“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.
“Oh, 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. I guess 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, like 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. Fuckers.
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? Probably I should 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 and bleated some weird sort of noise.
“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? How out there should I put myself? 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 wrote back, hit send, and then shoved my phone in my pocket. We’re all busy, aren’t we? Me and Amy. Busy.
If I just went to her apartment and knocked and found her there, would she freak? Crossing 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...uh...wanted. Mixed signals were never fun, and 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.
One option left.
Amy.
Amy
“What are you doing here?” I sputtered as Mom just barged right in as if 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 Hoarder’s 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. Gravel and bitterness poured out of my mouth.
“Then why aren’t you answering my calls?”
“Because Evan is an asshole and you let him drive 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 strange 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 somehow 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? And all his bosses are assholes, and 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—on a pathological level—to believe that Evan really was good and clean and trying so hard. That he wasn’t like our Dad, and that she wasn’t a failure.
All this time I’d thought I could be some sort of goody-two-shoes balance that would neutralize what Evan did, but Mom didn’t want that.
At all.
The idea that Evan was anything other than pure of heart was anathema to her entire being. And nothing I did would change that.
“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” she said, and a balloon filled with injustice inside me, the one that puffed up every time Evan did something that that turned the spotlight on him—it deflated. As if someone had torn a tiny pinhole in it, the deflation was slow and steady. No outrageous POP! No flying debris.
Just the steady exhale of resignation.
“You don’t have to, Mom,” I answered. You aren’t capable.
Taking that as some sort of surrender, she went in for the kill. An expectation that I would feel guilty laced her next words. “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 done?
“Yes—can you believe it? All he did was give a sophomore a ride to a soccer game and the kid left a baggie of something in the car, and then...” Prattling on, Mom’s one-woman act went on, her stage presence impeccable, the act maturing as the years went on and while the words changed, the play never did.
Evan had dealt to an underaged friend. That was obvious.
And now that he was eighteen, the legal system would treat him very differently. The panic in Mom had sharpened, and now 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.”