The living room is almost inaccessible, as Mom has made a mini city of out-of-date phone books and expired coupon clippings tied up with string. There are pyramids of cheap teddy bears and plastic-faced baby dolls, more cases of Diet Coke with Lime stacked and waiting to quench my mythical thirst, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton records purchased by mail order and still in the original plastic because Mom owns no record player, shoe boxes crammed with receipts older than me, endless cans of spaghetti sauce, never-been-cracked cookbooks, my grandfather’s childhood baseball card and tool collections in boxes labeled DADDY’S STUFF, and so many other useless items, stacked and teetering in a way that reminds me of Dr. Seuss cartoons.
“Don’t move anything,” Mom says. “Just don’t. I know where everything is!”
“Where can I sit?” I ask facetiously, because sitting anywhere but in Mom’s crumb-infested pink recliner is an impossibility.
“Your room,” she says. “That’s your space. I haven’t touched it.”
“Have you been saving the money I’ve been transferring into your account?”
“Of course! We have lots of money! I have bank statements. Every single one!”
“I bet you do.”
“I would never ever—”
“Mom, I’ve left Ken. We’re done.”
“You’ll work out your differences. Couples fight. That’s the way it—”
“No, Mom. He cheated on me. With a very young woman—among others. He’s not been nice to me. He’s been subhuman. Awful. Really shitty, Mom. I’ve completely fucked up my life.”
“Don’t curse like that, Portia! Not in my father’s house!”
“Mom, can I stay here awhile? I don’t really don’t want to live in a hotel right now. And I don’t have the energy to rekindle any of the old friendships that I failed to maintain because I’m a bitch who chose money over true connections.”
“You can stay in your room! Right here! Sure, sure, sure! I can get more Diet Coke with Lime at the Acme right across the street. Please stay. Please! I would love for you to stay.”
“Thanks, Mom. But we have enough soft drinks, I think. And I’m getting more and more worried we might kill each other. You did hear the part about Ken cheating on me, right? That was a pretty significant part of the story, which probably requires acknowledgment from you. I’m really leaving him.”
“Don’t rush to conclusions, Portia! Family is family.”
“We got by before Ken. We’ll get by now. Somehow. I’m starting over. I’m kind of in pain. My heart is broken. As high school as that sounds. I should warn you that I’ve been drinking a lot, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.”
“I haven’t touched your room. That’s your space. The Diet Cokes too. With lime. Drink those! Those are for you. Just don’t touch anything else in the house. Okay? Everything will be fine. Everything has a place. Everything. Even you. On the walls of the dining room and in your bedroom upstairs. That will always be your space. It’s so good to have you home!”
“I can’t live like this again,” I say to the ceiling.
“Would you like another Diet Coke with Lime?”
“Why not?”
Mom waddles around her mountain of National Geographics and returns with a fresh Diet Coke with Lime. I hand her my old one, which is still full.
“This new one is much colder,” she says.
I nod.
I sip.
It is colder.
I look around the house at all of the various collected shit piled high and the many dust bunnies. Then I look deep into the sick kind doughy eyes of my mother, the only person to ever love me unconditionally, maybe because she’s absolutely bonkers.
But she does love me.
That’s my one absolute.
She would bring me a new Diet Coke with Lime every ten minutes for the next six months if I asked—hell, the next six years, without sleeping more than nine minutes at a time—and she’d do it with boundless joy in her heart, completely satisfied to offer what she thinks I desire.
I wrap my arms around my mom and bury my face in her plump shoulder, feeling her bra’s thick shoulder strap cut into my chin.
“Portia—why are you hugging me so hard?” she says.
“Just because.”
“I love hugs!”
“I know, Mom. I love you. I really do. But I fucked up my life.”
“Please don’t use profanity in my father’s home, Portia. I raised you better. Your grandfather didn’t allow cursing in this house, and neither do I.”
“You did raise me better.” I start to sob. “It’s true.”
Mom rubs my back and offers me another Diet Coke with Lime, but I just cry into her shoulder and think about how I can’t quite get my arms all the way around her and wonder how many inches separate my two middle fingers that are resting on her shockingly thick bra strap.
I guess five inches, and then—in my mind—tell myself to stop crying.
“Can I take you to breakfast?” I ask.
“Why are you crying, Portia?”
“Let’s have breakfast at the diner.”
“Now?”
“Yeah. Right now.”
“Can I go like this? Where are we going? Which diner? Who will be there? How can we even know? Is it a safe time to go? Maybe we should wait until there are less people there. I don’t know, Portia. I just don’t know.”
She’s in the pink sweat suit she wears every day, brown stains floating like continents in a pastel sea of cheap, worn cotton. She has at least fifty different pink sweat suits stacked in her bedroom, which she purchases whenever she gets up enough courage to take the bus to Walmart and finds a pink sweat suit on sale for less than $9.99, which is the maximum she will pay. All of her extra pink sweat suits still have the tags attached, because she wears the same damn one over and over again, and wants to have the option of taking the extra ones back should she ever run low on money. She has receipts for pink sweat suits from the Clinton administration. And yes, she and the entire house reek.