Wild Game My Mother, Her Lover, and Me - Adrienne Brodeur Page 0,39

quad in the predawn hours.

Then, late one night less than a month into my freshman year, I woke to the phone ringing.

“Rennie,” my mother said as soon as I picked up, her voice in a high register that made it clear she was struggling not to cry. I sat up in bed, disoriented. At first I wondered if I was having a bad dream.

“Are you there, Rennie?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Yes, I’m here. What’s wrong? Is Charles okay?”

“It’s not Charles. Charles is fine,” she whispered. “It’s me. Oh, darling, I’m in so much trouble.”

I waited, listening to her ragged breathing.

“I need your help. I don’t know what to do.” Then she burst into tears, a rare event, and cried inconsolably for several minutes. “I’m ruined.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Whatever it is, I know we can fix it.” I felt desperate to reassure her, but I could only hear sobs. “It’s going to be okay, but Mom, I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

“That despicable woman—” she said, anger momentarily puncturing her despair.

“Breathe, Mom. Take three deep breaths.”

She inhaled and exhaled, gathering herself.

“Do you mean Lily? Are we talking about Lily?”

“No, no.” She started to sob again. “It’s Hazel.” She could barely speak. “That bitch found out about Ben. And now she’s blackmailing me. What a horrible, miserable person. I’m telling you, she’s had it in for me since the day she started working for us. And after all I’ve done for her. Trusting her in my home. Trusting her with my husband.”

Adrenaline surged through my body, that old familiar buzz.

“What exactly did Hazel find?” I asked, making my voice sound calm. “What evidence does she have?”

“Does it matter?” Malabar was hysterical. “If I don’t come up with ten thousand dollars, she plans to tell Charles and Lily everything. And if I do come up with the money, what guarantee do I have that this nightmare will end there? What will stop her from asking for more?”

I hadn’t met Hazel, but clearly she wasn’t as dimwitted as my mother had suggested. “It does matter. Do you think she actually took something?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know! What am I going to do?” Malabar was silent for a spell and then her voice returned, low and determined. “I will not let her take Ben from me. Ben is everything to me. Absolutely everything. My life isn’t worth living if I lose him.”

Even then, as a freshman in college, I still clung to the notion that somehow I was my mother’s favorite, more beloved than Peter or Christopher or even Ben. For better or worse, that was who Malabar was to me, the most central and important person in my life, even if I wished it were otherwise. For as long as her love affair had been going on, for me, the “we” had always been my mother and me. Not Ben and Malabar. If Ben was everything to my mother, then what was I? Was I not worth living for too?

“Okay, calm down. Let’s think. We can figure this out,” I said. “First of all, your life is absolutely worth living. Please don’t say stuff like that. It upsets me. Where are you right now?”

“In the kitchen,” she whispered.

I pictured my mother sitting on the stool, elbows splayed on the marble countertop. I heard ice cubes clink and the familiar glug of a bottle upturning.

“Go to sleep,” I said, realizing how much she must have had to drink already. “I’ll figure something out. I promise.”

“Oh, Rennie, I love you,” Malabar said, the words thick and heavy in her mouth. I knew she would take one final gulp of her drink to knock herself out. Before I could respond, there was a click and then a dial tone.

From there, I knew, my mother would bump her way down the hallway and slip into my bed, as she often did when I was away. I didn’t mind. In fact, I took comfort in the idea that she slept there. I almost never did. The new apartment would never be my home. Stashed in the drawer of my bedside table was a container of her sleeping pills. My mother would swallow a couple—part of her chemical lullaby—to ensure that she’d sleep like the dead for the next ten hours, her face surrounded by pillows. I thought of Christopher, the original source of her insomnia. Our shared birthday had just passed. I had turned nineteen and Christopher would’ve been twenty-three.

After hanging