Clearer in the Night

by Rebecca Croteau

  But, first things first—clean underwear. I’d been planning on getting her to give me a ride over to my apartment so I could get my things and my car, but if she was going to crash in her room all day—no signs of life had occurred at all—then I was going to borrow hers, and she’d just have to survive. I’d leave a note this time, though.

  When I reached into her purse for the keys, I came up with two prescription bottles. One for Ambien, one for oxycodone. I stared at those for a little while, then pushed them back into her purse. I really did not want to consider her mixing those kinds of heavy duty meds with whiskey. That was more than a messy house and a bout of depression. That was hard core. That was more than I could handle. So, best to pretend it wasn’t happening, until there was proof. There’d be an explanation. There always was.

  I took the keys and headed for the door. Just as I went to open it, there was a sharp rap on the outside, which made me jump, and then the door swung open, which made me let out a little shriek as I dodged. Not my best moment ever. I flipped the keys in my hand, the metal part poking out from between two fingers of my fist, and raised my hand, ready to confront…a little old lady. She was small and skinny in that bundle-of-sticks way that some old women get, her chalk-white hair up in a braid that was wound all the way around her head. She wore a floral housedress and carried a casserole pan. It took me a moment to grab her name out of the recesses of my mind. “Mrs. Dennis,” I said. “You startled me.”

  She looked me up and down, and her friendly smile reset into a thin, narrow line slashed across her face. “Caitlyn. I’m surprised to find you here. Your mother is always talking about how busy you are.”

  Ah. I’d been hoping that the glare had been a result of my lousy church attendance record. “I had no idea things were like this,” I said, trying to cut to the chase. “I’m here now.”

  I’d hoped for one of those sweet old lady smiles, but her eyes just got colder, and one eyebrow climbed towards her hairline. She let out a sniff as she closed the front door behind herself. “I heard that your mother was poorly today,” she said. “I brought shepherd’s pie.”

  “You heard—how?”

  She gave me another long side-eye as she carried a large paper bag into the kitchen. “Your mother called out of work. Your mother’s secretary is Gail Clary’s granddaughter’s girlfriend, so she called Gail, and Gail let me know. It was my turn.” I drifted in her wake as she bustled about my newly cleaned kitchen. She didn’t seem to notice the scrubbing, the fridge that wasn’t full of mold or rotting food, the shining sink, any of it. “Someone had to take care of her after all.”

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” I asked. It was better than hitting her over the head with a stock pot.

  “No, dear, I won’t keep you. I’ll just say hello to your mother, if I may.”

  “Could I stop you if I wanted to?”

  She grinned, then, but there was something…more to it. Something dark and interested. “Unlikely.” She slipped past me, and opened the door to Mom’s room without even knocking. She didn’t glance at me as she shut the door behind her, but I felt like she did.

  I wondered if I’d be able to listen in from where I was. I almost tried. But no. No. If I could do that…I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to know.

  I made myself a cup of coffee, and sat at the table, tracing patterns in the wood grain. It was probably ten minutes before Mrs. Dennis emerged. Her face was set with worry, and she came and sat down across from me.

  “I will take that coffee, if you’re still offering,” she said.

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “No thank you. Bad for my diabetes.”

  I poured a cup and placed it in front of her, then sat down again.

  “Your mother…” she started, and then trailed off. I waited. “When will we see you in church again?” she asked. “I know Elijah asks after you every time I see him.”

  Good thing my coffee was getting a bit chilly, it gave me somewhere to put all the excess heat I was suddenly generating.

  “He commented to me the other day about how lovely you are. I told him that you’re a very busy girl, but that maybe the two of you could go out for a meal sometime, as you have quite a lot in common, and I’m sure you’d get on famously.” She leaned over and gave me a conspiratorial little wink that seemed entirely out of character. “Forgive an old lady her matchmaking. I just want to see my grandson settled and happy while I’ve still got my senses about me.”

  “How’s Mom?” I asked, way too loud. “She wouldn’t speak to me at all, when I tried.”

  She shrugged. “She’s at a low ebb. She’ll come up from here. Most likely. Try to keep her away from all her little bottles and beverages, and she’ll do better for longer.” She watched me for a moment. “But you know that already, don’t you?”

  “I’m realizing.” I blinked, fast and hard, so she wouldn’t see how wet my eyes suddenly were. “I would have been here. If I’d known.”

  “You would have known,” she said, “if you’d ever been here. Or bothered to ask.” She threw back the hot coffee like a trucker, and then patted my hand with her papery fingers. “Take care, dear. If there’s anything we can do to help, please—just say it. We love your mother to bits, and don’t want to see any harm come to her. Now, forgive me, I’ll see myself out.”

  I let her go, just staring at the walls for a while. I’d been hustled, I knew that much, but into what?

  Mom didn’t leave her room until well past noon. I’d found an old pair of track pants and thrown my clothes into the wash. It didn’t feel right leaving. What if something happened? What if she needed me? I could wait.

  And then, about one-thirty, she came out of her room, all smiles and refreshed, like she’d just woken from the most peaceful sleep of her life. She came straight to me and enveloped me in a hug. “Hey, beautiful girl,” she said. “Sorry about this morning. You caught me off guard. Scared me.”

  I didn’t care. I took deep, long breaths of her perfume, and tried to memorize the feeling of her hands around me.

  “I thought I’d make muffins,” she said. “Do you want muffins?”

  I wanted the kind of mother who made muffins. She had to stand up on her tip-toes to kiss me on the top of my head, but I was instantly five years old again, when my life had still been good, and worth the bother.

  One trip to the store, and a few determined bouts of cursing later, the house smelled like sweet baking things and fresh coffee. While Mom had bustled around in the kitchen, I’d started pulling piles of paperwork down off the stairs. They were a hazard, after all. I started sorting out the junk mail into piles of “clearly trash”, “maybe interesting”, and “very likely that Mom needed this.” Then, there were the piles of bills that I was stacking up by who they’d come from. I didn’t open anything, just wanted to see what there was, so that I could ask Mom what she needed me to do to help.

  The number of bills with bright red disconnect stamps on them, month after month, made my stomach twist, but in a mundane way. After this morning’s dramatic display, whatever was twisting its way around inside me had taken a vacation. I could taste it in the back of my throat, but that feeling that it was going to take over and rip me to shreds had faded. It was something.

  But Mom was in real trouble. She had to be. And she wasn’t lacking for money. Her parents had left her a trust fund, and she made good money at her job. She did well enough to support my household, whenever I came up short on my bills. Her car was less than two years old, but was paid off, and she always had new clothes and jewelry.

  But the pills. And the booze. That had to cost. And if she was in a stupor all the time, maybe finances weren’t her top priority. Nothing had been turned off yet, but at least from the outsides of the envelopes, it seemed like she was balancing on a knife’s edge.

  “Exactly what do you think you’re doing?”

  The tone that she used was the same one that had stopped me in my tracks half a hundred t
imes when I was a kid. I looked up from the pile of papers in front of me, my eyes wide, my hands frozen exactly where they’d been. “I—helping?”

  She slammed the tray of muffins—she’d put them into a little basket and even scooped some butter into a cut glass serving dish with a tiny, fancy butter knife—onto the table, and swept all my neat piles up into an armful of mess again. “These are mine. I invited you here because you need somewhere to stay, not because I want you messing with my stuff and going through my things.”

  “Mom, I’m sorry—they were blocking the whole stairway, and I thought you’d like some help neatening up. It seemed like things have gotten…out of control.” Those were the wrong words. Holy hell were those the wrong words, and I knew it as soon as they came out of my mouth, but it was too late to take them back.

  She clutched the piles to her chest, shifting to try and keep them all from falling to the floor. “Everything is in control here, Caitlyn. You’re the one out of control.”

  “Mom—”

  “There is nothing to talk about. Just stay out of my things. They’re not yours, and I don’t want you touching them.”

  I took a deep breath. “Mom. Are you okay with money? Because the bills—”

  “Are none of your concern. I’m the adult here, and I’ve got it taken care of, okay?” Suddenly, she was all smiles and softness again. “Have a muffin, okay? I snuck one in the kitchen, and they’re really good.” She set the pile of junk mail and overdue bills on the sideboard, like they were the most precious treasure, and then she turned around and sat down at the table. She smiled politely, clearly waiting for me to say something about the weather or baseball or Shannon. I stayed silent, my arms crossed over my chest. I didn’t take a muffin. They smelled amazing, but I stayed strong. Even when my stomach grumbled loudly.

  When she sighed, I knew she’d caved. She tipped inward, somehow, collapsing in on herself like her solid core had given way, and she was crumbling. “You deserve to know,” she said, quietly. “After…” there was a long pause that was meant to stand for ‘your father and sister were killed, and I abandoned you,’ or maybe ‘after they were kidnapped by the men in black.’ Then she took a deep breath and carried on. “After everything happened, I thought that I was staying strong for you. I didn’t talk about them, and I didn’t cry where you could see, and I tried to keep things as normal as possible for you. But then you were gone, and you had your own life, and I didn’t have to be strong for anyone anymore, and things just kind of…caved in.” She grinned like a corpse. “But it’s all under control. It’s fine. I’m seeing someone. A counselor. God, I hate that I’m doing it, but I am. So everything’s going to be fine.”

  Keeping my mouth shut was the smart move. Which was probably a great explanation for why I didn’t do it. “Does the counselor know that you’re mixing oxy and Ambien? And shooting whiskey on the side?” It was a guess, but I knew I was right by the sudden O her mouth formed before she swallowed it all down again.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mom, the pills are in your purse, and you’ve reeked of whiskey since I got home—”

  She slammed her fists down on the table, and the muffins jumped in their basket again. The butter knife fell out of its dish with a tiny clatter. “You have no idea what I’ve been through. You don’t get to judge me.”

  “I’m not judging. I just want you to be safe. I love you, Mom, I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Then stop worrying, Cait. I’m fine. Everything is fine.” Her words sounded pretty, but there was something about the way her hands were clenched so tight that the blood had fled her knuckles that called her a liar. Or maybe just that she needed to convince herself even more than she needed to convince me.

  My fingernails dug into my palms until I thought I would hear blood spatter onto the floor. There was pressure at my temples, a throbbing in double time to my heartbeat. The world moved into a slow, nauseating spin. I tried to sit up straight and meet her lost eyes, but it was more than I could manage. “Sorry, Mom,” I said, my words clattering to the floor like tiny chunks of ice. “I just want you to be safe.”

  That made her smile again, and she reached across the table to lay her hand over mine. “I am, sweetie. You don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got it all under control.”

  How many times had I said exactly that? Yeah. Like mother, like daughter. I reached out and took a muffin. I spread butter on it, watching the way it melted against the warm, crumbly muffin innards. “I’m glad to hear that,” I said, and I tried to think of reaching out towards her, of understanding what she needed to hear. “I…don’t. I really don’t. I love Shannon, but…something’s not right between us.” That was a flat out lie, but the way it made her eyes soften meant it was also the right thing to say. “I was thinking that maybe I could stay here? For just a little bit? Until I can figure out something else? Or help her find another roommate. Or something. I don’t want to leave her in the lurch, we’ve been friends for so long. Would that be okay, do you think?”

  “Of course,” she said. “This is your home, Cait, any time that you need it.”

  I gave her my shyest, sweetest smile. The one that charmed all the boys in the coffee shops and gave them a little thrill. “Thanks, Mom,” I said. “I’m…thank you.”

  There was something seriously rotten in the state of our house, and now that I was here, I wasn’t leaving until I figured out what it was.

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 31

  The next morning, Mom was up and awake before I was. When I came downstairs, she had her hair up, her make up on, and her scarf in place like a gorget. She passed me a cup of coffee without asking, and I nodded my thanks.

  “If you’re going to be here for a bit, I imagine you need some stuff from your apartment?” she asked. I nodded. “I can drop you off on my way to work, and you can bring your car back. Okay?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “I need to leave in about twenty minutes, then. Be ready, all right?”

  Seventeen minutes later, I was very glad that I’d washed my jeans yesterday, or they would have been out-and-out rank today. I grabbed my keys and the backpack that Shan had brought to the hospital.

  Mom was cheery in the car, talking about the advances the state was making with Suboxone treatments, and chronic care programs, and healthcare reform. They were all topics I knew I was supposed to be all up in arms about, but I kept catching waves of scents that didn’t match anything around me, and I had been dreaming of running all night long; I felt exhausted and energized at the same time. I let her talk, and I enjoyed that she was excited. Animated.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I swiped it open, expecting an “Are you dead?” text from Shannon. She’d be totally justified. I shouldn’t have ignored her for this long. But then, instead of the “You’d better be dead in a ditch” message, I found a text from Wes. “Hey beautiful,” it read. “Dinner tonight? Your favorite place.”

  My cheeks flushed red, and I was grinning in that stupid way that’s impossible to stop. I looked like a total tool, I was sure of it, but at the same time, it was…nice? No one had ever had my phone number before. No one had sent me cute texts inviting me places. Well, there were a couple guys in college, but the only place they were inviting me was between the sheets. Not the same.

  “How serious is it?” Mom asked, without looking over.

  “Hmm?”

  “You and Wesley. How serious are the two of you? You’ve never talked about him, but you go all soft focus when he texts you. How long have the two of you been together?”

  “Not long,” I said.

  She nodded, all sage wisdom and laughter. “Is he trying to make plans for tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Make him wait an hour, then say yes. Or no, if you don’t want to go. Or, if you’d rather, invite him over to the house. I can hang out and meet him, or make myself scarce. Whatever you want to do, Caitlyn. I want you to be hap
py.”

  She laughed, and I laughed with her. Had she and Sophie ever had this talk? Had they driven somewhere, gossiping about her boyfriends? Had she even really had boyfriends, before she died? I wanted to be the first daughter Mom had this conversation with. I wanted this to be something special between her and me. I wanted her to reach over and hold my hand for a minute, and give me a mother-daughter-moment smile, and be the first one to have gotten it. Everything that had happened for the last decade had been overshadowed by my sister, even though—or maybe especially because—she was dead. “Duly noted,” I said. “Thanks.”

  She reached out and squeezed my hand tightly, her eyes locked on the road. I could see a sudden gleam in them for a moment, a quick second where she swiped at them, and when her hands were on the wheel again, the moment had passed. I watched it fade in the rearview for a moment, and then turned forward again.

  She didn’t say anything else as she dropped me off at my apartment, other than a quick and perfunctory “Love you, see you at home.” As soon as she was out of sight, I pulled out my phone and sent back the message: “Love to, pick me up at 7?” There was a dream world where I’d have him come over and watch a movie, and we’d chat with my mom before going out for a bit. That dream world was not where I lived.

  He must have been sitting by his phone, because faster than I would have thought possible, the reply came: “Excellent.” And that was that. Maybe making him wait would have been The Rules thing to do, but when had I ever followed rules?

  The apartment that Shan and I had shared for the past three years was on the newer side of town, as long as you understood that “newer” meant “built after 1970.” Since our landlord wasn’t a total scumbag, we had such lovely improvements as vinyl windows with actually insulating glass, a shower head made in this millennium, and lead-free pipes. Since nothing is ever allowed to be perfect, we also had loud college kid neighbors, never quite enough hot water for as long of a shower as I wanted, and flooring that had probably been installed in the last century and never replaced. Still, we’d made a home of it, and we loved it. We’d used a decoration scheme of Goodwill-chic, with shelves lining the walls for all the books we’d bought before we gave in to eBooks, and a mismatched table and chairs in the kitchen. We each had a desk in the common room, along with a TV and a couch. We’d also put together a reading nook with furniture we’d actually bought new. Two chairs, big enough to curl up in. Hers was upholstered in cream and green striped corduroy, mine in navy crushed velvet.