Life in the Balance

by Jen Petro-Roy

  (I pretend to be embarrassed about it, but it really makes me feel warm inside.)

  Except there was no one there to dance at all.

  Dad was gone.

  When I ran over to the stands, Claudia’s mom told me that Dad had an emergency and she was going to drive me home.

  “Do you know what’s wrong?” My voice quavered, and I reached back to tighten my ponytail, as if by doing so, I was tightening my hold on my runaway life. “What kind of emergency?”

  “I’m not sure.” Mrs. Munichiello shook her head, then grabbed the huge tote bag that she lugged along everywhere, the one that shows she’s an “always has it together” mom, the one she fills with snacks and water bottles and wipes and whatever random toy Jamie decides is his favorite that day. Today it was a bright yellow dump truck he was driving along the bleachers.

  “Your dad should be home by the time we get there. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

  Mrs. Munichiello’s voice didn’t sound fine, though. Her eyes didn’t look fine, either. They had that narrow, squinty look, the one Dad has when he’s trying to hide something from me.

  The one he wore for weeks before my parents first told me about Mom and her “problem.”

  Was something really wrong with Mom today? A pit of fear opened up in my stomach, deeper than the ones I used to dig as a kid when I’d grab a plastic shovel and make plans to tunnel to the center of the earth. This pit felt like it was bottomless, like it couldn’t be filled by anything except a return to the way things were last year.

  I keep doing dinosaur stomps all the way to the kitchen, a mixture of anger and fear swirling together inside me and propelling me forward. I stop as I near the doorway, though. Because when I hear Mom’s and Dad’s voices, so soft and whispery, the anger part drains out of me.

  That’s one thing the history books never tell you—that dinosaurs get scared, too.

  And, yeah, there may not have been a meteor approaching, threatening the extinction of my entire species, but when I see Mom and Dad sitting calmly at the kitchen table, Dad literally twiddling his thumbs, the entire situation sure feels catastrophic.

  They’re not yelling, like they have been for the past few weeks. The last few months, even. The sight of them side by side is so normal that I get angry again.

  Because my parents aren’t allowed to act normally. Not today. Not when Mom broke a promise and Dad totally abandoned me.

  “You forgot about my game.” The words drop from my mouth like they’re rotten food I’ve tasted and spit out.

  Mom’s eyes quickly meet mine. Her face looks tired, and there are bags under her eyes even though I know she got plenty of sleep last night. She went to bed before me. “I know…” Her voice trails off.

  I laugh bitterly, the sound surprising even me. I don’t do anything bitterly. Any one of my friends would tell you that I’m a nice person. I volunteer to pass out papers in class. Last Christmas, while the adults in my family exchanged presents, I offered to watch my cousin Billy, who’s basically a crawling poop factory.

  “You forgot,” I say again. I turn to Dad. “And you left. You missed seeing us win.”

  “I’m sorry, Veronica.” Dad bites his lip, but he doesn’t say anything else. I look between Mom and Dad, then back again. I was expecting them to make up a bunch of excuses about how they had to do important “adult stuff,” or say that I’m overreacting.

  Not silence.

  I feel like dinosaur stomping so hard the walls will rumble.

  “Do you even have anything to say for yourselves?” I feel like I’m the adult and they’re the kids, like they threw handfuls of flour all over the kitchen and I’m staring at a mess I’ll have to clean up all by myself.

  STOMP STOMP STOMP.

  More silence.

  “You don’t have an excuse?” I look at Mom again. “Did you ‘lose track of time’ with the other lawyers at the bar again? Did you forget to eat lunch, which made you ‘extra tipsy’?” I flash air quotes again and again because I’ve heard it all before. Mom’s been making excuses about her drinking for months now.

  This is why I can’t drive you to Claudia’s house …

  This is why I passed out on the couch in the middle of the afternoon …

  This is why I didn’t come home until two in the morning …

  She always has a reason. Always has an excuse.

  Until now.

  Mom and Dad look at each other, then Mom opens her mouth. She closes it again, then lets out a soft sigh. “Honey, we need to talk. Something happened today.”

  My breath catches in my throat. “We need to talk,” with all its drawn-out pauses and awkward silences, is never good news.

  Good news is different. Good news gets blurted out excitedly, like when Mom and Dad took me to Disney World in third grade and Dad couldn’t keep the secret for more than two hours.

  Good news is shared smiles and dancing in place, not kitchens that feel like the curtains have been drawn tightly, expelling every bit of sunshine and light from the room.

  “Your mom, uh…” Dad shifts back and forth in his seat. He’s in the chair that creaks whenever someone moves, and that noise is all I can hear.

  Creak. Creak. Creak.

  It sounds like the footsteps I used to imagine hearing outside my room when I was a kid, when the wind moaned and the house settled. In my head, those creaks always meant that someone—something—bad was coming. It must mean the same thing today.

  Creak. Creak. Creak.

  “For goodness’ sake, Dan, stop!” Mom shoots out her hand and blocks Dad from moving anymore. She rubs her forehead. “I can’t stand that noise!”

  “I can’t stand this.” I put my hands on my hips. “I’m going upstairs.”

  I turn around, ready to lug my gross-smelling softball bag from the hallway and slam my door behind me, but Mom grabs my arm. “Honey, wait.”

  “No!” I whirl around and pull away from her. “I don’t need to listen to what you’re going to say! I don’t need to hear some apology for today or some promise you’ll give me about the future.” I blink back the tears that are forming in my eyes. Mom has seen me cry about a million times before, but I don’t want her to see it today.

  Right now I want to be the strong one.

  “You have to hear this.” Dad’s voice is sharp, and I stop in my tracks, then slowly turn around.

  “I don’t have to hear anything.” I know I’m being rude, but I can’t help it. Why are parents always the ones in charge? They shouldn’t be the authority of everything, especially when they behave badly sometimes, too.

  Before I can stop myself, my mind flashes backward.

  Mom stumbling in the house in the middle of dinner, apologizing for not being home in time to cook the birthday lasagna she’d promised, while Dad and I look up from our frozen dinners.

  Doors banging and voices yelling from downstairs when I’m trying to go to sleep.

  The tight grip of fear on my chest anytime Mom grabs the car keys and says she’s going out for “just a bit.”

  “You’ll want to hear this.” Mom reaches out and covers my hand with hers, bringing me back to the table. Her hand is soft, the way it’s always been. Some kids had a security blanket growing up. Until she was seven, Claudia toted around a little stuffed giraffe. She kept it in her backpack every day at school.

  Not me. I had my mom. When I was scared or tired, I liked to hold her hand, to stroke the soft map of lines on her palm and feel her squeeze me back.

  Her hand feels the same today, even though she’s different.

  Even though she’s been different for at least a year now.

  Ever since the drinking went from one glass of wine every few nights to way, way more.

  Mom’s mouth opens, then closes again, like she’s lost her voice. I peer at her more closely. Is Mom drunk now? No, I don’t think so. I do smell something on her breath, but she’s not slurring her words. Her movements aren’t all jerky, like they
get sometimes. She looks tired, though. Super, super tired.

  My heart hammers in my chest. Maybe something else is going on. Maybe the whole hand-holding thing is an act and they’re actually getting a divorce. Are we going to move?

  My mind spins out of control as I stare at my parents expectantly.

  I don’t know what they’re going to say, but I can feel that my life is about to change.

  Four

  Dad is the first one to break. “Your mom got in trouble at work.”

  My breath whooshes out of my chest. Phew. No moving. No illness. No divorce. Then I realize what Dad has just said.

  “Wait, what?” I sit up straight. “What do you mean? Was she fired? Mom, did you lose your job?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  Dad gives her a look, and Mom coughs. “Okay, maybe something like that.” Mom closes her eyes and rubs her forehead. “A client saw me … um…”

  “What, Mom?” I’m losing patience with her. The barfy feeling in my stomach tells me I already know what she’s going to say.

  “I … well … I drank a bit too much during my lunch meeting. After I got back, I hadn’t quite, um, gotten back to normal, and the client I was meeting with noticed what was going on. She, uh, told my boss.”

  Back to normal. The words echo in my head. Our family hasn’t been normal for awhile now.

  “You were drunk? At work?”

  Mom squeezes her eyes shut. “I wasn’t so much drunk as—”

  I cut her off. “Mom, that’s exactly what you were. Drunk.” I spit the word at her like it’s a gross spitball the boys on the bus think is sooooo funny. It’s an ugly word, and it makes my mouth feel dirty. I imagine Mom stumbling around her office, talking about prosecution strategies and evidence and other lawyer stuff while slurring her words.

  Now I squeeze my eyes shut. Clients shouldn’t see Mom like that.

  No one should.

  Mom shouldn’t be like that in the first place.

  “What if you’d been driving?” I bite my lip as tears start to spring up behind my eyes. I don’t know who I’m crying for—me or some hypothetical person who could have gotten hurt.

  “I wasn’t. I’d never do that, Veronica.” Mom leans toward me, but I lean back. I can’t lean away from reality, though. Mom was drunk at work today. “But you drank enough to get in trouble, right? That’s still bad, Mom.”

  “Yes.” Mom sighs. “My boss was walking by and saw it, too. She told me that I need to take some time off. To go to…” Mom’s voice trails off, her mouth pursing like she ate a lemon.

  “Your mother’s going to rehab.” Dad says, finally jumping into the conversation.

  “Rehab?” The word feels sour in my mouth, too.

  “I tried to explain my ‘behavior.’” Mom uses air quotes, her lip curling up on one side. “But my boss smelled alcohol on my breath. She says I can’t come back to work unless I finish a two-month stay.”

  The lemon face gets even more sour.

  “Two months?” I realize that I’m repeating everything my parents are saying, but it feels like something has short-circuited in my brain. That I’m getting information, but nothing is processing the right way. How could this be happening to my mother? To me?

  “I told her that I could stop,” Mom says. “That I’m fine.”

  Dad snorts.

  “I can be fine, I mean.” Mom says “fine” again, even though that word has lost all meaning for me right now. Nothing about today is fine. “Fine” is a big fat lie.

  Then I realize something. “What if you had gone to my game?” My eyes are wide with horror. “You would have been drunk in front of all my friends.” I lean closer, trying to smell Mom again. “Are you drunk now?”

  “No!” Mom practically yells, then jumps up and touches her pointer finger to her nose. “See? Perfect reflexes.”

  “Now, at least,” Dad mutters.

  “I’m just tired. But I’m okay. Really. I can’t go away now.” Mom’s words come out fast and frantic. “I have another trial starting in a few weeks and I have to be here for it. I was just celebrating over lunch, anyway. We had one drink. Maybe two.”

  “I’ve heard that before, Annabelle.” Dad’s voice rises, but he presses his lips together when he notices the scared expression on my face. Not that I’m scared of him. I’m just scared of … everything.

  He has heard it before, too. I remember listening to Mom and Dad argue from the hallway outside their room a few months ago. The words were muffled, but I could still hear hints of what they were saying. (What they were yelling, actually.)

  Words like “I can change” and “I’ll be different.” Bitter exclamations of “I’ve heard that before” and “We can’t go on like this.”

  I close my eyes, wishing I could disappear somewhere else, to a dimension where pressing “reset” on my family is possible.

  “Daniel.” Mom snaps at Dad and I take a sharp breath. Mom and Dad only use each other’s full names when they’re super mad at each other.

  Dad’s eyes dart to me, then back to Mom. “Veronica, we’ll be right back.” He beckons Mom to follow him out of the kitchen.

  Mom trails Dad, her head hung low, then pulls the door shut behind them. I wait a second, then dash forward and press my ears against the crack. My parents may be smart enough to leave the room before fighting, but they’re apparently not smart enough to realize that of course I’ll eavesdrop on them.

  “You don’t celebrate by getting drunk at work,” Dad snaps.

  There’s a pause, then some shuffling. “It was just a lunch. I was fine,” Mom says.

  “Rachel sure didn’t think so when she called me to pick you up at work. How could you be so irresponsible? What if you had gotten behind the wheel?”

  I wish I could see their expressions. Are they standing close to each other? Does Dad look angry? Is Mom crossing her arms? My heart beats faster with each word they say.

  “I wouldn’t do that!” Mom exclaims. “You know that, Dan.”

  “Do I? How many promises have you broken so far?” More silence. I bite my lip so hard I’m surprised I don’t draw blood.

  Mom starts sobbing, a soft sniffle that gets louder and louder. It drowns out the soft murmuring of Dad saying something. Is he comforting her? Telling her she’s an awful person? Asking her why she can’t stop drinking if it’s hurting both of us—hurting her—so much?

  A minute later, Mom and Dad come back into the kitchen, both of them wiping their eyes.

  “I’m sorry for that, Veronica.” Dad says. “And I’m sorry for leaving your game early.” He glances at Mom, who’s avoiding his eyes. “I had to get your mother and bring her home. I had to call the treatment center, too.”

  “Which you really don’t need to do,” Mom grumps.

  Dad ignores her.

  “Is Mom leaving now?” I ask him.

  Dad shakes his head. “I left a message. The admissions office is closed right now. I’ll call back in the morning, though. Your mother needs treatment as soon as possible.” Dad sounds more serious than he did when my hands accidentally slipped off a softball bat and it flew into the side of his brand-new car. He sounds like a robot who’s been programmed not to take no for an answer.

  Mom doesn’t meet his eyes. She twiddles her thumbs, then picks at her thumbnail. “I don’t need to go.”

  Dad lets out a noise I’ve never heard before, a guttural groan mixed with a yelp. “Anna, please.”

  I look at the distance between my parents. I remember how I felt gazing at the empty bleachers. “Mom, please,” I echo. I want to yell at her. I want to scream that she’s been the worst mom in the whole universe. That she keeps letting me down.

  I can’t scream, though. I can’t make a noise that loud come from my mouth. Not right now, when every part of me feels like it’s shrinking. Even my voice comes out as a squeak.

  “Mom, please,” I say again. “Please make it better.”

  Please make
our family better.

  Mom finally looks at me. Really looks at me, like she’s staring into my soul. Like all our protestations are finally more than just words. Then she lets out the biggest sigh in the universe. The galaxy, maybe. “Fine.”

  “Fine.” Dad nods firmly.

  I wonder if I’m supposed to say anything right now. I wish there was a script for me to follow. I just know that I can’t say that anything is fine. My emotions are twisting and turning inside me like they’re caught in a windstorm. I want Mom to go to rehab. I want her to get help.

  I’m just sad that she has to.

  That she’s like this at all.

  “But what if I miss you when you go?” I say the words automatically, even though Mom isn’t home a whole lot anyway. She stays at the office late all the time. Ever since she started working toward making partner at her law firm, she hasn’t exactly been around to tuck me in like she did when I was little.

  Not that sixth graders need to be tucked in.

  But just in case I wanted that to happen, she’s usually gone.

  And what about all the other stuff sixth graders need their mothers for? We just did a whole unit in health class about how important this time in our lives is. Mr. Maxwell called it the “Growing Up” unit, and it was basically the most embarrassing thing ever. He didn’t separate the girls and the boys because he wanted to make sure kids questioning their gender would be comfortable. Which is really cool, but that also meant that Ryan Halpert kept asking all the girls if we had our periods.

  No one answered him, of course, but it just reminded me that I haven’t gotten my period yet. And now, if I do, Mom won’t be here to help me with all that … stuff. There’s no way I can ask Dad to get me a pad! Or a tampon. Or know which one is better.

  I grit my teeth, suddenly upset at myself for seeing Mom’s good side. I’m supposed to be mad at her, after all.

  “You may miss her, but she has to go.” Dad says it quickly, like if he talks for too long, Mom might change her mind. “Right, Anna?” He takes Mom’s hand and looks into her eyes.

  A tear falls down Dad’s face and I blink in surprise. I’ve only seen Dad cry once, when his dad, my grandpa, died last year. He sobbed by the graveside until his breath came out in hiccups.