“Greenleaf.”
“I’m serious.”
She takes me by the arm and drags me into her, close to her hip. I’m in a little cocoon with her.
“Did you just say crazy-mom-off to me?”
“Yeah, man. Let’s go. I promise you. My mom can out-crazy your mom.”
“How did you get like this?”
“Years of self-preservation.” Which is true. You can either get really depressed about your life or you can shove that depression so deep inside you and hide it with snarkiness. I’m not saying the second option is healthy. I’m sure I’ll die of an ulcer at age forty-six. It’s just what I’ve done.
“So you want to play?” I say.
Blythe nods. Takes a deep breath. This is weird for her, I can see. She’s not used to talking about private stuff. About stuff that you’re supposed to be ashamed of.
“I’ll go first,” I say. “My mother decided when I was twelve that she didn’t want to be a mother anymore and moved to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to drop out of life.” I draw myself closer to Blythe and slow the pace down even more. People are just bypassing us now, scrambling to their classes. I lower my voice. “My father caught her in bed with another man. In our house. Let’s see . . . she used to be a drunk. She’s on three years of sobriety now.”
“So now that she’s stopped drinking, does she just get high all day?”
“I don’t know, probably. When I go there, I sleep on the couch. She lives in a peach-colored house in the desert.”
“Do you still talk to her?”
“Talk to her? Yes, of course. I mean, she’s my mom.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she says, her voice breaking. “I live with my mom, and I barely talk to her. I try as much as I can to stay away from her.”
I shouldn’t have started this game with Blythe. My mother is crazy, but in the not-so-harmful way. It used to be bad. When I was younger, it was bad. But it’s not destructive anymore.
She stares at me hard, then loops her arm around mine tight, locks it in, so I can’t let go. She leans in as we walk, her breath in my ear.
“My mother used to be one of Oscar de la Renta’s designers in her early twenties. She worked for Louis Vuitton for years. And when she’s not in a robe, everything she wears is tailored or silk. It was good to be manic and have these grandiose episodes when she was creative and when she didn’t have me,” she says, bitter. “My mom got arrested when I was eleven for leaving me in a theme park by myself on purpose and then got institutionalized by the state. Now she’s at home under lock and key and medication, of course, when she decides to take it. She goes up and down. Mostly, I’ve gotten stuck driving her to doctor’s appointments because most of her meds have a sedative side effect and because my father is always traveling.”
She stares at me matter-of-factly, her eyes wide open.
“DAMN.”
“Top that, bitch.”
“I think you won,” I say.
“I think my mother out-crazies your mother by a long shot.”
I’m attached to her, a loop on her belt. We stare at each other so serious and then—I can’t help it. Nerves. The exhilaration of saying it out loud. My mother’s crazy. And like a flash, we’re hysterical. Laughing so hard that we’re going to pee. We keep walking. Part of me wants to hug her, because to get left in an amusement park? That sounds awful. My mother left me too—but not in an amusement park. I can’t imagine being left like that.
Blythe and I can shove the painful shit down. And laugh ourselves to tears until we explode. Look at us. So happy on the outside, neglected on the inside by the women in our lives. That’s what we have in common.
I tell her I’ll meet her after fifth period near the cafeteria, and I run off to class. I turn around in the hallway to see where she is, and she’s already gone.
15
BLYTHE
Morning. I look around the kitchen. My mom in her robe. Shuffling around in slippers. Dinner from last night still on the table. Cartons of takeout Mexican food.
“Where is Dad?”
“He left super early this morning.”
“Is Rosita coming?”
“No, Rosita is not coming— Do you understand what a spoiled brat you sound like?”
“I’m not asking if Rosita is coming because I want her to clean up.”
I want to know if Rosita is coming because I want to leave the house, and I can’t leave my mother unless someone else is here. I promised my father. She got kicked out of group therapy the other day. She doesn’t like her meds. They’re making her paranoid. She accused someone of stealing her phone, when really, she just left it at home. She got in the woman’s face. Threatened her. I prefer her when she’s drugged on Klonopin.
Her eyes travel off, looking at the mess around the kitchen, maybe, or just looking at the mess of her life.
“Rosita will be here soon. In twenty minutes. She’s running late.”
I can leave her for twenty minutes. What damage can she do in twenty minutes? I know. I’ll clean until Donnie gets here. I toss the plates into the sink. There’s an empty popcorn bag. There are tissues near the garbage that haven’t been thrown out. I’ll just get things started, that’s all. All my nervous energy around my mother, festering inside me. My therapist would say, Give yourself healthy advice. Channel that discomfort. So I’ll channel it into the dishes. Here I am, a good daughter, washing the dishes.
“Blythe, don’t start throwing dishes around.”
“I’m just clearing the countertops—”
“I’ll do all this. Stop—” she says, and reaches for the dish in my hand. Neither of us holds on to it. The plate breaks in pieces. White porcelain shards scatter across the wood floor.
It all gets so harried and crazy with her so fast. I only want it to slow down. So I stop. I breathe like my therapist told me to. I step over the shards.
“Mom, I have to go to school.”
“It’s fine. Go. I’ll clean this up.”
I grab my backpack and don’t look at her, even though I’m on the verge of punching something or throwing a chair.
“I know you want to blame everything on me, Blythe. But I want someone to blame too. You don’t understand that though, do you?”
I want to say things to her about her taking away my childhood and how since I was six I realized there was “something wrong with Mommy” and sometimes “Mommy isn’t rational,” and how it’s “not my fault that Mommy is sick.”
But I say nothing. My mother scares me in a way. I don’t want to be too vulnerable in front of her because I don’t think she can handle it. And if I break down and cry, tell her how I really feel, let it all pour out, she’ll fall apart. She’ll beg me to understand her side. To talk to me endlessly about her mother and her father. About her sister who died ten years ago. I don’t always want to understand her side. I just want to be a person who doesn’t have to take care of, or worry about, her mother—but I don’t get that option.
I want to call Ali. Isn’t that strange? That pull I have toward her? Suddenly, there’s some connection between us. Because this is something Ali would understand—especially about mothers—that no one else would. Even Donnie, who I turn to for everything. Her mother and father, they’re still together. Her mother is a scientist! Dr. Alperstein, the famous scientist.
And just like that, Donnie, Cate, and Suki are at my house. I lock the door behind me and text Rosita: Let me know when you get to the house.
I’m outside so fast. There’s Donnie with a cigarette, her hand hanging out the car window, her silver cuff around her wrist sparkling in the sun. I cram in the back seat next to Suki. Cate’s got shotgun, and usually I’d fight her for it, make her get in the back. Today I don’t care. Can’t get out of here, away from my mother, fast enough.
Donnie hands m
e the cigarette. Deep inhale. Smoke in my lungs. Exhale smoke rings. “Where’s your little friend?” Donnie says. “I thought you’d be walking to school with her. Maybe holding her backpack.”
“You sound jealous.”
“I, for one, don’t care who you’re friends with, but I also am kind of curious,” Suki says. “Is this an actual friendship? I thought this had something to do with Sean.”
“It does have to do with Sean. At least it started that way. But I like Ali.”
Cate turns around from the front seat, shoots a look at Suki, and they laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
They laugh more. There’s nothing funny. It’s a game they want to play. They’re scared that they’re going to slip from my fingers and they’ll have nothing for me to hold on to. Maybe that I’ll trade them in for Ali.
“Playing with fire, gonna get burned,” Suki sings, making up her own song.
“Ali? She’s innocent. What could she do to me?”
“Not her,” Suki says. “Sean.”
“He’s a baby,” I say. “You didn’t see him crying that night. You guys don’t understand how I pick up the pieces for him. How that’s part of our friendship now. He doesn’t come to you like he comes to me.”
Especially lately. That was a job Dev and I both handled. But now, it seems to be just me. The other day in the hallway. I need someone to set me straight. And then, Sometimes when I’m with you. I haven’t told anyone about that. Kept it hidden, all the way down.
“Crying about what, B? That he broke some other girl’s heart? That’s his MO,” Cate says.
“Oh, and what guy’s not a player?” I say.
“Dev’s not a player.”
“Maybe that’s why Sean hangs out with Dev and looks up to Dev. Because he wants to be more like him.”
But I have no idea if that’s true at all. It feels like it could be.
“You guys have never seen him cry like I have. You’ve never seen him spilling his guts like I have.”
“About what? His hair?” Suki says.
“His SAT scores?” Donnie says. “He has a soft side. You guys don’t understand.” Donnie, mocking me.
“That soft side is his pretty face,” Suki says.
I slump down into the back seat, my knees up against the passenger side. I close my eyes. I can see his face right in front of me. The way he looked that night. I would never hurt anyone.
He wouldn’t, would he? Not purposefully. Right?
16
ALI
It’s been two weeks since I first met Sheila the She Woman. Two weeks since that night.
My dad wants me to meet her again. The right way.
“You mean, not with her ass sticking out?”
I try not to laugh. I love teasing my father. It means everything to me.
“Alistair.”
“Dad.”
“You seriously have got to get a handle on that mouth of yours.”
So Sheila is coming over for dinner. My father is cooking. This means he bought a rotisserie chicken and is microwaving frozen broccoli. If he really wants to charm her, he’ll open a can of beans and chop up some cilantro.
Sheila comes in with flowers for me. A dozen orange roses, which is sweet actually.
“They’re from an organic farm in West Jersey,” she says.
“I thought roses came from a florist,” I say, deadpanning.
“Jesus, Ali. Give it a rest!” my father yells from the kitchen.
“Your father told me about your great sense of humor,” she says. She’s smiling. She’s not so offended.
* * *
* * *
At dinner Sheila wants to know about my interests.
“Boys.”
This used to be a funny joke in my family before Sean Nessel. Before my father thought I was a slut. Before I had to go to a gynecologist. Before my aunt delivered Plan B to me. It slipped out of my mouth too fast. My father stares at me like he’s going to slap me from across the table.
“New answer,” he says, gritting his teeth.
I sit up in my seat. Serious now. “I write a little. I also make collages. I guess I do a lot of things.”
She tells me that she writes too. That she used to be a journalist. Now she just teaches more than she actually writes.
“What made you become a journalist?” I say.
She perks up. Surprised that she caught my interest.
“I saw a movie on Woodward and Bernstein. Ever hear of them?”
I shake my head.
“They’re the journalists who uncovered Watergate. The reporters who found out that President Nixon had hired his men to break into the Democratic National Committee offices that were in the Watergate building to steal information. That he lied to the country and then resigned. They ended up uncovering layers of Washington secrets about the president that no one was willing to talk about.”
“It was a defining moment in history,” my dad says.
Of course I know about Watergate, but I don’t feel like explaining myself. Too much effort. So I nod. Watching her. Wondering what her articles were about. Why she started teaching.
“The only journalists I like are comedians,” I say. “At least they make you laugh while talking about how depressing everything is.”
“Apathy, apathy, apathy,” my dad says.
“Hey! Apathy! That’s on my PSAT.”
He shakes his head.
“Do you have a school paper or something? Do school newspapers even exist anymore?” she says.
“Actually they do have a school paper. Didn’t it win an award last year?” my dad asks.
“Yeah, we have a great school newspaper. And I know all about it because the boy that I used to be in love with was in it all the time. I used to cut his face out of it.”
More deadpan. My dad looks down at his plate.
“Are you interested in journalism, Ali?” she says. She’s not letting this go. She’s insisting on a serious conversation.
“I don’t really know what I’m interested in right now.” That’s the pathetic truth.
“Okay,” she says, uncomfortable. “Well, if you’re at all interested, maybe you could look at some places online. There are a lot of female journalists out there writing great stuff about college campus rape, eating disorders, abortion rights . . .”
I think of the first thing she said: college campus rape. Rape. My mind buzzes and buzzes as I stuff food into my mouth, nodding, Yes, sure, send me something, I think I say, my mouth filled with food because there’s not enough food, not enough of anything to fill me up and make this feeling like I’m disintegrating go away.
* * *
* * *
Later that night, I’m watching what seems like an endless stream of YouTube videos on babies who can’t see. A doctor places glasses over their little, confused faces and then their world becomes clear. Imagine your world so fuzzy. That you can’t see. That you don’t know anything is different about that fuzzy green thing hanging from the tree. Then it becomes shockingly clear: that fuzzy green thing is a leaf.
Blythe texts me: What are u doing?
Watching babies with bad eyesight see for the first time on YouTube
ALI
YES
Can I come over?
I look around my room. Some of my room seems so babyish. I bet Blythe’s room is glamorous. She’s got like silver wallpaper or something. A canopy bed with long white silk drapes hanging from each end. Some chic white chair in the corner with black fur pillows.
My room on the other hand. My desk is painted turquoise because my dad and I painted it together. My mirror is from the 1970s; it’s got tiny little daisies painted in clusters except for the center. My mother picked it up at a garage sale years ago. “When you loo
k at yourself in the mirror,” she said, “you’ll always be surrounded by flowers.” There’s a Nirvana sticker in the corner that came with it, otherwise it would have been worth something. God. Do we have to be so fucking quaint?
Mother driving me crazy.
Sure, come over.
Blythe will be here in ten minutes. That’s not nearly enough time to clean up. I assess my room. What’s the most messy thing? My bed. My bed has to be made first. But oh my God, why do I have Dora sheets? What am I—two? Everything else was in the laundry, I’ll tell her. It’s the truth! I found them at the back of the closet. Everything was dirty! But Dora sheets? How has it come to this?
“Dad! Where are those white sheets that you got me from Target?”
He’s downstairs, yelling something I don’t understand. I’m at the top of the steps.
“The white sheets from Target! Where are they? The new ones!”
“Still in the bag. Next to the washing machine.”
“Ugh, they’re not clean?”
“If you had cleaned them, Ali—”
“Does everything have to be such a chore?”
I run down the stairs, and he’s calling after me.
“It’s only a chore if you make it a chore.”
I unwrap the sheets and a duvet cover. Everything has to be white. That’s what it means to have a normal bed that’s not a loser bed. That’s not a baby bed. Everything white. I kick the bags to the side and race back up the stairs.
He follows me, stairs creaking behind me. “Why are you doing this now?”
“Blythe is coming over now.”
“Wait . . . now?”
“Don’t start with me, Dad. My room is a mess—”
“What are you doing with those?” He points to my Dora sheets on the floor.
“I’m throwing them out. That’s what I’m doing.” I’m standing on my bed trying to shove my pink comforter into the white duvet cover.
“I want to save those, Ali.”
“What? Why? Even if I have a kid one day, which I won’t, I wouldn’t let her watch Dora because her head is too big for her body and she doesn’t even look like a real person.”
Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf Page 9
