32. Things Can Only Get Better
I come home to a house that’s been trashed.
Cushions are off the sofa. It looks like someone was picking at the fireplace and got soot and ashes all over the floor and the carpet. The table in the family room is overturned—I see broken glass on the floor.
“Mom!”
I search her bedroom and the small bathroom attached to it, then sprint up the stairs and search the two rooms up there.
“Mom, are you here?”
I keep calling out her name while I go back downstairs.
The kitchen is a disaster, with pots and pans all on the floor and food everywhere.
Wait a minute.
I see opened cookbooks, along with several bottles of wine on the counter.
A couple of bottles are in the garbage can.
Noodles in some kind of white sauce (that’s now crusty-looking) are in the middle of the floor.
An empty wine glass is on the kitchen table.
Another one is broken on the floor.
It looks like there was a party here and I wasn’t invited.
“Mom!”
I open the door to the laundry room, then let out a sigh of relief.
It’s sad when seeing your mother passed out on the floor of the laundry room brings a sigh of relief.
Her eyes are swollen, with caked makeup smeared around them and on her cheeks. I can tell she’s been crying.
She’s been raging too.
I bend down and gently touch her cheek. Maybe it’s morbid, but I’m just checking. Then double-checking to make sure.
She’s not dead, you idiot. She’s just out like the drunkard she is.
Mom is wearing a black dress along with high heels and a necklace. Her hair is up. I prop her up against the back wall, hoping that will revive her.
She’s out.
Really totally out.
She smells sweet and sickly, a smell I’m slowly getting used to and quickly learning to loathe.
All around us in this tiny room are dirty clothes. Ghostly light spills in from the tiny round window above us.
I sigh and wipe the sweat off my forehead.
I’ve got a lot of homework to do, and none of it has anything to do with school.
The sun is gone and so is my appetite. If I keep this up I’m going to look like a skeleton.
It’s close to nine, and I hear my mom’s toilet flush. After carrying her to her bed and laying her down to sleep a few hours ago, I cleaned the place up as best as I could.
A light goes on. I’m watching one of the three channels we get on our television. I miss DirecTV. That along with a lot of other things.
She doesn’t come out for another ten minutes. When she does, she’s wearing pajamas. She looks tired, her face a bit swollen, her eyes vacant.
“Thanks,” she says.
“For what?”
Mom glances around the room, then looks at me. “For everything.”
I nod. What am I supposed to say? To be honest, I’m embarrassed about the whole thing.
“Guess my date never showed up,” Mom says, trying to make a joke.
I nod, continuing to look at the television. It takes me a couple minutes before I start laughing.
“Sorry you had to see that,” she says. “I didn’t even know I had any of my dresses with me.”
“You never know when you might need one.”
“There are a lot of things I might need, but an evening dress isn’t one of them.”
Mom goes into the kitchen and comes back holding a glass of water. “Chris—listen to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Tomorrow—tomorrow I’ll start trying.”
“Start trying what?”
“I’ll start trying to live again. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to come home to that.”
I nod again. It’s all I can do.
“I need to find a job. Find something to do. Tomorrow—I’ll get started on that, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Chris?”
I look at her.
“I know that—I know how I’ve been. I just—I just want to say that I love you. That I love how strong you’ve been.”
I’m not sure what to say back.
“You have your father’s strength, you know that?”
“I take after you more than him,” I say.
“Maybe. In some ways. But you’re still a combination of both of us.”
“I wish I wasn’t.”
“Don’t say that. I need that strength, Chris. I need it. It’s sad to say, but it’s true.”
“Okay.”
“I love you, you know that?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s going to get better,” she says. “I promise it’s going to get better.”
I nod, but I don’t believe her.
It’s November, and winter is still approaching.