TWENTY-TWO: MOM AND MY OTHER HALF

A WEEK AFTER THE FIRE—A week after I was arrested and fingerprinted and released into my parents’ custody—Mom is driving me to my first court appearance and she’s crying.

She says things like “I love you so much, baby,” whenever we pull up to a red light. Things like, “It’s okay to cry,” on all of the occasions she notices I’m not crying. And now she’s doing it again. “I just … I keep thinking about how you lost your other half. And how you saw it happen right in front of you.” She wipes the side of her thumb under her eyes, one at a time, then looks over and gives me the hardest excuse for a smile I’ve ever seen: her lips make a crooked line, and her eyes are pooling over, and she’s trying so hard to actually smile because that’s what a parent does—tries with everything they have to keep their kid from knowing how much pain they’re really in.

“It’s okay, Mom,” I say, knowing that she’ll just take it as me trying to comfort her.

This is the truth: as terrible as it all is, I am okay.

I can be okay.

I can be okay without Charlie. Or, at least, I want to be able to be okay without him.

And that feels so fucked up.

The light changes to green, but she doesn’t move. She just looks at me, the devastating smile going tighter and flatter as the car behind us gives a short and polite reminder honk. “You don’t need to be okay, baby,” she says.

“Light, Mom,” I say, motioning toward the traffic signal.

“Sweetie,” she says, and this time the car behind us lays on its horn. She reaches back between the seats and gives the car behind us not the middle finger, but the index finger—one that says, “Just a moment.” Her eyes are locked on mine when she says it again: “You don’t need to be okay. It’s okay to be everything else too.”

“Mom, the light changed.”

The car behind us backs up, angles its wheels, then dramatically zooms around us, the driver giving us not the index, but the middle. The light turns yellow.

“I love you so much,” she says. Her face is composed, but there are silent tears coming down her cheeks.

“I know, Mom. And I love you too.”

My eyes are dry. The light clicks to a deep red, washing over us.