I can feel a change. Something loosens. Something trusts. And something lets go.
Fifty-Five
For the whole way home, I lie down in the back seat of the car and pretend I’m sleeping because I don’t know what to say to my mom. I feel like she knows everything about me now and I’m naked in front of her, and it’s hard to get angry at someone when you’re naked. The moment we get out of the car, I trail her like a nervous duckling, almost tripping over her heels. We stop to get the mail on the way up from the underground garage. “Another bill,” she comments to herself, not even acknowledging me. For once in her life, she’s at a loss for words. There’s a new distance between us. Some kind of gap that neither one of us knows how to cross. It’s like someone pulled us out of the nasty rut we were in, shook us hard, and then set us back down again in our roles, all wobbly and disoriented. And now our mouths stay shut because we’re too busy focusing on trying to regain our balance and pinpoint our surroundings.
Just before we get to our apartment door, my mom stops. I walk past her because I figure she’s looking for her keys, but she doesn’t follow. I turn, wondering what she’s doing.
She stands there looking at me, sort of lost and pitiful. That new tough person I saw in the hospital is gone.
“What?” I ask.
She sighs, throws one hand up in the air in surrender, and says, “I feel like I gave this to you. If you do have depression, I feel like it came from me.” She brings her hand quickly up to her eyes to cover them. She’s crying.
“Oh, Mom …” I move toward her. “You didn’t give it to me. They don’t even know for sure that I have it.” I feel like I’m talking about the measles or something. I reach my hand out and hold her shoulder because I don’t know what else to do. I’m sort of going through the motions because I still feel a little numb in my head. And now that she’s said it, I think it might be true. Maybe she did give it to me. But it’s not her fault. It would be stupid to think that.
She moves closer and gives me a hug, sniffing her snotty nose into my jacket. Then she quickly pulls away. “Whew!” she says, waving her hands in front of her eyes like she’s air-drying them. “Okay. Sorry. It’s not about me!” She laughs awkwardly, like she’s embarrassed about her breakdown.
Wow. I feel I’m on another planet. My mother just said, “It’s not about me”? Did I hear right? Someone must have said something to her at the hospital. Maybe Ice Queen was not so awful after all.
My mom pulls at my hand and leads me onward. “This is hard for you. Coming home. I’m sorry. Let’s go in.”
She opens the apartment door and we walk through.
Crystal is sitting at our kitchen table. There are fast-food bags crumpled around her. She looks like crap, as if she’s been up for days. She smiles when she sees me and puts her hands together in her stupid “Namaste” yoga salutation pose. “Glad you’re home, Sweetie,” she says as I pass by.
“Thanks,” I reply sullenly, and keep walking. I pass through the living room, now decorated for Christmas, complete with dangling tinsel streamers and a fancy store-bought Christmas tree. It looks good, but all I care about is being back in my room. My own bed. My own sheets. My own pillow. My own music. My own phone. I find my journal sitting out on my desk where I left it, and I immediately panic. I’m sure my mom read it, and Crystal too. I just know it. I open it to the last entry, the one I wrote before I went out that last night. I don’t even remember what I said, so I read it with new eyes.
Dearest Michael,
You know why I like “The Lady of Shalott” so much? Why I read it to you all the time? It’s because she is me. We are the same. We are both stuck in this tower. Cursed. We both watch life pass by, unable to join in. We both fall in love with someone on the other side (that’s you), but we know it’s impossible to