Miss You Love You Hate You Bye

by Abby Sher

  “Yeah, well, things have been a little busy,” I muttered.

  “No excuse.” Mom’s voice was just sharp enough that I thought she could be legitimately mad. Only when I looked up and found her eyes, they were glimmering. “I guess I can’t blame it all on you,” she added with a grin.

  “Yeah, that’s not fair,” I whimpered. “We used to do the crossword on Saturday nights and then you started…”

  Mom waited to see if I’d fill in that blank. I couldn’t though. I didn’t want to say Elan’s name and point to him like some assassin of everything we used to have.

  “We stopped doing the crossword together way before Elan came along,” Mom said. Once again sniffing out my pitiful musings. “If you recall, we were actually on my bed one Saturday night when Zoe started texting and IM’ing about some party in James HeartThrob’s basement that you had to attend.”

  “HeartThrob?!” I couldn’t help laughing at that. Mainly because James Hartwick III was the complete opposite of a heartthrob.

  Mom continued. “And then it turned into a weekly thing. Which I don’t mind. I think it’s great. But I do want to set the record straight. That you were the one who started with the Saturday-night plans.”

  Mom didn’t look upset. She just looked smaller than a few minutes ago. Maybe it was because she was propping herself up on those crutches and I could tell her arms were getting tired. More likely though, it was because she was all alone. She had been flying solo for so long now. Kissing our boo-boos and balancing the checkbook and going to sleep in that abandoned bed when that was never the life she’d imagined. And I had never really seen this so starkly before. Or acknowledged it ever.

  “It’s okay,” Mom repeated. “It’s really good, actually. We both need to get out and socialize. Gus too.”

  Mom reached out to cup both of my shoulders with her cool, sturdy hands. Her fingernails were blunt and lined with crescents of mud. I thought about how Alli’s and Zoe’s nails were always painted some shade of glossy gray or shimmering pink. How I’d longed to get matching ones without really knowing why. Without even appreciating the hands Mom had passed on to me.

  “Can you tell me how you’re feeling about all of this?”

  All of this.

  I didn’t think there were enough adjectives in the English language to describe how lost and confused and free and furious I felt.

  “How about—let’s get a snack first, huh?” Mom suggested.

  I followed her to the back porch, which was one of those projects my dad had started lifetimes ago, just after my parents moved to the ’burbs. It was only big enough to hold a small card table and a couple of chairs, and he’d used the wrong kind of paint, so it constantly peeled little curlicues of white into the grass below. Today, however, the porch looked like a quaint tea party was expected any minute. Mom just happened to have turned on the twinkly holiday lights that Gus and I strung from the roof to a pole in the grass. She’d also laid out her blue polka-dotted kettle, two mugs, and a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies that must have been hidden in the back of a drawer.

  “Are you waiting for someone?” I asked.

  “Yes, silly. You.” Mom lightly swatted my butt with a gardening glove and then crutched past me up the wooden step with weeds sprouting through its cracks. “And I’m not going to wait any longer because my armpits are screaming from these things.” She dropped into a chair and threw her crutches clattering to the ground. “Why don’t they mention in the handbook of stupid injuries that you need pits of steel?”

  She poured us both some tea and I could tell from sniffing the warm steam that it was my favorite: mint-chamomile. Also, even the crumbliest of those prehistoric cookies was delicious once I stuffed them into my mouth. We sat there, munching and sipping in a soft silence for a while, before Mom ventured to ask me again, “So?”

  “So…,” I started. But I was nowhere nearer to having a real answer. “So, I mean, I don’t know what I can really say about Zoe except it feels ridiculously sad and lonely. And I can’t believe how many hours—or years really—I wasted trying to be like her. And then trying to be not like her. Or trying to be enough like her and also enough not like her that I could fit into her world. I mean seriously, some days I just stood in front of my closet and thought, I wish I knew what she was wearing so I could blend into her color scheme. How pathetic is that? And I don’t know why even. I mean, she was a great friend. For a while. But I just got so lost in her.”

  Mom nodded and chewed the edge of another cookie.

  “And … I don’t know who I am without her.”

  Mom tucked a tuft of my hair behind my ear. Which usually I hated because it just made the curly chaos more uneven, but now I didn’t protest.

  “Can I tell you who I see?” she asked. I shrugged—not trusting my voice anymore.

  “I see a beautiful, generous, kind, intelligent, bright soul who wants to do the right thing.”

  I blinked back as many tears as I could, then looked at my lap so they knew where to land.

  “Sometimes you get too attached to one person, and you’ve always been this way. Dad and I both worried about that tendency in you.”

  “Really?” I gulped. “Why didn’t you tell me that before? I mean, what did Dad say?” Even the mention of my dad made me feel possessive and grabby.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Mom said. “I mean, it was a while ago. But I do know that he was concerned. As was I.”

  “Think,” I demanded. “What did he say?” It was an outrageous request and I knew it. I was just so jealous that Mom got to hold on to all these memories. That she had gotten to whisper to him at night and snuggle with him in the predawn hours. That she had this whole history with Dad before I was even born—living in a studio apartment in Brooklyn and eating only rice and beans for a year to save money. Getting stranded in a two-door Honda on the side of the road somewhere near Memphis together. These were the tales that Mom got to pass down when and if she wanted to, and I had to wait thirstily for any drips or details.

  “Okay,” Mom said carefully. “I think he said something to the effect of, ‘She gets very attached to people, doesn’t she?’”

  “What else?” I pressed.

  Mom shook her head. “I don’t know, sweetie.”

  “He didn’t say anything else?”

  “If he did, I don’t remember.”

  “Why not?!” I yelled. Mom’s lips tightened and she blinked hard. “Sorry,” I said in a limp apology.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to upset you more. I just never know how much of the past you want to hear and how much I can actually recall…”

  “I want to hear it all,” I insisted. “Even if it’s stupid or boring to you. I want to hear it.”

  “Okeydokey.” I couldn’t tell if she was pleased or nervous or a smorgasbord of both emotions. She drew in a long inhale and then let out an exhale. Wiping her brow and smearing mud across her nose.

  “Well, you know how we met, right?” she began.

  “In a coffee shop?”

  “Right. Your dad was actually there with another girl. I think her name was January. She was a knockout.”

  “But wasn’t she rude to you and then Dad dropped her off at the bus and came back to apologize and get your number?”

  Mom smiled. “See? You remember this better than I do.”

  “Okay, so then he dumped January and found you and then what?”

  Mom told me how he wooed her with a fresh bouquet of tulips every other day and sappy poetry that he admitted he needed a thesaurus to write. They fell in love. They fell in debt too. Mom was still in grad school for English literature. Dad was paying off a mountain of college loans but had no idea how to save. He lived large—renting fancy cars just to take Mom to the beach for the day, ordering one of everything off the menu when they went out. He was twice her size at least, and one time he gave her a piggyback ride all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge.

&nbs
p; I knew all these tales, but I smiled and nodded anyway.

  “He was incredible. A force of nature,” Mom told me.

  “Go on,” I said. “Please.”

  Mom tried to dig back through the archives now—describing their first trip to meet her parents and Dad trying to impress them by speaking Yiddish but accidentally calling Grandma Doris a dick. I laughed even though I knew the punch line. Then she described moving into a tiny apartment together in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, both scrambling to make rent. Dad worked a construction job for some guy upstate who had a mansion and only wore silver tracksuits. Mom stayed at the café and tried desperately to write her Great American Novel.

  “And then, of course, you know how he wanted to propose to me at the top of the Empire State Building, but it was closed for renovation, and then he took me to a fancy restaurant that wouldn’t accept personal checks.”

  “Ha!”

  “There I was, all gussied up for some mysterious fancy date he was taking me on, and we wound up—”

  “Eating hot dogs on the fire escape,” I finished for her.

  Yes, I’d memorized that anecdote too.

  “I don’t know that there’s much more to tell you.” Mom sighed. “I loved your father very much, Hank. And he was crazy about you. He would do anything for his little girl.”

  “Wait—that reminds me!” I blurted. “Did you hear that whole debate about the train?”

  “What train?” Mom asked. I knew Gus would be pissed at me for bringing it up again, but I refused to let that go.

  “Elan said he used to take the 8:03 from Meadowlake to Penn Station and that he knew Dad from that train.”

  Mom’s face brightened. “Yeah, isn’t that a funny coinkidink?”

  “No, it’s not,” I shot back. “It’s impossible. Dad always peeled off at the corner when we were walking to school so he could catch the 7:29.”

  “Oh, right,” Mom said slowly. “The 7:29,” she repeated in a daze.

  “Am I right?” I pounced. Then I answered for myself. “I’m right! I know I am because I asked Daddy to walk us all the way to school and he said he couldn’t. Because he was taking the 7:29.”

  Mom squeezed my hands hard. She pressed them to her lips and I saw the edges of her eyes glittering.

  “You are right, Hannah, dear,” she said. “You have a fantastic memory and you are exactly correct. Your dad did take the 7:29 train a few times.”

  “A few times?”

  She locked eyes with mine. “Most of the time though, he headed to the train station just a little bit early, so he could stop at the deli and grab a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich. Before getting on the 8:03.”

  “No!” I snapped, pulling my hands away.

  “It’s not a bad thing,” Mom said.

  “Yes, it is!” I moaned. “He would never give up walking us to school just so he could get a sandwich!” I stamped my feet indignantly. Feeling so betrayed on behalf of the little girl who just wanted her daddy to walk her to the playground.

  “He loved you so much,” Mom cooed. “You were his little girl. You always will be,” she promised. I still had to wail though. My eyes leaking full, furious tears.

  “It’s just not fair!” I bleated. “Nobody else I know has this kind of hole. I mean, Zoe treats her dad like shit and he’s just—I mean, at least he’s alive.”

  “I know,” Mom said. She coaxed me onto her lap and I mashed my nose into her shoulder. “I swear, when your father died…” I could hear Mom choking back her own tears now. “Well, you know—it was the worst time of my life. I was completely alone.”

  I sat up and scowled. “Wait. Completely alone? Me and Gus were there.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “Gus and I,” I self-corrected with teeth clenched.

  “Right,” Mom said slowly. “I’m sorry I worded it like that. What I meant was, I felt completely alone. As a parent. And frankly, as a woman, with desires and needs.”

  “Whoa whoa whoa, wait a second.” I scooted back into my own chair. “I don’t really need to know all this.” I instinctually went to cover my ears, only Mom took my hands in hers again.

  “I know it’s hard. But I think it’s important,” she told me. “I want you to understand where I’m coming from too, you know.”

  “Oh-kay…” I didn’t know if she was going to give me a sex-ed talk or if we were still talking about grief. Either of those two options made me a little queasy.

  But Mom had a completely different agenda.

  “Hank, when I started seeing Elan, it wasn’t to replace your father in any way,” she said.

  “I know that,” I snipped.

  “Do you, though?”

  Which was a fair question. I did size up his every move in comparison to my dad’s larger-than-life legacy.

  “I want you to know that I thought long and hard about how this would affect you,” she continued. “And Gus. And I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but Elan is kind, he’s funny, he cleans the gutters…”

  She waited for me to offer up a smile of recognition. I think I made it halfway to a grin.

  “And most important, he really adores my kids,” Mom concluded.

  “He adores us?”

  Mom nodded.

  “Huh,” I said. Because I didn’t have any more outrage or heartache to hurl. Mom had felt all of that too—probably more so than me. She had found a way to move forward, despite the pain. Or maybe because of it.

  This was Mom’s biggest sin. While I was furiously trying to revive our past, she had put one foot in front of the next. And she’d discovered some momentum.

  “Please don’t make me go camping with you guys though, okay?” I said.

  Mom laughed. “Yeah, I’m not exactly keen on camping any more right now either,” she answered.

  “And can I ask a question?” I said.

  “Anything.”

  “Does he do the crossword with you?”

  “Never,” Mom said. “And I have no plans to ask him. That’s just for you and me.”

  She handed me the last Thin Mint and I snapped it in half. Or at least that was my intention. Really, we each got about a quarter and the rest crumbled out of my hands.

  I’m thinking a mourning dove enjoyed them for dessert.

  November 27, 2020

  Dear Zoe,

  Wow. How many times have I started a letter that way?

  Answer: too many to count.

  Yeah, I even named my diary Zoe when we did that project in Ms. Cotter’s sixth-grade class about Anne Frank. Remember that? We had to pretend the world was shattering all around us and write down what it felt like to be cramped in a hidden annex. And I thought, if I’m going to write anything really meaningful, I’d better name it Zoe.

  [insert pathetic emoji here]

  There were so many things I didn’t know how to tell you face-to-face. It just felt easier to write them down, I guess. I actually have a stack of letters and diaries addressed to you in the back of my sock drawer. In case you have a spare year and feel like laughing.

  I love you, Zoe. I always have. A little too much, some might say. You swooped into my life like some fairy sprite and plucked me out of my sad, dull existence. You made me excited about dancing and singing and popcorn and life.

  I wanted to be you so badly.

  Too badly.

  And now—slowly—I am trying to figure out who I am without you.

  In answer to your questions:

  • Yoshi’s did have a small fire—smelled like burned toast for weeks—but the damage was minimal.

  • Gus is really flourishing. He’s in choir and has this awesome bestie and is definitely a better dresser than I am. I’m super-happy for him.

  • I started a hard piece on the piano. It’s Russian and it sounds like church bells.

  • I don’t care what you look like. I never have. It’s your energy that’s always been magnetic to me.

  • And you asked about Elan—thank you for that. He’s actually moving into o
ur place in January, and somehow, I’m okay with it. It feels calm. It makes my mom happy. Though I refuse to eat his tempeh balls.

  • Balls.

  Also, Amelia Hartwick wants you to know that she lost her virginity to someone on the Fairbrook lacrosse team. Phew!

  So, thank you for the invite to your Circle of Support next week. I really appreciate that. I won’t be there though. That’s the same day that I’m going to the Young Maestros of Essex & Bergen Counties auditions. I’m playing this crazy-hard piece so if I make it through the first page it will be a minor miracle. I’m committed though. And excited.

  That’s all for now. Cuz now’s all we have, right?

  XOXO, Hank

  RESOURCES

  If you or anyone you know is hurting, please reach out to someone who can help. Here are just a few great organizations with mental health professionals who are much wiser than me.

  NAMI: The National Alliance on Mental Health is the largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for people affected by mental illness.

  nami.org

  NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION LIFELINE: A 24-7, free and confidential support network for people in distress. 1-800-273-8255

  suicidepreventionlifeline.org

  NEDA: The National Eating Disorders Association is the largest nonprofit organization invested in supporting those affected by eating disorders. 1-800-931-2237

  nationaleatingdisorders.org

  TEEN LINE: This is a community-based organization helping troubled teens address their problems. Call 310-855-4673 or text TEEN to 839863.

  teenlineonline.org

  TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS: This is a nonprofit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for individuals struggling with depression, self-injury, addiction, and suicide.

  twloha.com

  ANAD: The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders is a nonprofit organization that offers support, awareness, advocacy, referral, education, and prevention.