have saved my breath. Mom’s already grabbed her Niagara Falls mug, nearly filled to the rim with ashes, and is turning away. Still, I can’t keep myself from calling after her, “Mom, I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
This stops her. “Your father, of course. Who else? The one who brought you into this world, and nearly took you right out of it again.”
I can’t believe Mom is talking about Dad for the second time in as many days. This time, I’m not gonna let the opportunity slip away. “You’re talking about when he kidnapped me, right?”
“No.” She shakes her head so adamantly that she wobbles, and Smith, who’s been hanging back, reaches forward as if to grab her. Somehow, though, she manages to right herself. And then she kicks me in the teeth. “I’m talking about when your father tried to kill you.”
Okay, she doesn’t literally kick me. But the effect is nearly the same. I stumble, and for the first time, I am glad to have Smith attached to me, because he is immediately there holding me steady.
I take a deep breath and remind myself that my mom isn’t the most reliable source. But she keeps talking, making it impossible for me to shrug it off as typical Mom craziness. “Of course, your father did it to force my hand. He had a pillow pressed against your little baby face and I had minutes to decide whether to save you. So I did, and in doing so, I lost myself.”
“You what?”
Just like that, her back is to me and she’s moving up the stairs. Once again I have ceased to exist. Funny, it’s always been like this, but now after being given that little bit of knowledge, I am desperate for more. Scrambling up the stairs behind her, I grab hold of her arm, forcing her to swing around and face me. “Mom. Come on already. You owe me a little more information than that.”
Beneath my fingers I can feel her trembling bone covered with only the thinnest layer of flesh, and it makes me surprised she even has the strength to hold her cigarettes. Immediately guilty, I loosen my hold and soften my tone. “Please, Mom. I only want—”
The Niagara Falls mug smashes into my chest, cutting me off. She hits me with it a second time and instinctively I swat it away. The mug tumbles down, hits the stairs, and an instant later the ashes inside explode upward.
A black cloud surrounds us as she leans in and stares at me in this horribly bleak way. “You want. You always want, but I’ve given you everything I’ve got, Lennie. Everything. There’s nothing left in me to give. You got it all.”
I stumble back down the steps, wishing I’d never pushed her. Learning once again that if you never reach your hand out, you never have to worry about it being slapped away.
Meanwhile, Mom scoops her mug back up before spinning around to disappear in a cloud of her own smoke.
I stand there, stunned. And deserted by my entire family, at what I think can be classified, without hyperbole, as the worst moment of my life. If you’d asked me yesterday, I woulda told you that I didn’t count on one of them for a single thing. And I didn’t. Except. I guess I sorta thought if I really needed them, they’d pull their shit together, load the guns, put on their best camo and some Kevlar vests—that’d fallen off the back of a truck—and they’d charge in to the rescue. Instead, they left me here. Alone.
“Hey,” Smith says softly, giving my hand a little shake.
Well, almost alone.
“Gimme a minute,” I mutter, now even more mortified. I’d somehow forgotten he was there, attached to me, and witnessing the whole horrible thing.
Smith sighs. Then, in a whisper-soft voice meant only for my ears, he says, “I know that you already know Teena’s not winning any Mom of the Year awards, so I’m not gonna tell you that, but . . .” I wait, shocked that he’s—even obliquely—referring to the weird mother-son kiss I witnessed. “Some parents are worse than others and ours are, well . . . the worst of the worst.” Smith’s hand squeezes mine, and this time I am glad to feel his fingers interlocked with my own. If anyone had to witness that terrible scene, I’m glad it was him.
My throat is too tight with unshed tears to say anything, so I simply squeeze his