Follow Me Down

by Sherri Smith

  * * *

  Casey’s Bar didn’t open until noon, so I had time to kill. I knew I should go and see my mother, squeeze her rigid hand and tell her Lucas was missing. After two loops around the care home, I couldn’t bring myself to go in, so I drove aimlessly, stopping in front of the place we grew up in. A blocky black-and-white house in a third-rate neighborhood, with a postage-stamp-sized lot that Mimi always had trouble paying the mortgage on. The house where Lucas and I were partners in hiding our mom’s car keys, watering down her liquor bottles, unclamping her hand from her glass when she passed out. We spent hours on the pullout couch watching late-night horror movies we were too young for and falling into nervous, twitchy sleeps when Mimi went out on her “long dates,” the ones that meant she wouldn’t be back until the following day. Whoever lived there now took better care of it. It’d been repainted. The Christmas lights and rosy-cheeked plastic Santa that was strapped to the chimney all year round had been taken down. The window that had been my room now had Hello Kitty decals covering it.

  * * *

  My mother lived in a group home called the LightHouse for Women. After the accident, she went into a coma for two weeks. When she woke up, she had a spotty memory and the intellect of a nine-year-old. From the street, it was a cheery yellow three-story house; closer up, it showed signs of neglect. An eave had come loose and was gently swaying in the wind. The paint was peeling, and the mailbox, overstuffed with flyers, had dropped from where it’d been fastened into the cedar siding next to the door and just left where it’d landed on the porch floor. Its dictum was Semi-independent Living. A third of my income went there.

  I rang the bell, and a loud, deep chime sounded. I could feel the start of a migraine kneading its claws up my temples. I hadn’t had a migraine in years. Not since I was a teenager. The inside door was open, and I could see into the main-floor living room, where a woman sat on an antique sofa with a blanket wrapped around her, picking her scalp and staring at the TV. She was not going to get up and let me in.

  Finally a body waddled out of the dark, cavernous hallway.

  “I’m here to see Miranda Haas,” I said through the screen.

  The nurse, short limbed and moonfaced, looked me over. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

  It was an accusation. This must be their chance to shame family members who rarely visited, who needed to ask guiltily, what room their relative was in.

  “I’m her daughter. I live out of town.”

  The nurse looked as if she were going to argue; I was sure my mother never mentioned me either. “We’ve had people from the media come by, and of course it was very upsetting for your mother.”

  “Media? What media?” Please say that this was still confined to some reporter from the Wayoata Sun. That this hasn’t reached the outside world.

  “Oh, there’s been a few, but after the first one, we haven’t let anyone try to interview your mother. Don’t need a repeat of that.”

  “So she knows, then, what my brother has been accused of?” I was relieved I wouldn’t have to be the one to tell her. I didn’t ask what “that” meant.

  “We try to upset her as little as possible.” She waved me inside, and we walked through the kitchen to the back door. “She’s in the garden. Your brother, he was so good to his mother. He visited twice a week, every week. Like clockwork. I just don’t know what went wrong with him.”

  I passed the scalp-picker, who had started heating up some microwave popcorn and stood watching it, fully transfixed.

  “She is having a very good day. That’s good for you.” The nurse ushered me out the door.

  The garden, it turned out, was a patch of overgrown weeds and brush at the end of the backyard. A woman, who had to be my mother because she was the only one in the garden, was dressed in a floral-printed nightgown despite the heat, high-necked and long-sleeved, puffy around the shoulders. Her hair was parted down the middle and braided, the color of bleached straw. She tilted her head to one side, then the other. She looked like a life-sized pioneer doll. I hadn’t seen her in five years and felt paralyzed.

  In the kitchen, the microwave beeped, and I could overhear the nurse arguing that more cooking time didn’t need to be added. “Remember how it burns?” she kept repeating.

  “Hello, Mimi. It’s me, Mia.” I took a shaky step forward. We only ever called her by her nickname, never Mom, and no, the cutesy similarity of our names was not lost on me. There are pictures of us in matching pastel dresses, her red-painted fingernails resting on my shoulder like a garden rake. A sort of half grimace, half smile on my face as Mimi beamed over me. I can say with certainty that she loved me most before the age of eight, when I could still be cajoled into being her prop and sitting through her primping sessions. She’d pull and curl my hair, paint my toes, all to match her. She’d tell me how much she loved to show me off, but I was naturally shy. I had trouble maintaining eye contact and hated attention. Even if I tried to be the extroverted, giggly little girl Mimi wanted, I somehow did it wrong. Lucas was the easy one because he brought her all the attention she craved. He wasn’t difficult because she didn’t expect him to be someone else. Hockey hero, outgoing, and popular. Or maybe this was too kind. Maybe it had nothing to do with who he was, he was easier simply because Mimi needed male attention so desperately, so persistently, that her son could fill in the dry spells. Something I could never do for her. Even when I tried to be the extroverted, giggly little girl Mimi wanted, I somehow did it wrong. “Well, that was embarrassing,” she’d inevitably announce, as we drove home from lunch with her coworkers or from a friend’s daughter’s bridal shower. Once I figured out I’d never please her, I tried hard to stop trying. Still, there was always something in me that craved that one last appraising glance after she’d dressed me up and decided yes, I was adorable and lovable, and she’d lift me off the bathroom counter, hand me her tissue to kiss off my excess lipstick, our lip marks side by side, and we’d be on our way.

  “Oh, good, you’re here. Come see, come see.” My mother’s voice was still husky from years of booze and cigarettes, and as I got closer, she still had the same familiar scent of mint and cigarette smoke from my childhood. I was surprised she was allowed to smoke. It seemed wrong somehow, though it was perfectly legal.

  “Very good.” I wasn’t lying. The picture she was painting was disturbingly good. A rougher, darker version of the cluster of wildflowers before her. I could see it hanging on the wall of a trendy restaurant. She’d definitely improved.

  “It’s inspired by nature.” Her eyes were wide; she didn’t blink.

  “I can see that.” Mimi only started painting after her accident. I remembered she’d taken art classes for a time in the evenings, but then she was always taking a class. Cooking, Spanish, woodworking—another way she trawled for men. The class was a success or a failure based on whether she “graduated” with a new love interest, not whether she could actually cook, speak Spanish, or cut a piece of plywood straight. She’d have been the perfect plucky, chick-lit kind of movie protagonist if she hadn’t been so prone to leaving two children at home unattended. “Do you know who I am?”

  She let out a laugh, which sounded suddenly adult. “Of course I do.” She turned around and looked at me. Not looked, but examined. “Look how dry your hands are.” I glanced down at my hands; they did have that chalky dryness to them that came with handling pills and paper. I had an aversion to lotion from years of watching Mimi lotion herself up after bathing, her skimpy robe falling open; the clapping moist sound was so porny. The fragrances, so cheap and off-putting. I’d say Mimi had developed an artist’s eye for details to notice my semichapped hands, but she’d always spoken freely about my body as if I had no idea what I looked like unless she told me. “And your hair’s different.”

  “It is. I’ve let it grow long again.” It startled me. That she’d remember my hair was different. If she did really know who I was, and it seemed like she did, she didn’t come over and hug me or
even give me a chilly shoulder pat. Mimi was never affectionate with me, not sober, at least, and when she was drunk, it was a suffocating, simpering sort of affection. I’d go all steely until she got off me.

  “You should see Nurse Shelly’s hair. It’s so pretty.”

  How easily my mother could undo me. Even now. I should have been able to dismiss this, yet I still felt cut at my knees, and I didn’t even know what Nurse Shelly’s hair looked like. “I’ll be sure to take a look.” That was Mimi too. Always comparing me to others, better little girls and, I guess, women now. She’d bait you that way, get you to ask, But what’s wrong with my hair Mimi? and never give you an answer. The point wasn’t for me to fix my hair, but to understand that the world was full of people I was less than. Less pretty, smart, outgoing, bubbly, nice to be around. All cloaked as general statements. I’d bring her a math quiz with a shiny A-plus, and her response would be Oh, you should see so-and-so’s daughter. She’s so creative.

  She nodded. Turned back to her painting.

  I sat down on a wrought-iron bench covered with leafy detritus and watched my mother swirl her brush into a Styrofoam plate with blobs of different paints (the LightHouse only permitted acrylic or water paint, never oil due to a resident solvent sniffer.)

  Mimi made a dab here and there on the canvas, then cleaned her brush in a plastic cup of water.

  * * *

  So this was a good day. I watched her tilt her head, side to side. Quick, hummingbird movements. I felt a surge of pity, all spiky and tender, toward her. I decided I wasn’t going to say anything about Lucas. It seemed pointless. There had been a time I loved to tattle on him, tell her anything that could tip the scales toward me a little bit. Nothing had ever worked.

  I wanted to leave, but worried what the nurse might think of me.

  “When’s Lucas coming?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, I hope he gets here soon. I hate being alone.”

  “You’re not alone. I’m here with you, Mimi.”

  “Why are you here? You’re never here.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I would come more, but I live in Chicago now.”

  “Chicago? With your husband?” She said “husband” with a little giggle, like it was a slightly scandalous word.

  “I don’t have a husband.” I’d just broken it off with a blue-blooded finance lawyer who spent his childhood “summering” in swanky East Coast towns and whose smug smile just got smugger when he asked when he was going to get to visit my “neck of the woods.” I could tell he was envisioning pictures with kitschy monuments and ironically wearing mallard sweatshirts, while he sipped hot chocolate with my wholesome Minnesotan parents. (He could never keep North Dakota and Minnesota straight.) Lucas would have wanted to punch him out.

  I could have told my mother about my job. About my group of friends, other pharmacists who liked to get drinks on Friday nights and bitch about the number of people who firmly believe they’re allergic to generics and certain colored pills. Or how nice my apartment was in Chicago, all about the stainless-steel appliances. Or how I was still thumbing through MBA programs. How I started jogging. I could have told her how easy it was for me to be alone. Something she could never do.

  I could have given her answers to questions she’d never ask, now or before the accident. I could have forced a one-sided mother-daughter interaction, but I could never stomach trying to endear myself to her, the hopefulness in my own voice.

  * * *

  “Why not? Why don’t you have a husband?” Her voice went high into a schoolyard taunt, but was too rough to pull it off, so she sounded like a seven-year-old with bronchitis.

  “Haven’t met the right one yet.”

  She turned away from her canvas and faced me. “Maybe if you dressed nicer.” She started jabbing her paintbrush hard into the Styrofoam plate and walked toward me. The plate balanced on her fingertips. “I think you would look good in ruby red.”

  She bent in close, poised over me, so that I was nose to nose with her. Cracker dust dotted her lower lip. For a second I thought she was going to kiss me, and I tried hard not to shrink back. Her eyes narrowed, she made an uh-huh sound like she’d answered some question she’d posed in her mind, and reflexively my lips curled up. She knows. She knows that I did this to her. The truth was somewhere in her mind, scurrying around inside one of her brain’s many hollows, and one day she’d catch it. I was sure of it.

  Then Mimi’s hand snapped back fast, her eyes went dark, and she wielded the paintbrush like a maestro’s baton, bringing it down in a spatter of rusty-red slashes. Running the brush all over the front of my white V-neck.

  “Mimi, stop.” I stood up, forcing her to step back.

  “But you look so much better in red.” I caught her by the wrist as gently as I could, but this turned out to be wrong thing to do. She dropped her plate of paint upside down in the grass, pulled free, shrieked loud enough the birds scattered, and started to stab her brush over and over into her painting, tearing up the canvas. “Look at what you’ve made me do.”

  The nurse came running out. “Are you hurt?” She looked at my chest in horror.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s just paint.”

  The nurse turned her focus to Mimi, trying to calm her as I made a run for it back to my car.

  * * *

  Before I could even slip the key into the ignition, I ripped the red makeup bag out of the glove compartment. Unzipped it, turned it upside down, scattered the orange pill bottles on the passenger seat, and read the labels, quick as a savant. There was a little of everything, Xanax, Ativan, Valium, Adderall, Ambien, Percocet. Don’t think about it! Don’t think! Mouth watering, I uncapped the bottle that would best blur the edges. Closed my eyes and enjoyed the chalky, bitter taste rolling down my throat.

  I was a pill popper. Lately, a recovered pill popper. Though maybe “recovered” was a little too hopeful; I did bring the stash I could never force myself to flush. It started in college. A BZP at a party, and I was smooth-talking my way into a crowd much cooler than myself. A social crutch that self-perpetuated, and soon I needed an Adderall study buddy or an Ambien for a much-needed marathon sleep. More BZP.

  I became fluent in doctor shopping, knew all the symptoms for whatever ailment would get me my desired prescription. I pillaged medicine cabinets at parties. From there, it seemed a natural progression to a degree in pharmaceuticals.

  My first job was a residency at Northwestern Memorial (one of the top-ten highest-ranking hospitals in the US—impressed yet?). I did rounds, taking medication lists from patients. Tried to soothe them in their worst moments. I loved elderly patients the most. I was their purveyor of goods that had, up to this point, kept them alive. “You’ll get your heart medication right here at the hospital, OK? Be right back.” I had to think under pressure. Use my degree. Analyze dosage and interactions. I made recommendations to the physicians! I was trained in Code Blue!

  But of course a busy, overworked hospital dispensary was too tempting. A pill popper’s Shangri-la. I started double-dipping, just a pill here and there. The chief pharmacist, a cheery woman with big hair and a troubled son (code for drug addict), who referred to herself as my mentor, began to suspect what I was up to. She called me into her office one afternoon, a cubby of a room wallpapered with order forms, and asked me point-blank if I was stealing.

  “No, of course not!”

  “Can I check your pockets?”

  “No.”

  We spent a few minutes playing stare-down. If she checked my lab pocket, she’d find two tablets of Oxycontin. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have a scandal on her hands. She wouldn’t be questioned on her own ability to run things. “Why, Mia? You have so much promise. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

  The way she looked at me, with such stinging parental disappointment, I could feel myself shrink down to figurine size. I couldn’t answer. How did I describe the gnawing feeling that thrummed underneath everything
I did? How pills made it easier to live with myself, with the secret I was keeping? An offer was made that we both pretended was born solely out of her goodwill: if I went into a program and got help, she wouldn’t report me to the state licensing board. I agreed, and she shuffled me out of the hospital like a broken IV pole.

  * * *

  I finished the program. Moved into my new apartment. Found a new job as a glorified cashier with relentless, terrible hours. I started jogging, a hamster-wheel endeavor for that runner’s high that kept eluding me beyond a few fleeting gasps of well-being.

  So it had been two years since I’d pulled out my little red makeup bag. Two long years that I’d fought against my plentiful triggers.

  I should really throw the pill up before it starts to dissolve in my hungry stomach acid and works its way into my bloodstream. Before it makes my neurons fizz. I should zip the bag back up and toss it in the next Dumpster. I eyed the bag like it was a baited animal trap. Like the bag itself was the bad influence. I stuffed the pill bottles back inside. Ordered myself again to throw up.

  But I didn’t. I was looking forward to the fizz too much. Instead I put the makeup bag back inside the glove compartment. Flopped back against the headrest, closed my eyes for a second or two, then started to drive.

  Two long years.

  And now there I was.

  * * *

  Casey’s sports bar hadn’t changed. The sign was off, but at night it blinked neon red with the letter “Y” shaped like a long tongue licking the preceding letters. Inside was still the same old weathered wood, grungy, with an unreasonable number of flat-screen TVs. It was post lunchtime, but still fairly busy. The men looked bored; they ogled their phones as much as the waitresses, who wore knock-off Hooters uniforms. Green and gold, like oversized, sexed-up leprechauns.

  I sat in a booth, hoping to avoid seeing anyone I might know. A bulgy-eyed waitress named Brandy came to take my order, her green shorts pulled up too high over her bony hips. “Anyone else joining you?” She looked worried. Nice women don’t go to bars in Wayoata to drink alone. I had to be either slutty or a lesbian. Slutty was the far more acceptable option. I was glad I’d left three buttons undone on the Neiman Marcus denim top I’d changed into, just to throw them off. “Should I leave menus?”