Chapter Twenty-Two. Cat
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CAT
I had planned to arrive at the orientation early.
I knew it would be rough for Melanie, that she’d need me by her side, but Olivia is in full meltdown mode this morning.
She flew into the model home, rambling a mile a minute, high-pitched and on the verge of tears.
Something about Sarah Lynn’s dress and a dumb dry cleaner.
When I asked for details, trying to wrap my head around the drama, she snapped at me, the way an injured dog will bite your hand if you try to help.
Every item of clothing she brought over to my place to try on has been strewn across the floor, like a tornado tore through the pink little-girl-decorated bedroom of the model home.
She hates her clothes, her hair. She’s in one of those moods. We’ve all been there before.
When she was teeny tiny, she’d sometimes wake in the middle of the night, screaming with growing pains.
She’d saw her legs together like a cricket, moan, even break a sweat.
Back then, it was only me she wanted. Mama, she’d cry, Mama.
I would have to sit beside her toddler bed and rub her legs, stroke the meaty part of my thumb up and down her calves, whisper soothing words, and kiss her hot, wet forehead until she fell back asleep.
I hadn’t seen the beauty of those moments. The moments of being needed.
I’d only been eager to escape, the minutes ticking by like hours. I’d wanted to get back to my drink. To my margarita if Mark and I were hosting one of our regular neighborhood barbecues. Back to my wine if it was just a quiet night in.
When I first met Mark, it was like someone had dimmed the volume in a room with too many sounds blaring all at once. He just had this way of making my mind feel a quiet peace. He made me want to be the person he saw in me.
A backyard wedding out on Sheriff Ryan’s land with twinkly lights in mason jars on the table and a speech from Mark’s brother that had everyone wiping their eyes with their napkins.
Mark and I buying our first house, one of those boxy ’60s homes branching off from Main Street.
We painted the outside and fixed the sagging porch.
We planted Knock Out roses along the front chain-link fence.
Melanie and I pressing our pregnant bellies together for a family picture in front of the Christmas tree.
Then, Olivia was born. During those few days we spent in the hospital, Mark and I laughed so much and so hard that I had to keep pressing a pillow to my C-section scar.
We were delirious, drunk on the endorphins of becoming parents, of looking at the wonder that was Olivia.
And when he held her, I thought my heart would break in two.
It was more than I deserved. And that voice inside my head said: You can’t keep being this person forever.
Because I knew I was going to let them down, eventually. Knew I couldn’t resist the urge to shut off, to numb, to forget about all the mistakes I’d ever made. I just needed that silence sometimes.
At first, it was just a few drinks at night, then just a few nights out with friends, then just a few pills.
Olivia was four when Mark kicked me out after finding me passed out on the patio chair in the backyard, Olivia unattended in the plastic kiddie pool. I’m pretty sure Mark was semibluffing, hoping it would be my wake-up call, the rock bottom that would bring me back to him, to them.
It took him two more years to file for divorce.
Addiction is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You convince yourself that you are the worst version of you. And then you act like it.
Now, Olivia is seventeen. She doesn’t cry for Mama in the night anymore. I broke her of that habit a long time ago.
She sits on the floor in the middle of her abandoned clothes, pouting.
I sit down behind her. I don’t say a word.
Instead, I reach gently for the end of her hair, limp and dark blond.
She lets me rake my fingers through it, then a brush, closing her eyes as I comb from root to end, careful not to snag her ears.
I give her a French braid, then twist it into an updo, like my mom used to do sometimes for school picture day.
She looks in the mirror over the little white vanity, and she smiles.
Together we pick out one of the outfits. She lets me do her eyeliner.
“Thanks, Mom,” she says to the reflection of me over her shoulder in the mirror, and it’s like there’s a shift in the meaning of the word for her—Mom—like maybe I am someone who can have her back.
Because that’s what finally got me sober, in the end, not a rock bottom, but a realization. That Olivia would be eighteen soon. That this was my last chance to get to know her as a child.
So I went back to AA, and, this time, I chose to believe that I could be the person I wanted to be, that I could be more than my mistakes.
When we finally arrive at orientation, we’re the last ones here.
Olivia bounds off to meet up with Hannah, who stands in a cluster of girls.
I watch from across the room for a moment.
One of the girls has complimented her hair, I can tell, because she touches the braid gently, and she dips her head to hide her shy smile. Her eyes find mine.
I scan the women by the refreshments table and spot Kennedy Claire, her back to me, her blond hair sculpted into newscaster curls. She’s talking to a few women with mimosas and plates of pastries when I approach her, tap her on the shoulder.
“Oh, Cat,” she says, turning to me. She looks to the clipboard in her arms and checks something off her list. “Now we can get started.”
“I’m excited to meet up with everyone else on the volunteer committee. If you don’t mind pointing some of them out?”
Kennedy Claire scrunches her nose. “Oh, honey, you know I talked to some of the ladies, and I don’t think they’re going to have much use for you. They’ve got everything covered. But they did appreciate the offer.”
I’m a little taken aback. “Are you sure?” Yesterday, she was chomping at the bit to have an extra set of hands.
Kennedy Claire rests the clipboard on her chest and looks down her nose at me.
“Oh, and Cat, next time you have a problem with one of my children, I’d appreciate if you’d just call me.
You have my number. I mean, really,” she laughs in a way that sends prickles down my scalp, because I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“There’s no reason to call the sheriff.”
“The sheriff?” I say, but then I realize, blood draining from my face so fast it makes me queasy.
The ball cap boy from last night, the one who called me a cunt.
“Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize he was your son.
” I put a hand to her elbow. “Otherwise, of course, I would have called you. It’s just dangerous.
That’s all. With all this construction going on, they really shouldn’t be out there drinking. ”
“My Kayden wasn’t drinking,” she says.
I let out a puff of a laugh, but her face is a steely mask. She looks down at my hand on her elbow, like I’ve just wiped ketchup on her white dress, and she slides her arm away.
“If you’ll excuse me.” She turns and walks toward the front of the room. Conversations begin to die down and everyone finds a seat. Melanie is half standing, waving me over to the chair she’s saved for me in the front row, and I slink over, like a dog with her tail between her legs.
And all the glimmering potential of this morning has drained from me, and I feel heavy as a wet bag of sand as I drop into the seat beside Melanie.
Because—for Olivia’s sake—the last person I wanted to make an enemy of right now was Kennedy Claire Preston.