Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,75
always been their deal.
Kayla cleared her throat. “Guys, there’s no point in punishing or lecturing her now. She’s probably not even going to remember it.”
“Thanks for your input,” said Laura sharply before she could stop herself.
“Hey,” said Matt in a warning tone, quietly, but still.
It was a single syllable, but somehow it was all it took to make Laura feel completely enraged—not just at Marie, but at Matt and Kayla, too, at the whole stupid situation. How had she so fully lost control of what happened to these kids? Did no one in this household respect her at all?
She almost ran to the bathroom door, then pounded on it. “Marie? Let me in. You’re in serious trouble. We have to talk about this.”
From down the hall, she heard Matt and Kayla talking in murmurs, maybe discussing whether to intervene, and then the clink of silverware as they quietly cleared their places. They were so reasonable, so quiet. She suddenly felt the chasm in the middle of her family, the awkwardness of the combination of their households. How had she and Matt ever thought they and their wholly dissimilar daughters could all live together in harmony?
She pushed the door open. Marie was sitting next to the toilet, leaning her cheek on the toilet seat. Her cheeks were smeared with smudged eyeliner, and there was unflushed pink puke in the toilet. Laura was torn between the impulse to wet a washcloth and comfort her the way she had when she’d been little—the way she had even a year ago—and a warring impulse to shake her for being so irresponsible with her precious self. Above all she wanted someone she could blame, so that she could stop feeling guilty for having been out at a bar herself while Marie had been getting into trouble.
Instead she just stood there, waiting for Marie to look up. “Do we have to take you to the hospital?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know. No. I mean, I’m conscious, I can talk,” said Marie. “I’m really sorry, okay?”
She didn’t sound sorry, though. She sounded like she was just saying whatever she thought would get Laura off her back.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it, Marie. This is really unacceptable. I’m so worried about you, we all are. You can’t do this kind of thing! You just can’t!”
Marie looked up at her with tears in her eyes. “Do you even care how I feel right now? If you’re so worried about me, maybe you could try to act more concerned than angry. Because I am already feeling really bad right now, okay?”
The effort of this whiny plea seemed to deplete her, and she slumped back to the side of the toilet, then said, “Oh, shit,” and shakily leaned over it again to release another torrent of puke. Something about the color and smell awakened a sense memory in Laura. She knelt on the floor next to her daughter, rage draining from her and leaving something confusing in its place: tenderness and nostalgia. She smoothed sweaty hair away from Marie’s forehead and gently stroked her heaving back, flushed the toilet when she was done, and then let her slump in her lap and rest her head against Laura’s chest. Without meaning to, she deeply inhaled the top of her daughter’s head. She smelled like fruity teenager shampoo and booze sweat, but there was still some hint deep down of the smell that Laura had spent years huffing when Marie was a baby and a little girl; whatever it was that was unmistakably Marie and always had been, underneath whoever she was becoming. Filled with tenderness, she found herself taking a slight risk: opening herself up to Marie’s disdain and shedding her scolding mom role for a second.
“I was throwing up red wine on the night I met your dad. Your bio-dad, not Matt.”
“You’ve never told me that story,” said Marie. She curled her shaky body into her mom’s and prepared to listen, as if Laura were about to read to her from Dr. Seuss.
“Well, let me start by saying that I was twenty-two. Like, legally of drinking age. Okay?”
“Mom.”
“Callie had taken me to see this band, and then we went to the after-party at their apartment. I had been living in New York for a week or something, I didn’t know anyone, and I accidentally got way too drunk. I rushed outside to throw up in the gutter, and when I stood up he was there. Somehow it was cute and not disgusting.”
“And