She grins at me. "What salon?"
That grin tells me everything I need to know, and I think that I'm going to throw up again. She made it all up. All the funny stories and the people she met. Tony is probably real but I know that she didn't meet him cutting his hair. She may have even rehearsed what she was going to say to draw me in. "I'm not going to do this, Mom. I'm not going to watch you throw your life."
She's suddenly angry, on her feet and in my face, her voice vicious. "You know what? I don't owe you shit, Peter. I gave birth to you. Without me you wouldn't be alive, so it's a little late to be so high and mighty. And you know what else? This is who I am. I'm not gonna change. You want me to change? That's fucked up."
I cross my arms and clench my jaw. "I don't think it's fucked up for me to want my mother to stay alive."
But she doesn't stop, her tirade is at full speed now. "You know who else wanted to change me? Your father. He wanted me to change me so much that he hurt me. He used me and hurt me and then he threw us away. Threw me away. You gonna be like that too? You're going to throw me away?"
"I would never just throw you away, but I'm not going to let you destroy yourself in my house with my money. I'm happy to have you back in my life. But sober, looking forward. I can't have you here like this."
I can't. It'll kill me. I'm having a hard time concentrating because of all the memories that are surfacing. All the similarities. All the things I never told anyone, not even Amber. Like how the entire reason I decided to tell Amber's mom about her condition was because my mother begged me not to call the police while she was overdosing and dying. I was seven. All the times she went out and didn't come back for hours because she 'just got carried away' while she was high and having sex with people.
All the stories she made up about the places we would go and the things we would see just as soon as we had the money. It's all complete, terrible, lies. And it hurts. I want her in my life. I do, but not like this. I want to help her, but I know all too well you can't help someone who doesn't want help. "I'm leaving," I say. "I'll be back in a couple of hours. You can leave or you can stay. But if you stay you're going to get help. If you're still here, still high, and don't want to go to rehab, I'm going to call the police."
I grab my keys and my wallet and leave before I can change my mind and turn around. I can hear her calling my name through the door, crying. But I know that cry and it's not real. It's stopped by the time I make it down the stairs when she realizes it's not going to make me come back. That’s when the screaming starts. “You’re trash, Peter! You’re never going to make it as an actor. That’s a stupid job anyway. I don’t know why you’d ever think you’d be able to do that. You’re stupid and you’ll never make it.”
She keeps going but I shut off my brain. I won’t listen to that. It’s not real.
Somehow I drive to Aunt Lily's house. It's auto-pilot for me. And when she opens the door, I know she sees it on my face. "Come inside."
I sit down at her kitchen table and she makes tea while I tell her what happened. “Feel free to say I told you so,” I say miserably.
“Of course I’m not going to say that. I didn’t want this to happen. I’ve just known your mom forever. So I knew the odds.”
“I just really wanted it to be different this time.”
She reaches across the table and takes my hand like I did with my mother just a couple of days ago. “I know.”
“What am I going to do if she doesn’t go?”
“You have to do what you said you would. Because going back on your word only enforces that you don’t mean what you say.”
“Yeah…”
“I’ll go with you,” she says. “I’ve done this enough times, and you don’t need to do it alone.”
“Thanks, Aunt Lily.”
She smiles, and I’m thankful for her. Our relationship while I was living here wasn’t great, partially because I wasn’t great to her, and partially because she was afraid that I would turn out like my mom. We’re both in a better place now, and I’m so glad that I had a place like this to come when I needed it.
I’m so tired. On top of all the work just trying to get somewhere, I’m exhausted from life. It felt like everything was ripped out from under me with Amber, and I just kind of felt like I was getting back on my feet when Mom called. Now it’s all crumbling again. “I just want to sleep for like a week.”
“You can,” Lily says, laughing.
“I can’t. I have to work. I need the money.”
She takes a sip of her tea. “That’s true, but you can at least take a nap now. Sleep on the couch until we go back to your place.”
I feel suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to shut my eyes, and I don’t even protest. “Okay.”
Curling up on the couch, I think I’m asleep just seconds after I lay down, and I barely feel a blanket being pulled over me.
I wake up to a hand on my shoulder and I startle. “Sorry,” Lily says. “We’ve got to go. Need to be on time for this. She needs deadlines.”
“Right,” I say, scrubbing my face with my hands. I put on my shoes quickly and we’re out the door, driving the short distance to my apartment.
I know something’s not right the minute I come upstairs, because the door is open. My mom isn’t in the apartment, and I hear Lily gasp behind me, because neither is anything else. I walk to my bedroom, and most things there are gone too. The bed is still there, but that’s because they probably couldn’t move it. Anything that’s of value, anything that could possibly be sold, is gone.
She probably called that guy that we dropped off the present to. The present that was almost certainly drugs. No wonder my mom wanted to take the train. Security on trains is far lower than on planes.
Lily is shaking her head when I walk into the living room. “I’m so sorry, Peter. I should have seen this coming.”
“No,” I say. “Don’t feel guilty for not seeing the worst in someone. I wouldn’t have seen this coming either.”
Walking into the kitchen, my mom’s phone is on the table. A clear sign that she’s cutting ties, since that’s the only way that I had to contact her. She’s made her decision, and I’m not it. I think it should hurt more than it does, but when you’ve felt as much pain as I have, you get used to it.
12
Amber
Present
Fantasia is one of the worst kept secrets in Los Angeles. It's technically a speakeasy, with the entrance through another restaurant, but the bar nearly always has a line to get in, so the restaurant has a crowd of people waiting to get in. The food at the restaurant is pretty good too, so I know a lot of people put their name on the list to get into Fantasia and then sit down to dinner. It works well for both the bar and the restaurant—who pretend that they have nothing to do with each other even though they're the same place, technically.
Tonight I have the rare privilege of being able to go to the front of the line and get in immediately. That's nice. It's been a long time since I've been to Fantasia. It was only once, and it was with Clay Markham. It's his favorite place.