Say You'll Remember Me(46)

The progression was terrifying.

I was sore. I think I pulled something in my arm. I had a fat lip. Mom had thrown her head back into my mouth at some point. My adrenaline was so high I hadn’t even realized I was hurt until a nurse pointed out that I was bleeding.

I dragged myself to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and took two Advil. I cleaned up my lip and then tipped my head to look at my earlobe, the one Mom yanked an earring out of that night in the yard. It was mostly healed, but I still couldn’t get an earring in there.

I was collecting injuries. Physical ones and ones of the heart.

I came out and stared at the aftermath. The kitchen was destroyed. Shattered glass and food everywhere. Eggs on the walls.

We started cleaning the mess without a word to each other. Even Tristan was quiet.

Dad was on his hands and knees cleaning dried hot sauce from the footboard of the bar. He sat back on his heels and stared blankly at the spatter.

The hospital said we had to give her stronger sedatives. We had to be proactive and dose her when we saw her getting agitated before she was so distraught she was past the point of no return.

And the reason why she was distraught was because Dad had dared to leave for two hours to do something for himself.

My father was trapped in my mother’s illness. He was her person.

Every day she woke up and fell in love with him all over again. Every day he woke up living a nightmare. And this is what he got for leaving it, even for an hour.

Dad stared for another long moment at the floor. Then he grabbed one of the buckled corners of the linoleum and started yanking it up.

“What… what are you doing?” I asked.

“Fuck it. Why not?” he said. “It’s old, it’s ugly, and I don’t want to clean it.”

Jeneva and Tristan glanced at me.

We’d never started the remodel. We’d gotten the loan but we couldn’t agree on the right time to disrupt Mom’s environment.

I’d say her environment was good and disrupted already.

“Okay…” I said. “But then we do the countertops too.”

“And the stove,” Tristan said. “The stove sucks.”

“Anything avocado green goes,” Jeneva said.

We made eye contact with each other. Dad smiled. Then we demolished the rest of the kitchen.





21





SAMANTHA


IT’S AMAZING HOW cathartic destroying things can be. The whole family seemed to share my feelings because we took that entire kitchen down to the studs the day we decided on it. I think we had a lot of pent-up frustration to work out.

Then Mom came home two days into the remodel and it was clear that we hadn’t thought this through.

We had nowhere to cook. Everything was takeout. We had to be strategic about meals so Mom didn’t freak out with the change. We decided the best place to set up would be in the yard. We already had a little gazebo out there, but it was filthy and covered in dead bugs and cobwebs, so we had to clean that out, which took half a day. We power washed it and then Dad said we should just paint it while it was prepped, so we did. It needed new furniture so we ran out and got some. When we were done, it was really nice. Like an old, faded painting that had been restored. A bright spot in ruin. Color in a gray world.

It energized us.

The stress and worry and sorrow about Mom needed channeling and this was the thing we were all going to funnel it into. The family team-building activity we didn’t know we needed.

Tristan had called a silent truce, thank God. I think he recognized that if he didn’t become a team player effective immediately the kitchen would end up painted a color he hated. He made storyboards with design ideas. Jeneva began researching new appliances and I was in charge of getting contractor bids.

Then we decided we should probably do the formal dining room too since it was attached to the kitchen and having different colored baseboards didn’t make any sense.

Then it was agreed that the bathroom off the kitchen should also be done since it was already in a construction zone.

For the next two weeks the house was like an ant farm. Everyone running around, tasking, moving things. Workers coming in and out, drills and hammering.

Mom was so medicated she barely blinked.

The project got my mind off her. It got my mind off Xavier too. I was too busy to think about him. Much. Which was why it was such a shock when eight weeks after he’d left, he called.

I was standing in a tile store with Tristan, being told all the backsplashes I liked for the kitchen were hideous, when my phone rang. I stood there, staring at my cell, wondering if he’d butt-dialed me.

“Who is it?” Tristan asked, over a booklet of tile samples looking annoyed at the disruption.

“It’s him.”

I didn’t have to explain who him was in my house.

My brother crossed his arms and nodded at the phone for me to answer it. I swiped the call button.

“Uh, hello?”

“Hi. It’s Xavier.”

I thought I had been getting over him, and then immediately I wasn’t. It was literally that fast. Instantaneously back in the throes of it after three words out of his mouth.

I snuck over to a corner and stood in a shower stall display with blue hexagon tile and really nice grout.

“Hey. What’s up?” I asked, trying to seem nonchalant.