by Lara Zielin
My voice faltered. There were no words for this. Cat’s eyes, round and wide, found mine. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. It wasn’t until two drops of blood landed on the seat fabric that I realized I was hurt, too. I had no idea where, though. I couldn’t feel anything.
My mom grunted, then shook her head like a prizefighter after taking a right hook to the temple. The next thing I knew, we were moving.
Cat gargled something. She whipped her head toward my mom, then back at the accident scene. The car was shuddering and vibrating, its jacked-up back end trying to keep pace with the front.
Cat grabbed my hand. “She c-can’t leave,” she stuttered. “It w-was an accid-d-d-ent.” Cat’s jaw trembled like she was freezing cold.
My mom couldn’t hear her, or was pretending not to. The accident scene was getting farther and farther away.
We passed a few cars where all the drivers had their eyes trained on the truck in the middle of the intersection. They didn’t even notice us. They had no idea we were the cause of the mess they were staring at—and were driving away.
As soon as she could, my mom swung onto back streets, weaving in and out of quiet neighborhoods to stay off the main roads. Cat gripped my left hand with both of hers. With my right hand, I took my vintage scarf and held it just below the cut in her eyebrow. Blood stained the fabric bright red.
“M-m-make her go back,” Cat whispered. “This is wr-wr-wrong.”
My insides twisted. How could I tell her I understood what my mom was doing? “We don’t have any insurance,” I imagined myself saying. “We can’t afford it. If any of those people sued us, we’d lose everything. Plus, if they gave my mom a Breathalyzer, she’d never pass . . .”
But of course I couldn’t say that. So instead, I just held the scarf to Cat’s skin and let her blood color the fabric, then my hand.
It wasn’t until we pulled onto Hawthorne Boulevard, Cat’s tree-lined street, that my mom finally spoke. “Is your mom home?” She pulled over in front of Cat’s neighbor’s house, a three-story Tudor that could probably fit our entire apartment in its garage.
Cat shook her head no.
“Your dad?”
No.
“Your little brother?”
“All a-a-at the s-soccer g-g-g-ame,” Cat managed to say.
“Okay,” my mom said. She smoothed back her blond hair—the color and texture of straw—and licked her lips. She eased the Honda into Cat’s driveway and put it into park, but still left it running, probably because if she turned it off, it might never start again.
She got out of the car and came around to Cat’s side, where she had to yank on the door—once, twice—before it would open. “C’mon, sweetie,” she said to Cat, her voice honeyed with reassurance. She held out her hand, but Cat didn’t move. Take it, I begged her silently. My mom will say all the right things. She’ll convince you this is all okay. When Cat finally grasped Mom’s fingers, I exhaled a little puff of breath and followed them into the house.
Within minutes, Mom had Cat in the downstairs bathroom, seated on the edge of the marble tub. She’d rummaged around for rubbing alcohol and tweezers, and was extracting the glass from Cat’s skin. “It’s fine, just fine,” Mom kept saying over and over, like a mantra.
“See, Cat?” I imagined myself agreeing. “No biggie.” But I didn’t dare say anything—not with Cat’s lower jaw thrust out like that, a mixture of anger and hurt on her face like I’d never seen. So instead I stayed frozen in the bathroom doorway, scared to get too close, scared of what Cat was thinking, scared of where this was all headed.
Cat’s cut was deep and raw. If she needed stitches, there was no way Mom was going to say so. Her eyes were sharp as she cleaned out Cat’s cut, put a huge gauze bandage on it, and taped everything down. She can sure snap out of a binge when she needs to, I thought.
“Okay, then,” Mom said, leaning back on her heels. She patted Cat’s knee like this had just been a scrape on the playground. “I know you’re a little shaken up, but physically you’re fine.”
A corkscrew of Cat’s black, curly hair fell into her face, but she didn’t push it away. She just clenched her fists as Mom used the same reasoned tones she did when she was on the phone with the electric company or the landlord, trying to get our power back on or an extension on our rent. It’s all a misunderstanding, see? We’re all good people here. Sometimes things happen, but that doesn’t mean we need to go to any extremes. Right?
“You should rest, take a nap, and maybe have some tea or something. You’ll be fine. We’re all fine.” Mom stood and wiped her hands on her faded jeans. That was that.
Cat blinked like she was trying to process what my mom was saying. Like she was still trying to piece together how we’d gotten here—with blood spattered on her white tile floor and glass pieces clinking in her antique silver trash can. “Except,” she said slowly, “except what about the other people back there? What if they were hurt? What if they needed help? You just drove away.”
Cat’s eyes found mine. “Jane,” she said, like she was just now registering me standing in the doorway. Her teeth started clattering again. “Your f-f-face,” she said. “You’re cut too.”
I put my hand up to my cheek and felt shards and dried blood against my fingertips. I jerked as if I’d touched a live electrical current.
“Jane’s fine,” my mom said, her skin illuminated from the gilded light above the vanity. It softened all her edges and angles, and she was so pretty just then, with the hollows in her cheeks filled out, and the shadows around her eyes nearly gone. She looked like she did after she came out of rehab a few years ago, actually. Not that her sobriety lasted.
Cat shook her head slowly, her shock beginning to fade. “No, she’s not fine. This is not fine. It’s not okay. You—you almost killed us. Because you were drunk. You picked us up and you drove the car drunk.”
Mom’s eyes flashed with fear, just for a moment. Her full, red lips paled. “No, honey. That’s not it. We were in an accident, but everything’s okay now. You’re just shaken up is all.”
Cat looked at me, and I swear to God she saw all the way through me—all the way down to that cold ball of fear anchored in the pit of my stomach. The fear that she understood the truth about what had gone down: that I knew the second we piled into the Honda that my mom was wasted. But rather than say anything, I’d let her drive us around drunk because speaking the truth out loud was so completely humiliating. And now, here we were, post accident, and it was all my fault.
Cat stood and pushed past Mom, unbalancing her. Mom wobbled until she found the edge of the sink.
“Jane,” Cat said, “this is crazy. This is so completely insane.” Cat touched my face like she was going to try and get some of the glass out, then dropped her hand.
All I could do was stare at her. Insane didn’t even begin to cover it. “The only reason I’m not on the phone right now to the cops,” Cat continued, “is for you.” She glanced at my mom, whose face was ashen. “But if I find out anyone is dead? I am turning your mom in. People—we could have—that truck almost . . .” She took a breath. “I know you cover for your mom all the time. And, fine, I’m going to do it too. This once. As long as no one died out there. Because I love you. Because you’re my best friend. But never again, Jane. Do you understand me? If she ever comes within an inch of hurting me, or you, or anyone else again, I’m going to have the cops over here, and I’m going to get my dad’s lawyers over here and make sure she gets locked up for as long as possible.”
My mom let out her throaty everyone-is-getting-worked-up-over-nothing laugh. “Cat, honey—”
Cat wheeled around. Her heart-shaped face was hard with anger. “Don’t. Don’t you dare argue with me after what just happened. And after you had the nerve to ask me who’s in my home so you can use it to clean me up in secret and hide what you did.”
My mom held up her hands. Her long nails arched over the top of her fingers. “Sweetie, calm down. This
won’t ge—”
“NO!” Cat stamped her foot. Her skin was crimson with cuts and anger. “You have a problem, Amanda. And you can’t deal with it. So you know who deals with it? Jane. Don’t think we don’t see it. We all see it.”
I wanted to sink down onto the cold tile and cover my ears.
“She comes to school exhausted every day. Why? Because she’s up paying bills and working. She eats ramen noodles all the time because you’re out spending money at the bar. You think my mom has her sleeping over here constantly just for fun? It’s to get her away from you.”
I tried to stop the tears rolling down my face because the salt stung the wounds in my cheeks and chin.
Cat turned back to me. “Enough with helping your mom,” she said, her voice trembling. “Please, Jane. In the end, you’re only making it worse. Okay? Do you hear me?”
I did the only thing I could do. I nodded, even though my mom was right there and we knew that if I didn’t help her, we’d both be living out of the now-ruined back of the Honda.
“We’re leaving,” my mom said, brushing past Cat. The clack of her heels echoed like gunfire in the marbled bathroom. “Jane. Let’s go.” She held her head high as she walked through the foyer, out the front door. She didn’t slam anything like I thought she would. She simply left.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to Cat. It was the only thing I could think to say. We’d brought the hurricane of our lives into Cat’s perfect house, and now we were taking off like we hadn’t just torn everything up.
“Me too,” Cat said, wiping away tears. “This is pretty fucked up.”
I touched the glass in my cheeks. It was starting to feel hot. “I have to fix my face,” I said.
Cat looked at me hard. “Jane. You have to fix your life.”
* * *
Back at the Days Inn, I delete Cat’s text and shove the phone into my pocket. I figure I’ll write her later when I can get a better handle on my thoughts, when I can find some new way to tell her I’m doing fine down here. I’m fixing my life! And it’s awesome!
Which is of course bullshit. Other than take some pictures, I haven’t exactly done anything. At least not according to Cat’s definition of what fixing my life means.
I hear the slam of a van door and see my brother walking by, carrying a laptop under one arm. His weight is mostly on the balls of his feet, meaning he moves quietly and quickly—the same way he did when we were kids and we had to sneak around the house without waking Mom up.
“Ethan,” I say, and he stops like he’s surprised to hear my voice. He slides his room card through the reader on the pool gate, then scrapes the legs of a chair across the concrete to sit next to me. The water’s reflection paints him in giraffe prints of light.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, glancing at my head where the hailstone hit.
“Better,” I say, studying Ethan’s gray-blue eyes, the same as mine. We both have the same coarse, red-blond hair, same angular cheekbones and sharp jawline. On Ethan, the result is breathtaking—he could be a model if he wasn’t a meteorologist. On me, the lines are too severe. I wish for more softness, more curves. But I’m bones and edges through and through. Just like Mom—physically, anyway.
I motion to the laptop. “Are you running the data? On today’s chase?”
Ethan nods. “Even with Polly going down, we were still able to get some good measurements.”
Most of the Torbros are PhD students at the University of Oklahoma, and their tornado work is funded through a grant. The goal for the summer is to use the grant money to document just about everything that happens around a tornado: temperature changes, wind speeds, barometric pressure readings, and other stuff I can barely get my mind around. With any luck, it will help them better understand how tornadoes form and why. Because, as common as they are, a lot about them is still a mystery.
Ethan rubs the bridge of his nose. I know this gesture—he does it when he’s thinking hard. And no wonder. The Torbros aren’t the only team out here doing this kind of work. There’s hard-core competition from other chasers not just to get to the storms, but to figure out new ways to measure and study them. The team that’s going to survive long term is the one that can get extra innovative and extra ballsy on chases, and at the same time figure out how to use the grant money as a bridge to something profitable and sustainable.
Which is where Polly comes in. She measures toxins and pollutants in the air around a tornado, since the Torbros’ theory is that the more toxins present in the atmosphere, the more a tornado can spin, and the more destructive it will be. With any luck, the Torbros will be able to use Polly to help predict a tornado’s intensity based on how polluted the air around it is, then duplicate her technology and sell it to other chasers and researchers.
Ethan’s fingers squeeze at the place where his nose meets his forehead. Another sign that he’s deep in thought. Or stressed. Or both. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him do that. Last time we were together was two years ago. He came home for Christmas Day, then left the next morning. He said it was because he had research back at the lab that couldn’t wait, but his tired frown and slumped shoulders told the truth: he was miserable at home. Which probably explains why he skipped town the minute he had his high school diploma, too. He barely waved as he roared away in his old Ford. He was eighteen when he fled; I was twelve.
Like he can sense my thoughts, Ethan clears his throat. “Seeing you get hurt today—it was tough. It made me realize that in the three weeks you’ve been down here, I’ve never told you how glad I am you made the trip.”
I shift in my chair. I’m not used to the two of us having warm fuzzy moments.
“I’ve been trying to get you down here for ages, you know,” Ethan continues. “And I meant what I said about you staying on after the season wraps. I know it’s probably tough to think about, but I hope you’ll consider it.”
Tough to think about doesn’t even begin to cover it. In the past, Mom hated when Ethan sent me e-mails asking me to come to Oklahoma and visit. “I’m so proud of everything he’s been able to do,” she’d say by way of qualifying what came next, “but he should really come to us. Family doesn’t leave family. You shouldn’t have to go down there and split us up even more.” She’d freak if she knew he wanted me to come live with him.
“I will,” I say. “I’ll think about it.” On my own, by myself. I don’t add the last part only because Ethan will probably argue with me about how he understands better than anyone what life with Mom is like, even though he’s been gone for years.
“You haven’t said much about Mom and how things are with her,” Ethan says, picking at the arm of the pool chair, “but if you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
I swallow more irritation. I know he’s trying to be helpful, and yeah, Ethan might not have walked out on us the way Mom likes to paint it, but he did leave. And now he suddenly wants to know how things are? Well, the way they are is great.
Awesome. Never better.
I stare at my fingernails. It’s all lies, of course, but what am I supposed to tell him? About how we almost killed Cat? About how, right before I left, Mom peed in her own bed? No one needs to know that level of detail.
“I’m okay,” I say, offering as little as possible. If I know to keep my mouth shut when arguing with a drunk, then I sure as heck have enough sense to keep it shut around a PhD student who could probably source a dissertation on what I had for breakfast.
“You could talk to someone else,” Ethan offers. “If you didn’t want to talk to me.”
“Like who?”
Ethan shrugs. “Maybe just someone who’s super experienced in this kind of stuff and who could really listen. And help.”
I suddenly understand his meaning. “A shrink.”
“A professional.”
“Why do you seem to think there’s so much wrong with me?” I ask.
Ethan exhales, probably willing himself to be patient. “It’s not that I t
hink there’s anything wrong with you, per se. I think that the situation with Mom is messed up.”
Messed up. The expression makes it sound like there are just a few things out of place here and there, which might describe most days with Mom, but not all of them. Certainly not the day I came home from school to find her passed out under our apartment building’s bushes, topless. There were two neighborhood kids standing over her, taking pictures with their cell phones.
Messed up doesn’t really do justice to the red spots of rage and humiliation that blinded me before I could scream at the kids to leave her alone and get the hell out of there. Messed up doesn’t really cover the way the screaming didn’t stop when I put my hands underneath her armpits and dragged her out of there—facedown, no less, so no one else would see her breasts. And messed up doesn’t really describe how neighbors just shrugged it off, no one bothering to help us, because they’d been there, seen it, done it with the drunk lady and her daughter. Neither does messed up really convey the way I couldn’t stop screaming, not even when we were back in the apartment, or the rawness at the back of my throat afterward that kept me hoarse for two days. Which was just as well, I suppose, because once my mom came to, I had no idea what to say to her.
How does Ethan expect me to talk to a stranger about that kind of stuff? I couldn’t—wouldn’t—because that’s not how problems get fixed in my world. You just go through it. You deal with it. You survive one day and move on to the next.
“I’m not sure about the shrink thing,” I say finally. “It’s probably not for me.”
Ethan nods. “Fair enough. But think about it, okay? It’s been a rough year for you. And Mom. Speaking of which, how’s Mom been handling the Uncle Pete thing?”
The black hole in my heart yawns. I struggle to close it, to neutralize the gravitational pull of my pain. Uncle Pete was my mom’s brother, and he died this past winter by freezing to death in his car. He was a drug addict, and homeless, and we never talked to him much. But Mom took his death hard, blaming herself for it, telling me—and anyone else who would listen—that she should have done more to save him.