A Blue So Dark

by Holly Schindler

  My stomach kind of twists, and instantly, I wish I'd never seen them at all. Sure, I could snitch. But who would I snitch to? Whose bottles are they? Joey's mother's, most likely, the way things are looking right now-but with the Pilkingtons, you could never be sure. Obviously, though, it's a hiding place for one of them, and I figure I should do something-pour the whiskey out. Or toss the bottles into my yard, get rid of them later that night when no one's watching from the twenty or so windows that fill the back of the Pilkington house. Then maybe the rightful owner of the hooch would think they'd been found out by their lush of a family member. Might even be a way to shame that person into stopping. Head them out to rehab for the 142nd time.

  My eyes trail over to the window on the back of my own house-the one that leads straight into the living room, where I tucked Mom in. The uprooted bushes lie just below it, in ugly, frantic-looking piles.

  The back door bursts open, and Mom emerges from the house with tubes of red paint in her hands. Starts squirting the acrylic all over the plants, screaming, "Fix, fix it. Fix." As if red paint is all her bushes need to come back to life again.

  I've still got the lid to the Pilkingtons' trash can in my hand. I stare down-two empties, one half-full, one never opened. What are you going to do, Aura? All my options swarm like the bees that will never again be drawn to the sweet smell of Mom's bushes. But the Pilkingtons' mess is none of my business, is it? I've got my own problems right now.

  So I slam the lid back on the trash can, pretend I haven't seen a thing. Rush to grab Mom's arm and haul her back into the house, before anyone can see how bad she is.

  Embarrassing behavior can be dealt with in two ways: (t) Telling your relative what will not be tolerated, and (2) Examining your own attitude about why you are allowing yourself to be such a doormat, humiliated every single tinge you turn around.

  here are you going?" I ask when Mom emerges from her room dressed-not showered, but at least dressed, wearing a floppy summer dress that makes her too-skinny body look like a pipe cleaner.

  She smiles. "You said I was on vacation till Saturday, right? It's Saturday." She taps the newspaper on the kitchen table, pointing to the date. And for a minute, hope flashes like a just-struck match. I mean, Mom's still keeping in touch with the outside world-so what if she's mostly treating that world like some long-lost friend who moved away years ago? In touch is still in touch ... right?

  And then I realize what she wants, and a cold drizzle traces a path down my back, like I'm standing underneath an icicle that's started to melt. "You're going to teach?"

  "I always teach."

  "But, Mom-I don't think-you're ready yet. A few more days..."

  The corners of Mom's mouth turn up softly and her eyes glisten. "I love you," she tells me. "You're my girl."

  "You think I'm that easy?" I ask her.

  "I think you're mine. I think you understand. You understand. I need to, okay? I just need to."

  For the first time in my life, as Mom's eyes are pleading and her hands are clutching mine, I really do understand what it must be like when someone who desperately loves an alcoholic suddenly finds that alcoholic on their knees, begging for the key to the liquor cabinet. just a nip. I need it, I need it. I love you. You understand you see me from the inside what it's like you know so don't deny me don't don't.

  Mom flashes a diabolical grin. "When you were born," she tells me, pushing my hair behind my shoulders and smoothing it along the top of my head. "When you were born, you had the clearest eyes and most beautiful dark-blue aura. And I knew I wanted to name you Aura, so that the world would know that you were going to do great things." She kisses my forehead. "You're driving, remember?"

  "That's a dirty trick," I tell her. And like a fool, I grab the keys off the wall.

  At the museum, I steer Mom past the docents-broke college art majors who guide tours through the halls in order to have enough money for their fan brushes and canvas scrapers and potters' throwing ribs. One of them does a double take, frowning at Mom's summer dress that exposes way too much skin on a cold October morning. "Grace?" he says, in that shaky, unsure, are you okay tone I was hoping to avoid.

  I steer her into the classroom, where she throws my hand off her shoulder, disgusted. "Sit down," she barks, like a pissed-off Doberman.

  I don't want to, but the whole class-this one an even mix of white-hairs and volcanic zits-is staring at us with that awful half-shocked, half-scared look. So I take my seat in the back, where I can watch her, where I can save her if I need to, if she falls completely off that cliff. But will my arms be enough to hold her weight? I wonder as I start to gnaw on my bottom lip.

  Mom stomps to the front of the room, grabs some blank paper, and comes straight for me. Slams the paper down on the table in front of my chair. "Would have been useful if you'd remembered your sketchbook," she tells me, like we're not related at all. Like she's some mean-ass math teacher, bun on the top of her head, who doesn't give a shit what's going on in my personal life, it's time now to learn the quadratic equation.

  What happened to my beautiful blue aura? I want to ask, but the words stick in my throat like splintered chicken bones.

  "If you're going to insist on following me around, you have to participate," she says.

  "Follow you around," I repeat, because I can't quite believe I've heard her right. And besides, that drawing paper she's put in front of me is poison-I can practically see the skulls and crossbones on the top page. Doesn't she get what she's doing? Doesn't she see how similar we are to the Pilkingtons? Doesn't she realize she's an addict, falling apart at the seams, telling me to start using, too?

  Don't you remember your father, the writer? I want to scream. Don't you wish someone had stopped you from picking up that first paintbrush? Don't you see what art is doing to us?

  Mom pounds the table with her fist, wraps her hand around one of my arms, and hauls me to my feet. "Get out," she tells me, pushing me toward the door.

  I try to lock my knees, try to dig the toes of my sneakers into the tile. But Mom's still stronger than I am-I'm really not sure where this strength has come from-and she knocks me through the doorway. "Get out and let me work," she snaps, slamming the door in my face.

  I want to throw the door open, come right back, keep an eye on her. But I know that would just be provoking a horrible scene. So I hurry past the docents and head outside to sit beneath the maple, where I can watch Mom through the window.

  I'm just sitting down, though, when she sees me. She frowns, grabs the blind, and pulls. My shoulders collapse like a tower of blocks. I'm completely shut out. My forehead falls into my hands.

  "You get my board done yet?"

  I look up, and my heart takes a nosedive, straight to the core of the earth. Jeremy Barnes. He sits next to me, so close that when the breeze catches his hair, it actually tickles my cheek.

  I snort and shake my head, because on a day like today, with who knows what going on behind that window blind, this seems about as romantic as the time Adam Riley smashed our faces together when we were in my basement, all tongue and teeth, making me wonder when it could just be over.

  "Your timing sucks," I say, but Jeremy only grins, sending his beauty mark dancing.

  "Still working on it? Must be a regular Mona Lisa or something. I can't wait to see it.,,

  "Jeremy, I just c-" The rest of the word throws its feet down on my tongue, refusing to come out of my mouth. Can't. He has no idea what he's asking me to do. That my life isn't as simple as those necklaces he makes. That some people are actually allergic to the sun.

  He scrambles to his feet, crouches low, and starts sneaking up on a bush beside the museum's bricks like he's a cat hunting a squirrel. Then he comes rushing back toward me, his hands cupped one over the other like there's something inside, something fragile that he doesn't want to crush.

  "Did you know that butterflies carry dreams on their wings?" he asks as he sits back down beside me, even closer than before, his knee
against my thigh, the red maple leaves rustling overhead like the lips of a bunch of gossips. Jeremy and Aura sittin' in a tree...

  I roll my eyes at him and try to push his hands awaythey're only an inch from my nose, and I figure it's some sort of joke, like those playground tricks elementary school boys play on all the girls, tossing bugs into their hair or kicking dirt onto their pristine Mary Janes.

  But Jeremy shoves his hands even closer to my face and says, "I'm serious. Go on. Whisper your deepest wish, and this guy'11 carry it straight to the gods. Some Native American belief, I think. Come on-how many butterflies you see this time of year? He shouldn't even be here right now. He's just been sticking around, waiting for you. I know what that's like," he teases, nudging me with his elbow. "Go on. Make a wish."

  Okay, it's corny as hell, I know, but it makes my whole body unwind. The way he's offering, for a minute it's like nothing in my life is unconquerable. Nothing-not even Mom-is really quite so bad after all. So I lean in and shoot a whisper into the spaces between his long, artistic-looking fingers. I tell the butterfly that what I wish the most is that my life could truly, honestly be mind-numbingly normal.

  Normal. It's so far gone, I'm not sure I'd actually recognize normal if it rang our doorbell.

  When Jeremy opens his hand, a monarch, all black and orange, is standing in the middle of his palm. The butterfly flaps his wings a couple of times before taking off.

  I laugh as I watch him fly, my giggles as shiny as bubbles. Jeremy's so close, I can smell the lather and steam of his morning shower. And when I close my eyes again, his mouth brushes mine, but not at all like Adam. No, Jeremy touches me the way you'd touch a fragile, pink crab apple blossom-the way you'd barely caress it, knowing how easily it could tear.

  His kiss envelops everything at that moment. I lean forward, reaching for him, wanting him not to pull away, because with his lips on mine, I feel like I really am one of those girls that has room in all her pockets for mistakes. A girl who can have crushes on the wrong guys and break curfew and sneak out at night to hang out with her friends. A girl who really does feel naughty when she lights up, because her mother will smell the cigarette smoke in her clothes and ground her for half a century. A girl who has never, in her whole life, felt lower than the bubble gum on the bottom of her shoe.

  But our heads jerk apart when the front door of the museum flies open, banging against the building with the force of TNT

  "Fire!" I can hear Mom scream. "It's a fire! The only way out!"

  When I turn, Mom's clutching some ancient, bewildered student by the shoulder of his cardigan sweater, crying, "Go! It's the only way out!"

  "A fire?" Jeremy says, staring at the door. "In the museum? Seriously?"

  But one of the docents has a watercolor in his handorange and red and yellow-and he's shouting at Mom, telling her, "A painting, Grace! One of your student's paintings! That's all!"

  "What?" Jeremy asks, squinting at her like he's trying to make sense of it all. Slowly, that squint turns into a grin. A chuckle starts to rattle through his lips. Anger explodes through me, because he's so stupid. Aura collector, he'd called himself. Right. Sure. Sounds good, Jeremy saving up all the facts, pressing them into his mind like dried rose petals in a ludicrous book of old-fashioned poetry. I should have known it was all a bunch of bunk.

  You don't know anything, you moronic jerk, I feel like screaming. Because for all his supposed Aura collecting, he has no idea how much Mom truly terrifies me. He has no idea that when I look at her, I'm not staring at a person, but a mirror. I'm seeing me, exactly as I'll be in the future.

  I shove Jeremy away, screaming at him, "Loser. You're a loser," because his laughter makes me feel like my heart's in a freaking cheese grater. "Get away from me."

  I scramble to my feet like he isn't even a boy at all, but rotten flesh.

  "Aura," he says, shaking his head and frowning, squinting at me as though I'm a map he's trying to read.

  "Go away. Get away from me!" I shout, waving my arms like he's some stray cat I've got to get rid of.

  As he starts to back away, his face wearing the same confusion as Mom's students, I rush to the museum door. God, I feel like such an ass, because I haven't been watching her like I should have-I've been outside-what? Flirting?

  This is all my fault.

  It is important to remember that too much emotion on your part can upset your schizo relative even firrther. Don't shout, or wail, or cry, or nail the door shut.

  call the attendance secretaries the next few days, pretending to be Mom. Aura has the stomach flu. No, believe me, you don't want her in class.

  But by Wednesday afternoon, voices from Crestview start attacking Mom through our answering machine: "Yes, Ms. Ambrose, ah-this is, ah, Pat Harrison," a songbird voice chirps, "and I am no longer allowed to, ah, simply take a call regarding any more of Aura's absences. I must have a doctor's excuse note on file by tomorrow. If, ah, you don't mind."

  Yeah, well, maybe I mind.

  "Ms. Ambrose, this is Janet Fritz at Crestview High with a matter that needs your immediate attention." She pauses to slurp her soda. "It's in regard to Aura's academic career.

  What academic career?

  I spend the day playing Mom games, trying to manipulate her into doing everyday things like eating. I make a toasted bacon and peanut butter sandwich (Mom's favorite) and take it to her bedroom, where I tell her I'll mix up some paint for her, only, gee whiz, it sure is taking me a long time to stir it up, and Mom, could you taste that sandwich I made for myself and tell me if I've done it right? And golly, look here, I put in too much white again. Gosh, gosh, Mom, don't worry. I'll get it. Just a minute. And here, could you check this shade, and how's that sandwich, did you try it? Take another bite. What do you think about that maple bacon, and just a little blue, and oh, my! How did this happen? Mom's eaten the whole sandwich. That's okay, though, Mom-don't sweat it. I can make myself another.

  Jeez. It's like I'm the girl with the six-month-old, not Janny.

  "Here, that shade's still not right," Mom says, shooing me away from her paint cans as she chews the last bite of her sandwich. "Come on, move-I've almost got it. I'm so close now. Don't you get it? I can fix it, Aura, if you'll just get the hell out of my way."

  I spring for a pizza that night. I know I shouldn't blow so much on one meal, especially now that Mom's apparently not going to be teaching anymore and we'll be existing solely on Dad's child support. But Mom hasn't eaten anything but a crummy peanut butter sandwich all day. And seriouslywho can resist the smell of a piping hot pepperoni with extra cheese?

  Not Grace Ambrose, that's who.

  I'm grateful that she eats; it makes me feel a little less like a full-body fist, but I only pick at mine. At this rate, I could probably be the cover model for Anorexics Digest in about two more weeks.

  I shove the pizza leftovers in the fridge, and as I slump against the sink, I pretend I get a note from one of the pepperonis:

  Dear Aura,

  Thank you for being kind enough to put us in your Frigidaire. The box ofArm eT' Hammer is a nice touch. We are glad you are not going to just let us sit around on your countertop for days on end-college kids do that all the time, and we have heard horror stories about cockroaches nibbling on poor pepperonis' heads.!Ew.TNAnyhoo, thanks again.

  Love,

  Peppy

  P.S. Can you please go get some other groceries? We are all alone in here! We are so LONELYTI l

  I'm just tired, that's all. Stay cooped up in the house with a schizo too long, and you begin to wonder who the crazy one really is.

  Speaking of which...

  I tilt my head to the side, listening. No distant radio, no Mom's voice, no clatter-rattle through the hallway, no music from the turntable, no feet in her bedroom. "Mom?" I whisper, on the off-chance that she's actually asleep. It would be one of life's great rewards if she'd actually, if maybe ...

  I tiptoe out of the kitchen to find she's collapsed on the livin
g room couch. I just stand there a minute, watching Mom's chest swell and fall. I let the scene soak in like moisturizer on winter-chapped skin.

  As I stare at Mom's shoulder, rising with another deep breath, I begin to think that now is the perfect opportunity to get Peppy the note-writing pepperoni some friends.

  Keys in hand, I head out into the dark. At a quarter past nine, the sky seems like the cold leftovers of a tofu dinner-congealed and unwanted. But the stars are still sparkling, anyway.

  I shift the Tempo into neutral and let it slide down the driveway, afraid of waking Mom. And I catch sight of myself, now that my eyes are adjusting to the darkness, in the rearview. No makeup, my long black hair uncombed, in a hoodie with paint splatters all over it (Mom must have worn it at some point). My whole face is dripping with oil, because I haven't been washing it like I should, and because I've been out of zit-zapping cream for a week.

  "Warmed-up vomit," I mumble as I crank the ignition, because that's exactly what I look like.

  The whole Price Cutter has this funky green hue when I step inside. Like I'm walking into a bug trap that's going to saute me at any minute. As I fish my happy homemaker list from the pocket of my jeans, the door behind me slides open. Two boys throw their skateboards down and fly past me, toward the cereal aisle.

  The pulse of their wheels on the tile makes me remember Jeremy-and how the smell of sprinklers on a newmown lawn trickles off him every time the wind forces his long hair to dance. Thinking of Jeremy's kiss gives me honest-to-God goose bumps. But I'm no fool. I don't even have the teeniest sliver of a chance with Jeremy. Especially after the horrible things I said to him. I'm not the kind of girl who gets love-or crushes-or boys with beautiful long hair.