Authors: Claire Bidwell Smith

The Rules of Inheritance (5 page)

BOOK: The Rules of Inheritance

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She wakes up at least once a night, he says. All you have to do is sit next to her, comfort her until she goes back to sleep. She's just scared, he says.

That night, while we're playing video games and drinking wine, I swallow a little white pill that I've been carrying around in my pocket all day.

What's that? Brian asks.

Kind of like a quaalude, I answer.

Where'd you get it?

My dad, I say, washing the pill back with a swig of wine.

Brian shrugs and then unpauses the game we are playing. The tinkling sound of scoring resumes. I've already forgotten that it is my night to get up with my mom.

Hours later I stumble to bed in the guest room. My father has set up the baby monitor by my bedside and the little green light glows in the dark. It's the last thing I see before my eyes close.

I don't know what time it is, maybe three or four in the morning, when I open them again. I can hear my mother crying softly. I don't know how long she's been crying, but her soft mewling lights up the monitor with each intonation. My limbs feel like sandbags. I am warm and loose and so, so heavy. I push my way out from underneath the covers and make my way downstairs.

There is a tiny light on in the corner of my mother's room, and I stand for a moment looking at her. She is curled onto one side, her arms wrapped around her abdomen. She looks so small underneath the sheets.

I step forward finally and ease myself down onto the side of her bed. She doesn't seem to notice that I am there.

Mom?

She continues to cry. I reach out and begin to stroke her hair. The quaalude has left me feeling open and loose. I am not afraid of her.

Mom, I say again. It's okay. It's okay.

I murmur these words to her as I stroke her hair, smooth my hand in circles over her back.

It's okay. It's okay.

Her crying fades to a gentle whimper.

It's okay. It's okay.

My eyes are closed now too, and I lay my head down against her shoulder.

Mom, I miss you.

She is quiet now, her form gently rising and falling with each breath.

The memory of this moment will become the sole thing that prevents me from completely evaporating with guilt in the years to come.

Mom, Mom, Mom, I say quietly. The word like some kind of prayer.

We stay there for a long time like that, and when I wake up the next morning in my bed upstairs it will be hours before I remember any of it.

OVER CHRISTMAS BREAK Christopher decides not to return to school. He tells me this over the phone. He is going to work for his uncle in New Jersey for a while, painting houses, saving money. Then he plans to move to San Francisco.

Don't you want to finish college? When he doesn't reply I immediately feel stupid for having asked. Naive and girlish.

The last time I see my mother is the day I drive back to school. She is in the passenger seat of my father's car. He has dragged her out of the hospital bed, wants to take her for a drive, to remind her of the world outside. He has wrapped her in blankets, and her skin is the same gray as the seats of the car.

I lean in through the open door, try to put my arms around her, but it's awkward and I just kind of press myself against her.

Her voice is hoarse, her hands claw at me just a little. I love you so much, honey.

I do not know that this is the last time I will ever see her.

Months later, years later, when I think back on this moment, I'll wish for so much more from it. In my head I'll scoop her up from the car seat like an infant. I'll hold her against me, burying my head into her. Mom, Mom, Mom. Years later I'll cry hard and loud, wishing I had done exactly this.

But instead I just give her that awkward hug and then I climb into my car. I let out a breath, light a cigarette, and put both hands on the wheel. I had insisted on leaving, on returning to school, but now that I'm actually doing it I feel uneasy.

It's a seven-hour drive back to Marlboro and already late afternoon when I leave. As I drive the last hundred miles through Massachusetts and into Vermont, a snowstorm sets in. I can hardly see the road, the world outside a blurry white eclipse. I drive thirty miles an hour, smoke cigarette after cigarette. I listen to the same songs on repeat.

I am frightened as I drive through the storm. It's not the snow or the road that I'm afraid of but the fact that I'm doing this alone. Just four months ago my parents were driving me to college, our cars laden down with flannel sheets and lamps that would clip to the headboard of my bunk bed.

On that three-day drive from Atlanta to Vermont my mother rode in my car with me, my father alone in the Acura, leading the way along the highway. On the last night of the trip I broke down crying at a restaurant in Massachusetts. My mother sat outside on the steps with me, rubbing my back.

Why did I pick a school so far away? I mumble through my sobs.

My mother smiles, leans into me. She wasn't sick again yet.

Because you're brave, she says. And ambitious and hungry for the world.

Tears ran down my cheeks, and I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back to Atlanta and to my bedroom in the basement. Back to curfews and dinner times, back to being a kid.

My mother rubbed my back, and we sat there until I stopped crying.

I think about this now as I drive through the snow, through Massachusetts in the middle of the night, my mother asleep in her hospital bed in DC.

As I finally make my way to campus it is a dark, dead place, and I instantly want to take everything back. I want to go home. I want my mother.

TWO WEEKS GO BY. I trudge back and forth to my classes. Christine is gone all the time, busy with a new playwright boyfriend. Christopher is in New Jersey. Michel is nowhere to be seen, having holed up after his brief relationship with Kate fizzled out.

One afternoon toward the end of January, my father calls. I am sick of these calls. I hate the student who finds me, holding out a little Post-it note: Your dad called. I hate the little phone booth under the stairs in Howland where I go to return his calls.

Your mother is unconscious, he says.

I pick at the flyer on the wall. Rip another corner off and turn the bit of paper over in my fingers.

The doctors say she won't last more than a few more days.

I open my fingers, watch the piece of paper drift to the floor.

We talked about it, your mother and me. We decided that you should stay at school.

He takes a breath. He is waiting for me to say something.

I can't think of anything to say.

But look, kiddo, you're an adult now. You're eighteen. It's up to you.

I breathe through my mouth.

I'm coming, I say, and I hang up the phone.

It's already afternoon, but I figure I can be in DC by midnight. In my room I throw a few things in a bag: a book I'm reading, a pack of cigarettes, the shirt my mother bought me during parents' weekend. I leave a note for Christine.

It's one of those cold, overcast days where everything looks silvery and bright, just before it snows. I take my foot off the accelerator and let the car gather momentum as I wind down the mountain. I wonder how long it will be before I have to brake.

My mother is dying.

I say it louder.

MY MOTHER IS DYING.

The words mean nothing. I take a drag on my cigarette and steer the coasting car around a curve.

My mother is DYING.

Nothing.

Before long I'm crossing the border into Massachusetts, the road has leveled off. I think about how happy my father said my mother was when she returned home from parents' weekend. He said she was glowing, that she couldn't stop gushing about my life at school. I look at the little clock, calculate the hours, light another cigarette.

By 6:00 p.m. my body has adjusted to the constant hum of the engine. I've only stopped once, for gas and to pee. I've smoked too many cigarettes. My heart is pounding. I've made it through the endlessly boring stretch of Connecticut, but I've still got New York, New Jersey, and Maryland to go.

I cross the George Washington Bridge and watch Manhattan fade into the background. I think about my mother living there for all those years. I remind myself that she is dying.

DYING.

Claire, your mother is dying.

Nothing. I feel nothing.

I make my way onto the New Jersey turnpike and press my foot even harder against the accelerator. The light is ebbing from the sky and my chest feels tight. Maybe I'll get pulled over.

Do you know how fast you were going, young lady?

I do officer, but my mother is dying.

Dying?

DYING.

Right now?

Right now.

Go, go, he'll say, his eyes welling with sympathy and awe for this brave, young girl who is alone out in the world, her mother dying.

But I don't get pulled over. I just keep driving, the needle on the speedometer bobbing steadily at ninety-five miles per hour. My heart is pounding and I can't tell if the vibrating in my chest is from the engine or my own breathlessness. I've smoked too many cigarettes.
Pound, pound, skip.
I'm having heart palpitations.
Pound, pound, skip.
I squeeze my eyes tight for a moment, take deep breaths.
Pound, pound, skip.

I start seeing signs for the town where Christopher is living. I want to stop. It's all I can think about.

After the third sign I let the car coast off the highway, down an exit ramp. I park at a gas station and stand in front of a pay phone.

I stand there for a long time, just breathing and watching the light fade from the sky. It's cold and my breath comes in plumes. Finally I pick up the phone and dial the numbers. Christopher's aunt answers.

Is Christopher there? My voice is whispery.

There is a long pause while I wait for him to come to the phone. I think about hanging up, about getting back in the car, about continuing on. But then he picks up. I tell him where I am, what I'm doing. He gives me the name of a coffee shop nearby, says he'll be there in ten minutes.

I'm shaking as I dial the next number, the one that will connect me to my father.

Dad? I'm in New Jersey.

I tell him I'm stopping for coffee with a friend, that I need a break.

BOOK: The Rules of Inheritance

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