by Jenny Lee
Her mother made her walk to Saks anyway, and as Kimmie trailed three steps behind Danielle on the walk to Fifth Avenue, she blamed Lolly for her mother’s inattention. Lolly was the queen of crying fits and had thrown so many tear-filled tantrums over the years that it had made their mother immune to Kimmie’s own suffering. Kimmie stoically refrained from pointing out that in her fifteen years on earth, she had probably only cried in front of her mom a handful of times, and most of them had been out of anger over losing a competition.
What really pissed Kimmie off, though, was her inability to control her crying. She had tried and tried, alone in her room in the dark of night when she couldn’t sleep any more. She’d command herself to “stop crying like a little bitch,” but it didn’t work. She knew she had every right to cry over what had happened to her at Jaylen’s party, because she was heartbroken over her experience with Vronsky. It was hard to know what stung the most, the fact that he didn’t share her feelings or that he had chosen someone else over her.
She had many hours to think about everything that had happened, and the only thing that had made her feel a little bit better was when she tried to step back and look at it all from a distance. Kimmie wasn’t blind. Anna had things she just couldn’t compete with. Anna’s beauty was exotic, far more exciting than her own fake blondeness; Anna was older and more sophisticated than she was; and, most importantly, Anna wasn’t available. Anna turned his head, and all guys love a chase. Plus, maybe competing with Anna’s well-regarded college boyfriend made the situation too tempting for Vronsky to pass up. Poor Kimmie didn’t stand a chance.
Sometimes Kimmie wanted Anna to suffer the same fate as she had, to be swiped left as soon as the next shiny object caught Vronsky’s attention. But sometimes she hoped that Anna was the girl who had the power to take him down once and for all. If anyone could do such a thing, surely it was the perfectly enviable Anna K.
Kimmie knew these scenarios were pure speculation. She had only seen Vronsky and Anna dancing together at the club for a few moments and hadn’t seen them make out. She had even asked her sister whether Vronsky and Anna had kissed at the club, but Lolly assured her they had not. Anna had a boyfriend and would never pull such a basic bitch move on the Greenwich OG. This didn’t renew Kimmie’s hope for her own chances with Vronsky, however. She had seen the way he was looking at Anna when they were dancing. He had never looked at Kimmie that way.
Kimmie was now at the point where she knew in her heart of hearts what she felt the most was self-loathing. How could she have fallen for Vronsky’s charms so easily? How could she have believed that he loved her the way she loved him?
After a stop at the SK-II cosmetics counter, Kimmie tried once again to convince her mom to let her go home so she could sulk the day away. But once again her mom stayed firm and refused. “You need to eat lunch. Maybe your iron is low. I want you to eat some red meat. Are you on your period? How heavy is your flow?” her mom asked in her normal voice like she was inquiring about the weather.
“Mom!” Kimmie’s bottom lip quivered in an effort not to cry yet again. “Could you be more embarrassing? As if my life isn’t hard enough right now without you talking about my cycle in the middle of Saks!”
As Kimmie picked at the steak salad her mother ordered for her, she found out what Dr. Becker had told her mother in private after Kimmie’s exam. Dr. Becker wrote her a note excusing her from school for the rest of the week, which made Kimmie breathe a huge sigh of relief. He thought that perhaps Kimmie hadn’t fully processed her career-ending injury, and it was likely her current depression was her way of dealing with it. Dr. Becker had prescribed rest and recommended a few top therapists that specialized in adolescents.
“He thinks I need to see a therapist?!” Kimmie asked, her eyes wide with horror.
“Stop being so melodramatic, Kimberly, half the girls at Spence are in therapy.” This was an underestimation on her mom’s part, but that was beside the point.
“Please, please, please, can we not talk about this here? Let’s just wait and see what my blood tests show. I mean, maybe I have leukemia and I’m dying. Then wouldn’t you feel bad for making me go to a shrink? I’m sick, Mom, this isn’t in my head!” Kimmie felt a little ashamed about saying such a thing, but whatever. She just felt so tired. Who knew you could feel so tired at the age of fifteen?
“Mom, are you even listening to me?” she whined when she noticed her mother was texting under the table. How many times had she heard her mother tell her and her sister how rude it was to be on your phone during meals, and now she was doing the same thing? Kimmie knew her mom was distracted by her own love life, and for a moment Kimmie indulged in the mean-spirited wish that her mother was still a sad-sack divorcée. Perhaps then she’d be more empathetic to her daughter’s plight.
At the time Kimmie was holding her water glass, in fact squeezing it … hard. All she remembered was a pop, which sounded like it was coming from behind her. The next thing she knew, water was all over her lap and her mother had jumped up so fast she nearly toppled their entire table over.
Kimmie didn’t feel any pain, but when Danielle grabbed her right hand and wrapped it in a napkin, the white cloth turned red incredibly fast. She was surrounded suddenly by the restaurant manager and two waiters, everyone freaking out over the amount of blood.
And just like that, Kimmie was back in Dr. Becker’s exam room. As she stared at her gauze-wrapped hand, Kimmie noted that she felt a little better, though better might not be the right word. She felt calmer somehow. No, that wasn’t it, either. What she felt was the momentary absence of misery, and the absence felt like nothing, which Kimmie more than welcomed.
Dr. Becker didn’t think stitches were necessary. Instead he used some surgical superglue to seal the deepest of the three cuts on her hand and put Band-Aids on the ones remaining. He sent her mom off to the waiting room. He wanted to talk to Kimmie alone. For the second time in two hours, Dr. Becker stared Kimmie down, peering at her over his fashionable rimless glasses. “Was this really an accident?” he asked softly. “Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth.”
“It was an accident. The glass was defective,” Kimmie said. “It’s not like I’m the female Hulk or anything. It just … happened, I swear.”
Dr. Becker didn’t respond right away and Kimmie panicked. “Oh god, do you think I’m crazy? I read how some people lose it after trying drugs once. Is that what’s happening to me?”
“Kimmie, you’re going to be fine,” Dr. Becker answered in a calm tone. “You’re a strong girl and I want you to know that given everything you told me earlier, what you’re experiencing is normal. Teenage girls have a lot of social pressure these days, and it’s perfectly healthy to have emotional outbursts and freak out. But when healthy crosses the line … that’s when the blood shows up. Self-harm is not okay.”
Kimmie met Dr. Becker’s eyes with her own deadly serious gaze. “It was an accident.”
“Okay, good. Accidents happen. I should know. Now, do you need another heart-shaped lollipop? Normally one is my limit, but it’s Valentine’s Day, so…” Dr. Becker smiled.
Kimmie didn’t throw away her LOVE lollipop this time. Instead she opened it in the elevator with her teeth, spitting out the cellophane wrapper onto the floor. She suddenly felt hungry, ravenous even. She had barely eaten her lunch, and in fact hadn’t eaten much of anything for days. But she felt different now. As soon as she put the lollipop in her mouth, Kimmie bit right into it, enjoying the crackling sound of the candy breaking apart, splintering between her teeth. She was so busy crunching the cherry-red candy, she hadn’t even noticed there were two men her father’s age in the elevator staring at her.
“What the fuck are you staring at?” Kimmie snapped. “Didn’t you hear, it’s goddamn Valentine’s Day!”
VI
Dustin’s brother and his mom hadn’t spoken in half a year. Dustin blamed Nicholas for this. Six months ago, their mom had come home from the movies to f
ind people in the apartment. Assuming she had just walked into a break-in, their mother rushed out and dialed 911 on her cell phone. But what his mom didn’t know was that the break-in was being led by her oldest son, Nicholas, who was in the process of removing the Samsung 4K fifty-five-inch TV from her bedroom wall with a power drill. It was the very same TV Nicholas had installed only two months prior for Mother’s Day. His mother had been so touched by Nicholas’s gift that she had broken her own rule and given him some money afterward, which Nicholas used to buy drugs, breaking his four-month sobriety streak. Basically, the whole thing was a Greek tragedy of epic proportions as far as Dustin was concerned.
Dustin had missed the whole thing because it was his week to stay at his father’s place downtown. But from what he’d heard, Nicholas and his friends bolted when they heard the sirens and ran right into their mother, who was standing in the hallway outside of her apartment. When she saw it was Nicholas, she grabbed him by the arm, but he roughly pulled away from her, causing her to knock her head into the wall and then fall.
To Dustin’s brother’s credit, he didn’t leave his mother on the floor and flee like his two loser friends did. (They were apprehended outside the building.) When the police entered the apartment ten minutes later, they found Nicholas sitting on the couch next to his mother, administering a bag of frozen peas to the bump on the back of her head. Nicholas had begged his mother to lie for him and tell the cops he had been asleep in his room when the two men broke into her apartment, but she had refused. “I’d throw myself in front of a bus for you, but I won’t lie.” Dustin knew that statement was true because it was one of the things that both Nicholas and his mother mentioned in their account of the night’s events.
By the time Dustin and his father arrived, his mom had taken a double dose of Valium, which had already started to kick in. She asked them to stay for the night, and neither could refuse upon seeing this shell-shocked and devastated woman.
That night provided the opportunity for the first heart-to-heart Dustin had ever had with his dad. Well, there had been one non-conversation about sex when Dustin was thirteen, but it consisted of his dad coming into his bedroom when he was studying and saying, “Your mom asked me to come over to have the sex talk with you. Do you need it?” Dustin responded in the negative, and his father exhibited visible relief. His father then informed his young son that he now had to hang out in his bedroom for the next half hour so he could report back to his ex-wife he’d done as he was told. Dustin and his dad watched Game of Thrones in Dustin’s room, both staring in awestruck silence at the lesbian scene in Lord Baelish’s brothel. It was one of the most awkward moments of his life.
This time, talking wasn’t any easier, but far more necessary. The two of them sat on opposite sides of his mother’s floral couch together, father and son sitting in the dark living room, lightless since the lamp had been broken in the chaos of the attempted robbery. There they discussed the elephant in the room that they had been ignoring for the past three years. They both admitted to feeling helpless over what to do and guilty because their inaction left Dustin’s mother to do the heavy lifting when it came to Nicholas’s drug problem. The issues had started the August before Dustin started high school, when he arrived home from robotics camp to find out that Nicholas had gotten busted with drugs at the Jewish summer camp where he had been working as a counselor. His parents sat Dustin down and told him that they’d checked Nicholas into rehab, though at the time they were both in the denial phase and didn’t believe their son was an actual addict, just “needed to get back on track.” But less than a year later the story changed completely and Dustin realized that things were escalating at an alarming rate.
Now it had been going on for almost four years with no sign of improvement and had become common knowledge, whispered about behind their backs: “Oh them? Well, the parents are divorced, Jewish, and get this, they have an adopted black son who is incredibly accomplished academically while the older son, the biological child, is a drug addict.”
Clearly tonight’s incident meant it was time for Nicholas to go to rehab again, his fourth go-around. Dustin told his dad that from what he had read online, twenty-eight-day rehab treatment programs weren’t effective for long-term results and to get better ones, a three-month stay was needed. His father agreed but explained the huge financial cost of rehab. Insurance paid for some, but the good places, the places where people in their family’s tax bracket sent their children to kick the habit, didn’t usually take insurance for any stay longer than a month. His father explained he had a new wife to consider, and that he’d happily spend his retirement savings if he believed for one second that his eldest son would come out of rehab and stay clean forever.
This was when Dustin heard his father cry for the first time. Thankfully he didn’t see it. Hearing his father cry as opposed to seeing it was far less uncomfortable for Dustin, but at the same time no less upsetting. Dustin wondered if it was the darkness that allowed them to talk so openly and honestly. Dustin took a deep breath and said he wanted to use his own college fund to pay for Nicholas to go to rehab for a three-month stint at a reputable facility. He had already received a partial scholarship to MIT and he could take on a loan for the rest. The money would be better spent getting his brother the help he needed.
“He tried to steal Mom’s TV,” Dustin began, feeling relieved to share the emotions that were filling him up. He had no choice but to say what was on his mind or risk exploding. “The same TV he gave her for Mother’s Day, which I know you paid for, too, Dad. Do you get how twisted that is? She cried that night in my room after Nicholas left, but they weren’t sad tears for once. They were happy ones. You should have seen her at dinner, so happy and smiley. She actually believed he was gonna stay clean. Like she really believed it. She kept saying to me: ‘He knows how to use a power drill; he didn’t even chip the paint; he used one of those leveling things just like a professional!’ She thought he could get a job at Best Buy and be one of those guys who installed TVs in people’s homes. This was what her happy mom tears were about. Think about it, Dad, if I came home and said I got a job at Best Buy, she’d take my head off with a soup spoon. She acted like she was prouder of Nicholas’s fictional employment at the Geek Squad than when MIT called me and basically told me I was accepted before I even applied.” Dustin’s voice rose with anguish, but he didn’t care and couldn’t stop his words anyway. “And to think that dumb ass then came here tonight to steal that very TV back? Who does that? There’s no way he didn’t understand what he was doing. I mean, Mom never stays out late, so he probably came here knowing he was going to get caught. If that’s not a cry for help, then I don’t know what is.”
It was then that Dustin cried in the dark, sitting two feet from his father. Later, the two of them searched through the kitchen looking for booze. They eventually found a bottle of Prosecco that his mom had under the kitchen sink, and father and son, neither of them big drinkers, gamely polished off the entire bottle together. They drank it warm at first but later added ice, cracking jokes like they were two Real Housewives sitting poolside on a hot summer day, and later tossing the bottle down the hallway trash chute to hide the evidence.
Dustin’s father said he’d call his accountant to figure out a plan about rehab for Nicholas. Dustin made his father swear to never tell his brother or mother they were using his college fund, because Dustin had brought this idea up before, after he’d learned that Nicholas’s own fund had been depleted, and his mother interrupted him before he even got his thought out and said that Dustin’s money was for him and him alone. And if he didn’t need it for his education then he could put it toward buying his first home. “Dad, don’t feel guilty about it. We both know it’s the right thing to do. Please, let me help.” His words brought tears to his dad’s eyes again, but neither of them acknowledged it.
The next morning Dustin woke up in his room to the smell of pancakes and coffee and the surreal noise of his parents laughing.
His mother was making a big breakfast to thank him and her ex-husband for staying the night. The three of them ate together, which was a rare occurrence since the divorce ten years prior, talking about everything except for the reason they now sat together. At the end of the meal, his mother announced that she needed a break from her oldest son. She didn’t want to know when Nicholas got out of jail. She didn’t want to know where he went afterward. Her heart was broken, and she needed time. Dustin and his father agreed to step up and take care of things, which had been their plan all along. Dustin wished they had been able to tell her their plan first, which would have probably alleviated at least some of her guilt in having to take a breather from mothering.
Months later over a different pancake breakfast at a diner in the Bronx, Dustin finally sacked up and asked his brother Nicholas if he was still clean despite having been ejected from rehab early. The amount of relief that he felt when his brother told him he was still hanging on was enormous. His exact words were, “Dude, you think I’d be working at a taco shop if I was using?” Dustin’s second question was whether Nicholas felt like he was ready to see their mom, and Nicholas said he’d be open to it if she was, but he needed Dustin to be there, too. Dustin agreed to talk to their mom about it when he took her out for V-Day dinner, not wanting her to be alone for the holiday, or himself for that matter.
Dustin was in the denial stage of his grief over Kimmie. He had decided that Valentine’s Day morning at the florist, when he was picking up flowers for his mother, that it was ridiculous to have become so obsessed with a girl he barely even knew. He felt even more ridiculous for having convinced himself he was in love with her. Dustin soothed himself by saying that Kimmie’s purpose in his life was not so that he might experience romantic love for the first time, but perhaps to be a distraction from endlessly worrying about his brother and whether he had given up two years of college tuition for nothing.