Sweet Forty-Two

by Andrea Randall

  I knew my ability to make medical decisions for my mother was only covered insofar as she was incapacitated. Once she left the confines of the hospital, she could do whatever she wanted. Including zapping the hell out of her brain.

  “It’s my best chance against staying out of here for the long term. The medication and the talk therapy can only carry me so far, honey.”

  “But, you—”

  “I know what I’ve said in the past. Things have changed. I’m getting worse.”

  “So you want to fry your brain to get better?” I stood, the vomit working its way up my insides, needing more room to settle, or else it was going to be all over my mom’s room.

  She sighed. “Georgia, you know that’s not how the therapy works.”

  “No, Mom, I don’t. You spent several years making damn sure that I knew the exact and horrific reasons you didn’t want that therapy. Now you’re asking me to forget it?”

  “I’m asking you to think of the times where it works. This is the last solid option I’ve got. Come on, Alice, take a deep br—”

  “Stop!” I cut her off with a garbled yell, prompting Daniel to put his hand on my back. “Don’t start with that bullshit now. You can’t calm me down by making me pretend, Mom. I’m not eight, and that was just a fucking story.”

  Of a lonely girl. With no prince.

  My mother’s face fell; her lifetime tactic with me no longer effective. She looked at Daniel, then at me, then got up and walked to the window, saying no more.

  “Please get my things.” I looked at Daniel’s shoes as I spoke. Once they moved toward the door, so did I.

  “Georgia, I want to encourage you to stay. Don’t leave like this.” Daniel’s movements were slow as he gathered my bag from behind the nurses’ desk.

  Tears welled in my eyes and threatened to burst at any moment. Now wasn’t the time for discussion. I sniffed as I snatched my bag from his hands.

  “Sorry,” I sniffed again, tears fleeing the pressure of my head, “I can’t. It’s just ... I can’t.”

  Once in my car, I let myself cry for exactly ten seconds before cranking the engine and getting the hell out of there. I’d been so tired when I got there, having lived off of three, or so, hours of sleep a night for the last several days. But, now I was drained and vibrating with angry energy all at once. Worst of all, it was three-thirty in the morning and there was nowhere for me to go, except home. To my empty apartment.

  To fill the deafening silence of my car for the next twenty minutes, I picked up my cell phone. It was still drinking time on the East Coast.

  “Hello? G? Everything okay?” CJ was in a bar, that much was clear based on his needing to shout over the noise around him just to hear himself. No matter that I could hear him just fine.

  The panic in his voice was certainly justified. I would never normally call during hook-up-o’clock. But, I had no one else to talk to who got it.

  “I ... sorry to interrupt your night.” I kept my voice quiet so he couldn’t hear the trembling behind it.

  “Give me a second to get outside. There,” he said after a few seconds of human static, “now I can hear you.”

  “For God’s sake, CJ, it’s February. Get your ass back inside before you freeze!”

  “I’m sober enough to listen now, G, and drunk enough not to care about the blizzard.”

  Sadly enough, I understood him completely. Still, I vowed to make it quick.

  “I ... she wants to do the shock therapy!” I didn’t mean to shout, but when you’re trying to speak through years of frustrated tears, yelling is the only way to hear your voice.

  “Are you driving? G?” CJ was so loud, so intense; it was like he was next to me.

  I nodded, because that’s what rational people do during a phone call, and then said, “Yes, I just left the hospital. She’s fine. She’s checking herself out tomorrow and informed me she wants the ECT.”

  “Pull over.”

  “What?”

  “Pull the fuck over and talk to me. I’m getting in my car.”

  “You’re too drunk to drive!” My heart raced, wondering what the hell he was thinking.

  “I’m not too drunk to operate the heater. Just pull over, G, and talk to me. Tell me what happened.”

  A few seconds later, I pulled over into the safe confines of a scenic overlook. I stayed in the car, though, because between the ocean breeze and the highway noise, I’d never be able to hear him.

  “K. I’m off the road.”

  “Can you start over?” Whatever alcohol accent he’d had when he answered the phone was gone.

  I caught CJ up on everything with my mom right through my storming out of the facility like a pissed off teenager.

  “Sounds like she’s going to do the ECT, then, right? You can’t stop her, can you?”

  Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stared, unblinking, into the light traffic passing by me. “No, I can’t stop her.”

  “Do you think she’s really going to go through with it?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t flinch at my reaction. Wasn’t affected by my emotions.”

  “It does work for a lot of people, though, doesn’t it?” CJ’s words were softer and further apart as he asked.

  “I guess! But, I was indoctrinated to believe otherwise. By her. Now she’s asking me to rearrange my ingrained belief system. Not just for some random patient. For her!” I slammed my hand against the steering wheel.

  “Stop punching your steering wheel.”

  I gasped. “Did you hear that?”

  “No, but I’ve sat with you in your car a time or two when you’ve been pissed. If you’re not driving, then the dashboard gets the brunt of it. I’m sorry I’m not there, G. I have no idea what to say. What does Regan have to say?”

  His question confused me, causing me to look around. “About what?”

  “Your mom.”

  “He doesn’t know.” My stomach dropped. “You haven’t told him anything, have you?”

  “No. Calm down. I told you I wouldn’t tell. I just figured since you guys lived together, basically, he’d know by now.”

  “What has he said about me?” The question sounded juvenile, but I was still trying to get a sense for how he viewed me. Rae Cavanaugh aside, I could never get a clear read on him. He was reserved, each layer I peeled off—intentionally or unintentionally—only served to create more questions than answers.

  “We haven’t talked much. A text here and there. And, we’ve never talked about girls.”

  “Ah, yes,” I laughed, “must be the different philosophies you operate under.”

  CJ scoffed. “And what the hell does that mean?”

  I sighed, thankful for the shift in our conversation. “Oh, you know, he believes in love, and you were a signer of the declaration of one night stands.”

  He laughed, and I could almost see him throwing his head back. It made me smile. “Oh, G, how glad I am you’re not here to mess up my game tonight.”

  “I kind of am, since you’re not in pledging your allegiance to miniskirts right now and you’re stuck in your car.”

  “So...” CJ hesitated for a moment. “He told you about Rae?”

  “Yeah, a little heads up would have been nice before that letter showed up on his doorstep.” I lifted off my seat to check my mascara train wreck in the rearview mirror.

  “What letter?”

  “Huh?” My heart actually skipped a beat.

  “You said before that letter showed up on his doorstep. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Son of a bitch.

  I responded by not responding.

  “G...”

  “Please don’t say anything to him, okay? Shit, I figured he would have told you. I’m sorry!”

  “You know I’m not going to say anything, but, what letter?”

  I groaned. “There was this envelope addressed from New Hampshire. It had a letter in it that I didn’t read, but also it had a card addressed to Rega
n, unopened, sent from Rae Cavanaugh.”

  “Shiiiiiiit.”

  I’d bet anyone a hundred dollars that CJ’s head was on his steering wheel.

  “What did it say?”

  “I don’t know. He was going to leave it at the bar. He got shitfaced and walked away. I took it and put it in my backpack.”

  “Has he read it?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I still have it.”

  “He hasn’t asked for it?”

  “No.”

  CJ sighed. “Christ.”

  “Should I make him read it ... or something?”

  “God, I don’t fucking know. But ... if he does ask you for it, stick around while he reads it, okay? He went off the deep end in a flee-the-country kind of way when she died...” CJ trailed off, having expressed more concern over another human being besides myself than I’d ever witnessed.

  “I promise.”

  “G?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Regan’s a good shit. Tell him about your mom, okay? He’s just ... he’s a good listener.”

  CJ hadn’t ever suggested I tell anyone about anything. I started to protest. “Ceej—”

  “Georgia, come on. It looks like your mom is going to do what she’s going to do. You’re going to need support. If Regan is trusting you with something from Rae, reciprocate it.”

  “Reciprocate? You okay?”

  “Ha ha. Fuck off.” His tone was playful, but a little flat. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Come back out here soon, k?”

  “I’ll try. Bye, babe.”

  “Bye.”

  I tossed my phone onto the passenger seat and eased my way back onto the highway. It was nearing four in the morning, and I was wired from all of the emotional electrocution. Sarcastic pun intended.

  There was only one logical place for me to be at that hour, in this state, and Regan already knew about the bakery, so it was safe. As long as he stayed the hell out this time.

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t tell Regan about my mom—that would be the easy part of the conversation. It was the ramifications of that that were strewn about my life that gave me pause.

  Maybe it was his music, as Lissa suggested. Maybe it was the unfettered trust he’d shown me, and that I’d shown him earlier in blindly renting him my apartment. Whatever it was, I knew that I had to tell Regan something, so he knew why I wanted to kiss him.

  And why I couldn’t. Ever.

  Regan

  “That was perfect. Do it one more time.” Willow clicked her mic off from the recording room.

  I groaned internally. It was four in the morning and we had been in the studio since 9:00 PM due to some scheduling conflicts that presented recording problems. Last year I could have easily kept up a schedule like this, but Ember’s parents and her friends had trained us to operate on a “normal” schedule, as they called it, and this all-nighter was bullshit.

  “If it was perfect,” Ember snapped, “why the hell are we doing it again?”

  She chose not to groan internally.

  “Ember,” her mother, Raven, cautioned.

  Ember sighed. Apparently she wasn’t yet over Willow’s attempt at seducing Bo. I didn’t really know the details of it, and I hadn’t mentioned to Bo or Ember that I knew about it, but it was clear that now wasn’t the time to interject my opinion.

  “Let’s go, Em. We can do it one more time, even better than perfect.” I elbowed her and smiled.

  Bo mouthed a thank you to me as the rest of the Six let out a collective sigh of relief. The track we were cutting was one between just Bo, Ember, and myself. The band wanted to give us some space on the album, to highlight some of their new talent. Their words, not ours. I was grateful for the opportunity and didn’t have any reservations about playing the song for the 900th time.

  So, we played the song again. And, one more time.

  I’d been drugging myself on rosin and Chopin for the last week. Drowning myself in my craft kept me deaf to the telltale heart thumping away somewhere in Georgia’s apartment. A card. From Rae.

  No, I couldn’t do it. Not yet, or, maybe ever.

  I was grateful to Georgia for hanging on to it. I assumed she still had it, but I honestly hadn’t given much thought to if I cared what she did with it or not. As usual, I hadn’t seen her much during the days following our talk in her bakery. I hadn’t smelled anything signaling her use of the kitchen in a few days, and I’d long since finished the last of those delicious blueberry muffins. I wanted more.

  Not even more of the muffins, though that was a sweet benefit. I wanted more Georgia. She didn’t have a shred of innocence left in her eyes, and that made me trust her. I wasn’t worried about harming her glittery view on the world, because it was clear she didn’t have one. And hadn’t for a long time.

  Despite the whimsical appearance of her bakery, I sensed there was something dark underneath it ... even if I hadn’t been freaked out by the Cheshire cat eyes painted in stark green, above an equally jarring white smile, on the black crown molding in the cafe area. The desire to kiss her never really left me after the failed attempt weeks ago, even though I’d already apologized.

  I didn’t mean the apology. Because I’d wanted to kiss her in that moment. I shouldn’t have taken the apartment, really, since I wanted to kiss her. That’s a standard bad idea. But I just trusted her. And, she seemed to have exactly zero interest in me beyond friends. Really, I was fine with that. She had some heavy secrets that weighed down her smile, and even if she didn’t want to tell me what they were, I had to be there for her. I’d promised CJ, if nothing else.

  We finished our final cut of the song, and I played a couple more notes, lost in my swirling, exhausted thoughts.

  Bo placed his hand on my shoulder, but all I heard was garbled noise.

  I took my headphones off. “What?”

  “I said, give it a rest, bud. We’re done. Freed!” Though he looked exhausted, he managed a smile and a fist pump into the air.

  “I’m sleeping from the minute we get home until the day after tomorrow.” Ember yawned and lazily slung her backpack over her shoulder. “Let’s go, Bo.”

  I cut off her attempt at hugging him. “Actually, can I take you home? I have some stuff I want to talk to you about.”

  Bo backed up in mock defense. “What? You can’t talk to me?”

  “This is...”

  “Girl stuff?” he teased.

  Ember smacked his stomach. “Shut up, ass.”

  Bo laughed and Ember did too, so things seemed okay there, I guess. Though navigating the complex knots of Bo and Ember’s relationship wasn’t something I had the time or training for.

  After locking up the studio, Ember and I headed to my car. A few minutes into our drive, she yawned and looked at me. “I’ve missed seeing you every day.”

  “You mean you miss keeping an eye on me. Spying on my emotions,” I teased.

  “Regan, I couldn’t spy on your emotions if you drew me a map.” She knocked softly on my head. “Closed book.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not that closed off, I’m just not ... Bo.”

  She chuckled and leaned her head back on the headrest. I’d intended to tell her about the card from Rae but was getting gun-shy.

  “So ... Willow...” I didn’t have enough emotional attachment to the San Diego socialite to care that I was throwing her under the bus in my cowardliness.

  “Argh! What about her?” Ember growled.

  “Last week she told me about ... you know.”

  Ember snapped her head back around, looking deadly at the side of my face. “No, I don’t know. What’d she say?”

  “She said you were all pissy at her because she put the moves on Bo.”

  “Is that all she said?”

  Dear God, what did I just get myself into?

  “Isn’t that ... all there is?”

  Ember chuckled, but it wasn’t the friendly kind.
It was the kind that made you expect to see a crow on her shoulder, the way her eyebrow didn’t arch, but pitched to a severe point. “I guess that’s all there is.”

  “Okay...” I didn’t believe her.

  She continued, “Unless you count her telling me she thinks we’re half sisters.”

  I swerved into the next lane, grateful that weekend traffic this early in the morning was nearly non-existent. “What?”

  “Can you fucking believe her? Seriously! Always something to get attention.”

  “Did she ... are you ... do your parents—” Given my history with the emotions of Ember, she seemed to be handling this well. Maniacally, maybe, but well.

  She reached her hand over and patted my leg. “Calm down. She’s full of shit. No, I haven’t said anything to my parents. Willow blurted it out one night when we were drinking when we first got here. She said we had to have the same dad.”

  “Had to?”

  “She went on about how our families were always together growing up. Even when I pointed out that they were all fucking hippies who lived in co-ops together and shit our whole lives, she had to point out the vague similarities in our looks.” Ember ran her hand through her hair and left it there, as if mentally comparing it to Willow’s.

  Vague was not the correct term to discuss the similarities between Ember and Willow’s looks. Sure, Willow had darker skin, since her mom was black, but they had the same long wavy hair. Willow’s was only slightly less auburn than Embers, but their eyes were identical. Not just the color—a striking jade that often had me staring at both of them for too long—but the same shape and same size. Slightly too big for their face by some standards, but breathtaking by anyone who could see clearly. It wasn’t a far stretch to believe they were related, but I wasn’t about to tell Ember that.

  “What?” she cut into my thoughts. “You believe her?”

  Shit.

  “I ... I don’t have ... any facts?” I shrugged, trying not to sound like a complete bastard. I knew that girlfriends were supposed to believe each other no matter what, but I wasn’t her girlfriend. And, when I looked at Willow and Ember side by side, I saw two counter culture children who could very likely share DNA.