And Then Things Fall Apart (9 page)

My parents took turns reading to me before bed until I was practically thirteen. We did all of Harry Potter. Two
chapters from Dad. Two chapters from Mom. When they went to bed, I'd turn on my bedside lamp and read chapter after chapter ahead until I passed out. But I loved listening to them, each in their own weird way telling me what happened next. Mom was all dramatic books-on-tape with it, and my dad was more straightforward. He just read it, and that was great too.

When Dad was driving me crazy, I could complain to Mom, mutter how that man of ours is infuriating but don't we love him anyway. And when Mom was totally pissing me off, I could tell Dad and he'd say something like, “Yeah, well, give her some space, and here, help me fold this laundry.” Now I can't talk with either of them about the other one or anything. It's Mom. It's Dad. It's me. Each of our hearts are breaking and we can't even talk to one another like people do in normal families.

Now I have to have a “relationship” with each of them, totally independent of the other. Which is way more difficult. Especially
when you are an only child
. I have no one to share this with, no “Can you believe them, Chip? Let's get out of here, go for a bike ride in the forest preserves.” There should be a rule that if you have only one child, you cannot split up—unless the said child dies, which would also be horrible.

What I'm trying to say is that my parents' divorce is one of the saddest things, and I can't believe it's happening
to me. Although I act like I'm all mockety mock mock, and snarkity snark snark, I want my parents to be married. But my dad couldn't keep it in his pants. And here we are.

The term is “heartbreak” because that is how it feels. Your heart, ripped apart like a steak torn in half. And all the while you are supposed to move forward with your own stupid high school life, and do your homework, and look at college brochures, and make crap with Nic for your Etsy shop, and try on prom dresses, and cheer your lungs out for your boyfriend at semifinals. All this while the organ that is keeping you alive is a hot mess, stretching and twisting itself in your chest like a zombie pushing himself out of a grave.

When I'm feeling numb and want to cry, these are the things I think about:

1. Their goofy wedding photo with the tux and the white lace. They look so ridiculously happy, I want to keek.

2. How I used to climb into bed with them in the morning when I was little and they would let me.

3. When they brought Coffee home from the shelter on Valentine's Day with a red bow around her neck.

I don't think of these memories often. I thought if I typed them up, it would take away some of their power,
like how turning on the bedside lamp makes the monster under the bed disappear. But seeing them in black and white makes these events seem like the names in
Suburban Life
of people who have died. It only makes the death of my parents' marriage seem more real.

When did my life become a total Lifetime movie cliché? I wouldn't really call these pages a “diary” or even a “journal.” No hearts dotting the
I
s. They are just pages. Me, my brain, ink, and paper. Mine. Personal. It is obvious, and yet Gram feels that she must surreptitiously examine them while her pox-afflicted granddaughter sleeps like a log beneath the incapacitating coverlet.

On cable, mothers are always sneaking off and reading their daughters' diaries. They are looking for information about their sex lives. How far have they gone? In the really good movies, the daughter is a prostitute or a drug addict and/or sleeping with her history teacher, and there is a lot of screaming, and at some point the violated daughter stands and says, “How dare you!” or “You had no right!” Then the mother says, “Listen to me, young lady” or “As long as you're living under my roof.” Don't get me wrong, it's a great script, but when it actually happens to you, it is sort of devastating.

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. All Gram said yesterday was, “They look nothing like fleabites” as she inspected my arm. It got cold in the center of my stomach—dread, I guess. Then she added, “I've heard people say they look like, ah, bug bites, you know? How about a cup of tea?”

I've been leaving my pages facedown on the bottom shelf of the nightstand. It's not like it's a big secret that I'm working on something in here. Typewriters are loud. My pages aren't bound in a Hello Kitty embossed pink leatherette diary complete with miniature key. But for Christ's sake, give me a freaking break. The pages are facedown for a reason. Can't we all be mature adults here? When chicken pox sleep takes over my body, it is the severely deep, drooling rest of the dead. Gram could move furniture and rip walls down around me, and I wouldn't wake up. Asleep, I am entirely vulnerable. I feel creeped out and under surveillance, like Sylvia did in the hospital with the tulips leering at her from the bedside table.

Curiosity killed the cat, Gram.

I thought we were friends.

Haven't I been betrayed enough?

Now I'll need to keep my pages under my pillow or between the mattress and box spring or like, on microfilm that I conceal in a false molar.

When I was maybe eight or nine, I spent a weekend at Gram's. She babysat me while my parents went away for a
weekend. Wisconsin? Canada? Who knows. Who cares. All I remember is watching five straight hours of a
Tom and Jerry
cartoon marathon and whatever else bounced onto the screen when I hit the channel change buttons. Gram let me eat whatever I wanted. And what I wanted was BLTs. And Klondike bars. I was a chubby kid, and my parents were always pushing “healthy” snacks, such as baby carrots and hummus. Crunchy delicious apples. Roasted nuts rich in omega-3s. Sitting still and eating sandwich, after mayonnaise-laden sandwich, and square after square of creamy vanilla foil-wrapped treats while lush and violent cartoons kept me company is still an awesome memory. And not because of the sandwiches. But because Gram let me. Whatever I did was cool with her. I think of that, and
now
, at my moment of highest despair, she can't be trusted? Sigh. I think of eating now, and my stomach turns in disgust. My triceps are cramping up from all this typing. I don't think I have ever felt so alone as I do right now. This second. Like I am in a space pod orbiting the moon.

And when you knock on my door, Gram, and I don't answer, it is because I'm weak and weary, and crying so hard my ribs hurt, and honestly, I don't want you to see me this way.

The following is a transcript (from memory) of the phone call I received at 11:20 p.m. central time last night. I was the only one awake, lying on the couch clicking through late news and the opening monologues of unfunny late-night talk shows, a blanket around my shoulders like the queen of England or a homeless person. Before we begin, let me just say that after this so-called conversation, I have discovered that the landline is a superior method of phone communication to the cellular variety. It's as clear as a bell with no dropping of calls and no static. The handset is a big comfortable thing to talk into that actually fits my ear. No wonder Gram won't get rid of it.

MOM:
Keek? Izzat you? (Do you like how I am conveying her sloppy drunkenness?)

ME:
Mom? Hi! How are you?

MOM:
How are
you
? Itchy? Can you hear that beeping?

ME:
No. I'm better. But you know. Sick still. I feel like crap. Is everything okay? It's kinda late here. (I could hear mariachi music in background.)

MOM:
Shit. The time—it's only nine here. I juz wanna check in with you to tell you how much I love you and that Amanda's just a stupid kid and that you are the most un-stupid person I know. *hic* I think Auntie wants me to stay another week. The baby's lungs are making *hic* progress, but she's still yellow as a banana. I mean, my sister really needs me here longer, at least a little closer to her original due date. Izzat okay with you?

ME:
Another
week
? Mom! What're you talking about? I really need you—

MOM:
Ah! That's
my
cell battery beeping. *hic* Tell your dad I love him, just not—aw, hell. You are my baby, Keekie. You were the most beautiful baby I have ever *hic* seen. I've had about twelve Coronas with your uncle here at this burrito joint and *hic* I miss you, Keek.

ME:
Mom?

MOM:
Aurora's plumping up like a little pizza puff, though. Just a little more time, maybe a week, maybe more, until she comes *hic* home. 168 hours. You'll live. Hello? Are you there?

ME:
Mom?

MOM:
Are you there?

ME:
Mom?

MOM:
Karina, I—

ME:
Mom?

And then nothing.

Here's the thing about my mother. She's always doing whatever the hell she wants. In many respects this is an amazing quality. The Saturday after I began pinking chunks of my hair, I came home way too late from a knee-shaking L session with Matt, and there she was, my mother, with a skinny
pink
braid snaking down the side of
her head. She wasn't even that mad at me for blowing my curfew.

“I'm fighting the gray, Keek. Besides, what's the point of being your own boss if you can't have a little antiestablishment fun with your hair?” Mom's hands were all pink, like she'd been juicing beets all night. Gloves, according to my mother, are for sissies. As are umbrellas, the AAA motor club, and paying retail. I'm glad she had her fun. But she had used up the last of the jar of Fuchsia Shock, so I had to order more and wait a week for delivery.

My mom
is
fun, okay? She is sofa king fun that I hardly even needed friends until I was twelve because we always knew how to have a good time together. We totally get each other and, if pressed, could probably telepathically communicate and win big money in Vegas. But she is also too much fun sometimes.

In books and on TV and in the movies, there are mothers who wear turtleneck sweaters, curl up with a cup of Celestial Seasonings herbal tea, and ask their daughters about their days. “How was school? What would you like for dinner? I've noticed that you have begun dyeing your hair interesting colors. Is anything bothering you, darling?”

And as exhibit B there is my dear mother, borrowing my Light My Sapphire nail polish and dragging out her old bass guitar to strum along to the nineties grunge crap playing in
her earbuds. I know she is going through her own stuff now, but so? Priorities, people.

Lately Mom is the kid, the one who needs a stern talking to, perhaps an earlier curfew, and a trip to the school psychologist. It is not only infuriating, but also entirely confusing. Sometimes my mom puts her head on
my
shoulder and snuggles in like the world's tallest toddler. It makes my head spin. My entire equilibrium is upended when my head is higher than hers, staring at the roots of her hair and the beads of mascara on the tips of her eyelashes. If I'm the one comforting her, who's going to reassure
me
? So when I am at the end of my effing rope here at Gram's and this is the bizarre truncated conversation I get from my beloved mother, I get all kinds of aggravated.

Everyone I know, even Matt—usually even me—thinks my mom is “cool.” Which, I think, has been a goal of my mother's life, to seem cool to her teenage daughter's pals. When some parents try to do this, they appear ridiculous. They wear foolish clothing and use nonsensical slang and are so permissive that before you know it, the boyfriends are sleeping over in the daughters' beds like in European art films. My mom is, however, authentically and for real
cool
. She has a badass wardrobe, talks tough, and often mentions how when she closes her eyes, she forgets she is old and a wife and a mother and not the lithe, fearless seventeen-year-old she meditates herself into believing she is.

Usually I love this about her, that she is but a wrinkle in time away from being exactly like me. Lately I do not. I want concerned. I want wise. Stable. There for me when things go ape-shit all over the place, someone to tell me
no
when I'm saying
yes
to everything because it feels like it's the fastest way to grow up and get through this. I want to be first. Before the Dine & Dash, before her marriage, before her stupid and selfish “trajectory.” I'm hardly even on her to-do list.

Maybe it's like on airplanes when they tell you to fasten your oxygen mask before strapping it on to your own asphyxiating child. Maybe she needs to take care of her own shit before she can help me. I know, I know, I know. But still. I need to breathe too. She is so egomaniacal, my hands are itchy with rage, and no matter what I do, I can't catch my breath.

So when my mother started to talk about what a beautiful baby I was, I disappeared. I haven't been a baby for a hundred years. Babies can't talk. Can't text. Can't write anagrams in their sleep. Babies can't see you for the sham you are, and that's why she always—and I mean
always
—brings up the beautiful baby song and dance when she knows she is screwing up royally.

I just want her home. Is it so wrong for a sick girl to want her mother? They say that on the battlefield—France, Germany, Iraq—in the quiet dawn after a cease-fire, all you
can hear are grown marines whimpering for their mothers, squealing into the morning mist like infant animals. So, yeah. I want my mom. Hell, I'd even take my dad at this point.

I know, I know. I'm always going on about wanting my space, and now that I have space, I want to be surrounded by people and streamers and bossa nova music like the host of a 1950s cocktail party of Plathian proportions. I want to be having a fabulous time, twirling my drink's umbrella between my thumb and forefinger, dozens of people hanging on my every word, asking me how I feel. And caring, deeply, what the answer is.