Why Can't I Be You (28 page)

D
riving up to
my mother’s house, my breathing got shallow and my palms broke out in sweat. I’d spent every day of grade school with the same dizzying nausea taking over my stomach as I rode the school bus home, worried about the state she’d be in when I walked through the door.

We hadn’t talked since I hung up on her. When I finally turned my phone back on, I’d expected a long string of messages from her, but there was only one. All it said was, “Apparently we were cut off.” I tried calling her back, but she wouldn’t pick up the phone. After a week I gave up. I didn’t really want her to answer anyway. I didn’t want to talk to her. It was easier not to. Maybe I should have been worried, but she’d cut me off like this before. It was the price for hurting her pride.

I used my key and let myself in through the front door. The air was greasy, tinged with the sour smell of sweated-out booze and stale cigarette smoke. There were piles of newspapers stacked on the coffee table and empty takeout cartons strewn across the kitchen counter. I hoped she’d had food delivered. I shuddered to think of her driving across town to the Chinese place.

“Hi, honey, is that you?” she called, in her saccharine happy mom voice. There was an edge to it, darkness. I knew I was walking on eggshells.

She sat at the kitchen table in her nightgown, poring over the latest issue of
Entertainment Weekly
. She was gaunt through her face, but her eyes were puffy. Her faded blond hair was dry and frizzy and had a wide swath of dark roots peppered with gray. The fill line on her acrylic nails was halfway to her fingertips, and the polish was chipped.

She turned her cheek to me, expecting me to kiss it. I didn’t.

“What did you do to your hair?” she said, gesturing to her own. “It ages you.”

“So, I came to tell you I’m moving to Seattle,” I said, ignoring her. “I’m going to art school.”

“What about Deagan?” she said. “Surely he’s not going to leave his job.”

“We broke up.” I cleared a stack of magazines and mail off my chair at the table, hung my purse over the back, and sat down. “I got into an MFA program for painting. And I have a job as a research assistant.” I looked down. There was still a speck of purple glitter on my chair. “I’ll be working for the head of the department.” I felt pathetic for telling her, for even wanting her to know, like some little puppy dog hoping for a pat on the head. I knew I’d never get it, but I held my breath for her answer anyway, hoping that something would be different.

“I can’t believe you let Deagan get away,” she said. She got up and bent over the stove to light her cigarette on the burner.

“You didn’t even like Deagan,” I said, scratching at the glitter with my fingernail until it was gone.

“He came from a good family.” She sat down again, taking a drag of her cigarette, blowing the smoke in my direction. She never used to smoke in front of me.

“I don’t want to talk about Deagan,” I said softly, but loud enough.

She acted like she hadn’t heard me. “And it’s not like you’re getting any younger.” Her voice was bitchy and aloof, but I saw her cheek tremble. “I guess I’m never going to have grandchildren. You should have tried harder to keep him.”

I didn’t say anything. I looked around the kitchen at the stacks of newspapers and food-stained takeout menus. Wine bottles filled the space next to the sink, from weeks of missing the recycling pickup. Empty liquor bottles always went directly in the trash so no one would see them.

I looked at the woman sitting in front of me and thought about all the things I’d always wanted from her. I wanted her to be a mama bear teaching me to fish in the river, nudging me over logs and rocks. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She didn’t know how to hug me and tell me everything was going to be okay. She didn’t know how to love me through all her hurt.

I stood up and walked around the kitchen, collecting half-empty Chinese food containers that smelled like they were at least a few days old. I dumped them in a plastic grocery bag along with the pile of condiment packets and questionably clean plastic utensils that littered the counter, saving a chopstick so I could poke it down the garbage disposal to check for silverware. I pulled out a fork and an earring, and then I ran the water and flicked the switch to get rid of the random detritus that had collected, probably since the last time I had been there and run the garbage disposal.

“Have you eaten today?” I asked, opening the fridge. There was a carton of eggs four months past their date, a bottle of ketchup, an empty carton of milk, and an assortment of decaying vegetables in the crisper that were so far gone it was impossible to tell what they had been.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, smiling weakly. She liked the attention. She liked forcing me into this role where I had to feed her like she was a petulant child, clean her messes, calm her fears.

“You need to eat,” I said. “Do you want me to order something?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I have to watch my figure.” She patted her hip with her bony hand. I wondered who she thought she was watching her figure for. She looked so frail and feeble.

I grabbed the protein bar I kept in my purse for emergencies and placed it on the table next to her. “At least eat this,” I said. “Please.”

I picked up the array of mugs and glasses that formed the perimeter of her place at the table like a fort to obstruct her view of the seats that were empty. I balanced them in the crook of my arm, against my chest, and grabbed more with pinched fingers. She held her hand over the mug closest to her to keep me from taking it. I walked carefully to the dishwasher and stacked the glasses in the top rack one by one.

I thought about calling Anita, telling her I’d have to stay.

I set the dishwasher to run and sat down at the table. The protein bar lay unopened next to her. She flipped the pages in her magazine too quickly to be reading anything. My throat tightened. Her eyebrow twitched.

“I don’t know how you think you’re going to survive a grad program in art,” she said, her voice a soft slur, her eyes shooting daggers. “Your paintings are always so self-conscious.” She stared me down, waiting to watch the wound bleed. “You should have stayed with Deagan. I mean, I’m just worried what will happen to you when you can’t make money with your little art projects.” She placed her hand over her heart, like she was playing the part of a concerned parent in a community play. Her eyes sparkled. She lived for this. When she fought with my father, she used to glow. “I finally threw out those creepy girls in your room.”

“What creepy girls?” I asked, but my heartbeat sped up. I knew.

“All those hideous portraits you had taped to the walls. The tape took the paint off with it. I’m going to have to repaint the whole room.”

I thought about the way I’d painted Scout’s face with the right amount of defiance, Jo March looked wise, and Emma had the kindest eyes. I’d painted them so carefully. I used to lie in bed and look at them and think about what it would be like to have Anne as my kindred spirit friend. I showed Jane Eyre to my art teacher after class. He’d encouraged me to apply to art schools. My portraits weren’t hideous or creepy. She did it as payback for hanging up the phone. “You threw them away?” I said, blinking. I wished I could hide my hurt. She fed off of it.

She took a long drink from her mug. “I couldn’t stand looking at them anymore. I don’t know how you’re going to make a living. No one will hire you to paint a hideous portrait. No one would want to look like one of those creepy girls.”

“You’re drunk,” I said.

Her eyebrow twitched. Her face turned bright red. “You’ve always been an ungrateful bitch.” She spit the words out. “I gave up my life for you. My career, my marriage. Such a waste! I wasted my life on you, Jenny.” She said my name like it was the most trivial word in the world.

I stood up and grabbed my purse off the chair.

“You’re drunk,” I said again, trying not to yell, tears choking my voice. I wanted to say more, to find the right words to make her better. I wanted her to say she was sorry. I wanted her to be sorry. I still wanted her to be a mama bear. She couldn’t.

“I can’t fix you,” I said, sobbing. I wiped my face with my sleeve. “I really, really wanted to, Mom, but you have to fix yourself. And if you won’t, I can’t be here anymore. You broke my heart. You keep breaking it. And I can’t let you.”

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at me. She clicked her nails together, flipped the page of her magazine, and pretended to be completely absorbed in a story about Brad and Angelina. I didn’t exist.

“Call me if you’re ever ready to get help,” I said, squeezing her shoulder gently. “I’ll help you find a program.”

I went out through the garage. I opened the door to her car and sat in the passenger seat.

On my last day of high school, my mother picked me up and we went to the movies in the middle of the afternoon. She’d been having a good week. We saw
Moulin Rouge
. We shared a big bucket of popcorn and a Diet Coke, and I watched her eyes light up each time she recognized one of the songs they were singing. She seemed lighter, softer—happy. We hadn’t been to the movies in such a long time.

On the way home, we heard “Roxanne”
on the radio and sang along at the top of our lungs. When we got back to the house, the song was only halfway through, so we sat in the garage with the music blaring, singing together like it was the performance of our lives. I remember thinking that maybe after that everything would be okay. Maybe she was better. She was wearing a red sweater set that I’d bought her for Mother’s Day. She had blush on her cheeks and her lipstick had all but worn off. She looked so pretty. I remember thinking that maybe she was finally better.

I reached up and turned the dome light on to drain the battery. I closed the door behind me quietly when I left.

I drove to Wegmans, called the police from a pay phone, and gave them her license plate number. “Please watch for her,” I said, my heart pounding in my throat. “She drives drunk sometimes.” I felt like a traitor, but it was all I could do. I couldn’t make her happy. I couldn’t make her stop. She was never going to be the person I wanted her to be, and I couldn’t give up any more of my life to keep her in maintenance mode.

When I got home, I found Yarah on Facebook and sent her a request.

She wrote back a few minutes later: “My dear old friend! How happy I am to find you!” I responded: “I loved being an eight-legged sea creature with you,” and she knew exactly what I meant.

T
he drive across
country with Mr. Snuffleupagus was brutal. Snuffy cried in his crate and vomited every couple of hours, filling the car with the smell of cat food and stomach acid. There was too much time to think and too much time to worry that I was making some sort of colossal mistake. I spent my nights in crappy motel rooms, watching home-makeover shows, eating vending-machine burritos, and trying to get Snuffy to use the little travel litter box, instead of the motel carpet. So driving up to the apartment complex and seeing Robbie waiting in the parking lot for me, leaning against his truck, made all the difference. It made it less scary. I stopped doubting that I was making a colossally dumb decision. Even if I had nothing else, I had a friend, the kind who knew my deepest, darkest secrets and liked me anyway.

“Jenneroo!” he said, giving me a great big hug. “It’s good to see you.”

Heather didn’t come, but she sent cookies. “I think she’ll come around, you know?” he said, putting the container on the kitchen counter. “And she knows you’re my friend. She knows how you get me.” He leaned against the counter. “Plus a woman in her condition shouldn’t really be lifting boxes.”

“Wait! What?” I said, clapping my hand over my mouth. “Robbie! Wow!” I hugged him and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. “You’re going to be the best dad, Robbers.”

We blasted Meat Loaf and sang along while I hung my clothes in the closet and Robbie inflated my air mattress. I’d have to go furniture shopping, but I wanted to wait until I knew what I wanted my apartment to look like. I wanted to give myself some time as a blank slate.

We finished unloading all my boxes. Snuffy was settled on a windowsill, glaring at us.

“Can I buy you a beer, Robbers?” I asked.

“I quit,” Robbie said. “I’m not going to be like my dad.” He smiled wide enough for the gap before his incisor to show. “But I could go for a milkshake.”

“So, we’re not going to have our last drinks together too?” I said, laughing.

“When my kid gets married,” Robbie said, laughing. “You and me. We’ll go out to the field and drink champagne and toast to Jessie Morgan, wherever she is.”

“Deal,” I said.

“So, be honest. Was that your first cigarette?” He was grinning ear to ear.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I should have known,” Robbie said. “You coughed way too much.”