Cause of Death

by Laura Dembowski

  I turn and start kissing his chest, working myself up into a frenzy. I need to feel loved. I need to feel cared for. I need to feel wanted.

  Lana doesn’t really love me. She loves the idea of me, but she certainly doesn’t actually care about me. Maybe she does want me in her life, but really, her need for me outweighs anything else. I’m like water: necessary for hydration, but nothing more. No one loves drinking water, if they’re honest.

  “Margaret, we can’t. You know that.”

  “But she hasn’t bothered us at night lately, and we need to. How are we supposed to stay connected and together? She certainly wants us to maintain our relationship.”

  “She doesn’t see a correlation between the two things.”

  “What’s the harm in one night? Just a few minutes. A little fun,” I say gently biting his ear.

  “Okay, quick, then. She’ll hear or sense or whatever she does.”

  Quick. Sure. Fine. Whatever. I’ll take anything.

  I’m sure he wants sex, too, but he always gives in to the fear of Lana. Can you imagine being afraid of your own child? What does he think she’s going to do? Explode if she sees us making love? How does she think she made it to this Earth anyway? Magic? The stork?

  I’ve only been begging for weeks. I’m so close to climaxing I can feel it. Just a little more.

  And then the door swings open. The light from the hallway shining in is my first clue. I oiled the doors because the squeaking was annoying me, but now I wish I hadn’t. We could have stopped before she even walked in. Once the light jars me to reality, it’s too late. We freeze, then return to our normal sleeping positions.

  Lana says nothing. She certainly doesn’t run away in panic like a normal person would. Which can only mean one thing: She needs something. Something a normal twenty-something would do or get for herself—but Lana isn’t normal. Lana’s desire for this thing, whatever it is, outweighs any embarrassment she is facing.

  “Mommy,” she says.

  She may love Dave more than me, but in the middle of the night, it’s always me she turns to. Lucky me.

  “Yes, Lana.”

  “I can’t sleep. My tummy hurts.”

  Let me remind you again, she’s not five. Not even ten. She is a grown-ass woman.

  “I’m sorry about that. What do you want me to do?”

  “Can we go watch TV for a while?”

  I want to say “No,” or “Can’t you go watch by yourself?” Instead I say “Sure, honey,” knowing if I say anything other than that, she’ll be back in five or ten, maybe twenty minutes, bothering me again. Apparently there is something about my mere presence that allows her to relax and fall back asleep. Even when she was away at college or living in New York, she’d call me to soothe her. I didn’t even have to talk, just stay on the line and breathe.

  Lana heads out of the room, to gather her pillow and probably a stuffed animal to head downstairs. I put on my pajamas and grab my pillow as well. If I’m lucky, she’ll fall asleep quickly, something she does most of the time, and I’ll be able to run back upstairs to sleep with my husband. But then there are those glorious nights when she tosses and turns on the sofa, trying to find a comfortable position, the volume on the TV so low, any program she puts on sounds like a constant whining, none of the words intelligible.

  Which night do you think this was?

  The next morning, Dave gently kisses me on the cheek, waking me before he heads off for another day of work.

  I look over to the other sofa, where last I remember, Lana was trying desperately to go to sleep. She’s gone. That’s unusual. In fact, it’s never happened before.

  I look up at Dave and kiss him passionately.

  “Rough night?” he asks, walking to the kitchen to retrieve the lunch I’d made for him the night before.

  “Actually, I slept. I just would rather have done it in our own bed, or finished what we had started.”

  “Me, too. Maybe we can get away next month, even if it’s just for a weekend.”

  I laugh. No, actually, I cackle. Lana won’t stay by herself, and no one but us would stay with her, so this trip Dave wants is never going to happen.

  “You keep telling yourself that,” I reply.

  His hands full, he kisses me one more time, then heads out the door.

  I think about returning to bed, but I’m kind of comfortable where I am. The sun is kissing the top of my head, warming it in the most perfect way. I decide to stay.

  And fall back asleep before Dave even shuts the garage door.

  Chapter 2

  Lana

  “Ugh,” I sigh as I look at my phone, about to vibrate off the table. I swear it vibrates even harder when she calls. It’s like she can send it a signal to annoy me as much as humanly possible so I’m more likely to pick up.

  “Is it your mom?” Zack asks. He’s my friend—maybe my boyfriend. I don’t really know what we are, but he’s nice, and we like hanging out, so our relationship doesn’t really need a label at this moment.

  “Yes. I told her I was getting my hair done. You’d think she could just leave me the fuck alone.”

  “I don’t know why you just don’t tell her that you have friends and a life, like every other person on earth.”

  “Because she almost killed herself”—I pause, rolling my eyes—“or at least threatened to when I was away. I told you that’s why I gave up everything. For her.”

  “Eventually that’s going to have to stop,” Zack says before taking a big bite of his burger.

  There’s mayonnaise on his lip. I wipe it away with my finger.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  My phone vibrates again. I have no choice but to pick it up. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to deal with whatever crisis she is having at the moment and then continue on with my evening for another thirty minutes, maybe an hour, although that’s probably pushing it. If I’m not, I’ll eat my burger in the car with the windows rolled down so the smell won’t stick around and make her suspicious that I’ve done something fun without her.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say.

  “How’s your appointment going? How much longer do you think you’ll be? Can you bring home a bottle of wine and a pint of ice cream? I thought maybe we could have a movie night?”

  “Going fine. At least a half an hour, maybe longer. And sure.” I answer the questions in order. Of course, they’re all lies. And I don’t feel bad about it in the slightest. I’m a grown-ass woman, and I don’t need to be taking care of my perfectly healthy mother at the expense of the rest of my life. I don’t mind helping out or spending time together, but this is ridiculous. If this is the rest of my life, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to make it.

  “Okay, sweetie,” she says sounding a bit sad, like she usually does.

  “Bye, Mom,” I say, and put the phone down before she can get another word in.

  It’s not that I don’t love my mom; of course I do. She’s my mom, and up until I moved away to go to college and then get a job, we were fine. Along with my dad, we had a tight, happy little family. She seemed normal, like all the other moms out there: loving, maybe a bit overprotective, just the right amount of annoying and embarrassing.

  Once I left, she apparently lost control. She’d call me all hours—in the middle of class, the middle of the night, the middle of the year-end debate competition, crying, complaining, telling me stories my dad would later refute. Maybe she needed a therapist. Maybe she needed medication that she undoubtedly would have refused to take. Maybe she just needed to be institutionalized. My dad and I couldn’t force her to do any of those things, even if it was to our detriment. You have to support the people you love, even if it means going along with their wishes.

  “What are you thinking about?” Zack asks, making me suddenly aware that I’ve spent the past minute or so since I
hung up with my mom staring into the distance at nothing in particular.

  “That I have no idea what to do or where my life is going.”

  “Luckily we don’t have to, since we’re still in our twenties.”

  “Oh, so it’s okay for us to be messed up.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not okay for your mom to be so fucked up and ruin your life.”

  I say nothing. I’m not offended, because he’s right; I just don’t know what to say.

  “Sorry,” Zack says. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He reaches for my hand. He does that sometimes. When our hands touch, I have this amazing feeling and I want to kiss him, but I don’t, because after a couple months he still hasn’t made a move, and I’ve got this distorted view of the world, thanks to being stuck in the black hole that is my mom, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

  “No, you should have,” I say. “You’re right. She is, and I know it. I am watching her do it, but I don’t know how to stop it.”

  “I’ll help you,” he says, and leans close to me. Closer. Our lips meet. We are kissing.

  It is everything I hoped it would be.

  “Okay,” I say after we pull away from each other, both of us smiling.

  “Okay,” he says.

  We finish our dinner as leisurely as two people can while watching the clock, wishing the minutes would stop ticking away. In fact, it’s difficult to even call this dinner. It’s just after five by the time we are done. The latest I could convince my mom I needed to schedule an appointment of any kind was three-thirty. I’d left the house at three and met Zack at four, the earliest he could get out of work, and the earliest any restaurants worth eating at open.

  The only reason he was able to get out of work early was that he told his boss he’s trying to recruit me. Because he is trying to recruit me. I’m pretty much thrilled about it. I am at a crossroads in my life and I have to make a decision. I have to choose whether I will take the path that leads me down the road of forever living with my parents and comforting my mother, who may or may not be insane, or the road that leads to my own life, whatever that may be.

  I think I have decided to live my own life, but when I get home I may change my mind. My mom will be so happy to see me and she’ll give me a big hug. It’s like coming home to a dog or a child that has missed me all day long. That’s a feeling that is hard to deny. She guilts me into liking her, loving her, even, forget about all the drama she causes.

  But only for so long. One day, when both of my parents are dead, I will have no one, because I’ve shut everyone else out.

  I pick up the requested ice cream and wine, along with some grape juice. Then I pull behind the grocery store and dump the wine, refilling the bottle, sloppily, with the juice. I wipe off the bottle and head home.

  When I open the door, just as I expected, I am greeted with a giant hug. My dad isn’t home from work yet, which is to be expected. He stays late a lot because he doesn’t want to come home and spend time with his wife. That makes me sad, but it’s the truth, and I can’t blame him. He makes the money and I keep her happy. He buys me jewelry in blue boxes and shoes with red soles to make up for things, but it’s like putting a Band-Aid on a gushing knife wound in my chest.

  When I leave he’ll have a mess on his hands, and he knows it, but still, he tells me to go. He tells me to go live my dreams and fall in love and start a family. He says he wants me to be happy. He’s a good guy, my dad.

  “I’m so glad you’re home,” my mom exclaims, even though it’s only been three hours since she last saw me.

  “Me, too,” I say, not wanting to be a contrarian and start something.

  “Did you get the wine and ice cream?”

  “I did,” I say, walking into the kitchen, hoping she’ll stay in the foyer, distracted by the mail I brought in. I need to pour our drinks in the kitchen, so she doesn’t spot that the bottle is already open. She would notice that and figure that I’d done something to it. I quickly grab two glasses and pour, taking a drink of mine and feeling a sense of relief, though I know there is no reason for it to relax me.

  “Tomorrow I thought maybe we could go to the mall, or perhaps Vivian would meet us for lunch. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “It would,” I say, trying to sound excited.

  I’m not excited. Not even a little. We went to the mall the other day and had lunch with Vivian last week. My mom doesn’t even like Vivian that much. She’d never say that out loud, since Vivian is the only person outside our family who tolerates her anymore. I kind of like Vivian. Mom’s just jealous of her. She has successful children and even a grandchild. I’d like to remind Mom that she can’t have those things if she doesn’t allow me to leave the house more frequently to date and fall in love and make a name for myself, but I don’t. How does she think she’s going to have a grandchild—the stork?

  “Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow,” I say, handing her a glass of “wine.” “Let’s go watch some TV.”

  She follows me into the family room. We sit on opposite sofas, as we do most of the time. Every now and then she’ll get extra needy and ask me to sit next to her, with glassy, watery eyes. Without question, I do.

  We sit in silence, eating ice cream, drinking grape juice, and watching TV. It’s not a bad evening necessarily. Not one that many of my friends experience, but there is something to be said for it. There’s something to be said for not having to go to work every day. For knowing that I am taken care of financially, for perhaps the rest of my life. There is something to be said about the life that I am currently leading. Or maybe she’s just wearing me down.

  Like I said, I may change my mind about that potential job. About moving out, and Zack and kids. This isn’t the perfect life, but then, no one’s life is, and sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.

  Chapter 3

  Margaret

  “I should just kill myself,” Lana sobs.

  “I hate when you say that,” I yell, because yelling at her clearly will make her feel less like killing herself.

  “What do you want me to say? I have nothing to live for. And things never get better, they only get worse.”

  “That’s not true. You had fun last week at lunch with Vivian, and you love those new shoes Dad bought you.”

  “But Vivian’s your friend, and shoes don’t fix things.”

  That’s not what she said when he was buying them.

  “You just have to keep hoping things will get better, and they will. You are a smart, kind, pretty girl. It’ll all work out,” I say, meaning it. I want things to work out for Lana. As much as she’s a pain in my ass, it’s no fun to watch your child be unhappy, even if some—if not most—of their pain is their own damn fault. I want Lana to love life. I want all of her dreams to come true. I want her to be happy. But if she doesn’t make some changes and help herself, then I fear she’ll always be miserable. And always be my problem.

  “You keep saying that, but nothing changes.”

  “Then you have to change something to get the ball rolling,” I say.

  “Like what?” she asks, even though I’m fairly certain she knows the answer to that question. See, we’ve only had this nearly identical conversation at least once a week, sometimes twice, since she’s moved back home, and a slightly less desperate, dramatic version when she was at college.

  Her threatening to kill herself is a new twist, but neither Dave nor I actually think she’ll go through with it. She doesn’t have the balls to do it, nor the means. All the knives in the house are so dull they can barely cut a lemon, we don’t own a gun, and it’s not like she’s going to mail-order a vial of arsenic.

  We could send her to therapy, but the last time she was in therapy, she got to a point where she refused to leave the house. I don’t want to relive that, and I know she doesn’t either. Plus, I mean, wh
at’s a shrink going to say to fix her problems other than the things Dave and I have already told her? If anyone should be getting $150 an hour to dole out advice, it should be me.

  “Like online dating. Give that a try. It’s easy, and who knows, maybe you’ll fall madly in love and start a fam—”

  “I don’t want kids,” she says. “You know that.”

  I do know that. She only tells me every chance she gets. I try not to let it get to me, but what woman doesn’t want to be a grandmother—or a mother, for that matter? Maybe there is something more deeply wrong with Lana. Or maybe I should just be happy her genes won’t continue. Of course, that means I also have to be happy that mine won’t, because some of these problems had to come from Dave and me, even if we don’t like to admit it. Either our genetics or our parenting tainted Lana to the point that I often fear she will never be a contributing member of society.

  Instead of saying all of that, though I have said similar things to her before, I say, “Even if you don’t want kids, you can still date and get married. Kids don’t have to be part of the deal.”

  If only my mother had told me that. Oh, how things would be different.

  To my complete and total shock, she takes my advice. She goes to her computer, a fancy top-of-the-line model Dave bought her so she could write a novel or a blog or start her genius work-from-home business that was going to revolutionize life, not just for Lana, but for everyone. None of those things have happened yet, but I’m just happy she’s using it, and for an idea I gave her, no less.

  The rest of the week is quiet. Lana is filled with the hope of falling in love through the computer. She even suggests I meet a friend for lunch. She probably wants me to say “Oh, no, that’s okay. I’ll stay home with you.” But I don’t. I jump all over her offer like I jump on a glass of wine at the end of the day.

  I call Andrea. We’ve been friends for years, and used to live in the same neighborhood. Then I moved away to start a family and a new life. For better or worse, she stayed. “It’s fine,” she says all the time. I can’t tell if that’s the truth or not, but she says the same thing about her marriage, so maybe I shouldn’t read too much into it. And now I haven’t seen her in years. Maybe it will be weird, but then again, perhaps it will be exciting. We won’t run out of things to talk about, that’s for sure.