Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
“That’s all you want to do?” my mom asked as she threw another log onto the fire. She turned to face me, her cheeks flushed, and brushed a lock of dark hair off her face. “I made all these fun plans for us tomorrow.”
My gaze drifted to the windows where branches, buffeted by the wind, scraped against the glass. They looked like long, bony fingers, eerie in the moonlight. I don’t know how my mom did it. I could never live up here alone in the middle of nowhere surrounded by all this nature.
“You only have yourself to blame. You made this cabin too cozy. I’m not leaving this couch.
” I pulled a knitted blanket off the back of the floral sofa and draped it around my shoulders like a cape as a barn owl screeched, a haunting high-pitched scream that raised the little hairs on the back of my neck. “It’s a big bad world out there.”
“What do you want to listen to?” my mom asked, flipping through her vinyl collection.
“Anything except…”
She sighed. “I know.” She chose Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks . The perfect album to cheer someone up.
“Do you think a mug of cocoa will make it better?” She patted the top of my head on her way to the kitchen.
A farmhouse table with my birthday flowers arranged in a putrid green ceramic vase separated the kitchen from the living room. I’d made the lopsided vase at a pottery studio when I was about nine, but like me, my mother kept everything.
“Do you have anything stronger than hot chocolate? Tequila? Whiskey? A shot of Demerol?”
“What’s going on?” My mom poured milk into a saucepan and set it on the gas burner.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine.” I pulled on a loose piece of yarn and the blanket started to unravel. Kind of poetic, really. All it took was one phone call to unravel my entire life.
I care about Annika. It was never my intention to hurt her…
What did that mean? Was he planning to break up with her on his birthday? Why would he even say those things to me?
What an asshole.
My mom handed me a mug of cocoa with six mini marshmallows, like I was still five years old, and this was the cure for all my worries and woes.
She sat opposite me on the sofa with her back leaning against the arm and blew on her hot chocolate, waving her hand at me. “Talk.”
I didn’t want to talk. Spilling my guts would only drive home the point that I’d inadvertently caused my best friend’s impending breakup.
Far better to pretend that that conversation had never happened.
“You know what I’d really love to do?” My gaze drifted to the battered desk where my mom’s ancient Olympia typewriter sat. It was big and clunky and weighed a ton, but she refused to part with it.
When I was a kid, the distinctive sound of her pounding those keys late into the night used to be as soothing as a lullaby. A reassurance that my mom was working, she was safe and well, and I wasn’t alone.
“I’d love to get lost in a good book?—"
“No.” My mom shook her head and pursed her lips. “Absolutely not.”
“Please,” I pleaded. “It’s the only thing I want for my birthday. Just let me read a little bit?—”
“It still needs more rounds of edits…and it needs work. It’s not ready.”
“You’ve been working on it for two years. You have to let me read it eventually.”
Her brows inched up. “Just like you used to let me read all the poetry you wrote.”
“Oh please, that was entirely different. That was just angsty high school stuff. And I’m not a writer,” I pointed out.
“So how’s the art coming?” she asked, prodding my leg with her foot. “Have you exhibited your work in any galleries yet?” She wiggled her toes, digging them into my thigh. “Have you sold anything yet?”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed her foot, pushing it away. “I know what you’re doing.”
“I’m being serious, Cleo. If you want to be an artist, you have to put yourself out there.”
Where have I heard that before?
Without debating it further, my mom crossed the room and retrieved the manuscript from the desk drawer. She held it to her chest like it was her baby before offering it to me.
The symbolism wasn’t lost on me. I set my mug on the table and took it from her. “Thank you.”
With a nod, she selected a book from the shelf and returned to her seat. With the fire crackling and the wind howling, I started reading.
I was transported to a SoHo loft where Jakob, a passionate artist, painted to Rachmaninov on great swaths of canvas. He captured his lover and muse’s face and the dips and curves of her naked body as light poured in through the windows and illuminated her skin.
He fed her orange segments and licked the juice off her lips. Buried his face in her flower-scented hair and breathed deeply. Soft linen sheets, her silky skin, his calloused fingers brushing and gripping. Music soaring, her laughter and melodic voice echoing from the other room.
As the story progressed, all his senses were heightened except for one. Jakob was losing his sight.
I was so engrossed that I lost track of time and read late into the night.
When I finally lifted my head from the pages, tears streamed down my cheeks. “This is so beautiful and tragic and gut-wrenching…my heart hurts. It physically aches.”
My mom smiled. “Good.”
I laughed and wiped away my tears. “You’re evil.”
She took the manuscript out of my hands, set it on the coffee table and pulled me to my feet, hugging me tight. Whenever my mom hugged me, I felt like a little girl again. Like nothing could hurt me if she was there.
“Happy birthday, baby.”
It was one thirty in the morning. I was officially twenty-two.
“On the day that you were born…” she started.
I didn’t want to hear this story again, but my mother felt compelled to tell it anyway.
It was her favorite. As the story goes, I wasn’t breathing when I came into the world.
The doctor was ready to give up and my mother was hysterical, screaming for my father, certain that he alone had the power to save me.
He’d barged into the delivery room, snatched me out of the doctor’s hands and breathed life back into my tiny lungs. Then he’d rocked me in his arms, and when he sang to me, I “sang” along.
It was the most high-pitched wailing I’d ever heard , he’d always say. You were born to be a rock star .
The song was Led Zep’s “I Can’t Quit You Baby.” Not exactly a soothing lullaby but there you go, my rock and roll life.
It sounded like a myth. A tall tale. My mom was loopy on sedatives and Nicky was probably stoned and drunk, so the story didn’t hold much weight.
But that was how I got my nickname. Baby Blue. Because I was born blue.