Say nothing, she told herself. Just like when she was eleven. And fourteen. And seventeen. And twenty. Hunker down and weather the storm and just go on like nothing happened. It was easier that way.
Safer.
“You there?”
No, she wanted to say. Nope. Not here. Gone. Long gone, hiding away where you can’t hurt me, can’t snap at me, can’t bring strange men home and kick me out into the cold. Hidden in the abyss inside me that cracked open the day Daddy died, when you came home from the hospital six weeks later and told me I was the worst thing that happened to you. Far, far away from the you that you became, spiriting myself off to where the old you lived. Where the old you loved me.
“I’m here.”
“Whatcha got to say, then? I need my money, Josie,” she wheedled. “The gutters don’t fix themselves. You can pay for Darla to come out there in your fancy city, in an apartment I haven’t even seen. The only time you helped me visit was when you graduated college, and that was what? Five years ago?”
“Six.”
“How’s that music guy from your college, anyhow? He really took a shining to me.” Pause. Drag. “Might be worth moving in with you if I can see him.”
“Moving. In?” The words choked out of her as if she were on the receiving end of the Heimlich maneuver, forced out of her with a resounding gag.
“You got room for Darla. Why not me?”
“No.” The word came out before any filter could even try to catch it. Before her brain could process it. Before she could even gasp at the monstrous idea that Marlene would move to Cambridge and live with her. Her palm clamped over her mouth in shock. Had her mouth really done that?
Come to her own rescue?
“What?”
“No.” This time, it came out with deliberate force. Always evasive, using jokes and sarcasm to blunt Marlene’s pleas and demands, this time she just decided it was time to face her head on. No bullshit. No dancing the two-step while juggling live fish and doing it all spinning on top of a basketball. No worrying nineteen steps ahead, like a chess player moving not chess pieces, but her own emotions, constantly putting them in danger and making calculated moves to get just enough space to breathe—
No.
Fuck no.
She was done. Where was she supposed to have anything left over for her? For Alex? For friends and family and to build her own life? Moving six hundred miles away was supposed to give her space, but she’d made one crucial mistake in her concept of what it meant to get away: if you let the people you’re trying to leave behind live in your head, you never lose them as roommates.
“No what?”
“No to everything, Mom. No, you can’t move in.” Her heart raced, and her peripheral vision started to fade to white. Textbook panic attack, she knew, her nurse’s mind kicking in. Only it was a shame that she couldn’t be objective and couldn’t just see this for what it was.
Subjective and raw and all too viscerally real, she had to feel it. Not watch it.
“But Darla can—”
“That’s right. Darla can. Because Darla views me as a human being. Not as some object she can manipulate to get what she wants. It’s like you’ve seen me all these years since Dad died as some thing you can move around and use at will, but if I don’t comply with your demands I become an enemy.”
“That’s not—”
“So I’m done. You know that researchers did studies years ago on how to trigger mental illness in a kid, Mom? You move the goal posts. Constantly. You make sure they never feel like they’re good enough, and when you tell them how to do something and they do it that way, then you pull the rug out from under them and insist that you never said what they damn well know you said. It’s a damned miracle I’m not more f**ked up than I am.”
“Oh, honey, you’re not f**ked up.” Marlene’s voice had turned unctuous, a fake affect that made Josie’s fillings hurt. This was the voice she had used publicly when Josie hurt herself, a “doting mother” tone that made others smile in approval. The same tone she used when Josie won awards. Or impressed an adult. A far cry from real life and so painfully different from Marlene’s authentic self that it could be crazymaking.
“I’m not giving you the money.” Much more of this and her vision really would disappear. Her shoulders were above her ears, and a strange pulsing sound was starting to swallow the room. Was that her pulse in her ears? Would she descend into a fugue state if this went on much longer? Blacking out wasn’t her idea of fun, but she wasn’t sure she could stand much more of this.
Click.
Oh. Well. That was that.
Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. Josie couldn’t get the thought out of her mind. Never. Never had she stood up to Marlene. Never ever. Slinking around, hiding, running away—those Josie could do. Standing and facing a problem? Nope. That meant you got hurt—physically or emotionally. Being emotionally honest about feelings? Pfft—what were those? Marlene made it aaaall about her anyhow, so why bother? And when you made yourself vulnerable, it just gave people one more way to spear you.
Alex. Alex wasn’t like that.
The book’s pages were crushed in her hand, half the paperback wrinkled.
Grabbing her keys and sprinting out the door past Darla, who now sat on the porch, she reached her car and that clarity she felt earlier came back.
She knew exactly where she was going.
“Where are you going?” Darla shouted. “I got Trevor and the rest of the band coming to help with this,” she said, pointing to the kitty litter. Josie stared at her, at the pile of bags, but didn’t really connect with what Darla was saying. She had to get out.
Now.
“Great. I’ll be back.” She got in the car.
“When?”
“When I finish unfuckupping myself.”
“That could take years! Where are you going?”
“To the library!” she shouted, revving the engine and pulling out of her parking spot, everything in her aligned for a single purpose, her clarity turning the abyss inside into a minimalist shelter from the storm of what was about to be unleashed.
“Crackhead! Hey, Crackhead!” Darla shouted from the porch as Alex rounded the corner. Trevor, Joe, and two other guys about their age were in the front yard, moving large bags of sand from a pallet in the yard on to the porch.
“I might do ’shrooms and some pot, but I don’t touch crack,” a red-headed guy said drolly.