I Liked My Life Read online

  Kara drives while her mom rides shotgun, so at least I have the backseat to myself. Like my dad, they both avoid looking at me. Apparently, not having a mother on Mother’s Day is something I should be embarrassed about. Whatever. Anything is better than the hysteria Kara brought to my mother’s funeral, where she bawled as if she were the one left behind. I didn’t get why she’d make such a scene until my father and I led the procession out and I saw her folded up in Jake’s arm, a spot she’d been jonesing for all year. Always nice to see a tragic death exploited for a high-school hookup.

  “Wind will be twenty miles an hour from the northwest,” Kara reports. I nod, not that anyone’s watching. “The end courts will be the worst, especially the side closest to the field.”

  Kara always talks up an excuse for getting her ass kicked. When her ball hits the net it’s because of the wind, or a baby crying, or the sun’s glare. It’s never because she tilted her racket too far.

  “Good point,” Mrs. Anderson pipes in. “The court we get will matter.”

  Kara’s mom considers her and her daughter a single unit, using words like we and our when referring to things Kara will experience on her own. She even puts her hair in a high pony and wears a tennis skirt to our matches, as though she might be called in to sub. My mom hated gossip, but I once heard her rag on Mrs. Anderson, “The coach needs to pull that lunatic aside and break the news she didn’t make the team. Our turn ended three decades ago. Christie seriously needs to get over it.” When Dad joked that my mom sounded jealous she said, “I’m not gonna lie, I’d take her body if it was completely detached from her heart and her brain.” I find the memory particularly funny as Kara and Mrs. Anderson agree their court assignment will be critical.

  “They still haven’t fixed the crack on court three. Coach claims it isn’t a tripping hazard, but I took a digger on it yesterday.” Mrs. Anderson clucks like a chicken to show her disapproval. I swear she could be the billboard for what annoying looks like.

  They’re talking about this pointless shit because they don’t know what the hell to say to me. It’s the same at school. What no one understands is that it doesn’t matter what’s being said—everything makes me think about my dead mother because that’s all I ever think about. Kara literally breaks out in a sweat when we’re alone, as if suicidal mothers are contagious. I should tell her not to worry; her wannabe of a mom is way too vain to take her own life.

  I’ve learned to completely block out my friends. I don’t listen to their words, just the pattern of their speech. Each person is different. Kara doesn’t take many breaths, so her sentences come out in little sprints: There’s-a-sale-at-Nordstrom-today-and-I-need-a-new-strapless-bathing-suit-that’s-not-plain-black-so-let’s-go-right-after-school. As long as you keep a smile on your face, she doesn’t notice you’re not listening. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone’s opinion anyway. I haven’t yet perfected zoning out Mrs. Anderson—though I’ll be sure to get right on it after this car ride—so it’s hard to ignore when she jumps in with more of a squeal to ask why I’m not wearing my team ribbon.

  “Couldn’t find it,” I mumble.

  “You should’ve called, dear. We have extras at the house.”

  Of course she does. I’m not her dear.

  “I might have one in my bag,” Kara says, “but it’s in the trunk.”

  I stay silent while the two of them debate whether Kara does in fact have an extra bow in her bag and, if not, whatever will we do? There’s a long list of possibilities here: ask the other girls, Mrs. Anderson running home, going to Jo-Ann Fabrics for a new one.… The topic isn’t dropped until we arrive and Kara uncovers that—praise Jesus—she has an extra bow for me. Mother and daughter sigh with relief, proud of their impressive problem-solving.

  I leave them in the parking lot congratulating each other only to discover that the make-believe-it’s-not–Mother’s-Day plan didn’t stop with my dad and the Ribbon Police. I don’t know who coordinated it, but there isn’t a single cheesy WE LOVE OUR MOMS! sign, even from opposing teams. The buckets full of roses we usually hand out are nowhere to be seen. Mother’s Day has poof disappeared, just like my mother.

  As people spot me they look to their feet, pausing whatever pointless conversation they’re having. Eventually the uncomfortable silence passes and heads pop back up like I’m a freaking zoo exhibit. They expect a dramatic breakdown, but I refuse to be the entertainment. I change my shoes without a word.

  The match starts on time. Refusing to give the crowd even a frown, I take everything I’ve lost and put it in the force of my racket. Each time I connect with the ball I think, Screw all of you. My form suffers when I go all in with strength, causing a few stupid errors that catch the net or fall out-of-bounds, but I win all three matches. The losers will play it off as intentional. They’ll go home to their intact families, proud of their sensitivity in pretending Mother’s Day didn’t exist. “I’m glad she won,” they’ll lie. “She needed it more than me.”

  Screw all of you.

  No matter how people justify it, these cover-ups are not about comforting me. They’re so people can skip the depressing conversation. Or not feel guilty they still have a mother. Or stall a private consideration that if it happened to me it could happen to them.

  A week after the funeral I went back to school because Dad and I were such a mess together I was afraid we’d off ourselves too. It’s hard to say which is worse. At school people are so desperate for me to talk that when I finally speak, even if it’s just to say I have to use the restroom, they’re all like, “Really, Eve? Wow. That’s soooooo amazing.” It drives me apeshit. Unlike the deep pain I experience with my dad, I feel nothing at all with my friends. In some ways it’s creepier.

  At lunch there’s pressure to eat. Nothing is more loved at my school than a good eating disorder to diagnose, so I’m careful to finish what I pack. Anything is better than sitting through a food intervention with a bunch of teary-eyed girls and our clueless guidance counselor. We had one for Becky when she was making herself puke. I was all into it at the time. Lindsey told her mom, who told the guidance counselor, who helped us set Becky on the right course. All Becky took from it was the tip that everyone knows the sound of someone throwing up, so unless you’re in a private stall, anorexia is a better option.

  I’m at no risk for that particular societal trap. I despise puking and get wicked headaches when I go too long without eating. My problem is mental. Whole days pass where I don’t remember physically walking from one class to the next. The dismissal bell rings and I can’t remember where I parked or even driving to school. Teachers are divided on how to react. A few completely ignore what happened. They have no idea how to respond, so they treat me no differently than they did when I had a living, breathing mom at home. Most of the older ones are on a compassion mission. They ask how I’m doing before and after each class. No matter what I say, they flip their lips into their teeth and nod. The remaining teachers believe life is hard and, although it doesn’t seem like it now, my mom’s suicide will somehow serve me well later in life. They use the word grit a lot. Most of these assholes are now tougher when grading, as if to prove nothing is fair and life hasn’t come to a stop.

  But it has. This is a small town. I’ll forever be branded the daughter of the stay-at-home mom who jumped off the Wellesley College library. My mom took my life with hers. I considered taking off in her BMW, but that only ever works out in movies. If I showed up in New York with no money I’d be spit right back out and my story would be even sorrier than it is now. This neighborhood already grieves my potential like a lost life. College is my ticket out, but I can’t handle another year of this shit. I use Kara and her mom’s silence over their devastating loss to finalize my plan.

  When we pull into the driveway, I say good-bye and hop out. Kara doesn’t say a word. No amount of pity could turn her into a good sport. When she didn’t make varsity freshman year, she smashed her two-hundred-dollar Völkl racket in
to the court, probably causing that crack she’s been bitching about all season. How was I ever friends with her?

  Mrs. Anderson offers an insincere congratulations as I shut the car door. Her excessive mascara is smeared under one eye, so I know tears were shed over the loss. Real tears. From a grown woman. Over a tennis tournament. My mom was never that ridiculous. When I lost she’d sing that Sugarland chorus “Let go laughing,” then ask what I wanted for dinner. She could’ve picked sound tracks for movies—the woman had a song for every situation. Like when she belted out the Rolling Stones that time I sulked because she refused to buy me Tory Burch flats: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” I never admitted it, but the unique delivery did make her point stick. I wonder what she’d sing now? Would she encourage leaving Wellesley or want me to stick it out for senior year? As if in response, that Cat Stevens song she loved floats to my mind: It’s not time to make a change.… I shiver, looking around the kitchen as if she could really be here, offering an opinion. The words echo through my head once more before I shake them free. Screw that. She’s the one who ditched me; changing wasn’t my call.

  Dad isn’t home yet, thank God. I leave the admissions folder I’ve been carrying around for a week on the kitchen counter with a sticky note that reads: I want to be a boarder at Exeter next year. Need fresh start. Here’s the info. He’ll worry what people will think—first Mom bails, then me—but in the end he’ll agree. He has no energy to fight, and I know when he looks at me he sees her.

  She died on Good Friday. She wasn’t religious but maybe it was symbolic, like her death was a sacrifice or something. Everyone at the funeral went on about how my mom was a giver, which means everyone at the funeral thought of Dad and me as takers. So that’s it. We were both taking and taking and taking, and my mother, like a keg after only a few hours at a crowded party, was tapped. Her nod and smile meant the same thing as my middle finger. I just didn’t know it. She certainly made her point. I imagine her looking down and shouting, “Do you see all I did for the two of you? Are you capable of being grateful yet?”

  The struggle Dad and I have now is totally ironic. We’re so used to her caring for us that we have no idea how to care for each other. We play a reverse game of hide-and-seek where the goal is to never be caught in the same room. Do we not know what to talk about or is there really nothing to say? We discuss only necessities, and even then he seems limited to specific words: yes, no, maybe, when, where, why, who, okay.

  Every three or four days he attempts a deep talk, usually after he’s had a few. Last night he asked if I knew “all about sex.” I said it was a determination of whether you’re male or female and laughed. His eyes watered. I felt bad, so I told him not to worry about it, that I was “all set in that department.” When I realized how much I sounded like Mom, I started crying too. We both ditched the living room in opposite directions.

  The truth is, I’ve been sleeping with John since my sixteenth birthday. I wish I’d told my mom while I had the chance, but I overheard her on the phone with Aunt Meg the night my cousin Lucy announced she was planning to do it with Keith: “It’s so special she told you. I hope Eve trusts me when it’s time.” I knew instantly what she was talking about. “Make sure Lucy’s smart about it, so you aren’t a grandma at forty.” There was a pause while my aunt spoke. “Well, I’ll certainly keep you posted, but I don’t think Eve is ready yet. Lucy has it right; seventeen is a respectable age to take the plunge. Not too old, not too young.” I play the conversation over and over in my mind. I did trust and respect my mom, but I figured there was no harm waiting until I was the same respectable age as Lucy to tell her, which will be next month.

  I was always deliberate like that. I got my first period when I was only eleven, not even in middle school yet. I calmly grabbed a quarter from the bottom of my backpack, snuck into the teachers’ bathroom to buy a pad from the machine that we hid notes under between classes, and went on with my day. When I got home and told my mom she looked alarmed. “You could’ve called,” she said. “I would’ve picked you up so we could talk about it.”

  “We already talked about it.”

  “I mean about the details of what to do.”

  “What details?” I asked, genuinely concerned I’d missed something. “Blood comes out and something needs to be there to catch it, right?”

  “Huh, well, yes, but your independence does scare me sometimes. I hope you know I’m here if you need me.”

  “I do,” I said. “That’s why I can be independent.”

  She smiled. She had the best smile.

  Technically I’m more independent than ever since there’s literally no one looking after me, but independence isn’t liberating when it’s involuntary. I’ve been discarded like day-old milk. Even if I accept there’s a lifetime ahead, I cannot picture how I’ll live it without her. No Christmas cards will be sent, the vegetable garden will die, our sheets will have visible dirt before Dad or I think to change them, and we won’t do anything to celebrate my birthday this year. Which is fine by me.

  Brady

  My wife is dead. She jumped off a fucking building. I could watch the movie a thousand more times and still be shocked by the ending.

  At the funeral her sister Meg kept throwing out possibilities like closet depression or a hidden trauma, but it’s all bullshit. Maddy wasn’t a secret-keeper. She couldn’t tell a lie, even when it was the socially acceptable thing to do. A friend once hounded her for details on childbirth. She endeavored to avoid the question, advising that you don’t think about the experience once that precious baby is in your arms, but the lady wouldn’t relent. “You’re sure you want the truth?” Maddy asked. The lady nodded. “Labor is like shitting a watermelon while getting felt up by your mailman. And when it’s all over, you still look pregnant.” The woman blanched. With Maddy, it was ask and you shall receive.

  There’s no room for a hidden life with a personality like that, so if Maddy jumped it was to abandon us. The total contradiction between who she was and what she did is unfathomable. The last text I got from her read: I have no idea how we’re going to fit everyone @ the dining room table on Easter. I have a hard time reconciling that this dilemma was enough to end it all. The psychologist at the police station claimed suicide is often an impulsive act, especially in cases with a “family history” like Maddy’s, a history he pulled from me in pieces, then exaggerated to support his conclusion.

  Maddy was nothing like Janine. She had one glass of wine a night. One. Maybe two. Sometimes three on Friday and Saturday. It was social. She considered her mother’s suicide selfish, described it as a last fuck you to the few people who still cared. I remember the words exactly because it wasn’t like Maddy to be so harsh. She walked in other people’s shoes more than her own.

  I’m avoiding the bedside drawer where her journal lives. Yes, I want answers, but only if they prove reality to be what I remember.

  I made her laugh. I know I did.

  Sometimes when she wanted to relax before bed, she’d ask me to tell her a story, any story. I reserved an arsenal for those moments. The key was to get her laughing straightaway. Laughter was Maddy’s elixir. I’d jump right into a scene, as though she’d put a quarter in me. “Have I ever told you about the time I was six and got a tick on my dick?” Or, “Last night there was a guy at the airport so drunk he couldn’t drive his luggage.” The stories never had a point; they weren’t supposed to. Current events or work updates revved her up, and the fact that I knew it pleased Maddy. When I was home, she was happy. But I often wasn’t home.

  I take another sip of bourbon. Is this my second glass? Third? I open the drawer and stare at the journal, curiosity fighting pride. When the glass is empty, I grab it with such force that my knuckles scrape against the bottom of the drawer. “Damn it,” I mutter to the empty room. If Maddy were here she’d say something crafty like, “The drawer is winning, huh?” Of course, if
Maddy were here I wouldn’t be awake after midnight, drunk, pillaging her most personal thoughts.

  I count the entries, an occupational hazard from my days as an accountant. There are just under three hundred spanning two years’ time. If I read an entry a day, it’ll last until after New Year’s. It’s unclear whether the ritual will be a source of torture or a gift. I pour another bourbon since no one is here to keep track. A small perk.

  June 10, 2013

  All I need is a unicorn on the cover and a heart-shaped key and I’ll be seven all over again. As far as journals go, mine will be a bore. My life has been drama-free since my mom sucked back her last jug of wine with a handful of Klonopin. More on that later, I’m sure. Even dead she occasionally manages to be the center of attention.

  Let me introduce the people I’ll write about. My husband is Brady. He’s short, 5'8", but I had a tall boyfriend once and spent a lot of time looking at nose hair. He’s the CFO for HT (a company that makes software I don’t fully understand). I refer to HT as Husband Thief, but I’m not allowed to be bitter about his working hours because we live a good life off his sweat.

  Since my daughter landed her first serious boyfriend it’s gotten a bit lonely—hence this pathetic journal. Eve turns fifteen next week. She’s currently more a pain in my ass than the love of my life, but there is a bright light at the end of this teenage tunnel that keeps me warm. I can overlook that she says “like” every other word because she’s bright and bold in a way that suggests her life will be fun to watch.

  Today, she came home from school and declared, “I’m, like, so dropping out of confirmation class.” She wanted me to be shocked, so I stayed silent. It’s Brady’s side that’s invested in church. After I’d put away all the dishes without responding, she said, “You know what it is, Mom? They claim it’s wrong to be on birth control, and then they teach everyone the rhythm method. But the rhythm method is birth control—it just, like, sucks. Why would I want to be part of an institution that totally sets people up?”