“I don’t have anything figured out,” I said. “And I’m not strong.”
“I wonder,” Kirsten said, “if you two might have that in common. The ability to put on a show, where everything looks good from the outside.”
I didn’t answer. Probably, even now, my mom did look fine from the outside. Her makeup was always perfect, her clothing was impeccable, and she had a mantel full of tennis trophies to prove her athletic prowess. But inside she was a wreck, a walking-around mess. Just like me. My mother raised her head. “Allison,” she said, “you need to know that I have never once been impaired around your daughter.”
“Did you quit?” I asked.
She bent her head. “When your dad was diagnosed, I made myself cut back to just two glasses of wine at night,” she said. “I want to help you, Allison.”
“Was it hard?” I asked. Could you really go from being a fullblown alcoholic to drinking just two glasses of wine at night? Was my mom telling the truth? There was no way of knowing.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help you,” she said. “Only please.” She was crying again, but her voice was steady. “You have to stop taking those pills. You have to try. For Ellie’s sake. You can’t hurt her, and you can’t waste your life hiding, the way I did, pretending that things are okay, being drunk or on pills or whatever, and not being a real mother, and not really living your life.” She got to her feet, crouched in front of me, and grabbed both of my hands in her icy ones. Up close, I could see what I hadn’t seen, hadn’t wanted to see, my whole life. It was there in the web of wrinkles around her eyes, the way her lip liner didn’t strictly conform to her lips and, more than that, the faint sweet-and-sour fruity smell that exuded from her pores. I’d never given a name to that odor, any more than I’d given a name to Dave’s scent, or Ellie’s. People had their own smells, that was all. But now it was like I was getting blasted with it, like I’d dived head first into a vat of cheap white wine, in which my mother had been marinating for decades.
I’d never noticed. I’d never even guessed. Even though the clues were all there, I had never put them together to come up with the inescapable conclusion. What was wrong with me, I wondered, as my mother squeezed my hands and held on hard. Was I just as selfish as she was, that she’d been sick and suffering, and I’d never seen?
“Promise me, Allison.”
“I never want to be in a place like this again,” I said. It was the most I could give her and not be lying.
“That’s a start,” Kirsten said.
TWENTY-FIVE
I staggered out of the room, a minute after my mother’s departure. I hadn’t remembered the Accident when I was a girl, but I now felt like I’d been in one in that little room, like a bus had run me over and left me flattened on the pavement.
“Drink a lot of water,” Kirsten said. “Breathe. It’s a lot to take in.”
I tottered along the women’s path, head down lest I accidentally make eye contact with the men, and snuck a glance at the visitor’s parking lot. My mother’s car and driver would be waiting. She could go out into the wide world, wherever she wanted to go. Soon, I would have that freedom, too. Where would I go? What would I do?
It was a sticky June day, the drone of bumblebees and lawn mowers in the humid air that sat like a wet blanket on my limbs and my shoulders. The sun blazed in a hazy blue-gray sky, and the air itself looked thick with pollen that dimmed all the colors, making it fuzzy and faint. Somewhere there were kids splashing in swimming pools, dads underneath umbrellas, streaming the game on their phones, moms dispensing sunscreen and sandwiches and saying Oh, won’t that hit the spot to offers of a cold beer or some white wine or a vodka-and-cranberry, tart and refreshing, just the thing for a hot summer day.
Behind the administration building I found a little garden, overgrown with weeds, the borders of the flower beds ragged, squirrels chittering in the dogwood tree, a splintery wooden bench in its center. I sat on the bench, staring numbly straight ahead. I felt like I’d been looking at one of those optical illusions. Examine it one way you’d see a beautiful young woman, the smooth lines of her chin and cheeks, the ripe curls of her hair. Then you’d blink or tilt your head and realize you were seeing a withered crone, her nose a tumorous hump, the young girl’s hat really the old woman’s rat’s nest of hair. The world I had once known did not exist, had never existed. Instead of the Tale of the Childlike Mom, the Distant Dad, and the Love They Shared, I had, instead, to consider the Story of the Drunk Mother, the Dad Who Could Never Trust Her, and the daughter who was an endless source of worry for both of them.