by Alison Ryan
“What is The Side Pocket?” I ask.
“It’s a local bar. Not in the best area. Near Pritchett. She took your grandma’s truck since hers is busted. Told us she was goin’ to get some groceries but never came back.”
I am seething but I try my best not to show it, “Well. Isn’t that just great.”
Aunt Shayla gives me a look of sympathy, “I know, girl. I wish there was more I could say. Your mom is a mystery to us all.”
I hug her, glad she will be staying with Grandma. I walk past rooms with beeping machines and nurses walking around briskly in tennis shoes into the waiting area. It’s empty for now, something I am grateful for. My head hurts and I don’t feel like making small talk with anyone. I wish I had brought my Walkman with me, just to get out of my head for a little while.
Where the hell is my mother? What woman goes to a bar every night while their mother sits at home, dying? Why hasn’t she spoken to me since we arrived? All the secrets in my life swirl in my head. I am tired of never knowing what is truly going on. My grandma should be sitting here with her daughter. My mother should be comforting her own daughter, letting her know she is in control, that she can take care of this. All I want to know is that somehow we will be okay, that in the end there is a purpose and a reason to all of this. But I have none of that. I never have. My life revolves around the whims of a person who is undone by an invisible something.
I decide that sleep is not what I need tonight.
Mrs. Holt picks me up with McKenna in tow.
“Thanks, Mrs. Holt,” I say as I move my way into the backseat of her Camry.
“Of course, sweetheart. How’s Grandma?” Mrs. Holt turns to me, concern marking her beautiful features. McKenna gets her looks from her mother. The car is filled with her fragrance. It’s vanilla.
“She’s ok. They’re doing a CT scan to make sure she doesn’t have a concussion. I can’t stay with her because of my age.” I say this as she turns around to put the car in reverse.
“Well, honey. I am just so sorry about all of this. I’ll be praying all is ok. She is never far from my mind.”
As we pull out of the hospital parking lot I feel McKenna’s hand on top of mine. She squeezes me and I look at her with a half-smile.
“Is Rhiannon coming over tonight by any chance?” I whisper to her as Mrs. Holt turns up the radio to listen to the same country station I listened to in Aunt Shayla’s car.
“Yeah, she has to watch her little brothers until her mom gets home but she was going to come by later to spend the night. Why?”
“Well. Is she driving?”
11
Rhiannon and Big Rhoda crept up the Holts’ driveway around midnight.
“Sorry, I’m so late.” She apologized as she quietly shut her door. “My mom got home way later than she told me. Shocker, I know.”
McKenna and I are sitting on the porch, ready to put my plan into action.
“Do you know where a place called The Side Pocket is?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s usually where I find one of my parents on their bad nights. Why?” Rhiannon looks back and forth between McKenna and I.
“My grandma had a really bad fall and my mom isn’t around so I want to go find her and embarrass the shit out of her.”
Rhiannon without missing a beat turns around towards the car and waves us over, “Well, here we go, then. This will probably turn out really bad, you’re aware of that?”
“That’s my hope.”
The Side Pocket was almost twenty minutes from mine and McKenna’s houses. We had to go up a stretch of deserted highway. The windows were down and the cicadas sang to us as we drove. Rhiannon didn’t bother putting any music on. McKenna sat in the front passenger seat, one foot out the open window.
“So what are we going to do once we’re there?” McKenna asked. “Will they even let us in?”
“They’ll let us in. We’ll just say we’re there to get her mom.” Rhiannon glanced back at me in the rearview mirror. “I’ve done it before for both my parents. If she’s drunk enough they’ll be happy to oblige.”
I look between the driver and passenger’s seats to the road ahead of us. Big Rhoda’s headlights show me nothing but potholed pavement and darkness. My mind races with what I’m going to do once we’re at the bar.
When I was thirteen years old and we had first moved to Las Vegas, I somehow got into Mom’s work one night. We lived in a weekly apartment across the street from the strip club she worked. I was bored and didn’t feel like doing my pre-algebra homework. So I walked across the street just to see how far I could get. In the back, a door was cracked open, and one of the dancers was having a cigarette, the billowy smoke floating through the crisp desert air.
“Honey, you can’t come in.” She was probably thirty or so. It was hard for me to tell how old women were once they weren’t teenagers anymore. Anyone from twenty to thirty looked about the same to me. This woman wore a G-string and shiny patent leather boots. Curiously, she had a Van Halen t-shirt on. It was a cold night.
“My mom works here,” I said. “I just want to see her.”
“Yeah?” I had her attention. “Who’s your mom?”
“Naomi McCurtis.”
The woman looked me up and down, “I don’t see Naomi in you. I didn’t know she had a daughter. You look like your daddy?”
I shifted uncomfortably, “I don’t know.”
“Oh.” The woman seemed to get it. “Well, Naomi is on stage now. Want to wait here until she’s done? You have to leave after that. Kids aren’t really supposed to be in the dressing room. Or anywhere here, really.” She threw the cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with the toe of her boot.
“Okay, yes. Thanks.” I don’t know why I stayed. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, that I didn’t want to see where my mom worked and what she did. I knew once it was seen it couldn’t be unseen. But somehow I couldn’t stop once I had started.
Strangely, the dressing room reminded me of the locker room at school. There were benches and lockers. But the women here weren’t like the middle school girls that were always glancing around as they tried to get dressed under a towel. These women walked around topless, their voices loud and crass. They were all Amazonian in their sky high heels and all gave me side-eyes but no one said anything.
I could hear the thump of bass in the room next to me. It was a familiar song I’d heard on the radio sometimes, before my mom would change the station.
“I hate this song.” She would say. I never thought much of it.
I looked around to see if anyone was paying attention to me. The woman who had been smoking was gone and the others were on the other side of the lockers, laughing over something.
I walked over to the door that led to the adjoining room. As soon as I walked out I could smell beer. The music became much louder and I realized there was a small crowd of people gathered in the corner. Once my eyes adjusted to the dark and all the neon I could make out a stage and a figure dancing on it.
It was my mother.
I wasn’t stupid, I knew what she did. But to see it up close was another thing entirely. She wore nothing save for a thong and those same teetering heels the women in the locker room were in. She was bent over and a long silver pole from floor to ceiling was wedged between her legs. My stomach fell. The music thumped, thumped, thumped. Oily men put dollar bills on the stage and every now and then she would get down on her knees and grab them. Her face was smiling but I knew my mother and her eyes weren’t smiling at all. She looked like a robot, going through the motions.
I immediately turned around and went back to the dressing room. The smoking woman saw me and I could hear her calling after me as I went straight out the back door from which I came and back to the place we pretended was our home.
“Here it is.” Rhiannon slowly turned Big Rhoda into a gravel parking lot full of trucks and Camaros. “You sure you want to do this? This isn’t Applebees, Addie. Doing th
is is risky.”
“Not doing this is even more risky. My mother has to know I can and will find her. She has to know I’m serious.” I unbuckled my seatbelt, “I’m also totally fine with doing this on my own. I don’t want to make y’all uncomfortable.”
“Psssh!” McKenna swings open the door, “I’m down. We can add this to the adventure log.”
“You have an adventure log?” Rhiannon and I both said at the same time.
“No. I just kind of made that up two seconds ago. But if this goes well, I’m starting one! And this will make a hell of a first entry.”
The parking lot crunched underneath our Converse as we walked towards the door of The Side Pocket. Music blared from speakers outside. The laughter and noise of people echoed into the night. Now that I was going this, I was definitely apprehensive. But then I thought of Grandma in her room the other night, alone. Mom was supposed to be helping out. Why else were we here? My anger gave me a trajectory and I started walking faster.
“Addie, hold up!” McKenna and Rhiannon trailed behind me as I marched forward to the front door of The Side Pocket.
As it swung open under my push, the music became deafening. People were pressed up against the bar and waitresses in short denim skirts danced around the intoxicated patrons with their trays full of shot glasses and beer bottles. On one side there were three or four pool tables, with the sound of cue balls smacking against one another ringing in my ears. Immediately I heard a high pitched cackle coming from the far corner away from the tables.
That was definitely my mother.
“LAST CALL IN ONE HOUR!” a bartender shouted as he grabbed four bottles out of a cooler. Just as he looked up I turned away and started walking purposefully toward the cackle.
“That’s Mike, he knows me. I’ll tell him what’s going on.” Rhiannon went the other way to negotiate our entrance. McKenna followed at a clip behind me.
The place was incredibly crowded. I pushed my way through clammy, sweaty people, some of them staring at McKenna and me with looks I recognized from the men at the gas station a few days ago. I didn’t feel so well.
My mother sat on a stool, her hair piled up on her head, her cheeks rosy from her drunkenness. Two men flanked her, both laughing heartily as she leaned over. The whole world could see right down her shirt. Part of me wanted to walk away. She was so embarrassing and I didn’t want McKenna and Rhiannon to see her like this. I was mortified. How could she sit there laughing and happy with the current life situation we were in?
Before I could make a decision, our eyes met. At first she squinted, like maybe I looked like her daughter but wasn’t. Then came the slow, bombed realization that I was definitely her daughter and I was definitely in a bar. She was as naked to me now as she had been that night long ago at the strip club.
“Addison Grace McCurtis, what the hell are you doing here? Girl, I will jerk a knot in your damn tail!” She stumbled as she stood. One of the slick men next to her caught her arm.
“I’ve come to collect you.” My voice was cold. “Your mother is in the hospital.”
Her eyes locked with mine. I could see fear in them, which was a relief. Maybe there was a heart in there somewhere.
“Is she okay?” she asked, sitting back down but missing the stool and landing on her ass.
“She’s doing better than you are. At least when she fell it wasn’t because she was a tanked-up nightmare. God, you’re pathetic.”
McKenna stood silently next to me. My mother stood up and brought her face inches from my own.
“Who the fuck do you think you are? Huh? Coming in here and embarrassing me like this. I’m the damn grown up, Addison. You’re a child who needs to learn some respect. Don’t you ever talk to me like that.”
“You need to learn to have some respect before you earn it. Especially for yourself.”
Smack! Her hand hit me hard and quick. My cheek burned and my right eye watered. Suddenly the bar was silent. Rhiannon was next to me with Mike the bartender.
“Naomi, you need to get on home.” Mike said. “It’s late. The girls will take you.”
“My daughter can’t even drive and I don’t know who these bitches are.” She slurred as she sat back down on the stool. “I’m hanging out with my friends. Getting some things off my mind.”
“I am not asking you, Naomi. I’m telling you. Go home with your daughter.” Mike stepped forward, “I don’t want to have to force you. Just go. Your family needs you.”
As she continued to bicker back and forth with the bartender I walked through a crowd of people while holding my cheek, all of them staring at me. I refused to make eye contact with any of them. I just kept moving towards the door as quickly as I could. Whether my mother followed or not was no longer something I gave a damn about.
Once we were all back in Big Rhoda, my mother immediately passed out in the back next to McKenna. Her unattractive snores echoed around us.
“Jesus.” I turned the radio on and Red Hot Chili Peppers improved the ambiance immediately as Rhiannon pulled out onto the highway.
“So that sucked.” Rhiannon said. There was nothing more true.
“Did either of your parents ever do that to you? Hit you in front of a crowd of people?”
Rhiannon nodded, “Oh yeah. CPS had to come and we went and lived with my aunt for a while, which sadly, wasn’t much of an improvement. It only happened a couple times but it’s one of those things that just has to happen once for you to realize how much you never want to end up like that in your whole life.”
I nodded. “McKenna, you still want to be my friend?” I called to the back.
McKenna poked her head between our seats. “Sorry, did you ask me a question? I’ve got a drunk woman snoring like a yeti back here. Do yetis snore? Is that even a good metaphor?”
Rhiannon snort laughed but my face turned red.
“Sorry, Addie. Just trying to make you smile. Too soon, huh?” McKenna patted my head. “And of course I still want to be your friend. If this is the worst thing in your closet of crazy then you’re doing just fine. Besides, you haven’t met Rhiannon’s family yet.”
“Hey! I resent that very true statement!” Rhiannon pretended to be indignant and then started to laugh. “Yeah, Addie, my family makes yours look like the Cosbys.”
“You mean the Huxtables,” McKenna retorted, “It’s the Cosby Show but their last name is Huxtable.”
Rhiannon rolled her eyes, “And at least you’re not a know-it-all dork like this one right here. Huxtable, Cosby, whatever!”
12
Once we got home it took us about five minutes to get my mother to wake up enough just to get her out of the car. She immediately collapsed on the ground muttering, “Just leave me here.”
I was all ready to do that, but Rhiannon said we at least needed to get her inside. It took all three of us to pick up the dead, drunk, weight of my mother and finally get her to the couch in our living room.
As we stepped back onto my Grandma’s porch I unexpectedly burst into tears that turned into hyperventilating sobs. I squatted next to one of the porch columns and shook with grief. This was too much for me to handle. I was barely capable of handling Grandma’s prognosis, my mother being a fuck up on top of it all was too much. Why couldn’t she be like Mrs. Holt? Or any other mother of every other friend I ever had? I felt so completely alone. The only person who truly cared about my welfare above her own was lying in a hospital bed with cancer and a possible concussion.
I must have been babbling out loud because suddenly Rhiannon and McKenna were on the porch floor next to me, their hands on my back.
“You’re not alone, Addie.” McKenna said. “We’re here, girl. We might not know what to say or do but we will always show up.”
I looked up at McKenna. Rhiannon was nodding next to me.
“You don’t want to flee? I mean, this is all so ugly. When things get like this I’ve been shown it’s always just best to leave.” I shook with despondency, “
That’s what she always does. She can’t handle things when they’re hard so we always just run away. And I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much.”
“We’re Rut girls,” Rhiannon said, standing. “We don’t leave one another. Let’s go to McKenna’s and sleep this shitty night off.”
Aunt Shayla came by the house the next morning just as I was walking back from McKenna’s. Sleep had been fitful and I was still exhausted. As we both walked into the house we could see my mother hadn’t moved from the position we had left her in on the couch. Her snores assured us she was still alive.
“What’s that all about?” Aunt Shayla asked, “You found her? I don’t see the truck here.”
“Yeah we had to leave it there. She was way too hammered to drive. I told the bartender we’d go pick it up today.” I sat down on the stairs, “Aunt Shayla, she’s so messed up. I don’t know why she even came here. She isn’t helping at all.”
My aunt shifted her hefty body and sat in Grandma’s recliner across from my mom. She didn’t say anything for a little while. I wondered if she wished we had stayed in Las Vegas. Sometimes I wondered if my great-aunt even liked me. She was a difficult person to read.
“Well, she’s definitely not helping. I didn’t expect her to be Florence Nightingale,” Aunt Shayla stared daggers of disapproval at my mother, “but, damn. We have enough to focus on. But that’s your momma. She’s gotta have attention and drama in her life in order to feel alive.” Aunt Shayla slowly rocked the recliner. “But that’s the way it’s always been.”
This is the thing about mothers. Even when you know they’re embarrassing and even when you don’t like them, it’s difficult to hear other people talk bad about them. I knew Aunt Shayla was angry, and rightfully so. But I wished she wouldn’t bash her in front of me. It made no sense, I know. I had said much worse things about her in the last twelve hours. But I could do that. I was her daughter. I had earned the right.