Life in the Balance

by Jen Petro-Roy

  What if Mom’s too different?

  What if she doesn’t like it at home now that she doesn’t drink?

  What if I do something wrong?

  Thirty-Three

  It’s sunny when I wake up on Family Day, even though the forecast had promised bucketfuls of rain. Even though the weathergirl on last night’s news (the one who Dad says should have gone to drama school) wore a rain slicker, a yellow rain hat and boots during her forecast and did a little song and dance from Dad’s favorite musical, Singin’ in the Rain.

  But when I open my eyes, sunshine streams through my windows. The birds are chirping, too, so loudly that I feel like I’m in the opening sequence of a cartoon. Soon they’ll fly in here and help me get dressed. We’ll sing a happy song and do a choreographed dance routine in the yard with the local bunnies and deer.

  In reality, though, I roll out of bed with a flump. I try to do it gracefully, but my right leg gets caught in my sheets and I topple over sideways. I’m staring up at the ceiling, at the whirls and swirls of white, when Dad calls up to me.

  “You okay up there, hon?”

  I scramble to my feet and adjust the oversized Boston Red Sox t-shirt I wore to bed. It’s two sizes too big so it always slides down over my shoulders. “Fine!” I shout back. “Just bumped into something.”

  Dad’s footsteps pound closer to the door. “I was about to wake you up. I’m planning to leave in about half an hour, so you need to shower quickly. We don’t have much in the house, so we can stop at Dunkin’ on the way.”

  “Yum!” When I was a kid, Dad and I used to get doughnuts almost every Saturday morning, when Mom had to go into the office. He liked the maple frosted kind, and I loved the chocolate ones. Even better if they were chocolate with chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles.

  I may not know exactly what’s going to happen today, but at least it’ll start off with a sugar rush.

  I take a quick shower and change (I wear my favorite red-and-white-striped skirt, the one Mom says makes me look “so grown-up”), but when I go downstairs, Dad’s not there. The light in his office is on, though, and when I peek inside, I see him in his work chair, staring at a picture of him and Mom on their wedding day.

  I love looking at that picture. Mom and Dad got married on the beach, near the house in Cape Cod where Dad vacationed as a kid. They’re standing right next to the water, Mom’s train spread around her, the sand dunes spread before them. The sky is as blue as a robin’s egg and there’s not a cloud in the sky. If that wasn’t enough of a good luck sign, the smiles on my parents’ faces are as blinding as the sunshine beating down on them.

  I wonder what Dad’s thinking about.

  I wonder if Mom drank a lot back then or if this is a new thing. I don’t remember her drinking when I was a really little kid, but maybe she hid it back then. Maybe she hid it from Dad even further back.

  “Are you mad still?” I’ve barely considered the words before they’re out of my mouth.

  Dad looks up from the picture, his eyes shimmering. I expect him to look sad, but his smile is bigger than I’ve seen in ages. “No.”

  “Not at all?” It seems unbelievable. Dad’s been working two jobs, taking care of me, and worrying about Mom. Plus she lied to him. To us.

  “Really,” he says at my skeptical expression. “I was mad. I was Hulk-mad, even. But Holly helped me realize that I need to let go of that anger to move on. Which means that all I am right now is proud.”

  “Holly?” I ask.

  “My therapist.”

  Of course. The mysterious therapist. “She really helped?” I ask. I still don’t know if I want to talk to someone, but if it helped Dad this much, maybe it could help me, too. Maybe I can even start with Libby’s support group. This week. I’ll go this week for sure.

  “So much.” Dad tables his fingers together. “I’m not perfect. I have moments when I get so angry I could scream—”

  “Me too!” I cut in.

  “—but I try to push past those feelings. For the future,” Dad says. “For all of us.”

  I guess that’s what I can try to do, too.

  Dad puts the wedding picture back, arranging it carefully so it sits exactly where it always does. “Should we go?” He stands and reaches out his hand to me.

  “We should.”

  It’s the truth, after all. It’s time to move forward.

  Thirty-Four

  I wasn’t sure what would happen when I saw Mom for the first time. When she saw me. I imagined some grand cinematic reunion, where the music (that would somehow be playing around us) would slow down and come to a dramatic crescendo. We’d rush at each other through the crowded entryway while everyone else froze in their tracks. She’d cry. I’d cry. We’d hug for some indeterminate time.

  Then everything would be back to normal. We’d talk like normal and we’d laugh like normal. Normal, normal, normal.

  In reality, though, our grand reunion is nothing like my daydream. We’re not in the entryway; we’re in a little room off a side hallway. It’s cozy, with white walls and a few overstuffed chairs in a pretty blue-and-white print. There are a bunch of pictures that I bet are supposed to be calming—a sailboat, an apple orchard at sunset, and a flower garden filled with all the colors of the rainbow.

  I hope they calm everyone here, because they’re sure not working for me. Because the second Mom enters the room, my heart starts beating so fast I’m surprised it doesn’t pop out of my chest like in some gross horror movie.

  “Hi.” Mom says the word softly, like I’m a baby kitten she’s afraid to spook. She’s still in the doorway, and Dad takes a step closer. He squeezes her hand, like he’s infusing her with all the love she’s been missing out on for the past month. Mom doesn’t give him a hug or anything, though. She doesn’t move at all—she’s just focused on me.

  I’m her priority. Not Dad. Not drinking. Not anything else in the whole wide world.

  The thought makes my insides warm.

  “Hi,” I finally manage. I want to run to her and squeeze her tight, but I’m also afraid that I’ll break her, that she’s a statue made out of glass and anything I do wrong could be the hammer to shatter her. I take a small step closer. “Hi,” I say again.

  Mom sits down on one of the chairs and pats the cushions of the one next to her. I take it cautiously.

  “I’m looking forward to today.” She says it slowly and deliberately, like she’s picking out apples in the grocery store, choosing the ones that are the brightest and least bruised.

  “Me too.”

  “I wish I could spend more time with you two, but I have my own groups to go to.” Mom brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes. For some reason, I’m surprised to notice that Mom’s bangs are longer now. Of course Mom’s hair would have grown in here. Lots of things about her are changing, after all.

  I remember reading once that your skin cells replace themselves all the time, that we’re always shedding old bits of dry skin and growing fresh new cells. It sounds kind of icky—who wants to think about all that gross skin falling off all the time?—but it’s kind of comforting at the same time. That a month from now, there will be all new skin cells on the outsides of us.

  Just like, in some amount of time, all of Mom’s hair will be new. It’ll be hair from the time when she isn’t drinking anymore.

  Not from when she was.

  “Honey?”

  I pull my gaze away from Mom’s hair and finally meet her eyes. At least they look exactly the same.

  “It’s okay if you have groups,” I manage. My eyes are filling up with tears and my throat feels thick with sobs. I told myself to be strong today, but my plan isn’t exactly working. I take a deep breath, then puff it out as slowly and quietly as I can. “Dad told me that you’re going to be busy with stuff.”

  “I have my therapist this morning and then a peer group. But we can have lunch together,” Mom says. “And after lunch we’ll meet as a family.”

&nbs
p; “We’re so happy to be here, Anna.” Dad finally wraps Mom in a hug. I think about how when I was a kid, I always got super jealous whenever I saw my parents hugging. I’d run up and wrap my arms around one of their legs, then proclaim we were having a “hug party!”

  Today, though, I let Mom and Dad have each other.

  “We have some good news for you, too,” Dad says once he’s pulled away. His face is bright, his voice perky.

  “Ooh, what?” Mom sounds the same way, like she’s pretending to be the “Perfect Recovery Mom,” someone who doesn’t get upset about anything and whose life is going to be absolutely wonderful from now on.

  I peer at Mom’s face more closely. She actually does look a lot happier. Healthier, too—her cheeks are rosy and her eyes sparkle. Maybe she’s not pretending—maybe Mom actually is doing well.

  “Veronica?” Dad nudges me in the side.

  “I made the All-Star team.” I look at the ground when I say it. Well, whisper it, actually. Which is weird. You’d think I’d want to stand up on a table and shout it to the entire room. The entire world, even. Instead, I’m almost … embarrassed. Like I don’t deserve to be on the team. Like this new bit of news is a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit into the whole of me.

  “Honey!” Mom screeches loud enough for all of us, though, then reaches forward and sweeps me up in a hug. “I’m so proud of you. You must have been working so hard without…” She pauses, a wistful expression passing across her face. “Well, without me.”

  “Mom, it’s okay.”

  (I mean, it’s not okay, but I can pretend to be Perfect Happy Daughter, too. That’s half the point of today.)

  “I’ll make it up to you once I get out of here.” Mom nods her head firmly. “You’re going to have such a good season.” She continues to gush as some Pine Knolls staff member starts to herd us into a different room.

  As Mom’s voice grows more animated, the pit in my stomach grows. Because seeing Mom so happy has made me realize that lately, I haven’t been happy. That thinking about playing on the All-Star team makes me unhappy.

  That as much as I’ve tried to deny it, I don’t want to join the team at all.

  Thirty-Five

  “So is Family Day that bad?” Halfway through lunch, Dad leans over with one of those annoyingly smug Dad smiles on his face, the one he used after I insisted for years and years that I hated blueberries, then finally tried them and basically ate a quart a day for two months straight.

  “No.” I take another bite of my salad and avoid his eyes. A smile quirks at the side of my mouth, though, because I’m actually not annoyed that he’s right. I’m happy that all my doubts were wrong, that this morning’s informational session on alcoholism was pretty interesting. I felt like I was back in health class, but it was nice to learn that all the things Mom had been doing were part of an actual disease.

  I mean, I did already know that. But hearing it from a professional, a guy with a name tag that said DOCTOR and a fancy bow tie, made it feel extra official.

  We got a tour of Pine Knolls after that. I didn’t get to see Mom’s room, which is part of a three-bedroom suite with two other women her age, but we did get to see a model apartment, with a common room, a television, and a kitchen where they cook their own meals.

  “This reminds me of the dorm room I had senior year of college,” Dad whispered to me. “Man, that place was party central. The kitchen was such a mess, too, always covered in empty beer bot—” He trails off, his eyes flitting to the woman giving the tour, like by just mentioning the word beer he’ll get in trouble.

  He might. Maybe he should. I think that’s what we’ll be talking about in our family session today—what Dad and I can do and say to help Mom after she leaves here. That, and what she can do to help our family get back on track.

  I wonder if I should speak up about what Mom has done wrong. Will the therapist actually listen to me? Or will she think I’m a little kid and make Dad do the talking? What about softball? Mom and Dad keep saying how excited they are for me—is therapy the place to talk about how I feel?

  No.

  I can’t.

  Because every time I look at Mom, every time she squeezes my hand and tells me how excited she is to play catch with me again, my confidence wavers. I can’t quit the team. We need to give Mom a stable home when she leaves Pine Knolls.

  That’s my job. My responsibility.

  After we finish our catered lunch (rubbery chicken with sauce, shiny green beans, and a pretty yummy rice pilaf), Mom leads me and Dad to her therapist’s office. We climb behind her to the third floor, to a room with a plaque outside reading DR. MONICA MARIA MARQUEZ, PHD, LICSW.

  She sounds letter-tastically official. Alliterative, too.

  Mom knocks on the door, and a clear, confident voice echoes out from inside.

  “Come in!”

  I wonder if you have to be super confident to be a therapist. I wonder if this M&M lady has any problems of her own. I wonder if she’s judging us for being so messed up.

  When I trail my parents inside, I look the therapist up and down. She seems normal. There’s not even a couch inside, just a glass coffee table with pointy edges and a bunch of comfy chairs. I wonder if they buy the chairs in bulk here. The coffee table is covered with toys—there’s a Rubik’s Cube, a yo-yo, and one of those little square boxes with a sand garden inside. I reach over and use the little stick to trace a pattern before realizing that I could be doing something wrong. Already.

  My head pops up. “I’m sorry.” I pull my hand back.

  “No worries at all.” Monica’s voice is deep and rich, like a hug wrapping the room in its warmth. “These things are here for you to do with as you wish. Right, Anna?” She shoots Mom a mischievous look.

  Mom laughs. “Absolutely.” She gives me her own look. “I’ve used up most of Monica’s supply of Play-Doh during my time here.”

  “Play-Doh?” My mouth gapes open as I imagine my workaholic Mom playing with Play-Doh. “Why did you … do that?”

  “To help me think.” Mom shrugs. “I’ve realized that when I’m worried, it helps me to move my body. My fingers or feet or whatever. When I’m concentrating on something else, whether it’s making a bowl with the Play-Doh or doodling on a pad of paper, it frees my mind to figure out the answer to my problem. It relaxes me, too.”

  “Huh.” It makes sense. That’s what softball does for me, after all. Did for me, before the pressure got so bad. It’s what singing does, too. They take me out of myself. “I get it.”

  I don’t realize I said the last words aloud until Monica smiles at me. “That’s what we try to do here in therapy. Take you out of yourself so you aren’t the same person who came in. That way, you can examine your worries and figure out why you have them and how you can react in a different way.”

  “That makes sense!” Dad’s voice is jovial, like he’s some jolly old man. “Should we be doing the same thing?”

  Monica leans back in her chair, one of those swivelly kinds that I used to love to “take rides on” when I was little. “Well, that depends on how you cope,” she says slowly. “What problems you’re dealing with and what your normal reaction style is.” She steeples her fingers under her chin. “That’s why we’re here, after all—to determine how you, as a family, can best communicate in the future. So that no one has to communicate with drinking or dishonesty or other maladaptive behaviors.”

  I stare at Mom with my eyes wide open. It’s strange to hear someone call her out on her drinking. But I guess that’s what they do in here. There’s no getting away from it, after all.

  Dishonesty? Is Monica looking at me? Do they know I’m hiding something? But I ask something else instead. “Maladaptive behaviors? What does that mean?”

  Monica laughs. “Look at us with our therapy talk. Anna here has become quite fluent lately.”

  Mom rolls her eyes. “Unfortunately.”

  My eyes dart from Mom to Monica. What does she mean by that
? Is it unfortunate that she’s in therapy? That she had to stop drinking? Unfortunate that I’m a bad daughter who doesn’t want to fulfill her mother’s dream?

  “It’s unfortunate that I got so bad in the first place.” Mom says, like she’s read my mind. She places her hand on mine and even with all those different skin cells, it feels like it always does. Like when I was a kid and couldn’t fall asleep without Mom’s hand in mine. She was my security blanket.

  Maybe we all need a security blanket at some point, when things are hard. Maybe alcohol was Mom’s.

  Monica starts out by explaining that this session will be our opportunity to talk about how Mom’s drinking has affected us and what we need to do in the future. Then she turns to me and Dad and asks who would like to go first.

  “Go for it, Veronica.” Dad acts like he’s doing me a big favor by letting me start. I wonder if he is trying to be generous. (Or if he’s trying to avoid talking for as long as possible.)

  Not that it matters. I can’t back out now. Everyone’s eyes are already on me. I feel like I’m on one of those reality shows Tabitha likes to watch, when some huge dramatic event happens and there’s a close-up on one of the contestants talking about how awful one of the other girls is. How worried or concerned or angry she is.

  There are no cameras in this room, though (I hope). No viewers or ratings to worry about. No scripts to follow, either. (Because as much as Tabitha insists that her shows are “totally real,” I know that most reality stars are actually actors playing characters with scripted lines and manufactured situations.)

  Those shows aren’t real life. This is.

  I haven’t rehearsed, so all I can do is go off my heart.

  “Why did you need alcohol?”

  Mom’s face crumples, but she takes a deep breath and grips onto the sides of her chair so hard that her knuckles turn white. “I was having a hard time,” she says slowly. “Between making partner at work and just plain … life, I guess. I felt like I couldn’t handle anything.” Dad nods at Mom, and she gives him a soft smile. I wonder how much they’ve talked about all of this, or if it’s news to him, too.