by Sarra Cannon
“Slow down,” he says, taking my hand and pulling me back toward the bed. “Do you want to talk about what happened? How did she die?”
I close my eyes, picturing my mother with her nightly bottle of bourbon and her cabinet full of sleeping pills. She called them her happiness cocktail, and she liked to mix them. No amount of warning on my part could ever get her to stop.
“I'll be fine,” she'd say, her speech already slurring after the first pill. Usually a Xanax. “I need this, baby girl. It's been a long day.”
With my mother, every day was a long day.
When I was still at home, I'd sometimes water down the bourbon or sneak Tylenol into the pill bottle. Sometimes she didn't even notice, but when she did, she yelled like I'd murdered someone.
“I don't want to talk about it,” I say. I twist my wrist from his grasp and go into the bathroom. I start throwing my makeup into a plastic bag.
“Please don't shut me out right now,” Preston says. “I'll do whatever you need me to do. Do you want me to call anyone? Leigh Anne?”
“I want you to leave,” I say, channeling my despair into fury. I know I'll regret it later, but right now, I just need to be alone. I don't want anyone around when the meltdown comes, and I feel it nipping at my heels like a shadow.
“Jenna—”
“You said you'd do whatever I want,” I say, finally looking him in the eye. “I want you to go. I don't want to sit here and have some kumbayah moment while we discuss the details of my mother's overdose. I don't want you to book some fancy hotel in my hometown for me. I don't want you to take care of me at all. I just want you to go.”
He leans his head against the door frame. I know I'm being childish and lashing out at him when he is only trying to help, but all I can think about is that perfect little scene of him holding his twin sister's newborn baby in his arms, smiling and cooing at her while the whole happy family looks on, smiling and full of joy.
I have never had that, and I never will. I almost resent him for that happiness. That sheltered life with his complaints about how much his parents' hopes and dreams cut into his own ideas about the future. When I told my father I was leaving to go to college, he laughed at me. He said I wouldn't survive a semester on my own.
My mother had cried, saying I was a selfish little brat who only ever thinks of herself. She said I was abandoning her, leaving her there without another female voice of reason in the house.
And I had left. I'd gotten out of there so fast, I probably left a trail of smoking tire marks in the driveway.
I abandoned her and she drank herself to death. Dylan was right. It is all my fault she's gone, and there'll be hell to pay for it.
I push past Preston, who is still standing in the doorway of the bathroom, watching me.
I toss my makeup and toiletries into the duffel bag and go through my clothes again. I'll need something black for the funeral. Something I can burn afterward.
I take a plain black dress from a hanger and toss it into the bag.
“Are you seriously just going to stand there, breathing down my neck?”
“I don't know what else to do,” he says. “I know you're hurting and confused. I know you said you don't want to talk about it, but maybe it would help if you did.”
“What do you want me to say?” I shout. I'm so angry, I need to break something. I want to destroy everything, and just tear through this room like a tornado. My hand circles around the base of a lamp on my bedside table, and I hurl it across the room. The cord rips out of the socket and the lamp crashes against the wall, breaking into tiny pieces that scatter across the carpet. “That I knew my mother had a drug problem, and I left her there anyway? That I refused to take her calls for the first full year I lived here? That I'm a horrible person who wouldn't even drive three hours to see her when she went into the hospital six months ago, the first time she overdosed?”
I take my newly packed bag and hurl it toward the closet. I grip the sheets on my unmade bed and rip them off.
Preston grabs my wrist as I reach for the paper mache white rabbit.
I look up at him and see tears forming in his eyes. All the anger and energy that pushed me forward dissipates into sorrow, and I collapse to my knees.
Preston follows, wraps his arms tightly around me.
“I'm so sorry, Jenna,” he whispers over and over as I cry. He rocks me back and forth, stroking my hair as the tears pour down my cheeks.
I cling to him, unable to make sense of the emotions at war within me.
I sink lower, unable to hold myself up, feeling drained of life. Preston sits and leans against the edge of the closet, cradling me in his arms until the tears have run their course, and I drift off to sleep.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jenna
I arrive at my father's house by ten. I turn the lights off before I pull into the driveway. I need a few extra minutes before he realizes I'm home, if he's even sober enough to be coherent.
Twenty-four hours ago, I was making love to Preston, with the future spread out before us like an undiscovered treasure map. Twelve hours ago, I was holding Penny's hand through each contraction, ushering a new life into the world.
Now, my heart is stripped bare of those hopeful moments, and all I can see or feel is the heavy sorrow of my past.
I don't want to be here, but I owe my mother that much at least.
I let my head fall back against the worn headrest and force air into my lungs, gathering up the strength to go inside and face the nightmare that awaits.
Preston wanted to come with me and the thought of escaping my parents house and shacking up in some swanky suite downtown was more tempting than I cared to admit to him. But the horror of having him see this part of me won out, and I convinced him to stay in Fairhope.
I think of Penny's words at the hospital this morning, when she said I might someday become a part of their family. Now, with the evidence of my humble beginnings staring me straight in the face, I almost laugh at the thought. Jenna Lewis, a true, rags to riches Cinderella story.
I shake my head and sigh. That will never be me. No matter how hard I try, I will never shake the stink of this place off me.
I linger in the truck for a few minutes with the windows down, the smell of my mother's favorite wisteria blossoming around me. My father liked to remind her it was only a weed, but she didn't care. Even weeds can be beautiful, she'd say.
The scent brings a memory of one of the good days rushing back. It hits me like an anvil to the chest.
I was maybe seven or eight at the time, and my parents were on one of their many breaks. We'd moved to a tiny apartment on the edge of town. It was a terrible, dirty place with one bedroom and a kitchen so small there wasn't room for two people at once. Mom had picked it solely because of the wisteria. She took one look at the stretch of woods behind the apartment building, with its trees covered in purple flowering vines, and knew it was the place for us.
I always suspected it had a lot more to do with the three hundred a month price tag than the flowers, but who was I to argue with my mother, at that age? Besides, we were away from my father, and that made it better.
When they were apart, my mother was a different woman. She rarely drank, and did things for us: like cook eggs in the morning before school or walk us to the bus. On Saturdays, we would go to the park and she'd read romance novels while my brother and I played until we could hardly stand on our worn-out little legs.
One Sunday, I remember waking up to the sound of my mother's singing. It was early and the sun had only started to raise its head and paint the sky. I yawned and padded out to the living room, drawn by the siren song of her papery voice, so ethereal and thin, she sounded like an angel.
She'd looked up from the table and smiled. “Come sit with me, baby girl,” she'd said.
A heaping pile of wisteria littered the kitchen table.
“What's all this?” I'd asked.
“I woke up this morning and d
ecided we needed a little something to brighten up the house,” she'd said. My mother, always with a cigarette in hand, had sat at the table the rest of the morning clipping and cutting those blooms and forming them into pretty purple bouquets. She'd spread them around the apartment, setting the biggest one beside my sleeping bag on the floor of the one bedroom my brother and I shared.
I remember staring at that bouquet for hours every night when I lay down, wondering if it was some kind of sign that happier times were here to stay.
A few days later, though, my father had barged in and stomped every purple blossom into the carpet with his boots. He said he'd had enough of my mother's nonsense, and that if she didn't come home, he'd burn the apartment down around us.
We left our little apartment a few days later and moved back here to my father's trailer.
Every time I smelled wisteria, I thought of those days with my mother, and how rarely I'd ever heard her happy enough to sing.
Being here now, only makes it clearer to me that Preston and I could never really be happy together. It's been wonderful for a while, just like that apartment, but this is really who I am. I will never be able to shake the demons of my past, and it isn't fair to drag him into that hell. He deserves more.
“Jenna?”
My brother's voice startles me from my memories, and I clap my hand to my chest. “Dylan, you scared me to death.”
“What are you doing out here in the dark?” he asks, the smell of beer on his breath.
“Just thinking,” I say.
“Well, grab your stuff and come on in,” he says. “Wasn't sure you'd show your face around here. Too little, too late, don't ya think?”
He doesn't wait for me. Instead, he walks toward the house, stumbles up the stairs, and disappears inside.
Weary, I climb down from the sanctuary of my truck and follow him into the house.
The sweet smell of flowers is replaced by the overwhelming smell of sweat and smoke. My father is sitting in his favorite recliner, his big belly sticking out beneath a dingy white tank top. He's gained a good fifty pounds since I last saw him, and his hair is balding on top.
“Well, if it isn't the prodgical daughter,” he says, not even bothering to get up and welcome me home.
I know better than to correct him. Prodigal. No matter how wrong he is, my father is always right. I learned that the hard way a very long time ago.
“Hi, Daddy,” I say.
There's a cigarette clutched between his fingers. Next to him, an ashtRob overflows with discarded butts. Three empty packs are stacked up neatly beside it, and I wonder how long he's been sitting in that same spot, chain smoking and watching fishing on TV.
“So glad you decided to grace us with your presence, your highness,” he says. He scratches a spot under his armpit and wipes his fingers across his shirt.
The man repulses me, and it takes every ounce of willpower I have, not to turn around and drive straight back to Fairhope without so much as a glance behind me.
“Well, don't just stand there.” He waves his hand back and forth. “You're blocking the TV.”
Some greeting, after being gone nearly four years. I step deeper inside the house and look around at the terrible mess that's accumulated. The sink is full of dirty dishes that look like the food is cemented on. The floor is grimy and covered in dust and mud. There's a basket of clothes next to the couch with four or five balled up sacks of fast food trash lying on top.
How long had they been living like this? If mom just passed away last night, she must have been living in this filth for a while. It wasn't like her. She'd always kept the house tidy and neat. She had to in order to avoid my father's abuse. Cleaning was woman's work, he'd always said, never bothering to lift a finger to help.
I start to say something about the state of the place, but think better of it. Instead, I set my bag on the floor and go into the kitchen to start on the dirty dishes.
I turn the water scalding hot and scrub as hard as I can, washing away the dried-on ketchup and bits of ash from discarded cigarettes. I unleash my anger on these poor dishes, thinking it's no wonder my mother drank so much. In her eyes, she had no escape. This life was what she deserved, so she gave herself a life sentence and served until it drained every ounce of hope from her body.
When I'm done with dishes, I start on the floors. I mop the kitchen, scrub the bathrooms, wipe down the windows. It takes hours, and despite barely having slept in the past two days, I'm wide awake.
It's nearly two when I force myself to go back in the living room. The TV is still on, but Dylan is passed out on the couch and my father is snoring in his recliner. A cigarette smolders in his hand. I carefully take it from him and smash it into the overflowing ashtRob. I grab a garbage bag from the kitchen and throw away the butts and empty packs. It's so disgusting, I vow never to smoke another cigarette again in my life.
I clean up the discarded fast food wrappers and toss the clothes back into the washing machine.
It's close to four in the morning before I finally run out of things to clean and drag my weary body to the bed in the back room. I lay, fully clothed, on top of the flowered bedspread and wonder how my mother survived as long as she did.
**
Morning comes too fast. My muscles ache, and at first, I can't remember where I am. Those few moments are the best part of my day before the realization that I've come home rushes back.
I shower and dress, search the fridge for something to eat, but find it bare of everything except beer and a half-eaten bologna sandwich.
“Don't bother,” Dylan says, coming up behind me. “I don't even know why you bothered cleaning up the place. It'll just look like crap again in a week.”
“Heaven forbid you actually pick up after yourself.”
“I never said I minded it the way it was.”
I roll my eyes and shut the refrigerator door. “How long has it been like this?” I ask. “Mom never used to let the house get this bad.”
He shrugs and lights a cigarette. He takes a swig from his beer, not seeming to care that it's only nine in the morning. “After you left, things started going downhill, I guess. She'd been working two jobs since Dad got laid off at the factory and said she didn't have the energy to come home from cleaning all those houses and clean up our mess, too. After a while, Dad got tired of arguing with her about it.”
“You should have...” I don't finish what I was about to say, but Dylan finishes for me.
“What? Called you to tell you how bad things had gotten?” He laughs and tips his beer up until it's drained. “What did you think I was calling you for every day for the past six months? Just to say hi?”
I run a shaky hand through my tangled hair. I don't want to feel responsible for this, but the guilt is eating at me. If I had come home to visit, even once, I would have seen for myself how bad things had gotten.
“She didn't want you to know, anyway,” he says. “She was real proud of you for going to college, even if she wouldn't say it in so many words.”
I am silent. I lean back against the kitchen counter and hold my arms tight against my body.
“What about rehab?” I ask. “I thought she got cleaned up.”
“She was sober about three months,” he says. “Came home from rehab and dumped nearly fifty dollars-worth of bourbon right down the drain. I thought Dad was going to lose his mind when she did that. She had me sell all her leftover pills. Even let me keep half the money.”
I close my eyes and try to still my tongue from lashing out at him. He almost sounds proud of earning that extra cash for himself.
“It didn't stick, though,” he says. “I figured it wouldn't. She took her part of the money and bought this little laptop. Started searching the Internet for better jobs and going out on interviews. You should have seen her. She even went over to the Walmart in Perry and bought a new set of clothes for the interviews. They looked real nice on her.”
“What happened?”
“She couldn't get a job,” he says. “Nothing better than cleaning houses or waiting tables. She was looking for a desk job, but that was ridiculous, since she can hardly type and barely knows her way around a computer. Besides, with her face all scarred up, no one wanted her sitting at the front desk, greeting customers. But she tried real hard. She'd sit here at the table all evening, after she got off work, pecking away on the keyboard, looking for something better to come along. I guess after a while, she just got tired of waiting.”
“Where did she get the pills?”
“Pawned the laptop,” he says. “Bought some stuff off a guy down the street who got hurt at work and is out on disability.”
“You knew this, and didn't do anything about it?”
“Well, damn, Jenny.” I cringe at the name. He'd started calling me Jenny in kindergarten just because he realized it made me mad. “What do you think I should have done about it? She was a grown woman. I couldn't stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do.
“About a month ago, she got fired from her best cleaning job. They accused her of stealing some jewelry from the master bedroom. A diamond ring from the lady's grandmother or some shit.”
“Did she?”
He acts angry I would even suggest it, but then shrugs and lights another cigarette. “Hell, damned if I know. She swore she'd never stole anything from those houses, but I don't know where she was getting the money for those pills. After rehab, none of the doctors in town would prescribe anything stronger than ibuprofen.”
I run my hand along my forehead and sigh. The hopelessness of my mother's life weighed me down, like a stone around my heart. “I should have come home,” I say.
“Damned right, you should have,” Dylan says. “What kind of girl leaves her whole family and never even comes home for Christmas? Not once in four years did you come home. You have no idea how hard that was on her.”
“I'm sorry,” I whisper.
“Nobody here to apologize to anymore,” he says. He gets up and tosses his cigarette into the almost empty bottle. “Now that Momma's gone, you can leave and never come back for all I care.”