by Bromberg, K
Chapter 8
Sam
Instead of getting the sleep I needed, I sat on the couch listening to Darla, Trevor and Joe fight. Joe had come back from orientation and their days together before he left for law school were numbered.
If I could have been anywhere else I would have been. I needed to get a decent night’s sleep, or at least part of a night’s sleep. I thought I’d have some success napping from about seven to ten before heading off for one of my gigs. No such luck.
“What do you mean you don’t like my Spam?” Darla snapped.
“It’s disgusting,” Joe said.
“It’s not disgusting. It tastes perfectly fine. You mix it in with eggs and Velveeta and it’s good.”
“That’s the problem, Spam and Velveeta in the same meal.” Joe shuddered. “Ugh.”
“What would you prefer I make?” she asked in a sickly voice. “Would you like lavender-massaged chicken with a side of fingerling potatoes, a pound of which costs more than I used to make in an hour?”
Joe grabbed the Spam can of the counter. “This is glutamate hell. You’re feeding us preservative hell,” he insisted, running his finger over the list of ingredients that was half the can long. “Do you realize that some of these things are chemicals that are used in biological warfare? And Velveeta? Are you kidding me? You might as well mix candle wax with cheese.”
“You’re just looking for a reason to pick a fight,” Trevor said, glaring at Joe.
I knew what he was thinking: don’t blow it, this is our last chance for sex before you leave. And Joe knew it, too. But he was so wracked with fear and anxiety over going to Penn, leaving Trevor and Darla, and finally getting away from his parents’ geographical grasp, that he needed to distract himself.
He chose to do that by picking a fight with the people he knew would never reject him.
I didn’t understand the strategy, but my own approach, complete withdrawal, hadn’t exactly turned out well.
“This is what I know,” she said, “this is what I eat. This is my food. This is my comfort food. I like canned meat. I like Velveeta. I like macaroni and cheese that comes in a box and not the kind that is found at the hot foods counter at Whole Foods. I like the flavor and the taste of these things, and if you don’t, you don’t have to eat it.”
“But I have to smell it.” Joe’s voice told me he was going in for the kill. I recognized this tactic from his debate cross examinations.
He was looking for any hint of blood.
“I’m so sorry to offend your sensitive olfactory sensibilities,” she said, clanging the frying pan down on the stove. “Make your own goddamn dinner.”
And with that, she stormed out, Trevor following. He turned back for a moment to glare at Joe and mouth, What the fuck?
Being on the outside, I could see the clash. Joe and Trevor came from families with moms who acted like a McDonald’s french fry was napalm. If Darla ever met Joe’s mom, and that hadn’t happened yet, (a point of contention for the three of them) she’d probably die of the spot from being in such close proximity to someone who ate MSG.
Deprived of the fight he’d been going for, Joe stood there comically for minute, staring at the slammed bedroom door. He looked at me, shook his head and then hung it, walking slowly into their bedroom after them.
I laughed. Joe was going to pay for that. Five minutes later, it turned out I was right. Man, I wish I had been wrong because I heard Darla giggle and then say “there’s nothing wrong with pegging, honey,” and then Joe’s muted response.
I crammed orange foam earplugs into my ears and slammed the pillow over my head. There really was no hope for a nap, but I tried.
You would think that living with a group of people who were part of a band that had regular nighttime gigs would offer plenty of opportunities to sleep during the days, but more often than not, sleep eluded me. The band was only part of our schedule.
Four people in and out of a small apartment where my bed was the couch meant sleeping was only possible if I poured concrete in my ears.
Even silence wouldn’t have let me sleep while Amy still hadn’t responded to my texts. Two days of radio silence.
In the bigger scheme of things two days wasn’t that bad. But other than saying Amy wasn’t feeling well, and then telling me to mind my own business, Darla was uncharacteristically quiet about Amy, not giving me anything.
Stalking Amy’s apartment was an option, but one that left a sour taste in my mouth. Definitely not my style.
My style was giving up, though. I wasn’t going to do that again.
Insanity is thinking you can do the same thing over and over and get a different result, they say.
This time I wasn’t giving up. I was giving her space.
If Amy needed some time and space then I’d give it to her. If she was pulling my heart strings to jerk me around as revenge for what happened four years ago, that was (a little bit) fine as well.
As long as we ended up together.
Amy
Blocking out the world and watching the old Pride and Prejudice—the one with Colin Firth—was so much easier than facing that large, round, yellow thing in the sky. Dr. Alex had told me to go home and rest and heal, and I was finally doing exactly that.
And if he hadn’t actually prescribed a pint of Late Night Snack ice cream, I could still consider it medicine. Ben & Jerry’s should be tax deductible.
No one with a soul would disagree.
I watched Elizabeth watching Mr. Darcy come back from his swim in the pond. There is something so perfect about the way he stops short, how her breath catches—and how neither can actually reveal their feelings. Their true passion.
That deep, inner yearning that makes you fuck a phone.
Sam had texted and called and I wanted to answer but—Elizabeth! Mr. Darcy! Hellloooo?
Sam could wait. Why deal with messy real-life relationships when I could watch other people squirm in fictional ones?
So. Much. Easier to ignore real people for now. I was already ignoring Mom and Evan. Ignoring everyone was my answer.
Besides. Sam had made me wait for years. He could survive a couple of days.
In a poignant moment of incredible unfairness, I’d found my sex toys within thirty minutes of coming home from seeing Evan. I reached into a box labeled “Bathroom” for my hot water bottle, so I could curl up in bed and sleep off those two days. When I lifted the red, rubber bottle there they were, lined up so elegantly, little soldiers ready to be assigned to their duty stations. Clit. Ass. Vagina. Nipple.
You guys were AWOL when I needed you most, I thought, cursing them.
My phone rang. Mom again. I shut the phone off and dug in to my ice cream. How many times could she try? A rancid smell permeated the room as I bent over from the futon and put my phone on the little end table on the floor.
Oh. That was me.
When was my last shower?
The pint was nearly empty, so I finished it off and jumped in the shower, dispatching with the necessities quickly. Clean clothes helped lend a fresher perspective to what I hoped would be a better day than yesterday.
Time for a cup of coffee and some—
Bang bang bang.
That wasn’t just any knock. Someone was seriously wailing on my door. I jumped up.
“Amy! I know you’re in there!”
“Mom?”
Sam
She isn’t answering my texts.
My finger hovered over the send button after typing that. How much should I share with Darla?
I closed my eyes and hit Send anyhow, not caring any more. Sick with worry and feeling stupid, I just needed to know what the hell was going on.
Darla wrote back, I’m sure she’s just busy.
Busy. Yeah. K, thanks, I tapped, hit send, and then shoved my phone in my pocket. We’re all busy, aren’t we? Me and Amy.
Busy.
If I went to her apartment and knocked and found her there, would she freak? C
rossing that line—from being ignored electronically to showing up in the flesh—seemed both perfectly normal and freakishly obsessive. In an age where people texted pictures of their lunch fries and checked in at every store or movie theater, having Amy go “dead” online and by phone like this was creepy.
I didn’t want to up the creep factor, though, by intruding where I wasn’t wanted.
Wanting, though, is exactly what she said she wanted. Mixed signals were never fun. Amy was sending them like SETI trying to reach extraterrestrial life.
Creepy to go to Amy’s apartment and check on her? I texted Darla.
No answer.
My whole body went tense and my hands tapped as much as they could on every surface possible in the apartment. I’d already spent hours banging out a new song. Drums, coffee, long walks and cold showers—done, done, done and more than done.
Only one option left.
Amy.
Amy
“What are you doing here?” I sputtered as Mom barged right in like she owned the place.
“I didn’t raise you to live like this,” she scolded, picking up an empty Chinese food container and throwing it in the garbage. “I knew something was wrong.” A quick look around made it clear I wasn’t exactly Martha Fucking Stewart, but neither was the apartment at Hoarders level.
Yet.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
She jolted slightly and I couldn’t blame her. My voice made me jump out of my own skin. I hadn’t spoken aloud, other that talking to the movies I’d watched, in two days.
I sounded like gravel and bitterness.
“Then why aren’t you answering my calls?”
“Because Evan is an asshole and you let him destroy my car.”
Her eyes narrowed. Mom looked like an older version of me, with about the same kind of body, and smaller, more almond-shaped, eyes. Her forehead was higher and her hair perfectly straight. Dad had been gone for so long I only knew him from photographs. I had a touch of him in my face, but Evan had most of his genes.
In more ways than one.
Dad was an addict. That was yet another of Mom’s dirty little secrets, another I’d kept all these years. He’d skipped out when I was five and Evan was one and no one knew where he was.
“Don’t talk about Evan like that. He’s struggling, and we all have our struggles.” She made a sniffing noise and hoisted her heavy purse up her shoulder. “You should understand that.”
Empty words. A few days ago I’d have jumped like a Golden retriever puppy all over that one and at least politely aimed to please, but this time cold silence hung in the air like an angry fog.
“Are you here to talk about who is repairing my car?” That was all she’d get out of me.
She blinked and made a nervous sound in her throat. Her arms wrapped around her waist as if she were chilled and it made me realize how human she was. Mom was just as prone to mistakes and misjudgments as anyone else. Being forty-seven didn’t make her wiser or give her a better handle on life.
It just made her older.
“I’ll see to the car. Evan was hit by some crazy driver who—”
“They’re always crazy drivers. Ever notice that? All his bosses are assholes, he never has more than two beers, and he has you completely snowed, Mom.”
She hadn’t come here to check on me.
She’d come here to force me to comply with her lie.
Because that lie was her reality. Some part of her needed to believe that Evan really was good and clean and trying so hard. That he wasn’t like our Dad.
That she wasn’t a failure as a parent.
That she didn’t have a giant blind spot when it came to people like them.
All this time I’d thought I could be a goody-two-shoes balance that would neutralize what Evan did, but Mom didn’t want that.
At all.
“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” she said.
“You don’t have to, Mom,” I answered. You aren’t capable.
Taking that as surrender, she went in for the kill. “I have more than enough on my plate, you know, with Evan and these trumped up drug felony charges—”
“Felony?” Holy shit. What had Evan actually done?
“Yes—can you believe it? All he did was give his friend a ride to a soccer game and the kid left a baggie of something in the car, and then...”
Evan had been dealing. That was obvious.
And now that he was eighteen, the legal system would treat him very differently. The panic in Mom had sharpened, and I understood.
Her baby had met an immutable force.
The law.
No hoverparenting, no called-in favors, no cajoling or wheedling or pleading would get Evan out of what Evan had gotten in to.
Two wide eyes stared as I realized I’d zoned out. Expectation painted Mom’s face, the thick eyeliner around her eyes so ragged. Heavy.
Old.
“You understand?” she asked.
“Understand?”
Irritation infused her words. “You weren’t listening! Amy, you need to take out more loans for the rest of grad school. I need to use the fund for Evan’s defense team.”
“Defense team.” Now I just repeated her last words.
“Yes. If we hire the right lawyers, I think we can plead this down or beat it. But with a $10,000 retainer and then more billable hours, this will....”
The fund.
We called our college money “the fund.” Mom had saved an equal amount for each of us, and I’d gotten decent scholarships for undergrad, leaving a lot of money in mine—making my library science master’s degree possible.
“Wait—what’s left of my half of the fund is for my grad school,” I said slowly, the implication of what she was saying making my feet numb.
“I thought you’d say that,” she said with a prissy expression. “You can’t be selfish like this. Not now. I can’t be asked to choose between my kids.”
Oh, you chose long ago.
“And that’s the only money that we have for Evan’s defense. His original half isn’t enough to cover the basic lawyer’s fee—we need more.”
Practically speaking, my first semester was covered. A tightness in my chest bloomed and closed, a well-worn pattern that meant my body was going into fight or flight mode. Living away from home had made the physical sensation go away, but Mom’s proximity and the monumental unfairness of this rooted itself in my body and made me unable to speak.
Because this really was unspeakable.
Knock knock knock.
We both flinched and stared at the door. A rush of outrage took me out of my frozen contemplation and I found my voice. “You brought Evan here?”
“No!” she protested.
Knock knock knock.
I crossed the room and looked through the peephole.
Two very familiar green eyes topped with copper waves stood inches away.
Sam
Nerves almost got the better of me. Slipping in her apartment building might be a bad idea, but I didn’t want to have any artificial barriers. If she was home and didn’t want to see me, fine—she could just say it to my face.
The alternative—that she was hurt, sick, or something had gone wrong—worried me much more. The knock on her door held more urgency than I’d intended, and the shuffle of sounds near the thick wooden threshold filled me with relief.
Amy was there and alive.
Exhaling, I ran through what I’d intended to say as the click of locks unlocking rattled out into the hallway. All the words disappeared when I saw her, her hair darker than normal and slightly wet, her grey yoga pants curving in the right places and a pink v-neck showing enough breast to make my mind shove relief away and make room for far more carnal thoughts.
“Hi,” I said.
“Um, hi.” She was nervous and twitchy, in an uncomfortable way, but it had nothing to do with me.
“Is someone there, Amy?” an older woman asked, her v
oice tight and angry.
“Hang on, Mom.” Amy stepped into the hall and shut the door behind her, walking into my space so fast I couldn’t move quickly enough, our bodies brushing against each other. She smelled like vanilla and coconut. Good enough to eat.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called or texted,” she whispered, avoiding eye contact. “It’s just—”
The door swung open, sending a rush of air over us, making the ends of Amy’s hair fly up. “Who’s this?” her mom demanded, peering at me, a polite smile on her face. She looked at me, then at Amy, whose cheeks burned.
You couldn’t have cut the tension with a knife.
You’d have needed a chainsaw.
“I’m Sam, “I answered, reaching out to shake my hand. “Sam Hinton.”
Our palms met and she pumped once, then halted, her polite smile turning into a quizzical frown. “Sam. The same Sam who...”
Letting go of my hand, she turned to Amy and raised her eyebrows.
Amy nodded and reached out to take my hand, her fingers interlacing with mine. A grounded warmth flooded me, arms tensing out of a protective instinct, my body moving unconsciously closer to Amy. This had not been a mistake. Coming here was the right thing to do.
“Same Sam,” Amy said, smiling at her mother with such ferocious enthusiasm she might have been auditioning for Mean Girls.
“I see. Amy, can I have a minute with you?”
“No,” Amy said sweetly, the incongruity jarring, looking at her mother with eyes I’d seen only on women betrayed. Back in college if a woman looked at a guy like that, his shit would be out on the common with beer poured all over it within days.
What did it mean to have a woman look at her own mother like this?
Amy’s fingers tightened around mine and I realized she was unhinged. Whatever conversation had taken place before I arrived, it created a crazy dynamic.
I happened to come along at the exact wrong moment.
My specialty: lousy timing.
“Amy. Be reasonable,” her mom cajoled.
My neck tightened and shoulders straightened, so involuntary I couldn’t have stopped it if you’d tried to force me. I knew that voice.