by Sara Polsky
My mother never liked to stop painting when she was on fire with a project, but that day, she set her brush down and turned off the studio lamps, locked the door behind us, and pulled me upstairs and out to the car. We drove for two hours to get to the beach, where we waded straight into the water, still in our clothes, and had a splash war until I wasn’t thinking about school or how weird Leila was being. I was just running and shrieking at the cold fall water and the way long strings of seaweed kept getting stuck between my toes, then trailing through the ocean behind me, like a dress with a wavy dark green train.
—
“I’m sorry.”
This time I actually say it, instead of just thinking it the way I did to Natalie. I announce my apology as I walk into my mother’s room, before I’ve even checked to see whether she’s awake and listening.
“Sophie?” My mother is awake, and today she really does sound more alert than she did before, with more inflection to her voice. But she also sounds puzzled, and I know, with the medications she’s been on, that she doesn’t remember much of our earlier conversation at all. Sometimes the combination of pills she has to take can leave her pretty out of it.
I’m not sure whether I want her to remember or not.
“I’m sorry about all the things I said the other day, Mom,” I say again. “About you not caring how I am. I didn’t mean—”
I’m about to say I didn’t mean it. But that’s not true. I meant all of it.
What I actually want to say is I know it’s not your fault that this is the way you are. I know my mother can’t do much about the way her genes tell her brain to work.
Sometimes I just wish her brain worked differently.
“It’s okay,” my mother says.
I still have no idea whether she remembers the things I said to her. Maybe she’s accepting the apology just because I made it and she can see I mean it, whatever it’s for. She sometimes does that when we argue, just lets me off the hook because she can tell how sorry I am.
I walk around to her other side, where the plastic hospital railing on her bed is already lowered. She pats the blanket next to her as if she’s been saving me the spot.
I kick off my shoes and climb up, trying not to remember the last time I scrambled onto her bed, how absolutely still she was and the way I held her hand while we waited for the ambulance. I gripped her fingers so hard it would have hurt her if she’d been awake to feel it. But I don’t think she even knew I was there.
As I sit, stretching my legs out parallel to hers, I realize I’m not done being angry. I haven’t asked her how she’s feeling today, and I don’t particularly want to.
“Do you want to play a game?” I ask her instead. I’m still looking for a distraction. “I have that deck of cards.”
“Maybe in a little while,” she says.
Then she surprises me by reaching over and grabbing my hand. We sit in silence together for a minute, then two. It doesn’t feel comfortable. It feels like my mother wants to say something but can’t figure out how to start.
“I don’t like being like this,” she finally says.
Her voice is so quiet. I’m right next to her, and I still have to lean down to hear her better.
“I know, Mom,” I start to say. But she squeezes my fingers and shakes her head to tell me she isn’t finished yet. I’m surprised by how clear-headed and forceful she seems all of a sudden; how quickly the medication and therapy can work when the doctors are monitoring exactly what she’s doing.
Again I feel that pang of guilt for not watching what she does that carefully.
For enjoying the past few days I’ve spent not watching her that carefully.
“I don’t like being like this,” she says again. “Except that, Sophie—sometimes I do like it. I like feeling as if I can do absolutely anything. And I know my work is better when I’m not on all these pills.”
“But, Mom—” I start to interrupt. She squeezes my fingers a second time, murmurs shh. I wonder why she’s chosen this moment to act like my parent again, holding my hand and making soft calming sounds. I tell myself I won’t let any of it work on me the way she wants it to.
“But I know it’s not better for you. So I just wanted to say that I’m going to try,” she says. “To keep up with the pills and therapy and everything, and I know the doctor had some good suggestions about places that would be better with our insurance.”
“He did,” I manage. “He wrote it all down for me.”
The piece of paper, with the name and address and phone number I still haven’t looked at, is in the pocket of my other pair of jeans, on the floor of the guest room.
I’m going to try. My mother’s words echo through my head, bouncing and shifting, and suddenly they’re all mixed up with words she’s said before. I’m going to take my pills, Sophie, but just in case I forget sometimes, I want you to remind me. You can do that, right?
I can do that, I told her when I was eleven. I took it seriously, the job of reminding her to take her medicine every morning before I left for school.
She took the pills nearly every day for five years.
And then, one week, she stopped.
Now, on the bed, I squeeze her hand back and look over at her. She’s completely convinced that she’ll remember the pills forever this time, that she’ll force herself to take them every day, even if they make her hands shake too much for her to sketch or her head feel too fuzzy for her to paint. Even if she misses a few nights’ sleep, suddenly feels happier and more capable than she can ever remember being before, and starts to wonder why she’s taking pills if she’s absolutely fine.
I don’t believe her.
But I also know, looking at her, that she’s certain she’s telling the truth. And that version of my mother—not the impossible afternoon-snack-at-the-kitchen-table Mom but the trying-to-stay-on-solid-ground Mom, the Mom who drives me to the beach and runs with me through the waves—is the one I have to hope I get back.
Even if that means I have to give up some other things.
And for one moment, I’m sure I’ve made the right decision.
I need to go back to my old, Mom-centric life, the one where I go straight home after school every day, do my homework, make dinner, and spend my free time on the worn cushion in the corner of my mother’s studio, keeping her company while she paints and pretends to have a secret life as an orchestra conductor.
While she takes medication, goes to therapy, and tries to keep her moods in check so that my life will be as stable as possible.
I lean toward my mother, move some hair away from her face, and kiss her cheek.
“I’ll see you soon, Mom,” I say. “I’ll probably be back tomorrow. Want me to bring you anything?”
She shakes her head. I try to slide off the bed without messing up the blankets, and when my feet touch the ground, I let go of her hand.
“Bye, Sophie,” she says. She blows a kiss, loud and exaggerated, into the air. I hold up my hand and catch it.
And I’m not even sure why, but as I tug the yellow curtain closed and leave her room, I actually feel a little bit better.
Nineteen
Saturday morning again.
But this time, when the alarm beep beep beeps me awake even earlier than last week, I don’t hit the snooze button. Instead, I climb out of bed, get dressed quickly, and open the guest room window to let in the breeze I can see brushing against the leaves outside. They’re just beginning to change color.
I pull out the notes and half a sketch I made in Uncle John’s office on Thursday, sit cross-legged behind the desk, and start to draw.
One of Uncle John’s projects is a house for a family moving here from California. They bought a huge plot of land with a creek, he told me, and they want to build a house there from scratch. Something that will keep the cold out but let the
m see the sun, the way they could from their old house.
“See whether you can come up with anything,” Uncle John told me, passing over a few architecture magazines full of glossy photos. “Maybe these will give you some ideas. Just sketch whatever you can think of. Don’t worry about the format or anything, we’re just looking for a starting point.”
He was probably only trying to distract me and didn’t really need the help, but as I drifted off to sleep last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the family and their sunlit house. Now, as I stare at the tree just outside the window, I remember my mother’s favorite house too, the one with the wide windows and glass doors, standing out among all the nearby farms. I turn the pages of Uncle John’s magazines, looking at all the houses with balconies and the ones that look out on lakes. Somehow, the photos calm me and clear my head.
By the time Uncle John knocks on the door to see if I’m ready to go to the office, I have a rough sketch finished. The design is modern and angular, like the shapes I draw when I’m doodling, but this time they mean something. I imagine the first floor’s entire back wall made of glass and a wide balcony stretching around one of the corners of the second floor. Near the edge of the page I draw the creek, with a wooden bench facing the water.
When I close my eyes, I can see the California family there, even though I have no idea what they look like. I see the kids throwing sticks into the creek and walking back and forth across the water, balancing on stones, while their parents sit on the deck with the newspapers, eating fruit out of a big yellow bowl.
The way I imagine them there isn’t so different from the way my mother imagines us, moving into her favorite house and finding a way to make each room ours.
—
Even once Uncle John and I have gone over my sketch, combining it with his version and brainstorming more ideas, there are still a few hours of work left. And I know I won’t be able to avoid Natalie all day.
I follow Uncle John over to the filing cabinets and table near Claire’s desk, each of us carrying a heavy stack of papers. Natalie is working at a computer right next to us, but after I set my stack down, I turn back to Uncle John without looking at her.
“Are you all set with this stuff?” Uncle John asks me.
I nod. It’s just collating and stapling.
He glances from me to Natalie and back again, and I wonder if he’s noticed that we haven’t said hello to each other this morning.
But now he just nods at both of us and turns away with a “Come find me if you need anything, either of you.”
We work in a silence so deep that every time I staple something, I jump at the clacking sound. If Natalie were talking to me, she would probably mock me for it. But whenever I look over in quick glances that I try to make as unobvious as possible, she’s listening to her music and seems totally focused on the screen in front of her.
I wonder if she’s pretending or if she’s already completely stopped caring that I’m here.
Just as I staple my next stack of papers, Natalie’s computer dings, the sound of an instant message. After a few seconds, she lets out a soft huff of a laugh. Then I hear the keys clicking quickly, loudly, as she types something back. The rest of the room is silent.
I wonder if she’s chatting with Zach, or if the person on the other end is one of her other friends from school. A real friend, one who actually got to the stage of friendship where she and Natalie traded phone numbers and called each other to hang out. Maybe she’s already forgotten that the afternoon with James and me and Zach at the abandoned house even happened.
Natalie laughs again and types some more. We still haven’t said a word to each other today.
I suddenly see myself from above, an aerial shot of the girl sitting alone in front of her locker, standing by herself at work. But instead of seeing her and thinking productive or industrious, I think sad.
Then I wonder if this is how my mother feels when her moods shift, snap, just like that?
Twenty-four hours ago, I was walking out of my mother’s room feeling more upbeat than I had since the moment I found her lying motionless on her bed that day after school. I was certain yesterday that I was okay with what would happen to us next. My mother would come home, get treatment, take her pills day after day. I would be there, just like before, to nag her about it and keep her company. Our old, familiar trade.
But now—snap—as I stand by the filing cabinets, stapling furiously and listening to Natalie laugh at a joke I’m not in on, I feel as though my stomach is about to curl in on itself.
Suddenly, I’m just as sure that my plan of spending my days with my mother, climbing up and down from her studio to our small apartment with the cheerful orange kitchen, won’t be enough at all.
—
The nurses at the hospital are starting to recognize me, and when I stop by the front desk on Saturday evening, I only get out the first syllable of my last name before one of them hands me a pass for the eighth floor.
“It’s okay,” she waves me on with a smile. “Go right up.”
But when I get close to my mother’s room upstairs, I stop. There are people talking inside.
Did my mother get a roommate in the last twenty-four hours? Or is there a doctor or a nurse with her?
But I know that’s not it—both voices sound too familiar.
I stand just outside the door, tracing my finger over the letters on Tanya Wilson’s plaque again, trying to hear the murmured conversation. One of the people speaking is definitely my mother. But the other one?
“I’m sorry I didn’t explain it to her,” the second voice says. It’s lower than my mother’s, but something about it, maybe the way the speaker emphasizes certain words, is similar. “None of what happened was her fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” my mother answers. “It was my fault.”
“No, Amy.” The second voice again, and the way it says my mother’s name with soft affection and sadness rings a bell in my head. I know, Amy, I know.
The second voice continues, and now it sounds shakier and thicker. I wonder if whoever is speaking has started crying.
“I don’t blame you either,” my mother’s visitor says. “I was just so angry, not to mention scared for my daughter. I made a decision on my own because I didn’t think talking about it with you would do any good.”
My finger stops tracing the letters on the plaque in the middle of the i. My hand hovers there, frozen over the dot.
I know the second voice; it’s Aunt Cynthia’s.
I picture her sitting there by my mother’s bed, looking neat in the lightweight yellow sweater and jeans she had on this morning, tiny colored glass earrings in her ears and her hair pinned back away from her face. Maybe she’s holding my mother’s hand, the way I did yesterday. Or maybe she’s sitting farther away, twisting her rings around on her fingers, glancing at and then away from my mother as they talk.
Has she been coming here all this time, and we’ve just missed each other? Or is this her first visit? If it is, why is she here now?
More questions pile on top of one another in my head. What are she and my mother talking about? What did Aunt Cynthia need to explain, and who did she not explain it to? What decision did she make without consulting my mother?
I try to lean closer without making it possible for them to see me.
After a moment, my mother says, “Of course you wouldn’t think talking about it would do any good, Cynthia.”
She sounds knowing, warm, and exasperated all at the same time as she adds, “You never want to talk about anything you’re thinking or feeling.”
Uncle John’s words pop into my head. You’re just like your aunt that way.
My mother is still talking, and her voice now is softer and more strained, as if she’s pulling each word out of herself letter by letter.
“But it doesn’t
feel right that you don’t talk to me about my own…situation,” my mother says, hesitating over the last word. “It makes me feel like you’re making all the decisions for me. Like I’m just an illness and not a person.”
Like I’m just an illness and not a person.
I stand there in the hallway, stunned at the words, and I imagine Aunt Cynthia must be too, because it feels like several minutes before she responds, and she sounds surprised.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I didn’t even…” she trails off. I picture her shaking her head, the way she does sometimes when she’s thinking. “I never thought about that, but you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” my mother says. Her voice sounds clear now.
Then, suddenly, my mother and Aunt Cynthia are laughing. I stand in the hallway with my ear practically flattened against the wall of the room, listening as their soft giggles become loud, full laughs.
In a flash, I see them again the way Uncle John described them to me: best friends sharing their first apartment in the city, throwing parties and trading clothes and cooking dinner together. They giggle as they toss all the spices in their cabinets into the pots simmering on their stove, twirling each other around the kitchen. When they argue, stomping off into their own rooms, they come out quickly to forgive each other.
Without stepping into my mother’s room, I turn around and hurry down the hall, more confused than before. My mother thinks Aunt Cynthia treats her more as an illness than a person. Do I do the same thing?
—
I get off the elevator on the second floor and make a right into the cafeteria. It’s not that I want to eat hospital food; the cookies and wilted salads here don’t look much better than the wriggly desserts and mystery meat my mother gets upstairs.
But I’m definitely not ready to go back to Aunt Cynthia’s house.
I buy a cup of tea and find a table in the back corner, where I open my sketchbook and stare at it without taking out a pencil. I flip through the pages slowly, the story of my last week—the Carters’ land and house, the drawing of my feet by my mother’s bed—until I land on a blank sheet. Then I have nothing to focus on but the thoughts in my head.
