I’d check out books by Ursula Le Guin, Grace Paley, and Carson McCullers. And then I’d hide the books from view when anyone walked by because I was afraid someone would ask me about them, like they might think I was showing off or trying to be someone that I wasn’t. There were times when I felt feral, like I hadn’t gotten the proper training right when it mattered, and now I was lost.
And here I was, and now there were these two children, their arms wrapped so tightly around me that I could barely breathe. And maybe, now that I had them all to myself, now that we didn’t have the safety of that house on the estate, I worried that these kids had missed that opportunity, too, that they were lost. And I wondered if it was cruel to pretend that there was anything I could do for them. I knew there would come a time when I had to give them back. And, god, they would hate me. For their entire lives. More than their mother. More than Jasper, even. They’d hate me because I’d made them think that I could do it.
I pulled their arms off me, and they muttered, their bodies so sweaty in this humid attic. I rearranged the fans so they were closer to the kids, and then I walked downstairs, the steps creaking and squeaking loudly, until I saw my mom on the sofa in the living room. She wasn’t watching TV or reading or doing anything. She didn’t even have a drink. She was just staring into space.
Not long after I’d come back home after being kicked out of Iron Mountain, we were in the driveway, my mom about to take me to school. And when she started the car, smoke began pouring out from under the hood, this terrible grinding sound. More smoke. I ran to the house to get some water, and my mom used some rags to protect her hand while she popped the hood. I ran back outside with a pitcher of water sloshing around, and now the engine was on fire, the flames reaching pretty high. And I stopped a few feet from my mom, who was just staring at the fire, with that same look on her face that I was seeing now. It was like she could see something inside the flame, some prophecy. Or maybe she could see the span of her life up to this point, how she got to this moment, standing over her ruined car.
I’d walked over to her and held up the pitcher, but she just shook her head. “Look,” she said, gesturing toward the engine, “just look at it.” I didn’t know what she wanted me to see, if we could even see the same thing. “It’s kind of pretty,” she finally said. And we stood there, watching the fire, until she finally took the water from me and dumped it on the engine, which didn’t do much of anything. “You don’t have to go to school today,” she told me, sighing so deeply. “I’m not going to work.” I nodded, smiling a little, because I thought maybe we’d spend the day together, go see a movie, but when we went back into the house, she lit up a cigarette and closed the door to her bedroom, locking me out, and I didn’t see her until the next morning. And this was what I finally realized, that even as we sank deeper and deeper into our lives, we were always separate. And I wondered what it would feel like, to fall but to hold on to someone else so you weren’t alone.
And now, here we were, back in this house. What I wanted to do, if this was a dream, was to walk into that room. I wanted to sit next to my mom. And I wanted to ask, “Why did you hate me?” And I wanted her to say, “You’re looking at it from the wrong angle. I didn’t hate you. I loved you so much. I protected you. I kept you safe from harm.” And I would say, “You did?” She would nod. I’d ask her who my father was, and she’d say that he was the worst man who had ever been born. She’d say that she had given up everything in her life to get away from him. And she had raised me all alone, as best she could. And I would say, “Thank you.” And she would hug me and it wouldn’t be weird. It would be like the way somebody hugs another person. And the entirety of my life, everything that had come before, would disappear. And things would be so much better.
I stared at her for a few more seconds, and I could not imagine what was inside her head. I didn’t hate her. But there was no way that I was going to sit on that sofa. There was no way that I was going to say anything to her. I turned around, the steps creaking so loud that she must have heard me; how could she not have heard me? And there were the kids, still curled into the shape of sleep, their bodies both rigid and loose at the same time. I crawled back into bed. And Bessie opened her eyes.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her. Because I had no idea, had barely made it this far.