The Honey Bus - Meredith May Page 0,91

the motions of being a daughter. I would stay out of her house as much as possible, and during the times we were together, I’d smile and feign pleasantries. If no one in the family would protect me from her, then I’d have to do it myself.

“That was weird,” Matthew said.

“Indeed.”

14

Bee Dance

1984–1986

My brother’s camper marked our final pulling away from Mom, the turning point when we willfully went our separate ways. By the time I was fourteen, I had outgrown my hope that Mom would revive with a fresh start in a new home, accepting that it had been nothing more than an immature wish, as likely to become real as a child’s prayer for a new pony. Her increasing volatility was never mentioned, but it was the unspoken catalyst for our grandparents to alter our living arrangements so that my brother and I could safely navigate around her.

Matthew and I gravitated back to the little red house to watch TV and do our homework, we ate dinner with our grandparents and afterward Matthew would steal away to his detached room while I lingered to play checkers or cribbage with Grandpa. I waited until dark, when I knew Mom would be settling down to bed, and crept back to my room at the opposite end of the rental house.

Our retreat drew no complaint or question from Mom, and we saw less and less of her, settling into our separate lanes of mutual avoidance with the relief that comes from no longer trying to force an unnatural relationship.

By the time Matthew was starting middle school and I was in my first year of high school, the three of us had the physical proximity of neighbors, along with the attendant emotional distance. It was a face-saving compromise that solved the immediate problem of our safety yet not the underlying one of our abandonment, but it worked because it avoided confrontation and gave the illusion that Mom was still our parent. With Granny’s creative problem solving and Grandpa’s silent acquiescence, Matthew and I were forced to accommodate a belief system that robbed us of our mother. It was like we lived with a functioning alcoholic and rather than speaking the truth, our family just kept filling her glass to keep her from antagonizing us.

Matthew, now twelve, had grown accustomed to living in a detached trailer. At first, he’d been afraid to sleep alone. He’d spent nearly his entire life sharing a room with Mom and me, and it had taken him about a week of tearful nighttime returns to the little red house before he got the hang of it. With the addition of lights and running water, courtesy of a hose and an extension cord, Matthew felt better, and now he spent most of his time sequestered inside. In summer, he left the windows and door open to circulate air, and in winter, when it got so cold in the trailer that he could see his own breath, he burrowed under several electric blankets. He’d decorated the walls with posters from the rock band Rush and installed a cheap stereo Granny picked up at an electronics store, transforming his lair into a thunderous, pulsating sound pod. He had formed a school rock band with a few friends, and he was forever tapping his drumsticks on something, insulated from Mom’s outbursts and lost in a beat only he could hear.

He entered Mom’s house only to use the bathroom and to change from pajamas to school clothes in the mornings in front of the plug-in heater. I made myself equally scarce, entering only to sleep, or for the occasional surreptitious meal when Matthew and I cooked macaroni and cheese or microwaved tacos in the kitchen when she wasn’t home, being careful to clean and return everything to its spot afterward so we wouldn’t provoke her.

When we did encounter Mom, our interactions had the forced courtesy of housemates bound by financial circumstances to share living space, but never went beyond a quick hello. She didn’t ask questions about our lives, and we didn’t inquire about hers. It was tacitly understood that Mom expected only occasional updates from us, and our grandparents could handle anything that we needed. As far as Mom was concerned, at twelve and fourteen, we were old enough to look after ourselves.

Granny stepped in to fill the void with busyness, packing our schedules with baseball and scouting, swimming lessons and art classes, and while all that activity insulated us from loneliness, it