Chapter 46 Amelia Blue
“What do you mean as soon as possible?”
“Unfortunately, you can’t stay here any longer.”
“I’m sorry about the cereal,” I say, scrambling. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. It was like an out-of-body experience.”
Dr. Mackenzie’s shoulders relax, and she almost smiles. “You know, I think that’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me.”
“That’s progress,” I say hopefully. “A good sign, right?”
Dr. Mackenzie takes a seat on the couch beside me. “Yes, but that’s not the problem.”
I press my fists into my belly. “What do you mean?”
“We were unable to complete the payment for your stay.”
Relief floods my body, and I release my fists, resting my palms onto my thighs. This is something I can fix. I can literally buy myself more time here. “I’ll call my grandmother,” I say. I’ll tell Naomi the therapy is helping. She’ll be happy to dig into my trust if she believes I’m getting better.
I reach for my phone, but before I can dial, Dr. Mackenzie says, “I spoke with your grandmother last night.” Her face looks so solemn that I almost laugh.
“I convinced the owner to let you stay for one more night to give you the day to arrange your travel home, but beyond that, there’s nothing I can do. ”
“There must’ve been a clerical error or something.” I jump to my feet and dial my grandmother’s number. It’s early in California, but she’ll be awake.
Ach, who can sleep late?
I slide the door to the bedroom shut behind me. Much to my surprise, my grandmother sounds sleepy when she picks up the phone. For the first time, it occurs to me that maybe her sleeping habits are different when I’m not there.
I tell her a version of what Dr. Mackenzie told me. There’s silence on the other end.
“Please just call the bank, Grandma.”
More silence.
“Grandma?”
I hear a rustling sound, and I imagine her sitting up in bed, fumbling for her glasses.
Over the years, I’ve watched the wrinkles in her forehead grow deeper, memorized the crease between her eyebrows that never disappears, not even when she’s sleeping.
She wears her hair short, just below her ears.
It’s dark, but not entirely gray. She always said I was lucky I got her hair.
Never dye it, she said. If your mother had just left her hair alone, she’d have looked so much younger.
(In family therapy, a counselor said that was terrible advice, implying as it did that I should adhere to patriarchal standards of beauty.)
“I can’t call the bank.” My grandmother sounds old, tired.
“I’ll call, then. Just give me the account numbers.” Naomi always said she was the only one who could access the trust until I turn thirty. But she also said there were contingencies for my education and medical emergencies.
“I don’t have any account numbers.”
“Okay, whatever you do have. Passwords, trust numbers. I don’t know what you call it. Whatever you’ve used for my treatment in the past.”
I hear my grandmother take a deep breath, followed by a long exhale.
“The money for your treatment didn’t come from a trust.”
“Why not? My dad set it up so we could take what we need.” That’s what she told me.
“He didn’t.”
I feel something shift beneath my feet, so sudden that my stomach lurches.
I thought I didn’t take my privilege for granted, but now the words I said to Dr. Mackenzie echo back to me. I nearly laughed at the notion that I didn’t have enough money for something I wanted.
I’ve never actually seen documentation for the trust my father left me, and I never asked to, secure that what I needed would always be there.
I try to remember if I ever spoke about it with Georgia, but I only remember Naomi’s voice, assuring me that my father took care of me, that we could afford whatever I needed—school, doctors, therapists.
My father wanted to take care of me, she said.
I never doubted it, because I’d read his suicide note, along with the rest of the world. My daughter will be better off if she doesn’t have to worry about her old man’s broken brain. He thought he was helping me, relieving me of what he saw as a terrible burden—himself.
“How did you pay for boarding school, college, my MFA?” I ask.
All my life, money was no object. I had no reason to wonder whether we could afford the best care money could buy.
“There was some money,” Naomi says carefully.
I can still see her face when I told her I wanted to come here. I thought she was shocked I’d chosen this place after what happened with Georgia, but now I wonder whether she was doing the math: If I insisted that only this place could help me, she needed to find a way to send me here.
Grandma Naomi: my rock, the one who kept the house neat and clean, who made sure I got to school on time and brushed my hair and teeth each night; the one I could trust. Georgia: the basketcase who lied like she breathed. All my life, that’s what I knew.
“But there wasn’t enough money,” I supply.
Dr. Mackenzie said that Naomi wasn’t a healthy role model for me any more than Georgia was.
“No,” my grandmother says heavily. It’s quiet until she adds, “I mortgaged the house.”
Plenty of people have mortgages. Most people do, if they’re lucky enough to buy a home in the first place. When I get home, I’ll get a job, help with the bills.
Naomi adds, “The bank is talking foreclosure.”
“Foreclosure?” I echo. I glance around the bedroom, at the luxury mattress and expensive furnishings. I wonder if the word foreclosure has ever been uttered within these four walls.
“I didn’t want you to worry,” my grandmother says.
“But we might lose the house?”
“Yes.”
The house my father bought with the money he made from his music. The house where he died. The house I loved and my mother hated. The house where Georgia got high. The house where I planned to raise the baby I lost. The house I knew I would live in for the rest of my life.
I knew it, but like so much of what I knew, it wasn’t the truth.
Or more accurately, it isn’t the truth anymore.
In her sober diary, Georgia wrote, My sponsor wants to know why I haven’t told Amelia Blue I’m sober. Why I haven’t told my mom. She says I can’t stay sober without support. She says I can’t stay sober if I lie about my sobriety as much as I did about my using.
Georgia never wrote her sponsor’s name. I would’ve gone through the contacts on her old phone for a clue, but Naomi told the center not to bother sending it back with the rest of Georgia’s things. They wiped it clean and donated it to charity.
She doesn’t understand that I can’t tell them (the word can’t underlined twice), not until I’m sure I can keep it up.
She says sobriety is a promise we make to ourselves, not to other people.
I told her it doesn’t matter. They wouldn’t believe I’m sober anyhow.
“They say I have to leave here tomorrow,” I tell my grandmother.
“I’m sorry.” Naomi sounds very tired. “I didn’t want to add to your troubles.”
My grandmother lied to protect me.
With her final lie, Georgia was trying to protect me, too.