The Kitchen Shrink (18 page)

“You are such a whiner,” she screamed. “You are getting a killer kitchen, for free, thanks to me, and now you are even up for a chance to win a ton of money.”

“Well, if I do win I’ll replace your shitty shoes and buy you a new personality,” I yelled at her. OK. Maybe it was the pot talking. I did feel bad, but she started it. “You need to calm down, Daria, and just stop it. You were here. Didn’t you see what just happened with my family? My kids busted me. And it’s all your fault!”

“So hit me. Go on.” She leaned in closer. Her nose was maybe two inches from mine. I didn’t hit her, I just pushed her to get her out of my face. It wasn’t my fault she put her cheek right where my hand was aiming.

We were both stunned.

Daria stood up, placing her hand on the side of her face; her mouth a perfect O, her eyebrows semaphoring an SOS, like she had been shot or something.

My apology took the long way; meandering through a “Knock it off you big drama queen...” My front door slammed yet again, before she could even hear my “...I’m sorry. It was your fault. You shouldn’t have moved. You know I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”

The next morning, that same hand without any nail polish signaled Elgin that something was up. He was all over me like the red hideousness covering my poor kitchen walls. I clenched my hands to try to offset any comments until I could slip out to get some more polish remover. No such luck. Now that I knew fifty thousand dollars was at stake here, to say nothing of my pride, I needed to perform.

“Tsk tsk,” Elgin tsked. “What the hell happened here?” He said, grabbing my hands. “Pretty,” he said, taking my right hand closer to his face before dropping it and taking my left hand. “Stupid. Don’t tell me, let me guess. Half-price sale at the spa? No. I saw you yesterday. What happened last night?”

“Nothing.”

“So, you’re trying to make a fashion statement?”

“No.” I grabbed my hands back. “I chipped a couple of nails last night and they looked really bad and then I ran out of polish remover.”

He gave me a heavy duty stare down, knowing I wasn’t telling the truth and trying to make me spill. I yawned in his face. I had bigger problems.

My daughter, Nicole, wasn’t talking to me, and neither was my best friend, Daria. Begging for mercy was apparently not working.

“Look,” I had tried to explain to Nicole when Brett brought them by this morning. “I’m not proud of myself, it just happened, I’ll never do it again, and that’s why you should never smoke dope.” She pretended she didn’t hear me and put in her ear buds to listen to her iPod. She’ll get over it, Ryan told me. Smirking. As if he had the upper hand or something. “So, did you ever do cocaine or ecstasy?” he had asked me.

“No, of course not! There wasn’t ecstasy back then,” I said, thinking I had neatly dodged that bullet.

“So you did coke,” he persisted. “Come on, you went to college in the 80s. Ohio State was a rager.”

I shook my head. “Can you see me ragin’?” I asked him, my nose twitching, either because I wasn’t being quite truthful or because I was remembering the numbing feel of the frosted flakes from long ago and far away. Cocaine was making a comeback at the local high school. Brett and I tried to put the fear of death, long-term health problems, and jail into our kids’ heads. While ecstasy must be a fun drug since so many people were doing it, it scared me to death. I feared it was creating a whole new generation of permanently depressed people who were using up their allotted quota of happiness.

Ryan tried to hide a smile at the idea of his mom ‘ragin.’ “Yeah, right. You’re not exactly what anyone would call a party animal.” He laughed out loud.

I was so relieved with my blanket pass, that I was not even offended one iota. In fact, I played holier-than-thou pretty convincingly. Pursed lips, flared nostrils, tilted chin; check, check and check.

“Did dad ever do coke?” Ryan asked.

I shrugged. My lips sagged, nose whistled a deflating pfft; chin resumed jowly position.

“He did,” Ryan said. “He told me he tried a couple lines before.”

Oh honey, I thought, Daddy had a big problem with marching powder. Instead I said, “But, he was smart enough not to do it again.” Tricky business. If my kids ever thought I had tried that stuff, I could only imagine the short leap to them wanting to experiment themselves.

 Why are drugs so tempting? Why couldn’t Ryan still be in the first grade, thinking the DARE program was all about staying off of rugs? (Oh, how I missed the year of cold, tile floors.) And why can’t I be like the wise dad on Seventh Heaven and say just the right thing in the right way? Every time I got too preachy, Nicole said I was acting like the mom on that show. Fortunately, Ryan had used up all of his conversing-with-his-mother minutes and headed out the door for school.

I went into the kitchen, looking forward to being put to work to escape my thoughts. I got busy painting the crown molding; very therapeutic. Although with all the work I was doing and skills I was learning, why did it feel as if my life was getting worse?

I couldn’t believe my fight with Daria. She acted like I actually hit her. It was an accident and I knew she knew it. It was like she and I had just been looking for an excuse to argue with each other or something. I did blame her, because it was her idea to get stoned, and because she kept making me laugh in front of my family. Not very mature of me, but there you have it.

Daria was furious with me, I knew. And I didn’t know when this would blow over. She always accused me of sometimes acting like like her mother instead of her friend. Not true. I think she’s mad because she suspects I have the hots for her boyfriend, Sam, who she still won’t tell me about. I’ve even tried to get Sam to spill—I sometimes drop Daria’s name in conversations with him throughout the day—but he’s not playing along either. I was angry, but I missed her already.

Daria and I have been friends for about ten years. In lady years that’s a long time—long enough to get to know someone inside and out. Daria never cut me slack but always did it with such fun, showing me that I’d laugh at my sorry self, too—if it was someone else. She could always made me feel better and be better. So that’s why in the middle of my so-called ultimate life make over it really hurt my feelings that she dumped me.

Aside from our cage match last night, in the past week or so she was always too busy to come over, and wouldn’t even really take time to talk to me on the phone. We used to have some world-class world problem-solving harangues—the kind where everyone else was wrong. We loved our talks that, if overheard by anyone else, would seem mean, obnoxious and deliciously petty. I missed complaining like that. I know Daria’s work schedule is crazy. I know she has a lot going on in her own life. But I know what the problem is. She is dating Sam. Every time she has a new man in her life she doesn’t have time for me. I understand. I really do. Her time is filled with getting ready to go on a date, being on a date or recovering from the date.

“Just tell me about you and Sam,” I had told her the other day, and the fact that she wouldn’t tell me meant this could be serious. But it was even more than that. I think her spot on friend radar picked up that I had a crush on Sam. I would never admit that to anyone, and I was sure once he left in less that two weeks, I’d get over it.

I can daydream and whip up fantasies of a relationship with Sam that don’t involve ice cream treats or dry wall or shoes dunked in the toilet, but Daria didn’t know that, and didn’t need to. If she suspected, she didn’t have to hold it against me. I’m happy for her. Honest.

I think the fumes from the nail polish remover must have peeled off a couple layers of my manners, or at least my filters. So last night after all the drama maybe I tried to poke my finger in Daria’s cage to get a response.

Normally, if I knew someone who was having a huge blowout with their mother, daughter, and best friend, I’d be pointing the finger right back at that person suggesting they have some issues that need to be worked out. My case was different. I was changing. I was standing up for myself. I was done being a doormat. That makes for good TV, right?

“We have nothing to eat,” my son yelled as I heard the refrigerator door slam shut. My nice new shiny stainless steel 22 cubic foot side-by-side energy efficient frigid friend, complete with water and ice dispenser.

The kid could be on YouTube with his tired song and dance routine. I sniggered, thinking about the cameras picking up his theatrics. Oh, wait. They’d also pick up me not making him anything to eat and probably make me look even worse. I ran into the kitchen. “Hey, sweetie. I have spaghetti in there, I can make you a salad, I barbecued chicken breasts last night…” Take that America, there is, too, food in my refrigerator. “Does anything sound good?”

“Nah,” he grumped, heading upstairs.

My phone beeped. ‘Mom?‘ My daughter was texting me. Talking to me at last. She had finally gotten over being mad at me about the whole pot debacle. My kids always told me ‘everyone does weed,’ I guess they just never expected me to be part of that collective. Well, neither did I.

‘What?’ I quickly wrote back.

‘Come here,’ she texted. I jumped up and ran upstairs. I tapped on her door and poked my head in. “Hey, I’m the mom, you know, you’re supposed to come here,” I said as I usually always mentioned when answering my kids beck and call.

Nicole was on her bed, knees drawn up to her chest, crying.

“Honey, what’s the matter?”

I sat next to her and reached for her hair, smoothing it off her face. I wanted to grab her in a big hug, but I knew I had to move slowly.

“I’m so sad,” she told me.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything.”

“Honey. I’m sorry we fought, but I hope you can forgive me?”

She nodded. “It’s not that.”

I felt my heart break as her sweet little face crumpled. I pulled her close to me. “What is it?”

She cried some more, holding on to me.

“Is it your boyfriend, David?” I’d kill him. I feared I was going to take my kids’ heartbreaks far worse than they would.

“No,” her voice trembled.

“What’s wrong?” I was getting scared.

“I just don’t feel good. I’m so sad.”

“Aw, shh,” I rubbed her back.

“S-sometimes,” she tried to talk.

“Go on, it’s me. You can tell me anything.”

She leaned back and wiped the back of her hand under her nose. “Sometimes I get so sad I think about killing myself.”

“Oh, honey,” I said very gently and pulled her back to me, as blood drained out of my heart. “It’s OK. What’s going on?”

She just shrugged her shoulders. Over her head, I saw her little bag of crayons and markers on the floor next to her bed, next to a tube of mascara and and makeup. She still loved drawing pictures and making cards. My little girl, grown up enough to feel such pain made me crazy. Wasn’t it just yesterday when I was worrying about her not being able to say her ‘l’s’ properly?

“Come on. Do you have these thoughts a lot?”

She shook her head. “No. Just sometimes.”

“Do you want to see a doctor?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

I took her hand and squeezed it. Yikes. Come on, Lisby, be profound. Make some sense. Say something heartwarming here. “Baby, I love you so much, you know that, right? I know it can be so hard growing up.”

“It’s not that,” she said.

“Well, it could be part of it and I’m sure me and your dad divorcing was tough, too.”

She just sniffed. Waiting for me to say what?

“I remember having those terrible thoughts, too,” I said softly.

“Really?”

“Yes. I think most people go through that. It’s all about trying to figure out our place in this world, and then feeling like maybe there’s not a place for us. But there is.”

She pulled at her sheet to wipe her face.

“I just don’t want to be this sad.”

“I know. But part of life is feeling pain and sadness which makes the joy all the more special.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I agree. But, you know how when you eat so much chocolate candy you actually crave a salad?”

“No.”

“OK. Well, when I eat so much chocolate…”

She gave a small laugh.

“The good, the bad, the ugly,” I pointed to the pimple on my forehead, “keeps us humble, I guess, and keeps us hoping for the next surprise around the corner.”

“Mom, do you ever wonder why we’re here?”

“I think we’re here to help each other get through it all.” She let me kiss the top of her head.

“Listen,” I said. “I’ll make an appointment…”

Nicole interrupted. “No, I’m OK.”

“Honey. I’m making an appointment for a check-up, no arguing. But I need you to pinky promise if you ever have these thoughts again, you talk to me, or Ryan or your Dad, and that you never ever act on them. Life is tough, and sad and frustrating, but suicide is never the answer. You know that, right?”

She nodded.

“Say it,” I told her.

“I know, Mom. Honest. I would never kill myself.”

“Promise me.”

She hooked her pinky with mine, then kissed her circled finger and thumb and watched as I did the same.

“There’s something else,” she said.

Just when the blood was beginning to course back through my heart, it froze again.

She reached under the covers and pulled out a teeny blue-flowered enameled jewel box Brett had brought back for her from one of his trips. She used to keep a few earrings in it. I watched her open it. I couldn’t figure out what was inside.

“It’s from my eyeliner pencil sharpener.”

“What?” She had removed the razor part. “Why do you have that?”

She lifted up her t-shirt and showed me the top of her right thigh, where she had criss-crossed scratch marks. I wanted to throw up.

“Oh, Nicole.”