SUNDAY AFTERNOON I am doing my homework. Well, technically, I am sitting cross-legged on the guest room floor with To Kill a Mockingbird in my lap, chomping on a pencil and waiting for inspiration to strike. It is hard to be inspired in this room. No desk. No posters. Nothing at all, really. Just a bed and a dresser and a straight-backed chair over by the window where I put my backpack. Walls: white. Sheets: white. Carpet: beige. I might as well be living at the Holiday Inn.
I know this is my choice. I know I could decorate it any way I want. That was literally the first thing my dad said when he showed me the room. “This is your space, Anna. Decorate it any way you want.” It could be just like my old room, he said. I could have a beanbag couch. I could have a shag rug. I could paint constellations on the ceiling and peace signs on the walls.
This isn’t my space! I wanted to scream at him, scream until the ceiling cracked and the walls came crashing down.
I didn’t scream, of course. I just calmly told him that this was not my house, any more than his lame bachelor apartment had been my house, and that I would not be sleeping over. Ever.
And he calmly responded, “I won’t force you to sleep here, Anna. But decorating your room would mean a lot to Marnie, so just think about it.”
I hated the way he said that, like Marnie’s feelings mattered more. Like the things she left for me on the bed—a Pottery Barn teen catalog, paint samples from Benjamin Moore—could possibly make up for anything. Thanks, Marnie, a Totally Trellis comforter and Aztec Lily walls will totally erase the fact that you and my dad got together a month after he left his family.
I wouldn’t do that to my mom. I couldn’t. Decorating this room, moving into my father’s pretty new life with his pretty new wife, would send my mom right over the edge.
Over the edge, where she went anyway. Because I couldn’t stop her. Because I ignored all the signs—
No, I am not going to think about that. I am going to think about To Kill a Mockingbird. I open my book, pull out Mr. Pfaff’s essay question. What is Atticus Finch’s relationship to Maycomb? What is his role in the community?
I can do this. I can answer this.
But before I can write a word, there’s a knock on the door.
“I’m working,” I say.
Marnie pops her head in anyway. “Hi,” she says, smiling. “Sorry to interrupt, but you have a phone call.” She walks over, holding out the cordless. Her nails are shiny peach ovals. “It’s Regina.”
Crap.
I wait for Marnie to leave. She hovers in the doorway for a moment. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I say.
As soon as she closes the door, I pick up the phone. “Hello,” I say, all ice queen.
“Anna Banana?”
Hearing her voice, warm and deep like a man’s, a picture pops into my head. Regina Rose wearing one of her favorite tent-like shirts—the yellow one with the cowboy motif—and her bangs are sky-high. Regina is a big woman. Big voice, big hair, big boobs, big, strong arms. When she pulls you in for a hug, there is no escape. I used to love getting hugged by Regina. She is warm and wobbly like a water bed, and she always smells like tomato sauce. Gravy, she calls it. I love Regina’s gravy, but I will not be eating it again.
“How are you, honey?” Regina asks.
I say nothing.
“Anna?”
Silence.
“Can you hear me?”
This coming from the loudest person I know.
“Anna?” she says again. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” I say flatly.
“Good. I thought I lost you.”
If only.
“How are you doing at your dad’s?” she says. “Are you eating enough?” Regina thinks everyone is too thin. She cooks constantly, and I am her favorite customer. Meatballs, baked ziti, lacey Italian cookies. I have sat in Regina’s kitchen a million times, eating her food. A million times, I have stuffed my face with garlic knots while she and my mom drank wine and listened to Italian opera.
Suddenly the words burst out of me. “Why are you telling everyone about my mother?”
“What?” Regina sounds surprised.
“Dani says you told her mom. In the middle of Big Y.”
“Oh, honey. It was hardly the middle of Big Y. It was a discreet corner. The ethnic foods section.”
“I can’t believe you did that. I can’t believe you’re telling people.”
“Your mom needs all the love and support she can get right now.”
“That’s your idea of love and support? Blabbing her personal business to the whole world?”
“Joyce Loomis is not the whole world. She’s a friend of your mom, and I thought she should know.”
I snort. I don’t bother telling Regina that because Dani and I are no longer friends, by the transitive property our mothers are no longer friends. I just snort.
“Okay,” she says. “So you’re mad at me.”
I think about denying it, but I don’t.
“It’s okay to be mad at me. Be as mad as you want. I can take it.”
“Fine,” I say. “I will … I am.”
“I know you are. It’s all right.”
Silence for a moment. Then she says, “So, okay, we’ve established that you’re pissed at me. And we’ve established that it’s fine that you’re pissed at me. And now we need to talk about your mom.”
I feel a little twist in my stomach.
“Okay? Can we do that?”
My voice comes out low. “Have you seen her?”
“Not yet. But I’ve been talking to her doctors. They’ve been trying, based on what happened, based on your mom’s history, to come up with an accurate diagnosis.”
“What do you mean, an accurate diagnosis? It’s depression. She gets depressed. You give her pills and she gets better.”
Regina is the one who explained this to me in the first place—how not long after I was born, my mother developed postpartum depression. She was so sad and tired she couldn’t get out of bed, so she had to go into the hospital. My dad was left to take care of me, which was not part of the plan. You know that movie about the three single guys and the baby that suddenly gets dropped on their doorstep? They’re so befuddled they don’t know what to do? How do we put on this diaper? What do babies eat? That was my dad, minus the roommates to help him, so he called Regina. I don’t remember any of this, obviously. But Regina told me the story when I was in second grade, on the morning my mom was so tired she couldn’t get out of bed and go to my school play. I don’t think I will ever forget how it made me feel. Like my mom’s depression was my fault. Like giving birth to me broke something inside of her. That’s how little kids think, right? In literal terms? I broke it; now I need to fix it.
“It may not be as simple as depression,” Regina says now. “And the medication she’s been given in the past may not have been the right medication.”
“Why not?”
“Well … I need you to think back for me. Not about this week, when your mom was clearly depressed, but about the weeks leading up to her depression … What was she like?”
“What was she like?” I say. “She was Mom. You know what she’s like.”
“Energized? Excited about things? Working on a project?”
“Obviously.”
This is one of the things I love about my mom. She’s always jazzed about something. This summer it was guinea hens. She’d read some scientific journal article about Lyme disease and discovered that guinea hens eat the ticks that carry the bacteria. Most people would read the article and say, Hmm, that’s interesting. But my mom springs into action. She joins the Guinea Fowl Breeders Association. She buys the wood and the wire and the nails. She digs the trench in the backyard and builds the coop and orders the eggs. And then, when the chicks hatch, she names them all after Broadway stars you have never heard of. Gertrude Lawrence. Pearl Bailey. Betty Buckley. She sings them show tunes. She paints little signs for their roosts.
“Remember the guinea hens?” I say.
Regina saw the whole thing. My mom called her when the chicks hatched. They drank champagne to celebrate.
“I do,” Regina says. She starts to say something else, hesitates. Then, “What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember any other projects—say, before your dad moved out?”
I’m tired, I realize. I don’t want to have this conversation. I want to lie down on the bed, take a little nap. Wake up in a year.
“Anna. I know this isn’t easy. But I need you to bear with me.”
“I am.”
“Remember the painting project?”
Regina is really starting to bug me. Of course I remember the painting project. I was there. It was the last big fight my parents had before they split up, and I was right in the middle of it.
The way it started was my mom went to some workshop on the psychology of color, and when she came home she decided to repaint the whole house. First she made a chart: rooms, moods they should create, best colors to reflect those moods. Front hall: orange; welcoming energy. Downstairs bathroom: blue; peace and relaxation. She bought paint. She took all the art off the walls. She moved the furniture into the middle of each room. I was excited because my room was going to be green, harmony and stability, and because I would get to use the paint roller. My father was not excited. He thought the whole thing was a GD shit storm. He said my mother would never finish and he would have to clean up the GD mess.
I sigh into the phone.
“What?” Regina says. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“Whatever’s on your mind.”
“My dad was right. It was a shit storm.”
“Anna.”
“What?”
“Honey,” Regina says softly, “that’s mania. The flip side of depression. Your mom’s projects? Those times when she’s really, really energized and doesn’t need to sleep more than a few hours? That’s actually part of her sickness.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a new diagnosis they’re considering. Bipolar two.”
“So, what—Dr. Amman was wrong? She’s not depressed?”
Dr. Amman is a psychiatrist friend of Regina’s—the one she drags my mother to whenever she can’t get out of bed. My mom hates going, but Regina makes her go anyway. Because Regina is only a nurse and can’t prescribe medication.
“Dr. Amman was half-right.”
“How can you be half-right?” I say.
“He treated half your mom’s problem, and the pills only worked to a certain extent, when she was willing to take them. The doctors at the hospital are trying to figure out which medications, in which combinations, will work to stabilize all of your mom’s symptoms and make her feel better.”
“When can I see her?” I say. “When can she come home?”
“Let’s take this one step at a time,” Regina says.
Who put you in charge? I want to yell at her. I feel a knot of craziness forming in my stomach and another one in my throat.
“This sucks,” I choke out.
“She’s going to be okay,” Regina says. “I promise. You just need to give her time.”
Time? It’s been a week already. How much more does she need?