workshops and weird seminars with yogis and self-help gurus and rebirthing therapies and est training and Synanon and, yes, even Christian/Catholic/Evangelical/whatever religion like my dad. She tried everything—except stopping drinking. And she never stuck with any one thing for long—except, again, for the drinking.
Last year she even tried AA. But then, too, she never stopped drinking.
She’d gotten a DUI was all, and the judge ordered her to a mandatory ninety in ninety. She had a slip of paper she had to get signed. And she used to make me drive her to the meetings.
I remember one time, right at the end, when I drove her to the public park in Johnstown where they had baseball diamonds and a playground and a few ratty, cracked concrete tennis courts. I parked and my mom did a lot of breathing and sighing and saying, “Goddammit! Let’s get this over with.”
“Come on, it’s not so bad,” I said, trying to be encouraging.
I rolled up the window and opened the door and the key ding-ding-dinged in the ignition.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “I mean, how stupid do they think I am?”
She snatched the keys out and put them in her pocket and told me to hurry. I didn’t argue with her, grabbing a book I’d brought with me out of the backseat—Wuthering Heights. I climbed out into the fading heat of the early summer day-turning-night.
“They say it’s a disease,” she told me, baring her teeth—whispering like someone might hear. “But then they say the only way to recover is to pray.”
I looked up at her through the dark bangs over my eyes.
“If I had cancer,” she said, “would they tell me to pray to recover from that? Jesus Christ. Is it a disease, or isn’t it? They need to make up their minds. They sound just like your father.”
“But it can help you,” I said, watching as other people began parking their cars and gathering in front of the rec center, smoking cigarettes and talking loudly—laughing, hugging each other, slapping each other on the back, shaking hands. “It’s worth a try, anyway.”
My mom seemed to watch them, too.
She took hold of my hand and pulled me closer.
She crouched down, speaking close in my ear.
“It works for them,” she said, gesturing toward the growing crowd. “It’s made them better. But it will never work for me.”
I remember my stomach aching then. I remember being chilled. I wanted to go home and turn the TV on and the volume up like when I was a little kid.
“But . . . why?” I asked, staring down at a piece of gum, smashed and blackened in the sidewalk.
She was silent for a moment. I could hear the talking all around us like the drone of insects swarming. There was the smell of mouthwash and toothpaste masking something acrid and bitter on my mom’s breath.
“I’m not like them,” she said. “I’m different.”
“But, Mom—”
She didn’t let me finish.
“Nothing can help me,” she said.
And when I looked at her again, there were tears in her eyes.
“Please,” I said. “You’ve got to give it a chance.”
“I’ve looked for answers my whole life,” she said, facing me—not looking away. “And the only answer I ever found is that there is no answer. I’m sorry, Jen. But that’s the truth. Maybe it’ll be different for you. Maybe you’ll find something; I never did.”
“Please, Mom,” I said again. “Please.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It makes no difference at all.”
She let go of my hand and walked off into the meeting. I saw her get coffee for herself in a Styrofoam cup and take a seat at the back.
I went over to the playground and sat on a bench and read my book.
My mom was dead two months later.
Maybe she found the answer she was looking for in death, but I don’t believe that.
All I know is that if there are answers out there, they don’t come from any bullshit self-help groups or religious zealots—or goddamn mediums. If that’s what Rose calls herself, then I sure as hell don’t want anything to do with her. She may seem like a harmless old lady, but I’ve seen just how much harm those claiming to have “answers” can do to the weak and desperate people of this world. My mom needed real help, real solutions, not a bunch of party tricks.
There’s a heat rising in me now.
I clench my fists.
I want to tear everything down around me.
I want to scream and rage.
The sun is starting to set over the distant