Watch Over Me

by Tara Sivec

  I immediately shut off my mind from the memories. I can't think about her. If I do, I'll fall back down the rabbit hole and never be able to surface. I know it's not healthy to use this on/off switch as much as I do, but it's the only way I know how to survive. The only way I can wake up each day, put one foot in front of the other, and keep going.

  With a sigh, I flip on the light switch in the kitchen and get to work preparing the dough for the next day's cookies and the batter for the cupcakes. While I mix and stir, I think about the holiday coming up next month and wonder if my dad, on his fifth trip to rehab, will still be sober when that date rolls around. I feel a moment of shame when I remember that day at the cemetery. After ten months of therapy, I still can't say the words out loud to anyone. My therapist tries over and over to get me to relive that day's events, but I refuse. Instead, we talk about coping, living your life to the fullest, and how to overcome the grief that can swallow you whole. I put on a good show of acting like I'm "cured" and that I'm ready to join the land of the living. I prove to her that I'm better and that thoughts of death and darkness don't consume my every thought anymore.

  She will never be privy to my dreams at night, though, and she will never know how many times I still wonder if I would be happier away from this place, away from the pain and despair of trying to go on with my life when the most important person in my world is no longer there to help me.

  As I crack an egg into the big mixing bowl, the faint, jagged scar on the inside of my left wrist gives me pause and brings the memories I hate to think about, but ones that will never leave me alone, swirling to the surface.

  "Hi-ya mmo-om," I slurred as I plopped down on top of the dirt below her headstone and crisscrossed my legs. The handful of pills I swallowed with a sip of coffee on the drive over were starting to work their magic. I felt like I was floating on a cloud, and the thoughts in my head were fuzzy.

  I stared at the small, oval circle below her name that held a picture of her at my cousin's wedding the previous October. I hated headstones that had pictures on them. I hated that this was the one we picked out. And of course by "we" I meant me. My father was too busy taste-testing different flavors of vodka that day to pick out anything, and two hours after the funeral, our extended families all went back to the comfort of their own homes and forgot about the grieving people they left behind to suffer and struggle. They went back to their happy homes and their happy lives, and life just went on for them. The moment they walked out of the church, the cloud of death lifted from their shoulders, and they were able to fold up the sadness and put it in a back pocket and never think about it again while we were stuck trying to figure out how to cope and breathe again.

  "Happy Mother'sssssday," I mumbled as I popped the lid off of her cup of hazelnut coffee and poured it slowly into the dirt in front of me, watching it quickly disappear into the dry ground.

  When the cup was empty, I put the lid back on and set it down next to me, reaching for the bag with the bagel in it. I had to widen my eyes and blink a few times to get the bag to come into focus so I could open it and remove the cinnamon crunch bagel. I set it down right on top of the headstone and let out a huge sigh.

  "I can't do this without you. I hate that you're not here. I hate it so much," I said to the picture on the headstone, trying in vain to keep the tears at bay. They rolled down my cheeks on their own volition and dropped onto my knees.

  I picked at a few stray blades of grass that had popped up around the disturbed earth and began breaking little pieces off while the tears continued to fall.

  "What am I supposed to do without you? How the hell am I supposed to do this?" I cried angrily.

  I fiddled with a few more pieces of grass and wiped my nose on the back of my hand, the words on the headstone and my mother's picture beginning to blur and swirl in front of my eyes.

  "I don't want to be here without you. I don't know how…I don't know how to live without you here."

  A soft breeze blew through the trees, and I lifted my face up toward the sky and let it caress me, hoping that maybe it was a sign from her that she wanted me to do this, that she wanted me with her. With my eyes still closed, I reached into the front pocket of my shorts and removed the razor, lightly running my thumb back and forth over the top, thinking about how sleepy I was and how easy it would be to just curl up on top of the dirt and take a nap.

  Without opening my eyes, I brought the razor to the inside of my wrist and made the first cut.

  "How are things with your father?" Dr. Thompson asks.

  Her office is bright and airy, and at the start of every meeting, she apologizes and then gets up to shut the blinds, covering the window above her desk so the sun doesn't blind either of us. She always makes a joke about wanting to blind me so I'll forget I'm in a doctor's office and it will trick me into opening up to her more. Every time she says it I wonder if she knew my mother in another life and stole all of her best lines.

  I always sit on the buttery soft, white leather couch with my shoes off and my legs curled up underneath me, and Dr. Thompson sits directly across from me in a dark blue recliner. She says it's more comfortable and inviting to talk this way, and she hopes it makes people feel like they're just chatting in her living room. Her office is warm and inviting, which I guess is typical of a therapist's office. I wouldn't know since she's the only one I've ever been to. I always find myself staring at a Thomas Kinkaid painting of a snowy cottage scene on Christmas Eve that hangs on the wall. My parents used to have the exact same painting above their fireplace until my dad removed all traces of my mother the day after she died. I wonder where that painting is now.

  "Okay I guess. He always manages to call at the most inopportune times and then gets frustrated when I don't have time to talk. He has no clue how busy I am or that everything doesn't revolve around his stupid drinking problem."

  I say this quickly and try to gloss over the importance of those words and what they do to me when I speak them aloud. Dr. Thompson isn't going to be fooled though.

  "This is his fifth time in rehab, correct?"

  I nod in response, the reality of just how different my life is from a year and a half ago glaringly obvious.

  "How do you feel about the fact that he wasn't able to stay sober all those times when he got out?" she asks as she folds her hands in her lap on top of the pad of paper with the pencil sticking up between her fingers.

  "Hurt. Sad. Pissed off."

  "Your mother's death hit him hard," she states.

  "It hit both of us hard. It was unexpected and it shouldn't have happened like it did. I needed him and he wasn't there for me."

  Dr. Thompson unclasps her hands and writes a few things on the paper.

  "Do you blame your father for your suicide attempt?"

  I cringe when she says the word suicide. I don't want to be placed in this category of weak people who have nothing left to live for and feel like it's their only way out. After all of the soul searching I've been forced to do since that day at the cemetery, I've realized I don't really want to die. I just want to feel something other than sadness. Even though I question God every day, and no longer believe in half the things I was taught growing up in the Catholic Church, one thing still remains with me. If I took my own life, heaven—if there even is such a place—is not where I would wind up.

  "Yes. No. I don't know, maybe." I sigh irritably in response to her question. "He crumbled when she died. Just...faded away. It was like I lost both parents in one day. It was too much."

  "I think you have every right to be disappointed in him for his actions. You just need to remember that he's grieving too. He lost his wife and he'll never get her back," Dr. Thompson says softly.

  "And I lost my mother. At least he can move on someday and find another wife. I'll never have another mom."

  "Meg, can you grab me a dozen of the devil's food cupcakes with the cream cheese frosting from the back, please?" I yell to Snow's other employee as she disappears thr
ough the swinging door behind the counter while I ring up a customer.

  Meg's twenty-two, bubbly, and outgoing—the complete opposite as me, but she reminds me so much of my old self that I was instantly drawn to her. I had met her during my mandatory seventy-two hour psych evaluation at Metro Hospital. I still will never understand how someone like her wound up in a place like a psych ward, which just shows how out of touch I was with my own mental health. We met just outside the hospital two hours after I woke up from my sedation when I was permitted five minutes of supervised fresh air.

  "White is obviously not a good color for us. My name's Meg."

  She pointed to the white gauze secured around my wrist and then held up her own wrapped arm.

  "We're like the Wonder Twins. Powers activate!"

  She bumped her wrist against my own and made the sound of an explosion when she moved hers away then plopped down on the bench next to me.

  "Too bad they don't have pink to match my slippers," she said dejectedly as we both look down at the fuzzy bunny slippers on her feet.

  Meg and I were in separate therapy groups while we were there, so I never found out what the cause of her suicide attempt was, which I guess is a good thing because that means she doesn't know my secrets either. It's easy to be friends with someone who doesn't know about the demons chasing you.

  On the day I was released, I saw Meg again outside smoking a cigarette while I waited for a taxi to take me home. I bummed one off of her, even though I don't smoke, because she looked like she needed some company.

  As I took a drag of my first cigarette, the smoke filled my lungs too quickly and I began heaving and coughing so hard I thought I would throw up.

  "Jesus, did Bill Clinton teach you nothing? Don't inhale, dude," Meg said with a laugh as she took the cigarette from my hand and pitched it over into the grass.

  "You heading out of here today, too?" she asked when I finally managed to stop hacking up a lung.

  "Yep. Just got my walking papers and a long list of therapists I'm supposed to call as soon as I get home," I told her as she grabbed the list from my hands and skimmed through it.

  "Judgmental, too old, chronic halitosis, don't know that one, this one tried to get in my pants…oooooh that one is nice," Meg stated as she read each name on my list. "I think the Wonder Twins should pick that one."

  I leaned over her shoulder to see who she pointed to.

  "I went to her a few years ago but had to stop when my dad's insurance changed. Now that I have no job and no real direction in life, the state pays for my insurance so I can go to whomever I want," she stated matter-of-factly.

  "Do you need a job?"

  Meg shrugged as she folded up the page of therapist names and handed it back to me. "Money would be nice. I used to work at a daycare, but they sent me an email yesterday telling me that I'm no longer good role model material for the children. Um, hello? Suicidal here! That could have totally pushed me over the edge and they don't even care," Meg said dramatically.

  I didn't even hesitate before offering her a job at the bakery. Meg makes me smile and she doesn't try to pry into my life. Aside from the day she told me she lost her job, neither one of us has shared anything more personal with each other. Out of necessity, I had to tell her my father was "occupied elsewhere" since technically he still owns the business. She doesn't know that this is his fifth time in rehab or the cause for his spiral out of control. She doesn't know that I planned on graduating from high school, fully intent on going to college to become a writer, and I hate my father a little more each day for forcing me to take on the responsibilities that should have been his instead of doing something about my own dreams and aspirations. Meg knows enough to not ask questions. It's the reason why we get along so well.

  Weekdays after school lets out are always busy days at Snow's. The best part about the shop is that it's enjoyed by young and old alike. A group of high school students can be seen sharing a table with a married couple from the retirement home around the corner. A mother and her newborn baby often chat and receive advice from a couple whose son just went off to college. Today is a teacher in-service day at the high school and it seems like the entire four grade levels of students and teachers have been shuffling in and out of the shop since we opened at seven o'clock this morning.

  Since I was a freshman in high school when my mother opened the store, I had made the place a teenage hangout from day one. My friends thought it was the best thing in the world that my mom would give us free snacks after school every day and let us pretend we were cool by allowing us a cup of coffee to sip on in the mornings. My mom was always known as the "cool" parent with all my friends, even before she owned the bakery and the lure of chocolate and cake seduced every teenager within a mile radius. My mom was the type of parent who would let me have parties every weekend after the Friday night football games and allowed my friends to drink a few beers as long as they gave her their car keys and spent the night on the living room floor. My mom was the one who never gave me a curfew and, instead, trusted me to make the right decisions and call her if I was ever in trouble. My friends all envied me, but I never fully appreciated how awesome she was until I got older.

  "Hey, who's the hottie that keeps checking you out?" Meg asks as she comes back out of the kitchen with a tray of cupcakes.

  I hand a customer her change and nonchalantly glance over to the corner of the shop where Meg is looking. My eyes connect with the most piercing blue eyes I've ever seen, and a tingle runs down my spine. His eyes never leave mine—not to check out the rest of me like most guys do, nor to look anywhere else around the room even though chaos surrounds him. I watch his eyes soften and the corner of his mouth start to turn up into a smile. I feel butterflies in my stomach that I haven't felt in forever and quickly break the eye contact when I see that he has no intention of doing so. His blatant staring makes me uncomfortable, like he's trying to see inside me and find out what makes me tick. I don't need anyone knowing that much about me, especially a stranger.

  "I have no idea. Never seen him before," I tell her, the lie slipping easily off my tongue. He's a stranger, that much is true, but I've seen him before. I've seen him sit at the same table in the corner of the room once a week for the past few months. I've heard the deep melodic notes of his voice when he orders a chocolate scone and black coffee— two sugars—each and every time he's here. I don't know how I remember what his order is. We have hundreds of customers and it's not like I remember all of their orders. The first day he came into the shop, I felt a jolt of recognition when he came up to the counter, a sense of déjà vu, like I had seen this guy before in another time. I waited for him to say something about knowing me from somewhere as I rang up his order, but he never did. He thanked me with a nod of his head and a smile, never saying more to me than what his order was each week.

  "Well, whoever he is, he's yummy. And I've caught him checking you out the entire hour he's been here nursing that coffee," Meg says as she pushes the tray of cupcakes into the display case under the front counter.

  "He can look all he wants as long as he keeps his distance."

  Meg turns to face me and places her hands on either side of my face. "How do you expect to get laid if you make everyone keep their distance?" she asks with mock seriousness.

  "Um, maybe by not expecting to get laid. I barely have time to shave my legs or take a shower anymore. I'm not in the market for a guy."

  The store phone rings, saving me from having yet another discussion with Meg on why I don't have a boyfriend.

  Even if I did want someone in my life just to scratch an itch, they would always want more. More information, more history, more answers to questions I wouldn't give— more of me that I stopped giving away a year and a half ago.

  Meg answers the phone and immediately hands the receiver out to me. "It's your dad."

  The tone in her voice is sympathetic. My dad always seems to call when she's around, and she's gotten her fill of the one-sided
conversations, enough to know that my father and I aren't on the best terms.

  "Hey, hon," my dad greets happily when I take the phone. "How are things?"

  "Busy," I state curtly.

  "Any big party orders coming up this week?" he asks, attempting to make conversation.

  "Nope."

  I can tell my one-word answers frustrate him by the huge sigh he lets out on his end of the line. He spends day in and day out learning how to communicate with his loved ones and how to live a healthy life. He expects me to jump right on board with him and pour out my heart, but I've done that before and got nothing in return. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…

  "Yeah, I'm busy here too. Just got out of group session. I've got some homework to do tonight. Need to make a list of all the people I've wronged while I was using. I think I'll probably need more than one night," he says with a laugh.

  I don't return his amusement.

  I'm not a cruel person. I was one-hundred-percent supportive of my father the first time he went into rehab. He would call several times a day, whenever he had a free minute, and I encouraged him and asked questions and supported his sobriety every way I could. I was proud of him for making the decision that he needed help and for being the one to make that difficult phone call asking for it. I believed every single word that came out of his mouth during those thirty days. I believed he was sorry, that he loved me, that he knew he screwed up, and that he would do everything in his power to remain sober and be a solid support system for me. I visited him every single Saturday during Family Day, the one day a week when they were allowed visitors, and I participated in every "Smack Down Sunday" where loved ones got to tell their addict just how hurt they were by their actions. After his third, failed stint in rehab, my support went out the window with his sobriety.