Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Derek
My boss, Gina, she showed up at our house some months ago.
I opened the door to see her eyelashes thick like giant tarantulas.
It was almost as bad as seeing a teacher outside of school.
Maybe worse. Like the diner, she looked like she belonged somewhere in the past, with her big blond curls and straight bangs.
She craned her neck to look around me and into the kitchen. Her head jutted this way and that.
“Hi, honey, where’s your mother?” she asked.
“She didn’t show up at the art studio and I waited for twenty minutes and then I called and called and called,” she said, holding up her phone as proof.
“She was supposed to start teaching me how to paint the mountain scene with the little lake and all. You know, the one with the white-spotted deer taking a drink.” She leaned in closer. “Where is she?”
I licked my lips, trying to think of a cover-up that wasn’t really a lie. “She came home early. Sleeping off a nasty bug or something.”
“Yeah? Is that right?” Gina turned her head to the side and looked at me with small eyes.
I stared at her staring at me, and she was quiet.
She grabbed my waist and pushed me to the side, walked through the kitchen and down the hall.
“Nancy? Naaaancy. It’s Gina. I …” Silence.
Rattling pills. Maybe she was counting the number of bottles on the table.
Maybe she was counting how few pills were left.
“Nancy?”
I walked into the living room to see Gina bent over Mom on the couch. She waved a hand over her face, but Mom didn’t respond.
“Nancy, it’s Gina,” she whispered close to Mom’s ear, then again, louder. Mom swatted and turned away from her, and Gina stood up straight and whirled around to look at me. “Dear God almighty, Derek, does this happen a lot?”
I nodded.
“Well, do you know if she’s okay?”
“I counted the pills. She’ll wake up soon. Don’t worry.” But I couldn’t keep the worry out of my own voice.
I followed her into the kitchen and watched her grab a towel and soak it under a stream of water. She wrung it out and marched back to the living room, where she slowly wiped Mom’s face, moving away tendrils of red hair. Mom muttered something like Leave m’alone ung sleep.
Gina tsked. “Nancy, this has gotta stop. You’ve been getting mighty thin.
And irritable!” She looked at me. “My God, will she snap at you if you mix the wrong colors. I had my suspicions, but then I thought, No, not Nancy. But I should know better. Addiction doesn’t have a face.
It runs in my family, you know. My daddy was a drinker.
Got mean and nasty and one couldn’t stand to be around him most of the time.
And it made him a complete dimwit, too. Thought he saw a wolf walking through the yard at night and shot it.
Turned out to be the neighbor’s little boy.
Barely lived, poor thing. Mama drank too, but I think she did that to deal with Daddy’s drinking.
And me, I’ve been sober for thirteen years.
” She looked up at me and smiled. “So I sure as hell know what I’m talking about.
Now,” she said, pushing herself up from the couch, “you tell your mother to call me when she sobers up. I have some information I can share with her.”
I shook my head. “Gina, she doesn’t want it, trust me. And she won’t be happy that you saw her like this.”
“Well. I can’t help her if she doesn’t want to help herself. That’s the God-honest truth.” She paused. “But I don’t want you to ever give up on her.”
She walked back into the kitchen and began opening cupboards, muttering to herself.
“Just a little bit … macaroni … good ol’ Southern …
warm it up.” Then she straightened and brushed out her clothes.
“All right, honey, I’ll be by later with my famous casserole.
Maybe two. You can freeze one and heat it up later. ”
“I’m okay, Gina.” I was planning on living on sandwiches and cereal until I moved out, anyway.
“No, you’re not. You’re not okay.” She looked me straight in the eyes and I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I can’t fix this situation, but I can at least make sure you’re fed.” She patted my cheek. “Okay, honey, see you in a few hours.”
When she left, I felt more alone than before.
It’s like the eerie feeling you get standing over a body in a casket.
You think that any second, their eyes will open, and they’ll sit up, and they’ll be just like the person they were before.
They’ll tell you to grab the remote. They’ll say, Hey, let’s go on a road trip, just you and me.
But it’s just a body. An unfeeling, empty body. And you’re alone.
Gina was right. The answer to Jae’s question is no. I’m not okay.