40. Lenni
FORTY
lenni
I’m dreaming, or at least I think I am.
It’s a bright day. I’m on campus, the football stadium in the distance. Up ahead, I see Cam walking, his back to me. I call out to him, but he doesn’t turn. I try to push past the people in front of me, but I’m slowly falling behind, though I keep calling his name. Suddenly, there’s nothing but empty space between us. He hears me and turns. He looks at me and I smile. He gives me a nod, then turns away and walks on.
I wake up in the dark, thinking it was the nightmare that woke me. It’s 4:12 a.m. But then I hear my phone buzzing urgently on the bedside table. My heart leaps. I’m half-asleep but fully aware I’ve heard nothing back from Cam in the almost-twelve hours since I texted him an apology. It’s not Cam, though. It’s Grandpa.
By five, I’m on the road back to my hometown in the dark. The blue matchbox car from my windowsill sits rattling in the cupholder next to me, grabbed in my desperation for something solid to take with me. I don’t know exactly what I’ll find at home because Grandpa was spare with the details. Mom has been drinking on and off for the last two weeks, but it was only yesterday that things exploded. Her boyfriend called the cops on her after a screaming match, she might not be able to live with Gus for a while, things are a mess, of course. Nothing I hadn’t seen in my own childhood.
By the time we hung up the phone, Grandpa was apologizing for everything: calling me, waking me, upsetting me. He didn’t want me coming home, but the sound of his voice told me he needed me. When I was growing up and Mom went through her shit, Grandpa always held it together, promising me things would be all right, making it easy for me to forget that Mom was his daughter and that her addiction tore him up too. This time, I could hear his heart breaking. He can’t be the strong one this time. But maybe if I’m there, Gus won’t have to take on that role.
When I walk into the house just before nine, Gus is sweeping loose papers into his backpack while Grandpa works at a stubborn knot in Gus’s sneaker shoelaces, and Nana tucks the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. All normal and familiar, right down to the grim smiles my grandparents offer when they shuffle over to hug me. Gus jumps on me and buzzes about his new sneakers until Nana ushers him out the door to meet the school bus. He seems happy, but he’s nine now. I can’t pretend he isn’t aware that something is terribly wrong at home. I’m not sure what he witnessed yesterday, but he’s old enough to hear everything that’s not being said amid the tension in this little house.
Once he’s gone, Grandpa pours sweetened condensed milk into a big mug of coffee and hands it to me. “You still take it that way, I hope?” he asks.
“The only way I drink coffee,” I tell him.
The three of us sit down, but we don’t say much aside from some small talk about school and a few more details about Mom. My grandparents’ pasted-on smiles are gone, which I appreciate. Our family is screwed up, but at least we don’t pretend otherwise. We can sit here together and commiserate over how much this sucks without saying much of anything.
Finally, I ask the obvious question. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs. Packing.” Nana nods toward the ceiling. Since Mom and Gus moved in, Mom’s been living in her old childhood bedroom. This makes me feel unbearably sad.
“Should I go talk to her?” I ask, even though it’s a needless question. I guess I’m trying to delay the inevitable.
“Sure, if you’ve had enough coffee and small talk. You need a refill?” Grandpa asks, playing along.
I smile. “I think my sugar high is just kicking in. I’ll go see Mom.”
I take the stairs slowly. No matter how many times I’ve done this, and I’ve done it countless times, it always comes with the familiar concoction of dread and sadness churning in my gut, topped off with the urge to turn and run. Seeing Mom drunk and angry is awful, but this moment is the worst—when she’s sober and filled with so much shame she can barely meet my eye, when I want her to know how much she’s hurting us almost as much as I want to take her in my arms and wipe away her shame and tell her it’s okay, we can move on and leave this all behind.
Her door is half open so I knock and walk in. Mom leans over the bed, carefully laying a pair of jeans into an open suitcase like she’s tucking in a baby. She turns to me with a hard-earned smile but doesn’t hug me.
“Hi, love,” she says softly. “Grandpa told me he called you. He shouldn’t have done that.”
“Sure, he should’ve. I want to know what’s happening at home.”
“Well, I don’t need you worrying about me. You’ve got school and your own life to think about.”
I hate how she says this like it’s Grandpa’s fault I had to come rushing through the night to get home. “It’s Gus I’m worried about,” I say coolly. I think it surprises both of us.
Mom nods, then turns quickly back to her packing, but not before I catch the quiver in her lip. I know I’m awful for making her feel worse, but I’m so exhausted I can’t find the energy to fake it. I’m so tired of being let down.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“I’ve got it.”
I stand there and watch as she slowly refolds a stack of folded clothing on the bed. “I’ll help you,” I finally say, sitting on the bed and taking a shirt from the pile. I fold slowly, matching her pace.
“Tell me about your life, Lenni.” Mom sounds like a little kid asking for a bedtime story.
I want to tell her about Cam. I know I could get a genuine smile out of her if I told her about the tall, handsome football player with the intoxicating kiss. Nana says Mom’s been boy crazy all her life. But that’s not my life anymore. I want to tell her how it ended almost as quickly as it began so she can make it better like mothers are supposed to, but she’ll only tell me to forget him, move on, find someone better. The guy’s a bum , she’d say, summing Cam up the same way she’s summed up every man she’s ever known, save for her own father.
I tell her about school and the extra work I’ve been doing for the paper. I lay out my master plan for making editor by next fall. I invite her and Gus and my grandparents to drive up for homecoming in a few weeks.
She looks up at me. “I’m sure Gus and Grandpa and Nana would love to, but I can’t be there. I’ll be in rehab.”
“Oh, right.” Of course. I feel embarrassed, like I’ve been caught trying to pretend everything is normal. “Maybe I’ll come home for the holidays this year,” I find myself saying, though I really don’t want to.
“I know you don’t like coming home. I don’t blame you either. It’s just...we love having you around.”
Guilt cuts through me like a knife. “And I love being around you all. I just don’t like being here.”
She nods, but I know she doesn’t get it, and that makes me angry. She should get it. She knows what happened to me and that coming back to this town brings on a flood of bad memories. What’s so hard to understand?
“Look, Mom, this is all just temporary: you living in Nana and Grandpa’s house, me being far away, all the things that make life tough. In a year and a half, I’ll be graduating, and before too long I’ll have a good job in the city and a steady income. And then we can all be together.”
She cocks her head. “Be together? In what city?”
I laugh, though it’s out of irritation. “I’ve told you this before. I’m going to get you guys out of here and find you a real job and a good apartment. I’ll be able to support this family, with a little help from your job, obviously. If you guys can just hang on a little longer, I’ll make it better. I know what I need to do.”
Mom pulls back, stunned. “Oh, Lenni,” she says softly.
“What? That’s always been the plan.”
She sits on the bed beside me. “Sure, I’ve heard you mention that, but I didn’t know you really took it to heart. Honey, it’s not your job to make it all better.”
“Why shouldn’t it be? I want to.”
“I see that. But supporting a family is hard work. Money and time and stress. And even if you could, you have to know that’s not your responsibility. You take on that burden and you’ll feel sixty before you even turn twenty-five.”
“I could do it,” I say feebly.
“No, love, you live your own life, and you make it what you want. That’s your responsibility to this family.”
“I can’t live my life when I’m worried about you guys.”
“Then quit worrying. Today when I walk into that rehab center, that’s me taking responsibility so the rest of you don’t have to, and I’m gonna make it work this time. This is the last time anyone in this family cries over my choices.”
I stare at her hands folded in her lap. They don’t look like my mom’s hands anymore. “I want that to be true as much as you do, Mom. But what if it’s not?”
“Then I’ll try again. What I won’t do is let you set aside your life for mine. You can forget that right now.”
Forget that right now. It’s right up there with all Mom’s greatest hits. The guy’s a bum. Move on and let the past go. Don’t let it get you down. She wants everything to be as simple as saying the words, and it never is.
But this time, I wonder if there might be some wisdom in her advice. I can’t imagine what life would look like if I forgot I ever promised myself I’d save this family. But I think I want to find out.
That afternoon, Grandpa and Gus and I stand in the driveway and wave as Nana’s old blue sedan pulls away with Mom in the passenger seat. Gus is sad but hopeful. Between the four of us, he’s probably been told a dozen times today that Mom is going to a special house full of doctors who will help her get better. I obviously don’t tell him that she’d already been to this “special house” twice by the time I was his age and that her stays there amounted to little more than a complete waste of my grandparents’ meager savings.
Later, Gus and I drive into town for dinner and ice cream to give my grandfather some time alone. Gus is subdued until I tell him I’ve scraped together the money for spring soccer as promised. After that, he bounces around the ice cream shop and recites a list of the top ten soccer jersey numbers he’s hoping for, complete with detailed explanations of why each number would be just perfect for him.
We’re on the sidewalk walking back to my car when I look up at the young woman walking toward us, maybe a block away, and my stomach drops. Shit. Katie Weatherly? Is it really her? Katie was one of my closest high school friends until the incident with the football players. I stare. She’s a little fleshier, but it’s definitely Katie. I grab Gus’s hand and dart into the alley between two brick buildings.
“What happened?” he asks loudly.
“Nothing, nothing.”
“Why are we here? It smells.” He gives a disapproving look at the trash carts lining the alley.
“It’s a shortcut to the parking lot.”
“Nuh-uh. You parked that way.” He points in the opposite direction.
“Okay, fine. I forgot you knew left and right. I saw someone I used to know, and I didn’t feel like talking.”
He nods like he understands completely. “Was she mean?”
“No. She was really nice, actually. You probably don’t remember Katie, but you liked her. She used to come over after school sometimes and give you the Fruit Roll-Ups that she didn’t eat from her lunch.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember those! They were the rainbow kind. She was nice. Why don’t you want to talk to her?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just feeling shy.”
Of course I know exactly why I don’t want to talk to her. After what happened, I shut out all my friends from the “before time.” It was easy with most of them because they were backstabbing assholes who laughed at me or gossiped about me or got angry and called me a slut when the two guys, good old hometown football heroes, actually faced punishment for committing a sexual crime against a teenager. Katie was one of the few who stood by me and defended me and told me it wasn’t my fault. But during those dark days, it didn’t matter whose side anyone was on. I just wanted to forget what happened and who I was before that night.
Gus is giving me a look like he’s not buying what I’m selling. “Mom says being shy isn’t an excuse to be rude.”
This is true. Kind of like having baggage isn’t an excuse to treat the people who care about you like shit. Why do I always learn these things the hard way?
“Come on,” I tell Gus. I hurry back toward the street before I can question myself, my footsteps almost as quick as my heartbeat. Please don’t let her be gone.
Katie’s still half a block away, stopped in front of a coffee shop and staring down at her phone.
“Katie!” I call, but I’m too quiet. She doesn’t even glance up. I swallow and try again. My voice feels obnoxiously loud, but she hears me.
She looks up and hesitates, the furrow in her brow slowly deepening. Then a bright smile takes over. “Lenni Crawford? My god!” she shrieks.
She’s already closing the distance between us, her arms spread wide to hug me.
I’m glowing the whole drive back to my grandparents’ house. Katie and I only talked for a few minutes, but I feel transformed. I didn’t think I was capable of seeing someone from high school and smiling without faking it and talking without thinking of what those guys did to me. I didn’t think the power of my bad memories would ever lessen its hold on me. I was wrong.
Gus and I are both quiet until we turn into my grandparents’ long gravel driveway and Gus gasps.
“Look! That truck looks like Cam’s!” He points toward a big gray pickup sitting in front of the house, half-hidden by evergreens.
“No.” I wave him off. “Must be one of Grandpa’s friends.” But immediately I’m going down the checklist of Cam’s truck: gray paint, black pinstripe, black hubcaps with that little red logo detail that I know Cam loves because he rubs the dirt off with the hem of his T-shirt every time he gets in or out.
As we near the house, we move clear of the trees and there’s Cam leaning against the front of the truck, as at ease in my grandparents’ driveway as he is on the football field. The feeling that comes over me is one I don’t have a name for. It hits like fear but is somehow delicious.
“It is Cam!” Gus practically shrieks. “You didn’t tell me he was coming! Why’d he come?”
“I don’t know.” I force my eyes away from Cam so I can park the car without crashing. “I guess he wanted to surprise us.”
Gus darts out of the car as soon as it stops. I watch in the rearview mirror as he races to Cam, gives him a leaping high-five and then breaks into nonstop chatter. Meanwhile, I sit glued to my seat, my mind racing and my heart hammering. How did he know where to find me? Why is he here? He doesn’t text or call or knock on my apartment door, but he drives 250 miles to stand in the driveway and wait for me?
Also, has Grandpa come out yet to yell at him to get that goddamn truck off this property?
I sit for a few minutes, take a few dozen deep breaths. Cam is chatting away with Gus, smiling and nodding at whatever fourth-grade nonsense my little brother is overflowing with, but he keeps glancing over at my car.
I can’t stay in here forever.