The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance (21 page)

I think Snake caught on to that, because he said, “Want me to come in with you?”

“Yeah, maybe for just a minute.”

He waited in the dark living room while I looked into her bedroom. But there was nobody home in there. The bed was made—by me, of course—and there was no one in it. That little thing in my stomach got bigger.

I heard Snake's voice saying, “Hey. Cynnie.”

I knew exactly what to expect.

I found him in the dining room and turned on a light, and
there it was. The whole ugly scene. My mom was lying face- down on the carpet. Passed out. I hoped just passed out. I leaned over her and put a hand on her back until I could feel she was breathing. Then I breathed, too. She was drooling out of one side of her mouth onto the carpet. It was completely disgusting. The bottle she'd been carrying across the room when she fell was lying beside her hand, and it had been open and spilled whatever was left. I could see the dark wet place on the carpet. Worse yet, I could smell it.

You could tell she really fell hard, not just crumpled up, because the gin was thrown in a long line, about a foot forward from where she landed. Part of me hoped she hadn't hurt herself, but only part of me. I know that's a terrible thing to say.

I stood over her and watched my dream of our summer with Bill flying away. I was so furious, I swear I almost kicked her. That was my first thought. To haul off and kick her as hard as I could. Then I thought about throwing ice water on her. I hated her more at that moment than I think I ever had before. I just couldn't think of anything bad enough to punish her for doing this to me.

But I didn't do anything to her. I just felt really tired.

Snake said, “Got any carpet cleaner?”

“There should be some under the sink.”

I sat down on a dining room chair. Hardly even feeling I was doing it. I felt like an inner tube after somebody stuck a knife in the side of it. I was going down fast.

Snake came back in with a roll of paper towels and a can
of the carpet stuff. He started blotting up as much of the gin as he could.

“I should probably do that,” I said. “My mom, my mess.” But I didn't put much behind it.

“I just thought it would be better if I did, because … you know.” I didn't, actually. “Because it smells, and you're trying to stay away from that and all.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Besides, I'm good at this. I got a lot of practice, cleaning up after my dad.”

“Your dad drinks?”

He made a big noise of air rushing out of him. “Hoo. You have no idea. He makes your mom look like a social drinker. And he's mean when he drinks, too. You just look at him wrong and he'll beat the crap out of you. This is nothing. A little spilled booze. He used to puke on the carpet. Or he'd wake up in his own piss. And then just get up and go on with his day like it never happened. So I did a lot of carpet cleaning. Not because I owed him anything. I just didn't want to smell it. I didn't want to live like that, you know?”

I sat there with my head in my hands. I was listening, though. And taking in how strange it was to find this out now. But if people don't want to tell you something, then you won't know.

I said, “Is that why you don't drink?”

“Yeah.”

I still had my head in my hands but I could hear the aerosol sound of the carpet cleaner being sprayed. I was thinking
how strange it was, that Snake reacted to his dad by never drinking, and I reacted to my mom by following in her footsteps. Sometimes life is too complicated and backwards, and it's so hard to make sense of things. I tried to think what Pat would say about that. She'd probably say, It doesn't matter why. It matters what you're going to do about it.

Snake said, “I'd leave this on till morning. If you vacuum it up in the morning, it should be fine.”

I took my head out of my hands and looked at him. Really looked at him. “Thank you,” I said. Like I meant it. Because I did.

“Want me to help you get her in bed?”

“No. Thanks. I think she should spend the night right here.”

“Need company?”

“No. I really appreciate what you did. Seriously. This would've been so much harder if you hadn't been here. But I just need to go to bed. You understand, right?” I knew he would. Because of that night we ran away. He was upset, and he didn't want to talk.

“Yeah. It's okay.”

But then, just as he was walking to the door, I started wondering why I was chasing him away. It's like as soon as I knew he would understand my wanting to be alone—just like that, no questions—I didn't really need him to go.

“You know what?” I said. “Maybe you could just stay a few minutes. Go sit in the kitchen for a minute, okay? I'll be right in.”

I ran into my room and got my drawing pad and a pencil. When I got back to the kitchen he was sitting there waiting. I sat across from him. Past him and through the kitchen door I could see my mom's feet sprawled out on the carpet. So I just looked at Snake instead.

“You don't mind, do you?” He was looking like a hero to me. Not that I would have said that. It would have sounded wrong. I just mean, a hero, like … strong. Like someone who can be strong when you need him to be. And I wanted to get that down in a drawing.

“No, I don't mind.”

At first we tried talking a little, but I was concentrating too hard to really keep up my end of the conversation. So then we just sat there and I drew his face and we didn't talk. That was sort of what I liked about Snake, anyway. We didn't always have to talk.

After a while I looked at the clock and saw I'd been drawing for almost forty-five minutes.

“Are you getting tired of posing?” I asked him.

“I'm okay,” he said.

But I looked at the drawing and decided I could go on for hours or just stop now. It didn't really matter. The important part—the hero part—was already down on paper.

I turned it around and showed it to him.

He reached out and took it in his hands and looked at it for a long time. Neither one of us said anything. After a while, though, I really wanted to know if he liked it.

“Do you think it looks like you?”

“Yes and no,” he said, and at first I was disappointed. “It's not what I see when I look in the mirror. It's like when I close my eyes, I want to think I look like this. But then when I look in the mirror I see something that isn't this good. It's almost like you drew what I'm
trying
to be. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?”

“Yeah. I think so.” And I wasn't disappointed anymore.

“Is this really how you see me?”

“I guess it must be.”

“Can I keep this?”

“Sure. Of course you can.”

I walked him to the door and gave him a little kiss and thanked him again and said good night. Feeling grateful because I had at least one friend back.

When I closed the door and turned around there was my mom, passed out on the carpet.

I went into my room and flopped down on the bed. Then for some reason I thought about Pat, that night up in the tree house. When I was almost as drunk as my mom was right now. How she held me and rocked me and let me cry all over her shirt and covered me with her jacket.

I got the crocheted afghan off the back of the couch and went back into the dining room where my mom was and covered her up with it so she wouldn't be cold. And I sat there with her all night, just to make sure she'd be okay. Not because she deserved it, exactly. More because I hadn't deserved it, either, when Pat did it for me.

In the morning I woke up on the carpet and my mom was nowhere around. My eyes felt burny, and I was a little sick to my stomach from not sleeping much, and from being upset. I found my mom sitting at the kitchen table drinking instant coffee. She looked pretty awful.

I was thinking, We can still sober her up in time. It's not summer yet. We'll get her back on track in time for summer.

I said, “You better get ready. We're going to that Sunday morning meeting.” She never looked up at me. I said, “This happens to a lot of people. It happened to me. You just have to start all over.”

She lit a cigarette. She said, “I'm not as strong as you are.” I sat down next to her. I was trying to get her to look at me, but she never did. I said, “I
need
you to be. I need you to be my mother.”

She started to cry.

I went to the meeting anyway. Just before I left I asked if she was sure she wasn't going. She said, “I can't, Cynnie. I'm not strong like you.” She said it so quiet, I had to ask her to say it again. Then I wished I hadn't.

Pat took me to the IHOP after the meeting, and I ordered a big stack of pancakes. I thought if I ate enough I might feel numb.

I said, “It's my fault. I yelled at her. I said she couldn't tell me what to do because she was still making me be the mother. I hurt her feelings.”

Pat clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Can't make
somebody else get drunk, Cynthia. They're either going to do it when something goes wrong or they're not. Now for the bad news: Can't make somebody else stay sober, either.”

“She says she's not as strong as I am.”

“Maybe that's true.”

“I used to think I could take care of everything. I thought I was like a momma lion—I'd stand up for myself and for Bill and everything would be okay.”

“Maybe it still will be. Maybe it'll just take longer than you thought.” Then she used an expression I never heard before. One of those program sayings. She said, “If she'll drink over anything, she'll drink over anything.” At first I didn't get it. Then I did. Mom got drunk because we had a fight. Or maybe it was because of the pressure of trying to get ready for the responsibility of having Bill around. Or because even thinking about Bill made her feel guilty. Anyway, if there's anything in the whole world that can knock you off your program, then you'll get knocked off it. Something will come along sooner or later.

I said, “Why can't she get it, Pat? I wanted her to get it.” I wasn't sure if I could cry and eat pancakes at the same time. I was about to find out.

“Maybe you really are stronger.”

“I wanted her to get better. She's my mom. It's not fair.”

“No, I guess it's not. Some people get it. Some don't.”

“We can't just give up on her,” I said. “You didn't give up on me after one slip.”

Pat was quiet for a minute. Too long a minute if you'd
asked me. Then she said, “But you got up the next day and went back to the meetings. You didn't just fold up and say you weren't strong enough to try again.”

“There's got to be something we can do for her.”

“Only if she gets back to a place where she's willing to do something for herself. If that happens, we'll be a hundred percent behind her again. But until then, you really can't help her. And if I were you, I'd accept that.”

“Accept that … I have to wait till she's ready to try?”

“And that she might never get ready.” At first I thought she was being unsympathetic, but when I looked up she looked at me like her heart was breaking on my behalf. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I know it's hard to watch somebody you love fall away.”

That's when I started to cry. I couldn't bring myself to say I loved her, but Pat had said it for me. “I thought we could be like a real family. I thought Bill could come home. Now how will I ever see him? I thought we'd get custody of him again.”

“Here's the important question,” she said. “Are you going to go back to getting drunk and acting crazy and messing up your life because she disappointed you like this?”

“No. Of course not. That wouldn't fix anything.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “You have officially stopped growing up to be just like your mother.” Before I could even really take that in, she said, “Maybe
you
could get custody of Bill.”

“Yeah? In what universe?”

“Maybe in this one, when you're eighteen.”

“Eighteen?”
That seemed like forever. Like my next lifetime. It was more than three years away.

“If you had four years sober, and you had a job. Maybe go to college at night. I'd be willing to go to court with you. Vouch for your character. I think you'd make a great guardian. You're still the momma lion type. You protect the people you love.”

“How could I work and go to school and take care of him all at the same time?”

She shook a bunch of Tabasco sauce on her eggs, like that might help her think about this hard problem. “Maybe you could rent a room in my house, get a babysitter in the deal that way.”

I wanted to say thank you but I was still crying some and the words got stuck. I'd say it later, and she'd understand why I hadn't said it before. “That still sounds hard.”

“It will be. But it'd be something to work for. I mean, Bill's worth it. Right?”

“Absolutely. Bill. He's worth anything.” It still seemed a long way off.

“And you're worth it.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“How did I get into this?”

“How can we keep you out of it? It's your program. It's your life. Maybe you'll get Bill down the road. Meantime, you're working for a better life for you. You're worth it. Right?”

I'd never really thought about that. “You think I am?”