Twenty-Three #2
Over twenty-six years, I’ve learned when asking helps and when it simply gives somebody one more thing to carry. So I let the moment sit unnamed, the way we let most hard things sit in this house.
Mom clears her throat and takes the dustpan from me without another word.
We clean the last of the rug together before I pour another glass of water and bring it back with her pills. This time she takes them without protest.
When she sets the glass down, she looks at me and smiles.
“There,” she says, her voice steady again. “All better.”
Neither of us believes it.
We let it stand anyway.
∞∞∞
Mom falls asleep before the credits finish on the show she’s watching. Her head rests sideways against the sofa cushion, one hand loosely curled in her lap.
I grab the blanket from the back of the chair and drape it over her, tucking the fringe around her shoulders before leaning down to kiss her forehead.
“Love you,” I whisper.
She doesn’t stir.
I’m gathering my things from the hallway when the front door swings open and Dad steps inside carrying a grease-spotted takeout bag.
“There’s my youngest.” He catches me with one arm and pulls me into a hug. “I didn’t know you’d still be here.”
“Mom fell asleep watching TV,” I say, adjusting the strap of my bag. “I was just heading out.”
He lifts the takeout bag. “Got Thai. Want to share?”
“Thanks, but I’ve got a mountain of prep to do for the show.”
It’s the truth. It’s also the wrong thing to say.
Something that feels too much like pity settles into his expression. “You doing okay? You’re not putting too much pressure on yourself?”
“I’m good. I promise.”
“Because nobody would think any less of you if you couldn’t pull it off this time.”
The words find the exact sore spot left over from last year.
I bite back every furious response that rushes to the surface and give him the answer that will end the conversation fastest.
“I know. Thanks, Dad.”
He nods and moves on. “I hear you girls are dress shopping Friday. Bridesmaid stuff.”
“What?”
His eyes narrow. “For Madison’s wedding?”
Oh, shit.
How the hell did I forget about that?
Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem, except I have an appointment with Dr. Mercer on Friday.
“Ro?”
Whatever crossed my face, I clearly didn’t hide it quickly enough.
“It just slipped my mind. I can’t wait.”
“This is a big deal for your sister. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do.”
“I just want to make sure you’re keeping that in focus.” He moves the takeout bag to his other hand. “It’s just—you know how it gets. When something big is happening for one of your siblings, you tend to—”
“Tend to what?”
“Divert the attention.”
Of all the things he could have said, he has somehow landed on the one accusation I’ve spent most of my life trying to prove wrong.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I just stand there in the hallway of the house I grew up in and stare at him.
He must see something on my face because he gives a short, uncomfortable laugh.
“Hey, I’m just teasing. You know what I meant.
I just want to make sure you’re there and present for Madi.
” He shakes his head, backtracking fast now.
“That’s all. Madison deserves this. I want everybody showing up for her. ”
I keep looking at him.
This is the man who taught me to ride a bike in the driveway when I was six. The man who used to carry me on his shoulders. I love him with an uncomplicated, bone-deep devotion you aren’t supposed to dissect.
That’s what makes this hurt.
Somewhere over the last several years, something shifted between us, and I don’t know if either of us noticed when it happened.
He still brings up, at least once a year, that I moved out when I was eighteen.
Rowan’s always been our independent one.
She’s mature for her age.
She needed her own space early.
He says it fondly.
He has no idea why I actually left.
I couldn’t breathe in this house anymore. Every aching joint, every dizzy spell, every time my body refused to cooperate had an explanation ready before I ever opened my mouth.
Stress.
Sensitivity.
Anxiety.
A reaction to Mom.
For years, doctors gave us versions of the same story, and eventually it became the one everyone understood. Nobody had to keep looking for a physical explanation if the problem was already sitting inside my head.
I believed it too.
I became so convinced my own mind was inventing the pain that part of the reason I moved out was to test the theory. I wanted to separate myself from the family, from Mom’s illness, from all the things everyone said were making me anxious, and see whether my body suddenly stopped hurting.
It didn’t.
The pain came with me.
The dizziness came with me.
My parents love me. I know they do. But love didn’t give any of us an answer. After enough doctors suggested stress or attention-seeking, that became the story underlying everything else.
I wasn’t sick.
I was dramatic.
And Dad doesn’t know he has just repeated the part that hurt the most.
That whenever something was wrong with me, somebody somewhere wondered whether I was only trying to make people look.
All I ever wanted was for someone to look twice.
Dad is still standing in front of me, and I can tell he knows he has hurt me, even if he doesn’t understand how.
I don’t have it in me to explain.
Not today.
So I lean in and kiss his cheek, letting the familiar silence settle over everything we won't say.
“I’ll be there,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Love you, Dad.”
His face softens. “Love you too.”
I make it down the porch steps and halfway across the drive before my eyes start to burn. I hold back the tears until I’m inside the car, the door shut, with the house partly hidden behind the trees in my rearview mirror.
I sit there, gripping the steering wheel, trying to force everything back into whatever place I normally keep it, but it doesn’t fit.
The first sound that comes out of me is broken and furious, and once it starts, I can’t stop it.
I scream until my throat hurts, until tears blur the windshield, until there’s nothing left to hold in.