Bend (43 page)

Breathing through my nose, my jaw clenched, I keep swiping my thumb down and down and down, scrolling through hundreds, thousands of messages.

This is all I have left of her.

Without thinking, I tap on the empty box where I can write a new message to her. I stare at the blinking cursor, my fingers twitching. I’ve been here before, almost daily. Is this the moment I finally cave and send her something? Do I even know what I would say? Three weeks, and I haven’t been able to think of anything. Not sure why today would be any different.

I jump, startling, as my phone suddenly vibrates and chimes. Disbelief seizes me as I see the name that appears on the screen.

What. The. Fuck.

Why is my mom calling me? Does she have some kind of sixth sense that sends her an alert when I’m at my lowest, just so she doesn’t miss the opportunity to kick me while I’m down?

The phone keeps ringing, a shrill and aggressive sound. I could decide not to answer it. That’s what I should do.

With a sigh, I tap the green receiver icon, put the phone up to my ear, and say, “Hey.”

“Hi, Jay,” comes the raspy voice of a woman on the other end, a woman who is definitely my mother, so there goes the hope that someone had stolen her phone or something.

“What’s up?” I say curtly, bracing myself for…I don’t know what, but odds are it’s going to piss me off.

“How are you?” She says this with all the sincerity of a retail cashier.

Pressing my lips together, I rest my head back against the wall and roll my eyes skyward. “Fine,” I reply, because I can fake politeness, too. “You?”

“Oh, you know…hanging in there.”

As she lets out a bitter laugh that dissolves into a burst of her wheezy smoker’s cough, a mental image of her pops up, and it’s so clear it makes my spine curl. She’s probably sitting at her chipped and stained kitchen table, a cigarette between her fingers with a thin stream of smoke drifting up from it, ashtray in front of her. She’s wearing a black tank top that she got for less than ten dollars at Walmart with washed-out jeans that fit like a second layer of skin, and her hair—dyed an unnatural shade of red—hugs her face in voluminous waves.

And that pretty oval face is covered in so much makeup that you can’t tell that underneath it her skin is loosening and wrinkling, betraying her middle age despite her desperate refusal to admit it to herself.

“Okay, good,” I say in response to her usual, Eeyore-like statement. “Wha—”

“The tendonitis in my shoulder has gotten worse, though,” she continues, interrupting my mission to get her to the point quickly. “I’d been working at ValuShop for about five months, but the pain was so bad I missed a lot of work, and the assholes fired me.”

“That’s too bad,” I reply impatiently, not bothering to try and sound like I give a crap. “So, why—”

“I’ve been seeing this chiropractor, and he told me to try acupuncture and homeopathic remedies, and I swear that’s the only reason I’m even able to pick up the phone to call you.”

Oh, for God’s sake. I press my thumb against the spot between my eyes where a throbbing headache just flared up out of nowhere. “Glad you found something that helps.”

At the other end, my mom releases a snort. “Yeah, I’m sure you have no faith in alternative methods of healing. You’re too brainwashed by that education of yours to see that all those toxic drugs and unnecessary testing and procedures are why we humans are sicker now than we ever have been.”

Grinding my teeth together, I resist the urge to just hang up on her, because to hell with this. Her “Western medicine is evil” kick was new the last time I talked to her—around Halloween last year maybe?—and it’s just the latest in a lifelong string of unhealthy obsessions that she gets caught up in because it distracts her from the empty and meaningless shit-fest that is her life.

This stuff actually bothers me, though, and the fact that she has the ability to affect my mood at all is beyond infuriating. It bothers me because she seems to be using it as an excuse to diminish my accomplishments, which any mother with a shred of maternal instincts would be proud of, goddamn it.

But no, not Sherry Miller. She knows how hard I’ve worked to get where I am, but all she has to say about it is to accuse me of being brainwashed.

I mean, Jesus fuck.

And because I’m a dumbass who can’t take the high road with this woman, I find myself saying, “Well, you know what they say about alternative medicine.”

She’s quiet for a second, and I can hear the quiet pop of her sucking on her cigarette and blowing the smoke out with a whoosh. “What’s that?”

“If it worked, they’d just call it medicine.”

Another short silence, and then she snaps, “You know what, Jay? I think I deserve for you to talk to me with a little more respect than that. Dr. Flores has changed my life—”

“Is there a reason you’re calling?” I ask without letting her finish, because enough already.

A moment’s hesitation, and then she clears her throat. “Have you talked to your dad at all?”

The muscles between my shoulder blades start twitching. “You know the answer to that.”

With a sigh, she says, “I was thinking we could drive down there together to see him and say good-bye.”

A scoff erupts from my throat. “Yeah. That’s happening.”

“He’s your dad, Jay.” For a split second, her voice softens and she sounds like she might actually be having emotions that don’t revolve around herself. “It’d make him so happy to see you.”

“I have zero interest in making him happy,” I growl into the phone.

“Your uncle’s going to see him,” she goes on, being unusually and irritatingly persistent today. “I talked to Warren just a few weeks ago. He’s in Africa right now, and he’s flying all the way across the world to say good-bye to your dad.”

Yeah, but that’s my uncle’s business. His relationship with his brother has nothing to do with me. Is she seriously trying to guilt trip me? She must have some sort of ulterior motive.

The exit door opens with a loud click, and an unfamiliar blond guy in light-blue scrubs steps through. Catching sight of me, he nods, and I return the gesture as he pulls a cigarette pack out of his pocket.

I clamber to my feet and take a few steps away, putting some distance between us, as much to avoid the secondhand smoke as for privacy.

“Can you just tell me what you want?” I say to my mom, tempering my voice.

“Well, since I haven’t been able to work, I’m too broke to buy plane tickets to go see him. He’s my husband, and they’re going to kill him.” Her tone goes up a pitch, growing all squeaky and broken. She lets out a sob, and I can’t tell if it’s fake or not. “They’re going to stick a huge needle in his arm and—”

“So you want money?” I’m not surprised. Honestly, cross my heart. With a sharp stab of pain, my headache grows worse, and I want to punch something.

She pauses. “I’ll pay you back, of course.”

Right. And the sun revolves around the Earth. And homeopathic remedies actually work.

“Don’t worry about it,” I’m snarling into the tiny microphone next to my mouth. “I’ll send you the money. I don’t even care if you blow it on a bar hop instead of plane tickets.”

From the other end comes an Oscar-worthy huff of wounded outrage. “I can’t believe you’d—”

“I only want you to do one thing for me,” I say, cutting her off once more.

“What?”

I draw in a deep breath and hold it until I can feel my lungs start to protest. Here goes. I’m going to do it. Going to say what I should’ve said years ago.

“Don’t call me again,” I tell her. “Don’t try to contact me in any way. Just pretend you don’t have a son. You’ve got a ton of experience with that, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”

No sound comes out of the phone speaker for several seconds. “Oh,
really?
” she grinds out, and I know very well the sound of her quiet fury. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t always been such a disrespectful, ungrateful little shit—”

“Hey!” I shout, not giving a crap if the smoke-break guy a few feet away can hear me. “I’ll send the money. Don’t ever call me again.”

Then I pull the phone away from my ear and hit the red button.

Fucking bitch. My hands are shaking, my breathing erratic.

I really need to go back inside, because my absence is pushing ten minutes by now. But I can’t. Not without getting this shit over with.

Pulling up the browser on my phone, I go to my bank’s website and log in. My mom’s info is still there in the Bill Pay section, since I’ve sent her money before, of course. Because I’m a moron.

My fingers are so unsteady it’s hard to type, but it doesn’t take that much effort. Five hundred dollars should get her to Houston and back. With two taps on the screen, the payment is scheduled. In a few days, she’ll get a check in the mail.

Sliding the phone into my pocket, I stride back to the emergency exit door. My fellow hospital staff member is puffing on his cigarette, his face pointedly turned away from me.

My movements jerky, I pull open the door and go inside. Back to work for another two hours at least. And tonight, I probably won’t mind staying late, because somehow I suspect my job is the only thing keeping me sane right now.

A
s I park my car in front of the red-brick building that is Gio’s Cuisine, my pulse starts racing and my stomach cramps with anxiety. Why am I doing this? What possible good could come of it? I’ve asked myself those questions so many times since I impulsively—and stupidly, most likely—sent Matt that message on Facebook a week ago, and they always go unanswered.

At this point I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve talked myself out of canceling the whole thing. Maybe the decision to go is what won out in the end for no other reason than it can’t be any worse than sitting at home and feeling sorry for myself.

This past week has been pretty crappy. Flew up to see Grandma as planned, and Paige and the girls were there, too, as well as Cam and Aunt Hannah and my cousins, Malcolm and Emeline.

On Saturday my grandma cooked us Thanksgiving dinner in June, and it was as lavish and delicious a feast as she’s ever whipped up, but the effort took a toll on her. The next day she stayed in bed, and seeing her finally showing physical signs of illness was pretty sobering, not just for me but I think for everyone. As if her lack of symptoms so far had allowed us to almost pretend nothing was out of the ordinary.

Getting home to my quiet and empty apartment Sunday night was pretty brutal. I wished I could see Jay, needed him so badly my whole body felt achy and overstrung. It didn’t help to think about how the highlight of my upcoming week was having dinner with Matt Nolan.

Turning off the ignition, I grab my purse from the passenger seat and get out of the car. Matt responded to my message barely an hour after I sent it. His reply was friendly, and we arranged to meet. I suggested Gio’s after doing some Googling, because who doesn’t like Italian food?

Also, it’s about halfway between my apartment and Manhattan Beach, where he lives. That seemed only fair. And with my cheating ex-boyfriend, I want to make sure I’m being fair, right? Ha.

When I step inside the building and tell the tiny hostess with the tightly stretched and pinned dark hair that I’m meeting someone, she informs me with a professional smile that he’s already here. Grabbing a menu, she says she’ll show me to our table.