She takes me by the arm and drags me into her, close to her hip. I’m in a little cocoon with her.
“Did you just say crazy-mom-off to me?”
“Yeah, man. Let’s go. I promise you. My mom can out-crazy your mom.”
“How did you get like this?”
“Years of self-preservation.” Which is true. You can either get really depressed about your life or you can shove that depression so deep inside you and hide it with snarkiness. I’m not saying the second option is healthy. I’m sure I’ll die of an ulcer at age forty-six. It’s just what I’ve done.
“So you want to play?” I say.
Blythe nods. Takes a deep breath. This is weird for her, I can see. She’s not used to talking about private stuff. About stuff that you’re supposed to be ashamed of.
“I’ll go first,” I say. “My mother decided when I was twelve that she didn’t want to be a mother anymore and moved to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to drop out of life.” I draw myself closer to Blythe and slow the pace down even more. People are just bypassing us now, scrambling to their classes. I lower my voice. “My father caught her in bed with another man. In our house. Let’s see . . . she used to be a drunk. She’s on three years of sobriety now.”
“So now that she’s stopped drinking, does she just get high all day?”
“I don’t know, probably. When I go there, I sleep on the couch. She lives in a peach-colored house in the desert.”
“Do you still talk to her?”
“Talk to her? Yes, of course. I mean, she’s my mom.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she says, her voice breaking. “I live with my mom, and I barely talk to her. I try as much as I can to stay away from her.”
I shouldn’t have started this game with Blythe. My mother is crazy, but in the not-so-harmful way. It used to be bad. When I was younger, it was bad. But it’s not destructive anymore.
She stares at me hard, then loops her arm around mine tight, locks it in, so I can’t let go. She leans in as we walk, her breath in my ear.
“My mother used to be one of Oscar de la Renta’s designers in her early twenties. She worked for Louis Vuitton for years. And when she’s not in a robe, everything she wears is tailored or silk. It was good to be manic and have these grandiose episodes when she was creative and when she didn’t have me,” she says, bitter. “My mom got arrested when I was eleven for leaving me in a theme park by myself on purpose and then got institutionalized by the state. Now she’s at home under lock and key and medication, of course, when she decides to take it. She goes up and down. Mostly, I’ve gotten stuck driving her to doctor’s appointments because most of her meds have a sedative side effect and because my father is always traveling.”
She stares at me matter-of-factly, her eyes wide open.
“DAMN.”
“Top that, bitch.”
“I think you won,” I say.
“I think my mother out-crazies your mother by a long shot.”
I’m attached to her, a loop on her belt. We stare at each other so serious and then—I can’t help it. Nerves. The exhilaration of saying it out loud. My mother’s crazy. And like a flash, we’re hysterical. Laughing so hard that we’re going to pee. We keep walking. Part of me wants to hug her, because to get left in an amusement park? That sounds awful. My mother left me too—but not in an amusement park. I can’t imagine being left like that.
Blythe and I can shove the painful shit down. And laugh ourselves to tears until we explode. Look at us. So happy on the outside, neglected on the inside by the women in our lives. That’s what we have in common.
I tell her I’ll meet her after fifth period near the cafeteria, and I run off to class. I turn around in the hallway to see where she is, and she’s already gone.
15
BLYTHE
Morning. I look around the kitchen. My mom in her robe. Shuffling around in slippers. Dinner from last night still on the table. Cartons of takeout Mexican food.
“Where is Dad?”
“He left super early this morning.”
“Is Rosita coming?”
“No, Rosita is not coming— Do you understand what a spoiled brat you sound like?”
“I’m not asking if Rosita is coming because I want her to clean up.”
I want to know if Rosita is coming because I want to leave the house, and I can’t leave my mother unless someone else is here. I promised my father. She got kicked out of group therapy the other day. She doesn’t like her meds. They’re making her paranoid. She accused someone of stealing her phone, when really, she just left it at home. She got in the woman’s face. Threatened her. I prefer her when she’s drugged on Klonopin.
Her eyes travel off, looking at the mess around the kitchen, maybe, or just looking at the mess of her life.
“Rosita will be here soon. In twenty minutes. She’s running late.”
I can leave her for twenty minutes. What damage can she do in twenty minutes? I know. I’ll clean until Donnie gets here. I toss the plates into the sink. There’s an empty popcorn bag. There are tissues near the garbage that haven’t been thrown out. I’ll just get things started, that’s all. All my nervous energy around my mother, festering inside me. My therapist would say, Give yourself healthy advice. Channel that discomfort. So I’ll channel it into the dishes. Here I am, a good daughter, washing the dishes.
“Blythe, don’t start throwing dishes around.”
“I’m just clearing the countertops—”
“I’ll do all this. Stop—” she says, and reaches for the dish in my hand. Neither of us holds on to it. The plate breaks in pieces. White porcelain shards scatter across the wood floor.
It all gets so harried and crazy with her so fast. I only want it to slow down. So I stop. I breathe like my therapist told me to. I step over the shards.
“Mom, I have to go to school.”
“It’s fine. Go. I’ll clean this up.”
I grab my backpack and don’t look at her, even though I’m on the verge of punching something or throwing a chair.
“I know you want to blame everything on me, Blythe. But I want someone to blame too. You don’t understand that though, do you?”
I want to say things to her about her taking away my childhood and how since I was six I realized there was “something wrong with Mommy” and sometimes “Mommy isn’t rational,” and how it’s “not my fault that Mommy is sick.”