you really should send a tape to John Erickson,” Mom says.
“Consequence’s old manager?” I say. “Why would we send anything to him?”
“He’s still got all your father’s label contacts. Don’t you want a record deal?” she says.
“No, not anymore,” I say.
“What?” Sonia, Jeff, Joey, and Cole all say at the same time. They stare at me, mouths dropped open.
“What?” I say. “Is it really that shocking that I might want to grow up and be a responsible adult?”
“No, no way is that right,” Sonia says. “Now I’m really worried.”
“Look, I’m twenty-one and I need to get serious about finding a career. Maybe I’ll teach English or something.”
Joey laughs, outright, when I say that.
“What, you think I couldn’t be a teacher?”
“You’d hate being a teacher,” Joey says. “Get serious.”
“Okay, Emmylou, we need to talk,” Mom says, and I’m so confused because really, isn’t this what she’s always wanted? I follow Mom up the stairs, into my room, and she motions for me to take a seat on the bed.
“You’re not giving up your dream over a boy,” she says. “I don’t care if he broke your heart.”
“That’s not what happened. We didn’t break up or anything. He just quit the band.”
“So? You are that band. Not Travis. He’s a fine guitarist but he’s replaceable.”
“No, he’s not,” I say. “There will never be another Travis, Mom.”
“Emmy, you’re twenty-one years old, and trust me, there will be plenty of guys . . .”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” I explain. “I don’t want to replace him. I never want to be in this position again.”
“What position?”
“The one where I count on someone for so much and then he leaves. Because I can’t . . .” finish the sentence, apparently. But I don’t need to, because it’s Mom and if anybody gets it, she does. I walk to the window and stare out of it, unable to say anything more.
“Emmy, he didn’t leave you,” she says.
“Yes, I know,” I answer. “He left the band, which is actually worse.”
“No, I’m talking about your father.”
I whip my head around, and my mother’s face, oh God. I have no idea what she’s about to drop on me, but I’m pretty sure I’m not prepared to hear it.
“All that time on the road took a toll on him, you know?” she says. “He had a lot of problems with his neck and he was in constant pain. The doctors had him on a lot of painkillers, and that just opened the door . . .”
“Opened what door?”
“Do you remember when Dad went into the hospital on your tenth birthday?”
“Yeah, of course I remember. He had a really bad case of the flu.”
“He didn’t have the flu. He was so high on heroin that day he almost died.” She pauses as I blink several times in her direction. I shake my head because I must not have heard that right. But then she goes on. “By that point, he’d already been to rehab three times. After that, he said he didn’t want you to ever see him like that. And I agreed.”
My brain must not be working because I’m pretty sure she just said my father was a heroin addict and that is definitely news to me. I know he liked to drink a lot and I’m sure he smoked weed, because who didn’t in the ’70s? But heroin? Seriously?
I drop back down on the bed, and now I’m flashing back through all my memories of my father. I remember these multiple, lengthy stays he had in the hospital, and how I wasn’t allowed to see him and never understood why. I can feel just how tightly he held me when he said good-bye the last time I saw him. Then I see in bright detail the look on his face and his red, teary eyes when he left, and something clicks. As angry as I have always been at him for leaving, I never believed he wanted to leave. It never made any sense. Not until now.
Downstairs, I hear Cole teasing Sonia about something and Sonia laughing. I hear Jeff giving Joey grief for drying a plate with his T-shirt, and it all sounds so normal. I wish I was down there cleaning the kitchen, too, or maybe folding laundry or picking my teeth, or doing anything at all that felt normal, and not sitting here looking back on my whole life and wondering what the hell else was a lie.