“It won’t feel like that long.” Dad claps one of his massive hands onto my shoulder, and I shrink away. “The time will go by before you know it.” He waves his other hand through the air in a zooming motion, and I imagine it’s a jet plane going at supersonic speed.
Whoosh! Time’s up! Mom’s home! Things are normal again!
I’m not sure if I know what normal is anymore, though. I look around the huge lobby that we’re standing in and shuffle back and forth on the shiny floor. My beat-up sneakers look out of place on the black-and-silver tiles. My jeans and the TRAVEL THE WORLD: READ! t-shirt I won in last summer’s reading contest feel like they’re an insult to the huge potted plants and fancy picture frames surrounding me.
Then I look over at Mom’s faded jeans held up by a belt, at her baggy college sweatshirt and slip-on clogs, and feel a bit better. Then I feel bad for feeling better. I don’t want Mom to look all tired and exhausted like this. It’s ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, which means that Mom should be at home right now. We should all be relaxing on the couch, watching some cheesy show on Netflix.
Then I shake my head, realizing what a fantasy world I’m living in. Because in reality, Mom would usually be at the office right now, trying to log more billable hours.
A glass of wine would be next to her, too.
The only place Mom should be is right here, in the lobby of Pine Knolls Rehab Center, waiting for someone to meet us and show us to her “living quarters,” where she’s going to stay for the next two months.
Alone.
Without her husband and her daughter.
Without her family.
“Two months is a long time,” I mutter to Dad. Mom’s a few steps ahead of us, so I figure it’s okay to say something. As long as I don’t let Mom hear that I’m going to miss her.
As long as I don’t give her another excuse to try to back out.
Right before we left (before they made me leave to come with them), Dad pulled me aside and told me that we need to act happy today. That we need to reassure Mom that everything will be fine and that we’ll be okay without her.
That we need to accept that this is our reality.
Yesterday, my reality was having to buy the watery pasta at school lunch for three days in a row because Mom kept forgetting to make my lunch.
Annoying, but not awful.
Yesterday, my reality was how Camille Henderson, who sits behind me in science class, keeps trying to copy my answers during tests.
Irritating, but not awful. (As long as I don’t get in trouble, too.)
Yesterday, my reality was worrying about whether I’ll make the All-Star team and show everyone that I can be the third generation of Superstar Softball Conway Girls.
Super anxiety-producing, but not awful. Most of the time.
Today I have a different reality. The worst reality of all, especially since Dad keeps focusing on how hard this is for Mom.
Which, yeah, I’m sure it is. But what about me?
“We have to make things easy on her today,” Dad told me right before we left, as I hovered outside his door. He’d told me I should “look nice” when we dropped Mom off, by which I thought he meant my jeans without the hole in the knee. Except Dad was standing in front of the mirror, putting on a tie while wearing his shiniest black shoes on his feet, the ones he never even wears on sales calls because they hurt his heels after a half hour.
Apparently today is important enough for blisters.
“We have to support your mother, so she doesn’t feel more guilty than she already does.” He pulled and twisted at the strip of fabric on his neck and it magically turned into a tie.
“She should feel guilty,” I shot back. “She’s the one who’s leaving us.” I flopped onto Mom and Dad’s bed. Maybe if I couldn’t see or hear anything then it’d be like this day wasn’t really happening. I’d disappear into some alternate reality where moms didn’t have problems like this, problems that were way more than the “problems” everyone referred to them as.
“Your mom has a problem with drinking.”
“The people at Pine Knolls will help her with her problem.”
“Lots of grown-ups have this problem. But lots of them get better, too.”
People say that kids have big imaginations, but sometimes I think that grown-ups are the ones living in their own fantasy worlds.
A “problem” is when my favorite pink shirt is in the wash on school picture day and I have to wear my second favorite striped one instead.
A “problem” is how I have to stop doing Chorus Club this spring because All-Star practice will conflict with rehearsals.
A “problem” is something I have to solve on my math worksheets. It’s exponents and negative numbers and “solve for x.”
A problem has a definite answer.
Wash the shirt in time and you can wear it.
Decide to play softball because it’s what you’ve always done. And because you love it, of course.
Subtract each side of the equation by two and divide by four so that x equals three.
A problem isn’t anything where “lots” of grown-ups get better. Because what if Mom isn’t one of those “lots”? What happens if she’s in the other group, the one that people don’t mention?
Do they become the negative numbers in their own equations, disappearing without a trace?
Now I look around at the lady walking through the lobby and wonder if she’s one of the people who’s going to fix Mom. Or is she a patient, one of the ones who will get better? I feel like I’m working out a tricky word problem in my head. If this lady recovers, will my mother stay sick? Do I need to balance this equation, too?
I glare at her, then look away, my face warm, when she looks back at me.
“Veronica. Smile.” Dad nudges me in the side as Mom’s lips twitch up into a small smile of her own, then quiver and collapse. Is she going to cry? If she cries, does that mean I can cry?
Or does that just mean that I have to be stronger?
I wish Dad had told me what to do beyond “supporting” Mom. Because I’m here. I got dressed, brushed my hair, and rode in the car. I walked through the doors of this place even.
I’m here.
But Mom’s the only one who’s staying.
“Ah, the Conway family!” Another woman, this one with gray-streaked hair twisted up in a fancy bun, strolls into the room so smoothly it’s like she’s on one of those moving sidewalks they have in the airport. Maybe she has those sneakers with the tiny rollerblades on the bottom. I sneak a peek down at her feet, but nope. Just shiny red high heels, the exact same color as her blazer and her necklace.
This lady is way too matchy.
“That’s us!” Dad raises his hand in the air like he’s a kid on the first day of school. “Present and accounted for!”
Dad is way too cheerful.
Next to me, Mom takes in a shuddering breath. I hesitate, then reach out and squeeze her hand. It feels normal, all soft and smooth. She has a small callus at the base of her ring finger in the spot her wedding ring rubs against.
Mom squeezes back, and I imagine that her squeeze is a language all its own. One squeeze means “I love you.” Two squeezes mean “Now that we’re here I realize that this whole thing is silly. I’m going to stop drinking and we can go back home and life can get back to normal.”
I squeeze Mom’s hand once, then hold my breath as I wait for her response.
All she does is squeeze back once more, then she lets go of my hand.
“I’m Annabelle Conway.” Mom reaches back to tighten her ponytail, a gesture so familiar that my heart twinges in my chest. I’m not going to get to see Mom adjust her ponytail for another two months. At least.
Before this moment, I didn’t stop to think that something so small would be so important to my life. I was worried about Mom not getting to help me with softball tryouts and how I’m going to explain this whole situation to my friends.
But she’s also going to miss our Thursday movie nights. I’m going to miss the way she sings silly songs while cooking dinner and how she’s the only one who buys the fun brands of cereal. She still did those things sometimes, even after she started drinking a lot.
Will Mom miss our movie nights, too? Or will she miss alcohol more?
I drop her hand.
“It’s so lovely to meet you.” The lady is wearing a name tag that says OLIVIA ITO, DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS. She shakes Mom’s hand, then Dad’s. When she reaches out to me, I notice her fingers, hovering in midair. She’s wearing sparkly pink nail polish. It’s not super sparkly, but it definitely has a shimmer to it.
Her nail polish makes me want to bite my nails again. It makes me want to stomp out of here, too. Why should this lady get to wear fancy nail polish and fancy shoes and even fancy dangly earrings when Mom’s wearing her old Tufts University sweatshirt? When she’s about to be locked up for who knows how long?
I glare at her fingers, stopping just before I stick my tongue out at them. I still don’t shake her hand, though, and after a few seconds, she pulls it back and gives me a polite nod.
I don’t nod back.
“Well, if you have all your stuff, then you should say your goodbyes. We need to be making our way upstairs,” Ms. Ito says. “The first few days are busy in so many ways and we want to make sure you get settled before…”
Her voice trails off, and my mind naturally jumps to finish the sentence.
… before you descend into the belly of this horrible beast of a building?
… before we strap you to some medieval torture machine?
… before we make you realize that you started drinking because you’re unhappy with your family? That you really want to disappear forever, not just for two months?
I shove the last thought back into my brain, in the darkest, shadowiest corner, where I have a padlocked trunk especially prepared for it. I lock the trunk and cover it with a blanket. Then I throw away the key. I throw it as hard as I can and pretend it sinks to the bottom of the ocean, down where sharks and piranhas lurk. One of them will eat the key. Then they’ll swim farther away.
That trunk will stay locked forever. It has to.
Dad is hugging Mom. It’s the kind of hug I always gave my parents when I was a kid, when they used to put me to bed at night. I did it after baths and stories and tucking-in, before Mom or Dad went downstairs to do whatever adults do at night. (Back then, I thought they sat around looking at pictures of me and saying how adorable I was. Now I know they just watch television and eat ice cream.)
Before they’d shut the door, I’d give Mom and Dad what I called the “biggest hug in the universe.” I’d wrap my arms around their torsos and squeeze as tightly as I could, so tightly that I imagined I was squeezing all the love out of them so it’d float down around us in a warm haze.
Then they’d hug me again and reassure me that no matter how hard I tried, I could never, ever squeeze them dry of their love for me.
I want to give one of those hugs to Mom right now. But as I approach her to say goodbye, my eyes are watering too hard to even see her clearly.
I don’t want you to go.
Leave.
Please get better.
Stay.
The words aren’t coming, though, even as Mom reaches out to me and squeezes my hand. “I love you, honey.”
Mom’s not arguing or making excuses anymore. But she doesn’t make a move to come closer to me. She’s acting like I’m a dog that may not be safe to approach.
I made her feel that way.
But she made me feel, too. And I’m not over that yet.
Mom hugs Dad instead. They embrace for probably a full minute, which usually would be totally embarrassing. My friend Lauren’s parents kiss a lot in public, which always makes us blush and avert our eyes.
This isn’t so much embarrassing as sad. It’s a hug filled with apologies and promises and missed memories. A hug that both is only for them and fills up the whole room with its energy.
Mom turns to me again before the director lady pulls her away to her room or her cell or wherever she’ll be living. I don’t care what they call it if it’s not home. She wiggles her fingers at me one more time.
“I love you,” I whisper softly as she disappears up the stairs.