Come Back to Me (3 page)

I needed to
say
yes
to Amber’s improv.  I looked down at my arms, still folded up
against my ribs--still holding on to the dead toaster, whatever that meant.  I
moved my arms a little at first, then threw them into the air.

“It’s an
illusion. The witch tricked us all.  The real toaster, er man, um, is in the
kitchen,” I said, pointing at the door.

Everyone turned
in that direction.  Even I half expected some dude to stroll through the door.

“I’m sorry,”
Amber said, putting her hand on my shoulder.  “It was only an illusion to you.”

Amber was
really pissing me off.  I narrowed my eyes at her, wanting to tell her to quit
being so freaktastically dramatic, but just as I considered meowing at her, the
door opened.

We all
jumped.

“Sorry,” the
office secretary said, poking her head into the room.  “We need Whitney in the
office.  Her mom is here.”

What?  My
heart sank.  My mom wasn’t supposed to pick me up until morning.  Something
must have happened.  Was it my grandmother?  Or my dad or oh, my God, my
sister—shit, when was the last time I’d heard from Lauren?

My face
flamed with heat, and the floor swirled, beckoning my head to its Berber
carpeted surface. I remained standing.

“Whitney.”
Vivienne was now at my side, holding on to my shoulder.  “Go ahead.  Everything
will be fine.”

Everything
will be fine?  What did she know?  She lived in a world of improv and puppets. 
Life wasn’t a series of unicorns farting rainbows.  It was a series of to-do
lists scattered with random heart-stopping moments of disappointment and or
pain.  If you were lucky, those moments were far and few.

I braced
myself for the next wave of suck, because eventually it would come.

My heart
pounded. I could feel it in my neck.

As I turned
down the hallway toward the foyer, my mom stood at the entrance.  I could see
her shiny, helmet hair.  Even at a distance, I knew she’d be in full makeup,
from carefully applied lipstick to her fake eyelashes—she bought them in bulk. The
drawer under her vanity looked like rows of carefully splayed out spiders (um,
dead ones).  My mom never went anywhere with a hair out of place.  As co-host
of one of the local news at noon shows, her appearance was a necessity for her
job.  Once, when we were at a country club golf charity thing, a viewer came up
to my mom, stunned to see her in shorts.  She wore pressed, khaki Bermudas, not
short gym shorts, but it was further proof to her that she needed to be
on
at all times.

The image of
my mom gave me no indication why she stood in the entryway at Gosley a day
early.  My mom was an expert at masking life.  I continued down the hallway,
putting one shaky foot in front of the other.

I stopped a
few feet in front of her, the air whooshing out of me. My legs trembled as if
they were suddenly made of that nasty caramel flan the Gosley chef always made
on Saturday nights.

“What’s
wrong?  You said you were picking me up in the morning.”

“Hi Whitney.”
She smiled.  “I was able to get an appointment for this afternoon.”

“An
appointment for what?”  I asked.  Okay so if someone died today, she might’ve
been taking me to a hospital, or a funeral home.  Did people make appointments
at funeral homes or did they accept walk-ins?  Probably.  Death could be so
random.  I locked my knees to stop my legs from shaking.

“Your hair. 
Remember I said I would get you in with Marla at the salon?”

I opened my mouth,
then shut it, tight.  I straightened my spine and my anxiety fell away, only to
be replaced with anger. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“But we
talked about it.” My mom looked toward the reception window as if she were
going to get confirmation or backup, but the room was empty.  She remained calm,
impenetrable, and I imagined my fisted hands would dent if I tried to hit her.
“Remember?”

Remember? 
Ugh.  Yes, I did, but she never said she actually made an appointment.  She
never said she would pick me up early.

“Besides,
Whitney, it looks like your hair hasn’t seen much sun in the last few weeks.”

“Whatever.” 
I shook my head.

Honestly, I
was relieved there wasn’t a hospital to rush off to, or funeral to plan.  It
was just a stupid hair appointment.

Sweat
trickled on my back, above the waistband of my jeans.

On the
bright side, I could leave.  And without having to make have any awkward
good-byes.

* * *

I remained
quiet in the car, while my mom made two different conference calls. I couldn’t
hear the other side of the conversation, but the gist seemed to be about segment
pitches and some e-mail about someone being thick in the middle.  Vanity was
very big in her world.

We pulled
into a space in front of the day spa.  Bloom Town Center was across the street. 
I could see the signs for Smoothie Palace and the cupcake shop—all the places where
I once hung out with Katie, Kyle, study groups, and even Brandon Massey.  It
was weird to think about the normal.  Well, the once upon a time normal,
because I got pretty good at numbing away any reminders of my old life with
drinking.

My mom
parked and pulled the key out of the ignition.  Suddenly, the car felt too
small.  I reached for the door handle, only to realize the salon chair would be
equally confining.  Too much time for thinking.

“I really
just want to go home,” I said.  Changing my hair color was the least of my
concerns—at the bottom of the list next to spicing up my wardrobe and makeup
routine.  Or trying to fit back in to Bloom.  I needed to focus and keep my eye
on my goal—Colson University.  I’d already planned what was left of my summer. 
There were the volunteer hours I needed to finish to officially be worthy of my
Steeple Academy diploma, then I would be free to leave Bloom.  College would be
a blank page.  I could start over.

“One hour,
Whitney.  You can handle an hour, right?  Besides, I’m sure you want to look
polished for your internship next week.”

So that was
what this was about.  My mom didn’t think I was okay yet—or that my appearance
reflected that, anyway.  She was used to concentrating on the external, so maybe
she needed me to look a certain way, to sparkle, like I was one of her jewelry
pieces in need of a routine cleaning.

I wanted her
to know I was fine, that I wouldn’t hibernate in my room and drink anymore.  Not
that she knew that’s what I’d been doing.  All she really knew was that I’d
passed out near the ditch at the back of Jake Adler’s house and had to be driven
home by some sober, Good Samaritan partygoer at two in the morning, covered in
my own puke.

But that
knowledge was enough.  It wasn’t a proud parental moment.  Neither was the
Bloom gate guard ringing our doorbell hours later, at dawn, to let them know security
towed the car my parents bought me for my seventeenth birthday.  My car had
rolled down Dogwood Road—driverless, into the Bloom on the Bluff sign.  In
fact, from the bits of lecturing I remembered, there had been a lot of
what
if
talk. 
What if you had been in the car?  What if your car had rolled
into the quarry?  What if someone had been on the road?

They were
angry.  So much so that they even briefly brought up Katie.  She’d been the
victim of a random car accident not that far from the Bloom gated community. 
But mostly I figured they were embarrassed.  They didn’t like offspring who
didn’t perform as expected.  I knew that from watching how they handled my
older sister, Lauren.  She didn’t live up to their expectations, and now, it
was like she didn’t exist.  Even though I’d been dropped off at the door wasted,
I still remembered the furtive looks on both of their faces as they ushered me
inside the house.  Like my sister, it was humiliating for them, and they didn’t
stand for that.  In order to be a part of the Denison family, I needed to stick
with the Denison program.

I shifted in
my seat.  I wanted my mom to understand I was on the right track.  Not like the
last six months, when my grades plummeted, or I ignored my senior community service
project, and completely withdrew from anything social.  I needed her to get
that there was no way I would drink anymore.  Besides, I wasn’t up for another
hallucination.

I needed to do
what she and my dad expected. What other choice did I have?  If they cut me
off, I’d have no one.  I had to keep things as normal and stable as possible in
order to get to Colson.  Then I could start my new life.

I thought of
Vivienne’s improv game at Gosley.  Rule number one was to agree—say
yes
and open yourself up to endless possibilities.

Endless
possibilities.  The idea alone was startling, and I closed my eyes for a moment. 
I liked the idea of choices.  There were so little after I screwed up my
friendship with Katie.

I nodded to
my mom and got out of the car, following her into the salon.  Then I sat in a
swivel chair and watched my mom and her stylist, Marla, chat while Marla petted
my ponytail like I was Bug sitting in the chair waiting to be groomed.  I hoped
I wouldn’t be walking out of the salon wearing a fancy pink bow and a collar.

“I think a
nice honey highlight will work.  Just a light sprinkling here on top,” Marla
said, looking at my reflection.  “How does that sound?”

Marla’s gaze
met mine in the mirror as she tugged my head backwards with each pet.  I resisted
the urge to shrug, because my mom was steering this makeover bus.  Maybe it was
the chemical aroma in the salon, because my thoughts drifted to the fact stores
in my mind, and I said, “Did you know that a rhinoceros horn is made of
compacted hair?”

My mom’s
eyes narrowed.  Crap.  She was going to drive me back to treatment.  Then again,
after that random statement, I probably belonged there.  It was as if I was infused
with the best of Gosley—Amanda’s penchant for filling the air with words,
Shauna’s sarcasm, and even Jordanna’s randomness.

For my
next act, I’ll be making shadow puppets on the walls Vivienne style.

My mom and
Marla stared at me.  I smiled big and silly as if I enjoyed strange facts humor
(oh, if Steeple Academy’s quiz bowl team could see me now).  I pointed at my
hair—still in Marla’s hand, motioning for them to envision it upright like a
makeshift horn.

Marla laughed,
but my mom barely cracked her plump-lipped smile. In fact, she held her face so
still I could only guess at what she actually felt underneath it all.  Worry? 
Anger?  Either way, I wanted to retract my words, compact and disguise them
into their very own mythical horn.

“Sorry, that
was random,” I said, and my mom and Marla went back to petting and discussing
hair while I watched them through the mirror.

“Alright,
Karen,” Marla said after my hair had been sufficiently patted.  “You go get
your mani-pedi, and Whitney will be ready in no time.”

My mom
nodded, but before she walked away, she leaned down and kissed me on the cheek.
“I just want you to be happy, Whitney.”

I stayed
still as she smiled at me in the mirror.  The corners of her lips barely turned
up at all.

Happy.  I
knew what made my mom happy—denial.  She may have been a co-host for the local
news, but she was more like a forest ranger, because she worked extra hard at
smothering all the nasty life fires that sprouted up around her.  Every weekday
afternoon, in a mask of makeup and an immovable blonde shell of hair, my mom
reported whatever happened in Bloom that day.  Well, the unpleasant stuff mixed
in with the lifestyle crap like country club charity events, cooking segments,
or the latest health craze making its way around town.  She did it all with a
calm exterior—even while demonstrating downward dog in full hair and makeup.  If
anything ever bugged her, I couldn’t tell.  She apparently worked it out at
Pilates or in the kitchen.  If something troubled her, she found a way to fold
it into whatever dough she mixed up and baked it into icing covered cinnamon
rolls or white clouds of meringue cookies.

She baked
away everything.  Even when she found out my dad wasn’t your standard, lying
lawyer but a two-timing one at that—she consulted cookbooks
and
stayed
with him.  My mom may have looked like she juggled whatever it was that life
threw her way, but in reality, she whipped it up into sweet, comforting
goodness.

I recognized
the denial because I’d done it.  Instead of cooking and baking, I drank myself
into a cocoon of blankness.  At least I was done with that.

But happy?  That
was hard to pin down.  The poster in Gosley said it was about love, purpose,
and direction—and even though I could come up with examples for two out of
three, it still felt a little unreliable to me.  Life was so freaking random, there
was no way to be sure, so how was I supposed to convince her of happy?

She disappeared
around the corner, and Marla squeezed my shoulder. “Your mom told me about your
friend, Katie.  I’m sorry.”