by Rosa Sophia
I raise my hand to tell the group how terrified I was as a child, how I worried I would wake up one day and my mother would be dead.
But she’s not dead. She’s alive, she’s well. I think she might even be happy.
Things could turn around, things could change.
Maybe I could be happy too.
***
After I get home from work, Jenny decides she wants to go out for dinner. She has to head back to Florida in a few days. I tell her work has been steady, but I’m living paycheck to paycheck like I’ve been doing most of my life. She doesn’t listen, insisting she’ll pay for me.
We fight the traffic until we reach the Sunset Grille in Duck, where we’re given a table by a window overlooking Currituck Sound. The view is beautiful, but the menu makes me cringe; I don’t have the money for this.
“Will you quit looking at prices?” Jenny glares at me. “I told you I’d pay.”
“I know, I just don’t feel comfortable about that.”
“I don’t know why. It’s not as if I’ve ever had to worry about money.” She glances down at the menu before jutting her head forward and snapping, “And don’t order the cheapest thing here just because you feel guilty!”
“You know me too well,” I mumble, deciding on a salmon dish before handing the menu back to the waiter. “So, how’ve things been back in Florida?”
“Fine. The usual.” Jenny sips her water. “Choir practice started up again, but work is as boring as ever. This has been a nice vacation. It’s gone too fast.”
“Isn’t that the nature of vacations?”
“Pretty much.” A flicker of concern crosses her eyes. “You talked to your mom lately?”
“Yeah. She seems like she’s doing all right.”
“Good.” Jenny’s soft lips curve upward. “I saw her at the grocery store just before I left. But she did say she’s having difficulty getting on disability.”
“Yeah, her health isn’t what it used to be.”
“Even so, she seems happy. I mean…really happy. Maybe you two just had to get away from each other.”
“I’m sure it helps that she moved out of the place I grew up in. She has a smaller apartment now, and things are going great for her.”
As we eat, I can’t shake the feeling that my mother seems better off without me. I’m drawn back to my childhood, when everything seemed to be my fault. If only I were a better daughter, maybe she would be happier.
I know this is wrong, but like a recurring nightmare, the sensation never dissipates. The food seems tasteless all of a sudden, but I keep eating, my thoughts drawing me back to Juno Beach.
Chapter 5
Eleven years ago
Brett’s best friend Woody slides the bottle of whiskey across the counter. It’s my first taste.
Ever since the monster touched me, I’ve been changing, and now I want this drink. I want it to burn my insides until there’s nothing left.
My first drink leaves me disgusted with the taste and with myself.
A second will fix that.
Woody chuckles, straightening his Star Trek t-shirt. He’s one of the guys from Brett’s Dungeons and Dragons club at school.
I down my next shot, grimacing, and it seems to get easier with each one.
I don’t even notice, I don’t realize the connection.
My mother, the way she drinks. The way I’m drinking now. It doesn’t occur to me, probably for the same reasons I never think about how the walls in our apartment are painted white.
They just are.
***
Allen catches my eye during history class.
We start passing notes to each other, and with each day I find myself more and more fascinated by him.
I discover I’m thinking about him when I’m with Brett, and I don’t even mean to.
One evening I sit in the armchair across from my mother, who pours another glass of wine and lights a cigarette. The room is brimming with smoke, and I cough, wishing she would stop. Wishing she would consider me.
“Mom, can’t you—”
“Oh, quit it.” Agitated, she smoothes her short brown hair. Her eye shadow, smeared over her cheek, reminds me of a bruise. “You said you wanted to talk to me about something.” She sets aside the paperback she was reading—Destiny’s Wish by Marissa Dobson—and leans against the couch cushions.
“Yeah, um. It’s about Brett. Sort of.”
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, it’s just that…well, I like this other guy.” I fumble, linking my fingers together, shuffling my feet. “What should I do, Mom?”
She blows smoke from her mouth, her eyes red-rimmed. “Go out with him.”
“Who, Brett?”
“No. This other guy.”
“Allen? But—”
“Well, you like him, don’t you, sweetheart?”
“Yeah, Mom.”
“Then go out with him.”
“But wouldn’t that be lying? I mean, wouldn’t that be cheating?”
Mom shrugs. “Depends on your perspective.”
When she blows another puff of smoke across the room, I cough again, gasping, “Mom, do you have to smoke in the apartment?”
She rises, headed for the bathroom. “Yes, I do.” She takes a deep drag, then blows the smoke directly into my face. “Deal with it.”
Chapter 6
I’m approached by the girl whose father tried to hang himself, even though I don’t want to talk to anyone.
I didn’t come to ACA to make friends. I came here to get better, to learn about what might be going on in my own head. But it seems as if when I hide, when I separate myself from others, that’s when people come to me. When I least want them to.
“Hi.” She’s wearing a sweater that’s three sizes too large, and her tiny frame appears as if it’s being swallowed by a mass of gray knit. Her light brown hair hangs around her face like a messy blanket, and I resist the urge to brush it away from her bright eyes.
“Hi. I’m Nina,” I say reluctantly.
“I’m Roberta.” She thrusts her small hand forward, and I take it. Her palm is cool and soft. Her hand slips away just as quickly, and she pushes it into the pocket of her enormous sweater.
“Aren’t you a little too warm in that?” I ask. Around us, the others in the group mingle after the meeting.
She shrugs a small shoulder, a barely perceptible movement hidden by this amoebic garment. “Well, sometimes, but Dad loves to knit. I can’t turn him down. And anyway, it’s cozy.”
“Your dad made that?”
“Mmm-hmm. After Dad almost died, he said he needed more of a reason to live, so when he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and quit drinking, he started knitting. I know it sounds weird.” She giggles, and her laugh is melodic—soothing.
“I don’t know, I think it sounds awesome.” I think of Mom, and I wonder if she’d ever take up knitting. “My mom just reads novels. You know, romance.”
“Romance? Yuck. Then again, what do I know about romance?”
“I thought I knew something about romance once,” I muse.
“Really? Me, too. Once.” She laughs again. “Maybe we have something to talk about.”
“Maybe we do.”
All of a sudden, I know I’ve made a friend. A friend who hides behind a great big knitted sweater. What do I hide behind?
***
When Jenny heads back down south, I don’t feel as alone as I thought I would. It was nice having her around, but the day after she leaves I call Roberta to see if she’d like to get together. She isn’t a runner, but maybe we could walk on the beach. Get lunch or something.
I am lonely. I don’t know anyone in North Carolina except my friend who got me the job in the bookstore, and she just moved.
When I first arrived in Kill Devil Hills, Cheryl’s face lit up, her cheeks turning rosy as she talked excitedly. “We’re going to have so much fun! We’ll hang out every week, go running, and—”
<
br /> And nothing.
That was okay, she was busy, until she got engaged and left town. Roberta wasn’t busy.
Shit, am I really that starved for friendship? I think of all the people I knew in Florida, and suddenly I find myself missing it.
I even miss the plump, red-haired woman I used to see on the beach in the mornings in Juno, the one who carried a big trash bag and picked up after all the tourists. She would bitch at me for ten minutes or so, then carry on, picking up plastic cups, straws, and cigarette butts on her long walk toward wherever it was she was headed—probably as far as Jupiter Inlet, for all I knew.
When Roberta answers the phone, we chat for a bit and then decide to have lunch together on Saturday.
We meet at a place near the bookstore where I work, and have greasy omelets. I blanch at the single piece of roast beef mixed into my home fries. I never liked roast beef.
Roberta’s not wearing her giant gray sweater today; it’s too warm outside. But she does have a crimson knitted scarf around her neck, a very lightweight one that complements her black short-sleeved shirt.
“Your dad make that for you?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah.” She tucks the scarf away so it doesn’t get into the syrup she’s poured on her eggs.
“I noticed you always have something knitted with you.” I nod to the waitress, who tops off my coffee.
“I do. It seems to make Dad feel good, like he’s accomplishing something.” She meets my gaze, her blue eyes suddenly dulled by sadness. “He’s almost like a child sometimes. He shows me the latest things he’s knitted, and sometimes I think he’s…well, it’s as if he’s looking for my approval or something.”
I drift away for a moment, see my mother sitting there in the living room, her small body pressed against the large cushions of the couch. I hear her whispering in my mind, Do you love me, Nina? You don’t love me, you don’t really love me…I know you don’t.
I look up at Roberta, and I don’t have to say anything.
We understand each other. And it’s in that moment that we become like sisters, connected by an unbreakable bond—a comprehension that requires no explanation.
“Do you like to read?” she asks, and the question seems so silly, so simplistic, until I remind myself that not everyone grew up like I did, hiding away in a library and burying my nose in books to escape the chaos around me.
I nod.
“Wanna come with me to this festival tomorrow? It’ll be a blast. There’s going to be a lot of big-name authors there, book talks, that kind of thing.”
“Sure.”
A particular writer comes to mind, and I wonder what he’s doing. What he’s thinking.
I wonder if he’s thinking of me.
Chapter 7
Eleven years ago
“I think something’s wrong with me.” I down another shot; I’m starting to like this stuff. I think of my mother drinking too much and passing out in the evenings, but the thought is just as fleeting as the little voice in the back of my head that says, enough is enough.
“What’s wrong with you?” Woody leans across the island in the kitchen at his apartment. He’s older than Brett, older than me, and maybe it’s my imagination, but I see amusement in his eyes. As if he’s looking at me and thinking, I was messed up like her once, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“I…can’t…I can’t tell you.”
“Why? Is it about Brett?” He straightens. He knows, I can tell.
“Sort of.”
“Listen, Nina. I like you, you’re a nice girl. Brett’s my best friend, but you’re becoming like a little sister to me.” He reaches out and tousles my hair, making me giggle. “You can tell me anything.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay. Woody, I…I like someone else. And I feel terrible,” I add hurriedly. “I don’t want to hurt Brett. But I feel like I’m going to. Things with him are…they’re too good. He’s so nice to me, I don’t want to hurt him.” I hold my breath, as if I’m afraid Woody is going to insult me, jeer at me. He doesn’t. Instead, he pours me another shot.
“Just be honest with him.” He splashes the amber colored liquid into his own glass and swishes it around.
“How do you…how do you know if you’re being honest with someone?” It sounds silly when I say it out loud, but it occurs to me I’m not sure what honesty is, or what lying is. I wonder if what I’ve learned over the years is really truthful, or if I’ve been lying to myself all along, creating a carefully constructed house of cards that could tumble with the slightest breeze.
Woody looks at me with quiet concentration, as if he’s trying to figure me out. Finally, he says, “Aw, come on, Nina. You already know the answer to that.”
I don’t say anything else about it. We just drink, watch a movie, forget reality for a while.
But I don’t think I know the answers. They all escape me.
I run away from the chaos, but I’m really surrounded by it. And the answers are little dust motes that shimmer under the sunlight, but I cannot catch them. Every time I reach out, they dance away in the air, and I’m left empty-handed.
Empty inside. Just like I always am when I return home to a quiet house in the evenings, when everything is dark and my mother is fast asleep.
***
I don’t know if I can be faithful to a man.
But I know what commitment is. Commitment is sitting beside Mom while she weeps, rubbing her back as she clutches her gut, complaining of pain. Commitment is bringing her a glass of water when she’s too sick to stand. Commitment is listening to her talk about her mother, who has been dead for ten years and never told Mom she loved her, and listening to her talk about her father who violated her body when she was too little to know what faithful meant.
“Mom?” I call out into the darkness and my voice echoes around the street, coming back to me. Always coming back.
“Leave me alone.”
I see her staggering in the parking lot in her flannel pajamas. She’s walking toward the narrow street. Houses are dark, the apartment complexes next door are quiet.
She does this all the time, wanders off. I go after her. I’m her daughter, I have to take care of her. It’s my job.
“Mom, please. Come back inside.”
“No.”
I follow her, walk quickly to catch up. I step alongside her, try to take her hand, but she bats me away. “Leave me alone, don’t treat me like a child!” she hisses.
“Mom, it’s ten o’clock, I have to go to school in the morning. Please, can’t we go back inside?”
“You can. I don’t want to.” Her words are ground out between browned, rotten teeth, evidence of her predilection for sweets. The yellowed street lamps cast an odd glow on her bony face, which appears even more gaunt in this moment, punctuated by grief and wrinkles made deeper by years of drinking and smoking.
I follow closely.
“Look at the stars.” She peers upward, stumbling, and I hold out my arm in case she falls. She doesn’t—not this time.
“They are beautiful,” I agree, just wishing we could go back inside.
It’s a stunning, warm night, but all I can think about is my bed and how tired I am.
“We all come from the stars. And then we return to them. Did you know that?” She looks at me, her thin, chapped lips slipping open as if she is thirsty.
“No, Mom. I didn’t know that.”
“I do. I know where I come from.” A deep, shuddering breath escapes her, and she slumps as if she doesn’t want to go on. As if she wants to die right there in the street.
That thought hits home, and a sharp ache passes through me. I don’t want Mom to die. I must help her, protect her. Save her.
“Mom, we need to go back to the house.”
I can hear sirens in Lake Park, so close, so constant. All of a sudden I don’t want anyone to see us, me in my sweat pants and tank top, Mom in her pajamas, and both of us barefoot.
“Come on.” I put my arm around her, but she swats at me.
“Stop it, leave me alone, I don’t want to go inside!”
“Mom, you have to.”
“No!” she shouts.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see lights flicker on in a house across the street, and I hope no one has heard us. My heart hammers and I take deep, heavy breaths, sensing panic rising inside me, ready to boil over, and I just want Mom back in the apartment and me in my bed.
Please God, give me that much, just give me that…
“Damn it, Nina, you’re always trying to push me around.”
“Mom, I only want you safe.”
“Quit it!”
“Mom, please…”
Eventually she begins toddling back toward the building of her own free will. I walk behind her, praying that each step leads us closer to home.
Sometimes I think I’m trying to control her movements with my thoughts.
Maybe I am.
Someone has to take care of her. What would she do without me?
As I lie down in bed, I think about faithfulness again. I think about Brett, and Allen. I think about Mom, and my commitment to her.
That’s the only commitment I know. And for now, that’s the only one that matters.
Chapter 8
I know things are going well for him. Better than that.
When we’d first met, Wes told me he had a literary agent who was trying to sell his novel. His dreams came to fruition. I haven’t talked to him much since I left Florida—a year and a half ago—but I hear about him, mainly at the bookstore.
A big publisher picked up his novel, and a novella he’d written was published by a small press. The novella is in the bookstore where I work, and the new fiction shelf is right across from the front counter. Which means I see that book every day. Every hour. Every moment I stand at the counter and stare ahead.