Sweet Forty-Two

by Andrea Randall

  He chuckled. “Neither am I.”

  I was out of breath after speed-walking through the pillowy sand. Maybe I’d have to start working out with Ember.

  Or I could just keep making cupcakes.

  I shook my head, inappropriately light thoughts always invaded my head when catastrophe loomed. My mother had trained me as such, as I’d just finished explaining to Regan. I was one of Pavlov’s dogs, salivating with mental escape tactics at the ringing of the emotional bell.

  “Okay. I’m going to go back home. My mom’s there waiting...” I nervously tucked my hands into my back pockets.

  Regan held up the perfectly square card. “Take this.”

  Oh, hell no.

  “Uh, no.”

  “Please.” He pressed it into my chest with urgency in his eyes. “If I chicken out between here and the apartment, I’m just as likely to throw it out the window of the car as I am to read it. I have to talk with Bo and Ember about some band stuff, but I’ll be back home in a little while. Just ... please take it with you. Please.”

  I put my hands up, taking the offending parcel into my hand. “Okay, okay, I’ll take it. I’ll read it myself, though, if you don’t come back.”

  His eyes lit up. “You could read it, then just ... tell me?”

  “You’ve lost your fucking mind.” It was a phrase I didn’t use lightly.

  “Maybe so. Thanks. See you later.” He leaned in and kissed my forehead, and then turned and jogged toward the house.

  Did he just...

  Never one to disassemble motives, I walked to my car like I was carrying a live bomb, briefly considered buckling it in, and drove back to the apartment.

  It wasn’t until I was a block away from my apartment that it dawned on me with a sickening sinking feeling. My mom showed up, and I never asked her how she got there, if she needed a ride back to her place, or if she wanted to stay with me. I was so wrapped up in the hurt on Regan’s face that for the first time in twenty years I put someone before my mom. Me.

  That was exactly why Regan and I could stay just friends. I had to keep my priorities straight. Well, it wasn’t the only reason, but it was enough to get me through for now. My mom did have a point though. She didn’t need me. There were great assisted living facilities throughout the area, and she knew exactly what she was looking for when that time came. Maybe I was the one who wasn’t ready for that.

  I parked in my garage and raced up the stairs, hoping my mom had actually waited for me. My door was unlocked, which was a good sign, but not an absolute.

  “Mom?” I called before looking around.

  When I finally paused and took a minute, I smelled fresh bread and turned and jogged back down the stairs.

  “You’re baking,” I said as I opened the door, trying to sound nonchalant. Baking meant she wanted to talk. I forced myself to be ready to listen.

  “You’re out of breath,” she observed. “Were you worried I’d disappeared?”

  I shrugged, taking a seat on the stool nearest the stove. “I have varied success with my conspiracy theories. So...”

  “So?” Mom put a loaf of bread on the counter to cool and began pulling out ingredients for what seemed to be cookies.

  She put the ingredients down and looked me straight in the eye. “The board accepted my resignation this week.”

  I knew it was coming, but hearing the words caused the muscles in my abdomen to squeeze around themselves. I nodded, keeping my trained stiff upper lip in place.

  “Did they, um, say anything?” I wrapped my arms around my stomach.

  “They thanked me for my service, praised me for addressing my condition head on, and sent confirmation that my license to practice is now null and void.”

  “How are you feeling?” I slid off the stool and walked on shaky ground over to where she stood, unmoving.

  “Twenty years as a board certified psychiatrist. When I started, I had a fire inside me, Georgia. A fire to help people like your grandfather. To heal families from all kinds of trouble. It was only in my worst nightmares that I’d turn into one of those people.” She looked into the distance, smiling through barely visible tears.

  I wrapped an arm around her waist, resting my head on her shoulder. We’d talked about her resignation for months. Years, if we were both honest with ourselves. She’d only been practicing for a few years before she was diagnosed. At the time, she took it in stride. She didn’t crumble and try to run away, as I’m sure I would have. She faced it head on and turned her brain into a case study.

  It wasn’t until her first major catatonic episode five years ago that she started to question the ethics of her oath. Once she was regulated again with new medication, all was well. Until this year, when my dad died.

  Though my parents had long been divorced, his death triggered a series of devastating episodes for her, starting with her yelling at a patient, and ending most recently with her crying in the fetal position under her desk. I had to go get her. That was the last time she was ever there as Dr. Hall. The next time she walked through the doors of the medical center, it was as a patient-only. I tried to encourage her to go somewhere else, somewhere she wouldn’t feel so exposed, but she wouldn’t have it. She reminded me that she worked at the best facility in California and intended to have her treatment carried out at the same place.

  “Well,” I sighed, pulling up my emotional big-girl panties, “let’s talk about the ECT, shall we?”

  My mom wiped under her eyes. “You’re not going to yell at me and storm out, are you?”

  “No. Promise.” I took her hand and led her into the seating area, sitting us in a booth in the front window. “Tell me everything.”

  For years my mother had warned me about ECT, only having recommended it to her own patients in extreme life-threatening circumstances.

  “The medication alone isn’t working anymore, Georgia. You know as well as I do that there are triggers that can set off schizophrenia in someone who hasn’t ever experienced symptoms, and in those who are already diagnosed, can trigger episodes like I’ve been experiencing. The therapy and medicine aren’t enough anymore.” She repeated her last line almost as an affirmation. Or surrender.

  “So ... what will this do, then? Have you been thinking about hurting yourself?” While she’d never exhibited suicidal ideation around me, terminology I’d picked up from years of studying psychiatry along with her, it was never far from my mind that her father ended his own life.

  She reached across the table and set her hand on mine. “No. This isn’t like your grandfather.”

  “But he had—” I started, and she cut me off.

  “I speculate that he had schizophrenia, Georgia. All the signs were there, and had I read a file on him after I graduated college, I could have diagnosed him from that alone. But, he was never diagnosed. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Grandma only said he felt ‘watched’ all the time, like he was going crazy. He didn’t have help. That’s why he killed himself.”

  I nodded in understanding, and she continued.

  “While I’ll never practice psychiatry again, I need to be able to live as stable a life as possible. I want to enjoy life. You know me—I’m not going to sit in a rocking chair at Breezy Pointe until the day I die. The ECT can help my brain get out of the cycle it seems to have been in since your dad died.”

  “But, what about the side effects? What are they?” I hadn’t done in-depth research on the subject myself. My mother had made clear with me where my position was: a firm no.

  “Varied. There are some physical side effects that I’m not at high risk for. The main thing that’s kept me away from it all of these years is the high possibility of memory loss.” She bit her pinky fingernail and looked out the window.

  I took a deep breath. “What kind of memory loss? Like, how much?”

  “Usually it’s only trouble remembering things in the weeks leading up to treatment, and trouble with memory during the three to four weeks it takes to
complete a treatment cycle.”

  “So ... like this conversation?” My chin quivered.

  She nodded. “Maybe.”

  Couldn’t it just mess with the bad and leave the good? Why did everything have to go ... potentially?

  “The benefit, sweetie, is that I might never need it again after this. It could completely reroute whatever’s gone haywire and set me straight again. For a long time, if not forever.”

  For a few minutes more I listened to my mother, not an ounce of waver in her voice, discuss with me that treatment was to start in a week. She’d need my help to drive her to and from the hospital, and while the treatment itself only lasted a few minutes, they’d keep her in observation for a few hours afterward before releasing her. Two times a week for three weeks was the plan, evaluating progress halfway through.

  “I’m getting a coffee, do you want one?” My mom stood and I nodded.

  A moment later, she returned with two hot cups of coffee. We both drank it black, which allowed us to get drinking as soon as humanly possible in the morning.

  “What happens if you get lost there?” I asked, staring into the steam swirling off my cup.

  “Where?”

  “In the ... haywire. What if it doesn’t work? What if you’re stuck in that faraway place forever?” The end of my sentence was cut off by a rogue sob breaking through my restraint.

  My mom left her seat and slid in next to me, bringing my forehead to her shoulder as she squeezed me closer and I continued crying.

  “Then,” she sighed and sniffed away some of her own tears, “we’ll always have this moment. Right here.”

  She squeezed harder, and I cried harder. Until the sun went down in my little slice of the Mad Hatter’s tea party, I cried in my mother’s arms, certain these moments were on borrowed time.

  Regan

  It twisted my stomach watching Georgia’s car drive away with Rae’s letter inside, but I knew it was safest that way. I wasn’t always levelheaded in the emotional department. I knocked on the doorframe to Bo’s room, where he was sitting and strumming his guitar.

  “Hey, bro, come in.” Bo set his guitar down and smiled, waving me in.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. “Your fingers have to be getting raw. This recording schedule is brutal.”

  He laughed. “It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but isn’t it great to be creating on a regular basis?” He stretched his arms overhead and leaned back in his chair, cracking his back.

  “It is. I’m happy we have today off, though. I’m exhausted.” I knew better than to think it was from the schedule. It was from that damn letter, keeping me up at night with its endless possibilities. I wasn’t telling him yet, though.

  “Well you’ve been rock solid in rehearsals, dude. I’m psyched you agreed to come.”

  I nodded and he leaned forward in his chair. After some heavy silence, I took a deep breath.

  “What’s up?” Bo asked, scrupulously studying my face.

  “I miss her, Bo.”

  Bo was understandably taken back by my admission. It was obvious, and expected, sure. But, I never talked about it. Not since shortly after returning from Ireland three months after burying Rae.

  He reached out and put his hand on my knee, smile still on his face, but eyes clouding over. “I do, too.”

  “Of course you do,” I stood, pacing the length of the room, “you’re her brother. I shouldn’t even be dumping this on you.”

  “Dude,” Bo stood, crossing his arms and shrugging, “I don’t own the rights to grief. Nor do I want to. We all lost someone when she died. The whole goddamn world did.” He sniffed and cleared his throat.

  I sat back down. “I know, man, but ... damn. I go along thinking everything is fine, then I’ll have a flash of pain, like real pain, like someone is stabbing me, or punching me, or kicking me, or all three at once...”

  Bo sat next to me, his arms still crossed. “Yeah. Sometimes, for me, it’s like someone’s holding my head under water. When I finally fight my way up and catch some air, I look around and realize I’m alone in the middle of the ocean.”

  “You’ve got Ember.”

  “I do. She rows by in her boat every time. But, I’ve learned to swim, too, Regan.”

  I cracked a smile. “Did your therapist give you all of this water imagery?”

  He punched my arm. “No, smartass, but it’s true. You know she’d want more for you than for you to wade around just keeping your head above water.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. I feel like I do okay with that most of the time.”

  “How’s the place in La Jolla?” Bo was as stealthy about changing the subject as I was.

  “It’s great. But, you know how it is with our schedule lately ... all I really do is sleep there.”

  “How’s Georgia? I saw her here earlier. Everything okay?”

  Not particularly.

  “Everything’s fine. We just had a misunderstanding, but it’s all good now.”

  “Well, I think I’m going to catch some sleep now, but maybe we should all go down to E’s tonight. I’d like to see her again—she seemed really fun. Maybe check with her to see if they have any sets available tonight?”

  I shook my head. “You’re a machine, dude.”

  “I’ve never been able to, like, do this for a living. I want to soak it all in while it lasts, you know?”

  I don’t know if he was aware of the double meaning of his statement as he said it, but he seemed to be about a second later. Time is not something to be wasted. Not a second. Rae lived her life with a precious urgency. I realized that in the time I’d spent replaying our relationship. It was injected in her soul to take each day and own it. I needed to get on with owning some.

  “Yeah,” I nodded, “I know. Give me a call later. I might be up for kicking back and watching you glorify yourself on stage,” I teased.

  “Get the hell out of my house.” He laughed and gave me a side man-hug. “Let’s talk more, okay?”

  Sigh.

  “Okay.” He was right. We needed to talk more. “By the way ... Ember told me about Willow ... and the dad thing. I think you’re right, she does need to talk to her parents.”

  Bo let out a long exhale. “I’m glad she told someone else. She’s been carrying that shit around for weeks and it’s pulling her down big time.”

  “I thought hippies were supposed to be drama free,” I joked.

  Bo yawned. “Looks like those girls are Hippie 2.0, the Gossip Girl edition.”

  I laughed. “I hate that I know exactly what you’re talking about. Later.”

  “See ya tonight.”

  Walking back through the house, I found Ember sleeping on the couch. Clearly the taxing recording schedule was starting to wear on all of us. Just a few more weeks and we’d be able to take a break while Willow produced a chunk of the tracks. We could take a listen and decide how we wanted to continue.

  During my drive back to my apartment I played a mental game of “open it” or “toss it” in regards to the letter. There was always secret option number three, I suppose, which was to save it and open it when I was ready, but I felt like a definitive decision was the only way to handle this.

  It was just a letter.

  Just a letter.

  Just words.

  Not just words. They were from Rae.

  Shit.

  Open the damn thing.

  Back in La Jolla, I found Georgia wiping down tables in the bakery. I knocked on the door so she’d let me in. She did it with a smile, though she looked tired.

  “Did you, uh, have people in here?” I asked as she locked the door behind me.

  “No, it was just me and my mom.”

  “Oh, sorry I missed her. How is she?”

  “She’s good.”

  “Hey,” I put my hands in my pockets and walked through the seating area, “how long has this place been open?” I put air quotes around the last word, given it wasn’t open, as such, but ju
st functional.

  She chuckled. “About six months. I renovated this space at the same time I did the apartments upstairs.”

  “What was down here before?”

  “Oh,” she sighed and put her hands on her hips, “over the years it was a lot of things. My dad leased the space to a bunch of retailers. Clothing stores, a bait and tackle shop—that one was gross—and last year there was a coffee shop here.”

  “I know you’re not, like, officially open for walk-in customers but ... you should name it. Be proud of it.”

  “If I name it then people will have all kinds of expectations.” She walked back into the kitchen and started washing dishes.

  I followed her, digging a clean towel out of the drawer and drying as she talked. “What’s wrong with expectations?”

  “More ways for me to disappoint people in the end.” She didn’t make eye contact. She was good at that.

  “More ways? What end?” I was pushing her a little, I realized, but I was taking slight advantage of my emotional upper hand given all the guilt she said she had. I wasn’t doing it with cruel intentions, but this girl had some tightly woven layers.

  “Regan...”

  “All right, all right, sorry. Hey, those cupcakes are gorgeous. Did you make those?” I pointed to the counter, immediately realizing the idiocy to my question. “I mean...”

  “Ha! Yeah. Well, my mom actually made the cupcakes. I made the frosting and decorated them after she left.”

  “She bakes, too?”

  “That’s where I learned. It was like therapy for both of us when I was little and things got tense. You have to concentrate to bake. Your mind can’t wander. By the time you’re finished you’ve spent lots of time thinking about something other than your problems and you get to eat something delicious. It really is the ultimate win.” She smiled and carefully plucked two from the cake stand and put them on a plate.

  “These are gluten-free, too?”

  “Everything in here is. We’ve been over this.”

  “Huh. I didn’t realize gluten-free stuff could look so ... good. Smells good, too. I totally trust how it will taste.”

  She smiled. “Who said you’re going to have any?”