Chapter Thirty-Six
Thirty-Six
“Order up…”
The new teenage waitress and her hefty mouthful of braces move for the steaming fajitas. “Careful,” I warn. “That plate is piping hot.”
New girl recoils just in time to spare her finger skin. I use a well-worn pot holder to maneuver the dish to a serving platter and then hand it to her. “It’ll cool off by the time you get to table eight.”
“Thanks so much.” She beams, metal and colorful rubber bands on full display. “Mike was right, you know everything about this place.”
It’s hard to keep a pleasant expression. “You’ll get there one day.”
Braces only shrugs. “Probably not. I leave for college in September. I’m going to NYU.”
“Congrats,” I tell her, my voice a little tight. “If you ever miss all the green, Sheep Meadow in Central Park is a good spot.”
She flashes those braces at me again and I think about them the whole drive home. How young I was when I got my braces off. How my future sprawled wide-open before me back then. Like a summer pasture, rich with possibility. And all the nothing I did with it.
At the ancient stoplight on Barrow and Vine my phone dings.
Molly Moreno: Hey. Can we talk?
The words buckle my stomach and I toss the phone into my bag. I don’t need to hear from her how shitty it was that I left LA without saying goodbye or how Tom and Cara are or aren’t back together. I’ve left that world behind for good. What I need to do is move on.
But when I turn on the radio to drown out my thoughts, I’m assaulted by Tom’s voice. “Lay yourself bare beneath my hands so restless,” he croons. “ Or just hum in the kitchen as I make us breakfast. Anything to know that you’re still there.”
The rush of profound sorrow is a physical thing I could hold in my hands. Tom is out there somewhere, laughing, reading, strumming softly. He’ll be everywhere I’m not. He’ll live an entire life, light the whole world up in Technicolor, and I’ll be here, in Cherry Grove, without him.
And though everything gives me war flashbacks, still I search for him constantly: Is that “Heart of Darkness” playing in the allergy aisle at the pharmacy? Does the Irish nurse helping my mom with her clinical trial hail from County Kerry? I’m relentless in my quest to hurt myself.
I shut the radio off as if swatting at a hornet, but the sting remains. My forehead finds the steering wheel for long minutes until someone behind me honks.
At home Willow greets me with her expected full-body waggle and I stoop low to cradle her in my arms. She’s probably sick of me by now—I’ve been back for two weeks and discovered snuggling your dog is perhaps the only genuine remedy to heartache.
“Mom,” I call. “Have you had dinner?”
But nobody answers, and the hairs on my arms rise.
Fibro doesn’t have any life-or-death symptoms, but the chronic pain alone has sent my mom into more than one depressive episode. In my mind I’m sixteen again and my mom is drunk, sobbing in the bathtub telling me her quality of life is too shitty to bear.
“Mom,” I yell, hurtling down the basement stairs—
But it’s empty down here, too.
My feet move faster up the winding steps than they have since I was a kid. Willow bounds after me. I call for my mom three more times before I realize she just isn’t home. I’m massaging my forehead, wondering how I became so paranoid, when the front door opens.
“Hi, honey.” My mom is holding a full bag from the craft store: brushes, sponges, and cutting wire poke out at odd angles. “There was a sale!”
I follow her into the kitchen and watch in slight disbelief as she drops her bags on the table, grabs vegetables from the fridge, and begins to chop. “You’re making pottery again?”
“I don’t want to jinx anything, but the trial’s been going really well. I thought why not pick up some new goodies to celebrate?”
That had been the only silver lining to the dull gray that’s slumped over the past two weeks. We’d signed my mom up as soon as my first check had cleared, and she’d seen near instant improvement.
“Are you sure it’s not the placebo effect? I don’t want you to push yourself too hard.” I watch her slice a mushroom just shy of her pointer finger. “I can do that.”
“I got it,” she says. “And if it is a placebo effect, you aren’t supposed to point that out to me.”
“Right.” I busy my hands sorting through some mail. “I’m really glad you’re feeling so good.”
“And how are you holding up?”
“I’m fine. You sure you don’t want me to slice those—”
“I got more Ben and Jerry’s.”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
When her rhythmic chopping halts, I look up, half expecting to see blood spurting.
But she’s just staring at me. She looks younger today.
Her eyes are bright, her cheeks flushed.
Her brows meet in such a sweetly empathetic expression my stomach turns.
“The house is small. I hear you crying at night.”
I debate every possible excuse from those are my night terrors to I’m just watching weird porn, before the truth tumbles out. “Yeah. I miss him.”
I do not expect the words that sigh from her. “This is all my fault.”
“What? How could it be? The tour ended and I left.” Him. I left him.
“I never encouraged you to go after things, you know? That’s what parents are supposed to do.”
“What are you talking about?” I chew my lip—she’s never said anything like that to me before. “What does that have to do with Tom?”
“Had you not grown up so damn fast being my friend and caretaker and confidant, you might’ve flown the nest, made mistakes, fallen in love.
But you were here dating the guy I encouraged you to date, paying for my meds…
making sure I could cut my own vegetables.
” She takes in a shaky breath. “After your father…I’m so sorry, Clementine. I just didn’t want to be alone.”
My throat tightens with emotion. “I didn’t want you to be alone, either.”
My mom’s brows wrinkle with sympathy. “But that was never your responsibility.”
“It was, though.” Now it’s my turn to say something I’ve never said. Never even consciously thought until now. “If your loneliness is anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”
My mom puts down the knife. “How on earth do you figure that?”
My chest has never felt so tight. “Forget it.”
“Clementine B—”
“Because you had me,” I blurt. “Because I came along and ruined your life. You and Dad might still be together if I’d never been born.” I look down to pick at my nail. “You would have never had to raise me…You might have been happier, healthier…”
It’s like shaking out a rock that’d been in my shoe my entire life. How long had I needed to be useful—to take care of her and everyone else’s needs before my own because of some kind of universal debt I owed for being born?
When I look up, my mom has tears in her eyes.
“You are my entire world, Clementine. You make me happier than anything else in it, and I wouldn’t trade you or when I had you for anything.
Not even to have your father back. It is the gift of a lifetime to be your mom.
That’s why I wish I’d done a better job of it. ”
“Hey.” I round the kitchen counter to pull her into a hug. “You’ve done the best job. You still do.”
When she releases me, she says, “I never should have let what happened with your father affect what I taught you about love…We were just kids.”
“That’s not what—”
“I never meant to put so much pressure on you to settle down. I just looked at you and saw all I could have been, all I could have had…I’m sure you looked back at me and saw a cautionary tale.”
“Mom, no—I never felt that way.”
And maybe I’m lying—I did fear her pain and her loneliness—but it’s the truth, too. I also assumed if my dad could leave someone as extraordinary as my mom, there was no hope at all for me.
But she’s like Willow when she knows I have treats on me. “Then tell me what happened. Why you’ve been walking through the last two weeks like there isn’t a light on inside of you anymore. You tell me he didn’t break your heart, so I’m trying to figure out why you broke your own.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I told you—”
“No, you didn’t really—”
“I can’t leave everything behind, change my entire life —”
“What life?!”
My jaw goes slack. And strangely, my cheeks heat with shame.
My mom’s eyes are still wet, and she raises them up to the kitchen ceiling with a sigh.
“You’re a waitress at the Happy Tortilla, honey.
You spend your days taking care of me when it should have been the opposite.
Meanwhile you’re allowing what you love to do—this unbelievable skill you have, something you are great at—to pass you by.
I’ve been a crummy mom allowing you to use me and my sickness as an excuse to avoid putting yourself out there.
To avoid really living. ” She wipes a tear from her eye as if it’s offended her.
“I don’t care if you go after this musician or not.
Fuck him. He’s just a man, Clementine. I just want you to go after something for yourself. ”
She’s right and it hurts like an axe wound. I chew at my lip until I taste blood.
“You are such a good kid. You’ve given so much up to be there for me all these years, and I’m not doubting for one second that that was done with anything but compassion. I love that about you. Do you hear me?”
When I nod, I knock a few loose tears down my cheeks.
“But you’ve been scared, too. And I haven’t helped with that. Falling in love does not mean you will end up like me. Trying does not mean you will fail. Pain is not inevitable.”
“Mom—”
“I’m serious. And if you go after your dreams, whatever they are, I will be just fine. Clinical trial or not. I’m your mom. Let me be a good one, okay?”
This time when we hug, we don’t let go for a long, long time.
—
I don’t sleep that night.