It’s close to a perfect California day when I pull up outside my mom’s apartment complex. Blue skies, a breeze that carries with it the fresh salty taste of the ocean. I could even turn off the A/C and stay comfortable. But the sweat clinging to me has nothing to do with the weather.
The neighbor I paid to be my lookout is smoking on his balcony and hops over when he sees me. He takes his money and points me toward her apartment as though I haven’t been parked out front and staring at it for two straight days.
I adopt Rebecca’s nervous habit and swipe my palms over my thighs as I draw closer, somehow losing years until I raise my hand to knock, feeling eight years old again. I have that same nervous energy skittering through me.
I’ve never done this part before, come for her. I was the one always waiting. It’s not gonna be the same. She hasn’t been scanning windows and listening for cars. She’s not waiting for me at all, in fact she might not even open the door.
That realization sucks the force out of my knock, making it soft and timid. I have to repeat the gesture three more times before I hear a man’s voice grumbling that he’s coming and a minute later the door swings open. I recognize the features of the man who scowls at me, but just barely. The Jensen I remember had a boyish grin and waves of tousled blond hair, not these sunken cheeks and wispy ponytail. He looks a good twenty years older than I know he is, and like none of those years were kind. Seeing Bauer again that first time had been its own kind of shock. Jensen is too, but in the opposite direction.
“What?” he says, stepping out into the light and revealing that the perpetual tan I remembered has given way to wan paleness.
“Jensen?” I can’t help but add a questioning note to my voice. It has to be him and yet, there’s something gut punching about seeing him like this and it has everything to do with the person I actually came to find. What would somebody think seeing my mom after ten years?
Jensen’s scowl shifts to wariness. “Do I know you?”
“No,” I say, because he really doesn’t. Unlike Bauer, I doubt he’ll even remember me. “I’m looking for Joy.”
At the mention of my mom’s name, he drops his hand from the door and turns to go back inside. “Joy.” Then louder, “Joy!”
I hold my breath waiting for her to appear. Even now I want that moment of happiness to transform her face and send her running to me. I want her to be happy that I came for her the same way she always came for me.
But it doesn’t happen like that. I have no trouble recognizing her when she peers around the corner; even scowling like Jensen, there’s no face I know better. There are no drastic changes either, they’re the same ones I’ve seen chip away at her features for years and they don’t shock me even though they would if I were anyone else. I just see my mother, alive, and in that moment, it’s enough.
“Mom?”
She doesn’t run to me; she stays right where she is in the hall and tugs the sides of her cardigan around her. “Ethan? What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing—?” I can’t keep the surprise from my voice. “Mom, I’ve been searching for you since the day I found out you checked out of rehab.”
“No, you’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be there, with them. They said they’d take care of you.” Then her eyes dart past me. “Are they here too? ’Cause I’m not going back to rehab. I’m not.”
“Grandma and Grandpa aren’t here. Just me.”
“He’s not staying here.” Jensen walks in the living room and plops down on an old lounge chair before lighting a cigarette. “You can go, but he can’t stay.”
“She’s not staying with you,” I say, through clenched teeth, just as my mom says, “He’s not staying with us.”
I shift my gaze to her almost reluctantly. I don’t have to say her name; she’s staring right back at me when she takes half a step forward. “I’m fine. Better than fine. Jensen’s helping me. You remember Jensen?”
Jensen blows a ring of smoke in my direction before grinning. “Looks like Mommy doesn’t want to go with you.”
Fury sends a spike of adrenaline surging through me and I relish the flicker of fear on his face as I start toward him.
“Stop.” My mom steps in between us. “I said I was fine.”
It takes every bit of self-control I have not to push past her and take years of fear and anger out on the smug piece of shit across the room. I don’t know how I do it, but I look down at her instead.
“Mom, you’re not fine.” And then because she doesn’t seem to be hearing anything I’m saying, I add, “I’m not fine.”
That stops her. Her bloodshot eyes pass over me, head to toe, searching. “What? What’s wrong with you?”
The weight of that question shudders through me. “A lot, Mom. Why didn’t you call me?”
“You were fine.”
This time I do raise my voice. “I wasn’t fine. I’ve never been fine. You know that. That’s why you sent me away so many times.” But even as I say it I know it’s not true, or at least it’s not the only reason. The fight goes out of me then, deflating like a balloon until I don’t even register that Jensen is there anymore. “I hurt a lot of people trying to find you, people who care about me. All because I thought it was my job to protect you. Every time you left me I thought it was because I failed, not you, me.” I jab all my fingers at my chest. “You let me live in my worst nightmares for weeks and now that I’ve finally found you, all you can do is tell me to go back because you’re not done getting high?”
A tear slips down her cheek as she lifts a hand to my face, but I push it away and swallow as my throat tightens. “Why couldn’t you want me more?” It’s a little boy’s question and one she won’t answer now any more than she could then.
She’s crying harder now. “I’m trying.”
I shake my head. “No, you’re not. Trying is rehab. Trying is coming with me right now. You’re not fine, and if you try to tell me that one more time...”
She shuffles back a step, then another, eyeing me like I might make a grab for her and drag her away whether she wants to go or not.
But I can’t do that. I won’t.
I’ve spent my whole life trying to make her stop, first as a child watching her fall prey to her addictions, then as a self-appointed jailer trying to protect her from them. And even there I failed. Maybe I could find a way to stay with her now, and maybe she thinks I could too based on the way she keeps moving back. I could watch her better this time, never leave her alone for a second. I could make my every waking moment about this singular purpose, and it might even work for a little while.
But not forever. Eventually there would be a moment I would miss. She’d slip away again and I’d be right back here searching for her, worrying for her, mourning for her and blaming myself. I would give up everything and I would still lose.
I take my own step back. “It can’t be my fight anymore, not if I’m the only one fighting.” She did more than make mistakes with me growing up, and I’ll be making one right alongside her if I don’t do this right now.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I love you, Mom, and I’ll be here when you want to stop more than you want to use, but I don’t want you to come back for me anymore.”
And then I walk away from her, my face crumbling as she cries after me to come back.
I sit in my car in a random parking lot, parts of the conversation with my mom swirling through my mind as Old Man butts his head against my unmoving hand. Every time I close my eyes I see her tearstained face as, for the first time ever, I was the one who left her behind. Old Man purrs in soft fits beside me sounding like a car engine that isn’t going to start. I glance down at him, envying the simple and clear-cut life he has.
“What now, huh?” I murmur, petting him and being rewarded with louder staccato purring. “What am I supposed to do now?”
My cat blinks at me, arches his back into a deep stretch, then turns his head to stare out at the road ahead.
I stare out with him, at a brilliantly blue sky that would make the most beautiful painting, and I start my car.