“But, Mom…” I said, not yelling. More quiet. Like I knew she had a point but still had to argue with her anyway.
“… but being angry about things being sucky is self-fulfilling because if you’re so busy being angry, how are you going to look for things that might make you happy? And if you’re so good at being angry, why are nice, fun people going to want to spend time with you? So of course things will keep staying sucky!” She tried to pretend this was funny. It wasn’t. But then my mom hugged me and made us grilled cheese with tomatoes, which was my fave then, and that day became my fave forever.
You can’t tell your parents lectures work or they’ll do it all the time, but that lecture worked. Not like I became this fake, smiley person suddenly. But I stopped hating every person I met. I tried to talk to other kids like they might be my friends and not just ignorant idiots.
That summer is when I met Cam. And listen, my mom is right. When I let myself have a friend, someone I could have fun with, it was easier not to be angry all the time. I guess I’m thinking about this now because it’s not like my mom is just this nice person who feeds me and clothes me and drives me places. She’s got super-wise insights. And I want her around to give me more insights. About college and jobs and Cam. I want her here. Please.
* * *
Once at the hospital, a nurse directs me to the waiting room while they wheel my mom back into the emergency department. I try to argue, not really with words, but the nurse says, “We will bring you back there as soon as she’s stabilized.”
Can’t sit, too much energy, so I hover near the admitting desk. Text Cam:
ME
At the hospital with my mom
He doesn’t respond right away. Which sucks. Sucks. Sucks. Sucks. So I text Michael just to have something to do. Michael responds fast. Which is cool I guess. Says he is on his way. I keep looking at my phone, waiting for Cam to text back or call or maybe just show up. Wouldn’t that be the best thing to ever happen? If Cam just strolled into the emergency room and then saw me from across the lobby. Without words, he’d be saying, I’m here for you, Zee.
If he showed up like that, I think I would run up and jump into his arms.
Yeah, I totally would.
art
The one positive of my dad losing his job and our family possibly ceasing to exist is that I don’t obsess over Zee every second.
Every other second?
Yes, duh, ha.
I finally text her again around seven. Which is basically a world record.
She doesn’t text back.
But I’m a much more mature person than I was this morning, so I’m not going to text her again until after she texts me. Unless she doesn’t text me back in the next ten minutes.
ZEE
Cam doesn’t show up. No jumping into a boy’s arms today.
Michael does show and does his grown-up thing and talks to the nurse. Doesn’t do any good, but it’s cool he did it.
* * *
Three hours. That’s how long we have to wait. Michael makes business calls, but all I can do is just stand there. Yep. Nothing else. Don’t really think anything either. Sometimes you want something to happen so much you can’t do anything but wait for it to happen.
So three hours. The doctor first explains that they have opened her chest to release some of the fluid buildup in her lungs, which regulated her breathing. “So she’s stable,” the doctor explains, “but sleeping. The surgery and the pain medication will probably keep her resting through the night. But you can go see her.”
A nurse then leads us back to the patient rooms. Michael and I both walk through the door to her room, and I expect her to look like she did when I walked into her bedroom after school. But now she’s ghost white, drool down her chin, mascara smeared across her face, the hospital gown jagged across her left shoulder. Tubes and wires sprout from her body. My mom looks sicker than I’ve ever seen her, even the chemo days.
I grab a towel from the bathroom, get it wet, and wipe her face clean of the drool and makeup. After cleaning her up, tightening the gown, straightening out her blanket, I kiss her on the head. Love you, Mom, I say without saying it.
“I’ll sleep on the chair here,” I say.
“No, you are going home to get a good night’s sleep,” Michael says in his boss voice.
“One person can stay, but not two,” the nurse says. “I’ll let you two work it out.” Then she leaves.
“I’m staying.” I fire my evil eye. He gets the message.
“Okay, okay…” he stammers. “You call me if anything changes. I’ll come back in the morning so you can go to school.”
No chance I’ll be going to school tomorrow but no reason to argue with Michael on that point now. He tries to hug me before he leaves, but I look in the other direction and he gets the hint, says good-bye, and leaves.
Cam has finally texted me back:
CAM
Zee, so sorry about your mom—Thinking of ya
I’m sure he had been lifting weights or maybe hanging out with Abigail. But three hours is a long time to wait for your best friend to respond when your mom is dying. And then to not say, I’m on my way, or even Can I do anything? or any fucking thing besides the most pointless thing in the universe. Thinking of ya. HOW DOES THAT HELP ME? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH YOUR THOUGHTS, CAM! I want you here! I want you trying to hug me! I want you to love me like I love you!
Fuck me, I’m such a loser.
I go to type something back, something normal like Thanks, but my phone dies. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK.
art
Four point two minutes later, suffering severe Zee withdrawal, sure I am about to die, I text Bryan to see if he can distract me from the pain:
ME
My dad lost his job. We’re poor now.
I’m either going to work at TGI Fridays
or sell my body to lonely old women.
BRYAN
Sorry about your dad, Art. That’s hard.
Bryan’s parents are super-rich accountants—like big-deal accountants and I don’t even know what that means, but if you have a house with a tennis court in the backyard, you must be a big deal, right? And Bryan is an only child, so he gets whatever he wants. New car. New clothes. (Even if he picks terrible ones.) New video games and computers and a credit card he can use to buy whatever food he wants whenever he wants. He’s so lucky. His life would be perfect if I was his boyfriend and his parents stopped pretending he wasn’t gay. So maybe it all equals out.
BRYAN
But if you’re going to sell your body,
you should sell it to me.
Set myself up for that one.
BRYAN
I’m KIDDDING Art. Sorry about your gf
How does he know Zee isn’t texting me back?
ME
What do you mean?
BRYAN
Her mom—you didn’t hear?
ZEE
“Zee.” The nurse steps back into the room.
“Yeah?”
“There’s a young man in the waiting room here to see you. We can only let family back here after hours. Do you want me to tell him something?”
“No-I’ll-go,” I say almost as fast as I am walking back toward the waiting room.
Cam came.
Cam came.
Cam came.
Maybe he does love me. Maybe, right? I am definitely going to jump into his arms. That would be fucking insane, but I’m going to do it. No more waiting, no more planning stuff in my head. Just going to go for it.
I round the corner into the waiting area and there … he is.
The kid.
Art.
Holding two large potted plants.
I want to strangle him. Strangle him for not being Cam. For being annoying. For showing up at the hospital where my mom lies dying when I barely know him. But before I can yell at him or punch him, he sprints over, drops the plants to the floor, and bear-hugs me before
I can tell him I don’t do hugs. Lifts me off the ground even. Barely, because the kid is probably lighter than me. But my feet are definitely in the air.
I stop fighting his fucking weirdness and hug him back. I’ll punch him or yell at him or never speak to him again later.
art
After I put Zee back down, I think about kissing her. Oh-my-god, a first kiss in a hospital! So epic! So dramatic! But I didn’t. I’m crazy but I’m not that crazy. Tonight’s not about all my mad fantasies of our love and life together; it is about her mom.
Sooooo, I say: “How’s your mom? How are you? What can I do? Can I go get you something to eat? To drink? Is there someone I can call? Do you want me to talk to any doctors? Tell me, Zee, tell me. I’m here to do whatever you need.”
Zee takes a step back. I am too much. DON’T BE TOO MUCH, ART! She says, “My mom’s resting. She’s fine. I’m okay. Thanks for coming.”
Oh-my-god, she wants me to leave. No, no, no. “Let me do something. Anything. Tell me.”
“I just need to be alone with my mom right now. Okay?”
My dad wants to be alone; now Zee wants to be alone. Humans are not meant to be alone! We are meant to love and connect and communicate and create with one another! But I can’t say any of that. (Don’t self-combust, Art!) Instead I fake composure: “Okay. Of course, I totally understand. Here, I figured you might need this.” I pull an iPhone charger from inside my coat pocket and place it in her hand.
And, you wouldn’t believe it, but it’s a stupid phone charger that turns my stoic queen soft. Zee doesn’t cry but her eyes get big, so big, and quiver, and then she wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me tight into her. Our bodies are both thin and I’ve always hated how skinny I am, but when we’re pressed together like this, it’s like we’re one of those kids’ shows where two people join together to create a singular superhero. Yes! Yes! I could see it all now. Apart, we are these mere mortals Art and Zee. But together, we will transform into the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wonderful … Artzee!
(Or Zert. Yes, you’re right, Zert’s better.)
The all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wonderful … Zert!
Oooh, I’m going to write a comic book tonight and then I’ll sell it and then it will be made into a movie and then the whole world will know our one-of-a-kind love story!
“Thanks again, Art,” Zee says as she returns us to two mortals.
“Of course, my queen.” And then, while ever so slowly backing away, I give her my best movie-star smile and wink that I practice in the mirror. Yes, I practice it every day! “Call me, text me, if you need anything at all.” Then I twist away from her because I’m pretending to be cool and not super needy. I keep waiting to hear, Wait, Art, wait, come back! And then I’d turn, run back, and we’d have the first kiss to end all first kisses. But she doesn’t. It’s okay.…
IT’S NOT OKAY AT ALL! I want to kiss her and spend every minute with her until I know every inch of her heart, soul, and body!
But it’s okay. Really. I’m maturing. Right? Yes, really, because the old Art would have run back, all pathetic, and asked/begged Zee for more time with her. Ruined my flawlessly executed good-bye. But not the new Art. No! This new Art keeps walking and walking—oh-my-god-this-is-so-hard!—and walking until the emergency room doors open and let me outside.
Of course, then I hide behind a cement column and watch Zee pick up the plants I brought, turn, and disappear back into the hospital.
And then, of course, I go back into the waiting room, sit, and stare at my phone. She’ll text me, right? She will.
She doesn’t!
I want to die from loneliness!
But then she does! Twenty minutes later! It feels like twenty years, but that’s okay because I’d wait twenty thousand years for her. Her text:
ZEE
you’re awesome
In my head, I interpret Zee’s text to mean: You’re the best person to ever breathe and I can’t wait to see you again, and so I type out: I’m here for you always and forever. But that’s too much. Or not? Yesssssss, Art, it’s too much. New Art is not going to be too much! So I erase it and send a smiley face.
Which is so dumb and boring, but she’s in a hospital room with her sick mom and needs me to be helpful, not needful, and true love knows when to be which.
ZEE
The fucking kid brought me a phone charger. Like he had read my thoughts. Not just read my thoughts, but read my thoughts before I had my thoughts and from miles away. Fucking kid. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with him. He’s so lost and needy and nuts … and yet … yeah, and yet …
After my phone turns back on, I text him. I shouldn’t encourage him, or lead him on, but I can’t just ignore Art’s being awesome either. I look at Cam’s text again. Thinking of ya. Oh, who cares? That’s who Cam is. He’s a man’s man and man’s men are aloof and almost never helpful with shit like this. I saw that with dozens of my mom’s previous boyfriends. Michael is the first one who ever provided anything of substance. But he’s also the first one who—and she admitted this to me—didn’t “excite” her. Maybe that’s how relationships are. The ones that excite you are only good for getting you excited (and I don’t mean sexually although that’s probably also true) and the ones that are helpful don’t really excite you. Sucks that there aren’t guys who can do both. Maybe there are. But my mom has never met one. And I certainly haven’t.
art
An hour later, with no more word from Zee, I walk home from the hospital. Alone in the dark. It is miserable, of course, but also a very productive time and place to plot out the beginning adventures of ZERT: THE SUPERHERO BORN OF SUPER LOVE.
Yuck. That might be too dramatic even for me.
Ha, I’m hilarious. Nothing’s too dramatic for me.
ZEE
I fall asleep without realizing I’m going to, and when I wake, my mom is staring at me.
“Mom! How long you been up? You should have woken me.” I jump from the hospital room reclining chair, chucking the blanket, and crouch by her bed so our faces are level.
“I wanted to watch you sleep,” she says, but her voice is a whisper. Not even a whisper. A wisp. A broken, scratchy wisp.
“You shouldn’t talk. Should I call the doctor?”
“No, I need to tell you something.”
What-the-hell-my-eyes-are-watering. Why the fuck are tears forming? There’s no reason to cry now! She’s fine! Doctor said she was stable! She just said she needs to tell you something. “You’re okay, Mom.”
“I know, I’m going to live forever.” Making jokes. Always making jokes. She tries to smile. Tries. Too much pain. I stand but she grabs my hand. Her gaze wavers again, like last night. Vanishing into another time and place.
“Mom?”
She dials back to me and the now. “Zee … I wrote a letter.…”
“You’ll be able to tell me. You’ll be okay.”
“… It’s under those dresses you never wear. Your bottom drawer. I should have explained some things. I was a good mom, right?”
No, no, no. “Mom,” I say, and f me, f me, f me, I am crying and I don’t want to cry because if I am crying my mom is probably dying and DO NOT LET MY MOM DIE!
“I was good. I was like the best mom ever.” She grins even though it costs her a double shot of pain. “But I screwed up, darling.”
“You didn’t screw up. You’re the best mom. THE BEST MOM AND I WANT YOU TO STAY WITH ME.” I don’t yell this. I just feel it so much my body cracks in half.
“Three things … the letter explains everything better … but three things … I’m being really dramatic, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are!” And I laugh. Laugh while crying! Who does that? That’s like eating and puking at the same time!
“I like being dramatic.…”
“Yes, you do.”
“… First thing, you’ll have some money. I opened an account under your name.… Michael knows all the details.…�
��
“Mom…”
“… Let me finish, I could be dead any second.…”
“MOM!”
“… I’m so funny.…”
“Mom!”
“… Second thing … Michael said you could live with him as long as you want, but if that feels weird for any reason”—and it’s weird that she’s saying it might be weird—“then use the money to get your own place.”
“Mom, you should rest.”
“… Third thing … oh-my-god, this is even more dramatic than I thought I could be.…”
Mom …
“… Your dad…”
My dad? MY DAD?!
“… I promised him you’d call.”
“You talk to him?”
“See? I wasn’t perfect.”
“You’re perfect, Mom.” But what the hell? She told me my dad disappeared after I was born and now she’s telling me she’s been talking to him? I never even asked about him because I never wanted her to feel she wasn’t enough. But she knows where he is? Knows what he’s doing? WHAT THE HELL, MOM?
“I’m so sorry, Zeela,” she says. Zeela. That was her nickname for me before I could speak—I have no idea why—and then when she tried to call me Rebecca, I hated it and so she started calling me Zee.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I say because everything will be okay once she’s better. I’ll eventually fucking yell at her about this dad craziness. It will all be okay.
“Hug me,” she says, and I try. I can’t get anywhere close to our seamless hug with her strapped to the bed. But our faces press together. We are united as one even if it’s only our cheeks. Then, with her right hand, she turns my head back to face her. “I…”
“What, Mom?”
“I … actually thought I’d be dead by now.”
The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy Page 4
