Chapter 75
“Where ya been, hon?” Mom says over her shoulder as she scrubs the countertop. “You’re hanging out with that Nolan boy a lot, huh?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“Oh, goody. I’m tellin’ ya, that kid has class. Absolute class.”
I dump my backpack on the floor and take in more of the place. Shiny countertops and floors, clutter-free surfaces, the smell of fresh laundry wafting through the air.
“What’s the matter, doll, why you lookin’ at me like that?”
The only other time the house was this clean was the summer after I turned ten, when Allan, the male nurse, proposed to her.
Mom got all giddy and suddenly became the version of herself she could never manage to be for herself, or for me.
She did a deep clean of the house, made a car payment instead of blowing her paycheck on the usual Burlington Coat Factory shopping spree, took us to Goodwill to find some new furniture, even signed me up for the gymnastics classes I’d been wanting to take.
It was an exciting time. For the month or so that it lasted.
Until Allan left town with no warning and never came back.
I tried to comfort Mom, tell her Allan was kinda creepy anyway, like all male nurses.
But she was already too deep in her spiral.
The house got dirty again and the gymnastics classes were dropped before the eight-week session was over.
I never even got to try the uneven bars.
“Sit down, sweetheart, I’ve got somethin’ to tell ya,” Mom says. She guides me to the kitchen table, yanks up the drop-leaf, and sits down opposite me.
“So, Tony started acting kinda strange and I got that awful nauseous feeling in my gut, thought I smelled a breakup comin’.
So of course I start pullin’ out all the stops, trying to keep him, wearing my good perfume, my new panties, strip eyelashes, all of that crap.
I was doin’ it all. And with all the anxiety I was not sleeping, not eating, running on coffee and Trident gum, the kind you’ve gotta pop out of the foil packs.
Tastes like ass but makes your breath smell good, go figure.
So then I’m workin’ the late shift one night with Margie, right?
And she goes, ‘Hon, are you alright? You look like you haven’t slept in ages.
’ So I tell her what’s goin’ on and she tells me I oughta join her for some sex-and-love-anonymous meetup group she’s a part of.
And I’ve got nothin’ better to do so I join her, right?
And there’s people telling spiels about ramming their cars into walls after breakups, sneaking in their husbands’ trunks to catch them mid-affair, calling their S.O.
’s workplace fifty times a day, and each time I’m thinking, ‘Hey that’s me!
Hey that’s me again! They’re all a buncha fucked-up crazies just like me.
’ Never felt more home than I did in that meeting. ”
Mom digs in her purse and pulls out a glossy pamphlet with blue and purple lettering. She flips it open and shoves it in my face, tapping excitedly on a portion she’s already circled.
“Look at that,” she says, craning her neck to read it to me.
“Typical signs of love addiction include: mistaking intense sexual experiences and new romantic excitement for love. Constantly craving and searching for a romantic relationship. An unhealthy fixation on another person which may include excessive fantasizing and obsessive compulsions, potentially even stalking.”
She looks up at me. “I mean, you remember how I acted with Gary. I’d call that stalking, wouldn’t you?”
She keeps reading. “Achieving a sense of euphoria from the fantasized relationship, feeling desperate or uneasy when separated from the partner, using the relationship to hide from negative feelings or situations, excessive interest in the new relationship to the exclusion of other interests and responsibilities, neglecting other key relationships in your life for the sake of pursuing the fantasized relationship.”
“Sweetheart!” Mom says, her eyes watery with recognition.
“I figured it out. Or, rather, Margie figured it out for me, but still…They said in the meeting ‘Name it to tame it’ and a lightbulb went off for me. An epiphany. Can’t fix a problem you don’t know you have, right? Well now I know, so now I can fix it.”
“Wait, so what happened with Tony?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah. He broke up with me! Just like I knew he would! He starts givin’ me some crap about the timing not being right and how we should still be friends, manspeak for keeping his options open cuz he’s too much of a pussy to just say the truth, and then, in the middle of his speech, I just start laughin’.
Just laughin’ right in his fuckin’ face.
And he’s looking all confused, like, ‘I just broke up with this lady, just broke this lady’s heart, and here she is laughin’ at me.
Is she crazy?’ And yet I just can’t stop, tears streaming down my cheeks I’m laughin’ so hard. ”
“What? Why were you laughing?” I ask.
“Cuz he didn’t break my heart. Oh God no.
My heart was broken a long, long time ago.
By your father. Maybe even before then. Maybe by my parents.
Or maybe I was born with a broken heart, I dunno.
But I do know that all I’ve ever done is gone man to man to man, with my broken little heart in a bunch of pieces, asking him to fix it like a little girl asking a neighbor to buy her Girl Scout cookies.
Begging. Pleading, you know? ‘Please buy my Peanut Butter Patties.’ ‘Please fix my broken heart.’ But the thing is, it’s not his responsibility.
My broken heart. It’s my responsibility.
It’s a thing I gotta fix. Can’t expect nobody to go takin’ care of you before you take care of yourself. ”
“That’s…profound?” I say, more as a question.
“That’s good, isn’t it? Has a nice ring to it. Margie told me that. The thing about how my broken heart is my responsibility. She’s my sponsor. I have a sponsor, can you believe? Look at me go.”
Mom takes what seems like her first breath of the past five minutes and holds my hands in hers across the table, looking at me with an intensity that is equal parts convicted and unstable.
“Honey,” she says, “this program is gonna change my life. Already has.”