Come Back (30 page)

Cameron’s instinct was a good one. Mia’s finally becoming the leader everyone knew she could be, but what’s new is that she’s actually liking it. Not just the doing-ness of leadership, the
being
-ness of it. I can hear it in her voice, even on the phone.

This is possibly the most crucial time in her healing process. Stopping the pain of a troubled child, and the behavior it elicits, is only half the journey. Because it’s one thing for them to finally know what they
don’t
deserve—to be molested, addicted, or in jail. It’s another entirely for them to know what they
do
deserve, for them to fully embrace success, to dream big and achieve, the true mark of self-worth.

This is what I want Mia to get from this last phase. That she’s worthy of being looked up to, worthy of the self-respect, confidence, and distinction that comes of great accomplishment, hard earned. And what she’s achieved so far is an accomplishment few of even the most stalwart adults could.

This is becoming a familiar scene for us—Mia running into my arms and bowling me over, while Paul stands nearby with tears in his eyes. We’re at LAX picking her up for a ten-day home visit. She’s been in the program a year and five months and hasn’t been home for twenty-one months.

Just how isolated Mia’s been, and for how long, becomes apparent on the freeway going home. She’s clutching my arm and staring around like a scared bunny, flinching whenever a car goes by. “I forgot about traffic,” she whispers to me nervously.

We stop at Whole Foods on the way home. Mia’s agog at three whole shelves of cereal; she takes half an hour deciding on Ben and Jerry’s, and practically swoons in the produce section.

“Mangos and persimmons and kiwis! All we ever had were oranges, apples, and bananas!”

The program has cost us a small fortune, but she’s come home a really cheap date.

It takes being away from home for a long time to be able to actually smell your house. I stand in the doorway, inhaling that delightful mix of clean laundry and simmering pasta sauce until my mom, eager for me to see the house, steers me away.

I wander through each room, soaking up every last detail, familiar and new. The house looks a lot brighter. Gone are the breasts in the hallway and in their place are pastels I did when I was younger. My room is almost empty, but the color! It’s the most vibrant shade of pear green.

“We can decorate it together when you come back. I’ve been saving—”

I stop her mid-sentence with a crushing hug. My parents, my home! I’ve been gone so long, everything I’m seeing doesn’t feel like reality yet. I’m afraid I’ll go to bed tonight and wake up staring at the bars of the bunk bed above mine.

If Mia continues to do well, she’ll be home in a few months, just in time for the spring semester at Santa Monica College, which we’ve all agreed will be a good transition to university. We scheduled this home visit to coincide with registration for spring classes, which starts today. She must have changed ten times, finally settling on jeans and a roomy yellow fleece top.

It feels strange seeing her write “Spring Creek Academy, Montana” on the enrollment forms. Stranger still is how clingy she’s being. She holds me close in the crush of the registration lines and refuses to hold our place while I go to the ladies’ room.

I expected the opposite, especially around people her age. She stares at the students like they’re another race. There are thousands of them, speaking a cacophony of languages. Has she grown so used to the mountain quiet, walking heel to toe in silence and knowing every face? Or is she simply disoriented and scared because she has no real experience of herself in this world? The last time she was in the big-city world of teenagers she was almost always high. With each day home, a truer picture emerges of what the possible long-term effects of being gone in a program so long might be.

I watch her among the kids in the packed cafeteria, looking like just another student, and I almost have to pinch myself—Mia’s going to college, Mia’s home, Mia is
alive
!

“There won’t be anywhere near this many students when you go to classes,” I whisper to her. “It’s only this crowded because everyone’s here to register.”

“I hope so,” she whispers back.

“You’ll adapt in no time. Really, Mia, could it possibly be harder than the Gravel Pit?”

I can’t believe I’ll be going to school here. Alone.

The fleece my friends envied in Montana now seems atrociously earthy. The girls are all in really low hip-huggers or miniskirts. Kids I would have once considered cool now look like deliberately crafted projections of personality rather than their real selves.

My mom sits in the grass and pores over the course catalog.

“Mom, can’t we do this in the car?” I whisper, dying to leave.

“If you don’t register today, you’ll be locked out of the classes you want.”

“I can register by phone, I checked. Can we go now?”

I look around the campus and wonder how hard coming home is going to be. As much as I’ve hated the program, I’ve loved it, too. People are vulnerable and honest, I’ve formed deeper friendships there than I ever had before, and there’s no temptation in terms of drugs or sex.

In the real world, if I have an issue come up or I’m just having a bad day, I won’t have fifteen girls or Mike or Chaffin to talk to me at the drop of a hat. I won’t have anyone there to call emergency bathroom therapy sessions.

It almost seems wrong to have you change and mature in an artificial reality. They strip you of any facade, teach you to be totally open with your thoughts and feelings, and then send you into a world where it’s impossible to live without a label, where people smile when they’re sad.

I used to know how to operate in this world. I had a skin thick enough to withstand the harshness of it, but I feel like I’ll be re-entering it virtually naked.

“You can’t take just three academics. And you can’t hold my arm while I drive.”

“So, just drive with your left hand. And I’m taking four classes.”

“Sculpture is not a class. You’ve missed two years of the academics you would have gotten at Hopkins. You’re at a disadvantage for admissions when you transfer to begin with.”

“Mo-ther, I’m not even home yet and already you’ve got my next year of school planned. You’re taking charge as if I’m incompetent. And why am I at a disadvantage? I plan on getting all A’s. It’s not like I want to transfer to a shitty school.”

“Mia, please don’t swear, it sounds trashy.”

We drive most of the way home from the school in silence. It feels miserable. She stops me before we get out of the car.

“What are you so scared of, Mommy?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not about the classes. Control’s always about fear, you know that.”

She’s right, Claire, stop, what you’re doing isn’t working. My inner Debbie is practically shouting “Get outta’ your damn head and be emotionally present for your daughter!”

“I’m afraid you’ll get bored.”

“What would happen if I got bored?”

“You might decide you don’t like college.”

“And if that happens?”

“You might cut classes or quit.”

“I’ll cut to the chase, Mom. If I cut classes, I might flunk and end up working as a janitor for life. Or start partying with the other class-cutters and, voilà, I’m addicted to heroin all because I didn’t take enough academics.”

“Well, I didn’t consciously take it that far, exactly.”

“That’s worse, Mom. If you go unconscious with letting your fears run you, you’ll be exactly where you used to be two years ago and we are going to seriously butt heads.”

She’s right again. I’m avoiding my feelings by pretending they’re not there. But knowing this isn’t enough. I have to live what I’ve learned—right here, right now I have an opportunity to create a stronger relationship with Mia.

“I’m afraid of what you’ll do with your spare time. Actually, I’m terrified. So, I want you too busy with school to have any.”

“If I’m going to screw up, I’ll do it if I’m taking ten classes. You can’t
control it, only I can. I know I have to earn your trust back little by little, but it would feel nice to know I started out with
some
. You know, you sent me all the way to Morava basically so I could learn to let go of what my old dad did to me. Well, the things
I
did to me are part of my history, too, and
you
have to learn to let go of that.”

Mia needn’t have worried about coming home to a “program parent.”
I’m
the one who should be worried.

Halfway through opening the pastry box with Mia’s birthday cake, I realize that I’m doing it again. I’m afraid the top of it got smashed on the ride home. I’m afraid I won’t have time to iron the napkins or put on lipstick. I didn’t push my cuticles back after my shower, the street’s full and her friends won’t find parking, why aren’t my inner thighs responding to exercise, what if Jordana doesn’t find financing, what if Mia comes home and tanks, what do I do with the rest of my life?

And that’s just in the space of two minutes.

Guests are coming in ten minutes and I’m having another Bing! Moment: I am completely fear driven, every minute of the day. And not just about negative things. Even in the midst of happiness I am, like right now. How did fear become my driving force?

As stressful as the fiasco at Morava was, I felt so alive there. The crisis forced me to be in the moment, to experience myself firing on all cylinders for the first time since I was in film school with Mia and battling Nick in court. I’m setting out the silver on the buffet and thinking this: if crisis makes me feel so alive, then to have that feeling when there isn’t an actual crisis, I create
potential
crises, up in the penthouse suite.
That’s
what fear does for me. Keeps the adrenaline going; it makes me feel alive.

I share this with Mia when she comes to help me with last-minute preparations.

“Mom, please, you’re a total adrenaline junkie. All drama queens are,” she says matter-of-factly, eating cherry tomatoes out of the salad. “Don’t tell me you just got that.”

“Well, yeah, I did. Stop picking out the tomatoes.”

“You’re usually the last one to know anything about yourself. I knew you would be Morticia before you even took Focus. So did Sunny when she saw you at Morava.”

“No way.”

“Come
on
, Mom, everything in our house is black, it’s all you wear, all your stories were depressing, it felt like
The Addams Family
here sometimes.”

She gives me a kiss as she takes the salad out. “Don’t worry,
The Addams Family
was a cool show.”

I open the door and we both scream. It’s Hilary, but she looks so different! So…cool. Her hair is no longer the long frizzy halo I remember but a very chic, short bob which she’s gelled into place. A leopard print purse dangles from her shoulder and she looks great in a black miniskirt and top. I have just enough time to give her a hug when my two other friends come running up the driveway.

We do the girly oh-my-God-look-at-you screaming session before moving inside. The conversation starts as small talk, which is funny to be doing with the same girls I used to stay up late with talking about the gross things adults do to each other. A lot’s changed since slumber parties when we were fourteen.

I keep making excuses to leave. It’s not their fault, they’re not trying to leave me out, but I can’t relate to anything they’re saying—boys, hair products, music.

“Mia, go back out there, you’re being rude,” my mom whispers.

“But it’s so awkward! They keep bringing up movies or songs I’ve never heard of! It’s my birthday and I don’t want to feel like an outsider on it. There’ll be plenty of time for that once I’m home,” I add as I huff back into the room.

I listen to my friends gossip some more. Finally, Jenna asks
the
question.

“So, what’s it like in there?”

“Yeah, your mom told us about it, but, to be honest, it sounded kind of weird,” Leila whispers.

I try to explain to them how different it is, how open, how real, how much you learn about yourself even though there are months where all I want to do is murder everyone, but I don’t think I’m doing much better than my mom did. They say oh and nod politely, but I know how it sounded to me when I first heard it. Leila’s right, to an outsider it is weird. I’d need a whole book to explain it.

I think Hilary can tell I’m uncomfortable because she brings up her recent trip to Europe to change the subject, which doesn’t much help because then they all start talking about places they’ve visited, road trips they went on. I’d love to have something of my own to add but somehow I don’t think being driven into town in a locked van to see a doctor is much of a road trip. I feel so different from them, on the one hand older and on the other so far behind. It’s not a good feeling.

Paul and I eavesdrop shamelessly from the kitchen. The girls are so excited to see Mia, and I can see that she feels it both as special and as a burden. They’re ahead of her socially; Mia’s ahead of them psychologically.

We can hear in Mia’s voice that she’s nervous, trying to fit in and ask the right questions. But when Hilary complains about her parents wanting her to spend New Year’s Eve with them in Paris, Mia’s nervousness vanishes and she says soberly, “You wouldn’t say that if you hadn’t seen them for a long time.” There’s an embarrassed silence, as if Mia’s inadvertently chastised them.

At one point the girls are talking about where they’re applying to colleges, rattling off Ivy League schools, elite private colleges. Other than Harvard or Yale, Mia’s not familiar with most of them. She’s been out of the academic world since the tenth grade, though she doesn’t want to show it.