Julian's Pursuit (9 page)

When I’d first heard the words “alcoholic mother,” I was confused.

It was a dichotomy. Mothers were supposed to be nurturing, caring individuals.

They weren’t supposed to be falling-down drunks who turned up after a few days of being on a bender, totally volatile, juvenile, and at times even hostile.

How could the two possibly go together?

“Anyway.” She scowled. “Why does it even matter how much I drink? Isn’t that why you have Brianna come over and babysit when you’re not around? You don’t even trust me.”

How can I trust you, Mom?
I wanted to say.
You can’t even take care of yourself. How can I trust you to take care of my son
…
your grandson?

“You need to start trusting people,” she murmured faintly. “How about this new man…
whatshisname
? Jared?”

“Julian,” I corrected.

“Are you gonna go out with him or what?”

“He’s just someone I know from work, Mom. A friend.”

“But he wants to be more than that.” She hiccupped. “Am I right? Or am I right?”

I didn’t respond.

“Let me ask you this,” Mom went on. “If everyone in our family would die if you didn’t do it, who would you have sex with at work?”

I didn’t even know why I was entertaining her questions. “Everyone in my family?”

“Everyone.”

I bit down on my lower lip. “You know what? I can’t say.”

“Hmm…” She fixed her liquor-glazed eyes on me, tapping one fingernail against her tooth. “Would it be
Juuliaaaaan
?” She drew out his name with exaggerated courtesy.

I tried to speak, failed, so I looked away.

“See! I knew it!” she cried. “So why don’t you give him a chance? Just date him for a little bit… think of it as a free two-week trial. Like Hulu Plus or Netflix. Or Ancestry.com or Weight Watchers online.”

“Mom, please—”

“And if you like him, you can date him for a whole year. For free! Like Amazon Prime. And you can cancel anytime.”

“Mom, you’ve had
way
too much to drink.” I shook my head. “Way too much!”

She carried on talking as if I hadn’t said a thing. “You need to take a leap of faith, Sadie. Or take a leap into his pants.”

“I don’t have time to date. And you, more than anyone else, should know that.”

“I know. I know.” She began curling in on herself, drawing her knees flush against her chest. “Just don’t let me and Evan become your Achilles’ heel.” She let out a huge yawn. “Okay?”

Within minutes, Mom was passed out on the sofa, her breathing shallow and labored.

Sighing heavily, I stroked her back lightly, as she had so often done for me after my childhood nightmares.

My throat tightened when I remembered how she would gather me in her arms and lead me back to bed. And there, she’d stay with me as I tried to fall back to sleep, lightly stroking my back so I’d know I wasn’t alone.

Mom used to be my rock. She was a beacon of love, safety, home, and humility. Not this angry, bitter, hostile drunk who spent half the day at the bar.

To this day, I blame my dad. Mom was never the same after the divorce.

Some days I think she still loves him. I know she loved him the day she discovered the email from his mistress, giving him the flight information for their scheduled trip.

And there were more emails. Many more.

I never forgot the day I discovered Dad’s duplicity. I never forgot what I was doing, even what I was wearing. I was fourteen at the time and had on an old 49ers T-shirt and gym shorts, as I’d just gotten home from a track meet.

When I walked into the kitchen to grab a drink, I found Mom weeping in front of Dad’s laptop.

“Mom.” My voice quivered as I laid a hand on her shoulder. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

She only cried harder and pushed the laptop away from her.

I caught it right before it slid off the kitchen table. When I set it back down, I saw the emails from some woman who professed her undying love for Dad.

My dad
. This woman, whoever she was, went into explicit detail about their intense lovemaking, their mind-blowing fucking, and how she knew he couldn’t love his wife if he could love her so completely. And fuck her so passionately.

Mom sobbed endlessly while I went to the bathroom and threw up.

Later that day, when Mom confronted him, Dad didn’t even put up a fight. He didn’t beg for forgiveness or tell Mom it was all a sordid mistake.

Instead, he turned righteous, with an attitude of relief. “I want a divorce,” he told her.

“Are you in love with her?” Mom’s voice was raw from tears.

“Yes,” he said unapologetically. Then he twisted the knife, skewering Mom with a dull blade. “I don’t love you anymore.”

That night, I found a liquor bottle lying next to Mom’s bed, and when she woke in the morning, I was by her side. She stared at me with bleary eyes, unable to remember what she’d done the night before. And every night after that, it was more of the same.

Mom became lonely, depressed, bitter. The divorce was her private black hole, sucking in every ounce of her energy.

And while Mom’s life was extinguished, Dad’s took off. He thrived. I soon found out that he had a son with this woman and he’d bought her a house three years before.

For three years, he’d been living with us, pretending he was a dedicated father and husband, while all along he had this other family on the side.

At the time I found out, everything just felt sort of strange and warped, like some weird crack in reality had occurred and I’d stepped into an alternate universe where things as I knew them were not what they seemed.

It felt as if the past fourteen years of my life were unraveling like cheap yarn.

Dad had lied to Mom. He had lied to me. I felt like I had to reexamine everything I’d been told. Everything I ever knew about him.

All of a sudden, I had no idea who this man I called Dad really was.

All of a sudden, this kindhearted man who was my champion, who cared so deeply about me, who comforted me when I cried, who coached me all through Little League, and loved me so unconditionally… he became cold, distant, indifferent.

He became a stranger.

Mom called him a masterly puppeteer, but I knew deep down she still loved him. I never stopped loving him either. I waited. I hoped. I prayed.

But Dad never came back.

Months later, I was at the mall with my friends and I saw him walk past with a woman.
The other woman
. She was young, in her early twenties. Though she had her youth going for her, she couldn’t hold a candle next to my mom.

Mom was strikingly gorgeous, heart-stopping beautiful. She had an enigmatic presence that brought to mind the classic beauties of the Old Hollywood era. Grace Kelly. Audrey Hepburn. Sophia Loren. Lauren Bacall.

Back then, when Mom wasn’t a drunken mess, she was an amalgam of all those iconic women.

This rail-thin woman walking alongside my dad was just plain. Ordinary.

With her stick-insect figure and so much makeup caked on her face, she looked like a praying mantis that flew into a jar of foundation.

My first thought was,
Dad left Mom for HER?!?

I know, I know
. It was a low blow, and there were no lows to which I didn’t sink to at the time.

I had a lot of anger inside me. Anger at myself. Anger at my dad.

I was angry that I wasn’t enough for him. I was angry that we weren’t enough for him.

But what made me even angrier was seeing how happy Dad looked with his new family.

He was carrying a freckle-faced boy in his arms, beaming like a proud father.

“Dad,” I called to him with a confidence I wasn’t feeling, but he kept on walking, acting as if he hadn’t heard me. It was Black Friday and the mall was packed with holiday shoppers, so maybe he couldn’t hear me.

Even so, my heart broke that day. As I stood watching my dad disappear into the crowd, I knew then I’d lost that special place in his heart.

It had been replaced by his new son and his new mistress.

Suddenly, Mom snorted loudly in her sleep, bringing me back to the present.

Then out of nowhere, she began mumbling a string of curses, as she often did when she was wasted. “Fuck off, insurance company!” came her slurring voice. “You massive, swindling, fuckhead cunts!” Seconds later, she was murmuring gibberish. “My body is a spacesuit. My body is a spacesuit that my brain made. My body is a spacesuit that Buzz Light Beer made. Buzzzzzzz.” Her slurring voice trailed off.

I watched her for a time, wondering if she would wake. There was a long moment of silence. Then her heavy breathing resumed.

I sighed. Mom was never the same after Dad left us.

Even after I became aware of her addiction, I kind of brushed it off.

But gradually, it became too bad to ignore. By then, Mom was no longer a high-functioning alcoholic. She was just an alcoholic who couldn’t hold down a job. She couldn’t take care of anyone, let alone herself.

“Where are you, Mom?” I whispered softly. I knew she was in there somewhere. Beneath the layers of booze, pain, and heartache, she was in there somewhere.

I took a deep breath and exhaled until my lungs were empty. That girl that used to be me was in there somewhere, too, buried deeper than Pompeii.

But I no longer knew how to find her.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but when I looked at the TV, Letterman was wrapping up his monologue. With a weary sigh, I reached for a blanket and tucked it around Mom’s shoulders. Then I turned off the TV and switched off the lights. As I turned to start for the stairs, my phone beeped in my hand.

I glanced at the display. It was another text from Julian.

I felt like listening to some straight hood shit
…
so Taylor Swift is playing on my iPod.

I tamped down my desire to laugh. Afterward, as I crawled into bed, I scrolled through the playlist on my iPhone and selected Taylor Swift’s latest album. As the hauntingly sweet melodies of
Wildest Dreams
began wafting through my room, I reclined against the pillows and began thumbing in a text to Julian.

About to fall asleep listening to some Taylor Swift. Welcome to my thug life.

Barely two seconds later, my phone beeped.

Goodnight. I’ll catch you in my dreams ;)

For some inexplicable reason, as I lay in bed drifting off to sleep, I felt a faint smile tugging at the corners of my lips.

Chapter Nine

“So what do you think of the XE campaign I’ve been working on?” I asked. “You can be honest with me.”

Sadie sat forward, leaning her elbows on the table. “You’re serious about using Gigi Malik in both the print and TV ads?”

“I am. I feel the XE brand can’t simply sell clothing to young women anymore. It has to sell a mission, a purpose for why it exists.”

Her eyes narrowed in thought, her soft lips parting in concentration.

I liked that about her, the way she mulled ideas over in her head. “And you feel Gigi Malik should be the face of the brand?”

“I do.” Gigi Malik was a former reality star who, much like Lauren Conrad, had gone on to build a successful enterprise of her own.

Sadie lifted her cup and took a long sip before answering. “I think you’re going in the right direction with Gigi. She’s the CEO of her own company and she understands that a successful enterprise can’t just run on fame. And I like her. I like how she exists as a person outside of her relationships. I like how she empowers young women to step up as leaders.” She tilted her head, and the look she gave me was long and considering. “Empowerment. I think that’s the next big shift in marketing to consumers.”

“Empowerment marketing?”

“Yeah, you know, going deeper than the product and appealing to the higher needs of esteem and self-actualization. Inspiring consumers to be their best selves, and they in turn will support the brands that share their beliefs.”

Her words gave me pause. And it definitely gave me something to think over.

Our waitress appeared at my side and smiled. “More coffee?” she asked.

“Nah.” I smiled my thanks. “I’m good.”

“I’m good, too,” Sadie told her. “Thank you.”

After the waitress left, I produced a box from under my chair.

As I slid it across the table, Sadie looked at me with wide, inquiring eyes. “What is this?”

“It’s for you.”

She stared at the box. “But what is it?”

“A care package.”

“A care package?” Her surprise showed in her voice. “Why’d you get me a care package? I’m not overseas. I’m not deployed.”

“Well…” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I can tell you’re not having a great week, so I figured you could use a care package.”

With her being a single mom, I imagined it couldn’t be easy pulling double duty at home while juggling the demands of her job at the office.

She was the mom, the dad, the breadwinner, and she had no one to help carry the load.