crying in the corner. Apparently, he’s got some weird fear of sirens or something.”
“What?” Mom questions behind her own laugh.
“I know, isn’t that crazy?” Julie says. “I mean, I’ve dated guys with issues and, you know, like wild fetishes and stuff, but never one that’s freaked out by sirens.”
“I went out with a guy who liked to pee on me in the shower,” Mom admits.
I cringe while Julie snorts and says, “Shut up! He was into golden showers? Are you serious?”
“Yes. I mean, I think that’s right . . .”
“I’m sure it is!” Julie squeals excitedly.
Despite the disappointment flicking my heartstrings, I can’t help but nod in agreement.
As much as I’d prefer she remember more important things—like, oh, I don’t know, my name!—over nasty little tidbits from her sordid, post-abandonment dating past (another trait she clearly passed on to Julie!), I’m still grateful for it. It means there are still pieces of her in there.
“Oooh! I’ve got another one,” Julie goes on, settling into the corner of the love seat, inside leg bent at the knee so she can get extra comfy. “I went out with this guy who was totally into cartoon characters. He asked me to wear a Tweety Bird mask every time we did it.”
Mom snorts. “Stop it! You’re kidding.”
“No!” Julie crows back. “I’m totally serious. It was one of those old-school Halloween masks. You remember the plastic ones that had the elastic string around the back, and they came with a one-piece costume? They were made of plastic or vinyl or something. They were impossible to move in. You know, the kind you got at Woolworths.”
Mom’s shrug implies the reference is lost on her, but it�
��s not on me. I know exactly the kind of costumes she’s talking about, and they weren’t just hard to move in; they were hard to breathe in. (Mom treated me to my first store-bought Halloween costume the year I turned eight. She claimed it was because I was doing so well in school, but looking back, it was clearly meant to cushion me for the life-altering blow that she’d gotten herself pregnant with Julie. So much for casual dating with no strings attached!) As excited as I was to be Jem, of Jem and the Holograms, it was practically a near-death experience trying to breathe through the teensy little slit of a mouth hole. I had to raise that mask up and gulp air between every door we knocked on just so I wouldn’t pass out.
“Anyway,” Julie goes on, laughing harder now, completely unfazed by Mom’s unawareness. “Yeah, he’d ask me to wear the Tweety one pretty much every time we did it. And then when we were done, he’d tell me to go clean my feathers in the shower!”
“Oh! That’s funny,” Mom cries. “What else? Were there others?”
“Are you kidding?” Julie wails. “I could go on for days!”
I swallow a disappointed sigh.
I wish I could say that this unsettling conversation is another indication that Mom isn’t in her right mind, but I can’t. This chummy locker-room talk is very reflective of the kind of relationship Mom and Julie have—or had, before she got sick. They’ve always been more like girlfriends than mother and daughter, unlike Mom and me, who have never dipped a toe into friend territory. The role of mother, however, has swayed back and forth between us more times than I can count. But once again, the fact that Mom’s brain is hanging on to this connection is actually a good thing, even though it’s more than a little disheartening. There are certain topics moms and daughters do not need to explore.
“What about you?” Mom turns to me. “Do you have any kinky stories in your closet?”
My eyes spring wide, and my heart starts to race. Even though there’s no way she can possibly know what kinds of stories are hiding in the closets at my house, I can’t help but feel incredibly self-conscious right now.
“I, uh—”
“Pfft! Not even,” Julie cuts me off with a flippant wave. “Janie’s only had sex with one guy her entire life, and he’s so straitlaced he probably doesn’t even take his suit off when they do it. No offense,” she adds as an afterthought.
See Jane Snap Page 10