A Blue So Dark (13 page)

"Burr fee," she corrects, through guffaws. "It's like coconut fudge. Instead of some plain old cake."

I'm red in the face, I know it, and Dad's eating my humiliation up like Brandi was shoveling down the Indian food just a second ago.

I can't stand curry-Brandi would know that if she'd paid any attention at all the night she and Dad took me out to announce their sickening engagement. So I reach for my packages instead.

"That one's from me," Brandi says proudly.

I shake the top off the box, peel back the tissue paper, and find a blouse. A designer white blouse.

"You don't like it," Brandi says, disappointed.

"It's fitted," I say, eyeing the seams that curve in at the sides-just the kind of thing that makes my boobs look like watermelons. "I don't wear fitted clothes."

"But, Aura, most girls would kill for a figure like yours. Or pay a fortune in plastic surgery for it, anyway."

"My figure is exactly why I never wear clothes like this," I say, shoving it back into the box.

"Well, hon-I can-take it back-"

"No, you won't," Dad barks. "You went to a lot of trouble to shop for Aura, to buy her a shirt that belongs on a lady and not a twelve-year-old boy," he says, eyeing my hoodie. "And I think she'll get plenty of good out of it."

I bite back every word that wants to fly out at him, and reach for Dad's gift. I know what it is before I even open it.

"Journals," I say, shaking the top off the other gift box and peeling back the tissue paper. A whole stack of them.

Some white-coat suggested the journals back when we first put Mom on meds. We. I really mean, Dad. A family member was supposed to record her behavior, so we'd know, as the white-coat put it, "if we need to tweak the dosage." Mom was so disgusted, she just glared at him like tweak this.

I'd swallowed a laugh and sneaked a glance at Dad, wishing he'd roll his eyes. But he'd changed by then-he'd cut off his ponytail and given me all his old Sex Pistols records. He was cringing every time he saw me leave with Mom for a day of classes at the art museum. He grew red in the face every time he found one of Mom's crystals on the kitchen counter. Dad wasn't the same person who read all of Mom's new-age metaphysics books. He wasn't the guy who'd helped Mom try to hypnotize me, wanting to find out who I'd been in a previous life. He wasn't the guy who'd grounded me for a month after I'd giggled during a seance the three of us had held because Mom had wanted to reconnect with her dead father. That day, in the whitecoat's office, Dad was the kind of creep who gobbled that journal bullshit down like a starving eight-year-old with free reign at Mickey D's.

I run my fingers down the corduroy cover on the top journal in the stack. I guess somewhere in his brain, he figures all it takes is a hundred bound, blank sheets to make it okay that he's not around anymore. To make it okay that Mom's all mine. Like, here we have this pretty little clothcovered book and now Aura won't be mad at me. For Dad, parenting has become just like shooting one of his stupid insurance ads-some makeup to cover the blemishes, a flashy smile, and wham! He's got himself a regular pictureperfect family.

"So you can keep track of her," Dad says, like he does every single freaking year when he gives me my usual pile of journals. "Write every day, Aura. It's very important."

I nod. The sad truth is, Dad only bothers to think about Mom in the same way anybody in the world thinks about an old flame. You know, once in a blue moon, you might get to remembering them-there you are, stretched out on the back porch on a summer night with the lightning bugs and a nice cold beer, and you say something like, I wonder what happened to Adam Riley. First boy I ever made out with, back in the ninth grade. He gave me mono, the bastard. I hope he's scrubbing toilets at Wendy's and has a bad case of the clap.

Yeah, that's how Dad thinks about Mom. Only when that blue moon finds him, he's on the back nine of a golf course, because he figured it out the second time around and married into money. And he's standing there in the bright, warm sun, and he's thinking, Wonder what that freakazoid first wife of mine is doing with all that alimony she's got me paying out the ass for. Ah, well, at least I was smart enough to have a kid with her so that she'll always be taken care of and all I'll ever have to do is give the kid a pile of journals and sing, "Happy Birthday, "loiddy-doiddy-di.

Brandi wipes her mouth on a white linen napkin and asks, "How'd you get out here today? Did your mom bring you? Because, you know, hon, she could come inside."

And do what? I want to ask. Wait on the balcony until we're done?

I shake my head no, but my "no" means I now have to explain how I really did get to the loft. Because dear old Dad hasn't even offered a single driver's lesson. And if I lied and said, Oh, yeah, Dad, got my license this morning. Me and Mom went right to the DMV and I took my test, and gee-williker-whiz, I passed with flying freaking colors, then he'd want to see my license. Or Brandi would. So she could oooh and ahhh all over it while getting that sickeningly pleased look on her face that says she knows she takes a better picture than me.

I get all stiff inside, like the time Dad caught me smoking his Camels in the garage. (I wonder if Dad was honest about once having a pack-a-day habit when he applied for his own health insurance. Probably not. That happened to somebody else. A guy who married a schizo and named his kid after the energy field his wife swore she saw around their newborn daughter's head.) What the hell do I say?

"I ... I took the bus," I lie, praying that Dad hasn't seen the Tempo parked out next to the curb.

But Dad frowns, and already Aura, you idiot-I know where I've slipped up. His loft overlooks the bus terminal.

"There isn't a bus that comes through at this time," Dad says. "I mean, not that we take the bus, but being this close and all, you notice-"

"Yeah," I say, getting ready to try on lie #2. "Okay. My boyfriend dropped me off."

And dear old Dad-how I would love to kick his stupid teeth in-he just stares at me, all taken aback and shocked.

"Why does that surprise you?" I snap. "It surprises you that I'd actually have a boyfriend?"

"You just have a lot going on, is all," Dad says.

"Yeah, well, don't worry about it. I can take care of Mom and date at the same time," I tell the fake concern he's got plastered on his face.

"It's not that," he stammers. "I just-you're awfully young. To have begun all that, I mean."

"To have begun?" And it hits me-Dad doesn't remember the summer before last, how I left the retarded anniversary bash that he (actually, Brandi) had thrown for his in-laws, literally five minutes after I'd shown up, because Janny and I had a double date, her with Ace and me with Adam Riley, that disgustingly picture-perfect blond soccer player with ego oozing out his pores. Yeah, Adam Riley, who I hated, but kept going out with anyway, just so I could hang out with Janny.

And he doesn't remember the day he'd decided to drop by like Mr. Good Dad, flicked on the light in the basement, and found me, Janny, Ace, and Adam playing ridiculous, juvenile make-out games (and there I was, wanting to throw up because Adam was such a creep). Doesn't remember how he just stood there, stuttering in the doorway with my week-late birthday present (yet another stack of journals) in his hand. How Adam jumped to his feet and hightailed it out of the basement, or how Ace and Janny laughed their butts off, Ace screaming, "Go, Adam, go!"

My mind boggles. I mean-he doesn't remember any of it?

Adam? I think. He doesn't remember Adam?

"What's this boy's name?" Dad asks, looking generally as bewildered and flustered as he would if I'd shown up to this sorry excuse for a birthday party in my birthday suit.

"Adam Riley," I say, head tilted down, glaring up at him through my eyebrows.

"I hope-I hope he's a fine boy, Adam."

"Nope. He just dates me 'cause I have the biggest boobs in the eleventh grade," I grumble, shocked that I've said it out loud. You never paid any goddamned attention at all, did you? You don't even know who I am.

"But the, uh, the journals," Dad says, all flustered. "Write down her behavior, her moods, anything that strikes you, anything at all. And if it looks like she's going to have another-"

"Episode," I spit, fuming mad now-fuming-finish ing Dad's sentences, just like I finish them every single goddamned year.

"Right. If she has an episode-"

Oh, Dad, if only you knew ...

"You'll be able to look back in your journal and tell the doctor exactly what's wrong. He'll be able to fix it right away. He'll be able to-"

"Tweak the dosage," we both say in unison.

Yeah, I think, staring at him from across the table, the nasty smell of curry filling the space between us. Tell it like it is, creep. Just say, `Here you go, Aura. Write everything down so I won't ever have to get involved, not one more time. " Say it. Say she's mine. You can't be fucking bothered.

Hallucinations arc the result of hypedup, super,sharp senses. It's really almost as though a schizophrenic's brain -works too well, Often, auditory hallucinations (voices) drive the schizo to engage in completely terrifying behavior.

s I pull the Tempo into the driveway, I feel lightheaded and woozy. Our front door is wide open, and a mountain of tools-shovels and rakes and hedge clippers and trowels and hammers-are all piled on the front porch.

"Mom?" I croak. The curry I gagged down to please Brandi is trying to crawl right up my throat.

As I climb out of the car, everything turns slowmotion-like that moment in a movie when a woman sees her little baby tottering out toward the street and realizes a semi is headed their way.

"Nooooooooo," the mother shouts, her voice all low and distorted. But the truck comes anyway.

Splat. Her kid is a pile of pink guts. Enter Angela Frieson in her white autopsy coat.

This moment is just like that-slow and agonizing, and even though I can't see her, I know Mom's headed straight for disaster. She's headed straight for a metaphorical semi.

Splat.

"Mom?" My voice cracks. I'm sick. I have a fever and blisters in my throat. That's what it feels like, anyway. I have pancreatitis. I have cancer. I'm dying, here.

I navigate my way around the pile of tools and burst into the house. "Mom?" I try again, but the word clings to the roof of my mouth.

In the living room, I find more tools-a sledgehammer lies on the floor like a just-fired gun. I swear, I can almost see smoke curling out of it.

"Oh my God," I say. Melodramatically, my hand flies to my forehead, a la actress in a silent movie. "Oh my God," I repeat, standing there like an idiot as I stare at the hole in the wall. She's smashed right through the drywall, into the wooden frame. The hole looks horrifically permanent, like damage inflicted by a hunting rifle. If I stare long enough, the shadows inside the wall start to look black-red, like fresh blood pouring from a wounded heart. Ohmygodohmygod- ohmygodohmygod.

"Mom!" I shout it this time.

A gust of wind reaches into the living room and slides its cool hand into mine.

Wind? There shouldn't be wind in the middle of the house, not like this, not like there's a-a what?

An open door?

In the kitchen, the mermaids are all swinging back and forth on their strings. The sliding glass door is wide open.

I lunge outside and nearly collapse with relief. She's here, she's here, and she's in one piece. As I step toward her, trying to figure out how to ask her what this is all about, I realize mud is caked on the knees of her jeans and her face and her arms. She's also wearing Dad's old gardening gloves, the ones Mom and I have always hated because they're as scratchy on the inside as sandpaper. But for some reason that doesn't seem to bother her today. Maybe, I catch myself thinking, it even soothes her. Kind of like when you have poison ivy and everything itches so bad that you pour bleach on your rash, hoping the pain of a chemical burn might bring relief.

"What've you done?" I finally manage to ask.

Mom points to the rose bushes that she'd long ago started watering and pruning and caring for like babies, because Dad (who had always been in charge of the yard work) was killing them. Dad was better at cutting away dead limbs, pulling up unwanted weeds. Better at ripping things apart than keeping them alive. So Mom took over the care of the roses, every fall going through the same painstaking ritual to prepare them for the winter-removing all the fallen leaves that had blown across the yard and collected around the bushes, giving the ground a good soaking before it could freeze, mounding nearly a foot of mulch around each plant. She did such an amazing job that the summer before my seventh-grade year, Mrs. Pilkington tried to get Mom to enter her gorgeous pink blooms in the state fair.

But today, instead of trying to protect them, she's killed them all. Their dirt-covered roots are all sticking up into the fall sunshine. They look like dead dogs, roots like rigor-mortis-infused legs. The holes left in the ground are shallow graves.

"You pulled them up?" I say. "You pulled them all up? But you loved them."

"I had to," Mom snaps. "They were crying."

"The bushes?" I say, clutching the base of my throat.

"No," she says, as if I'm completely dense, "the walls. The walls were crying. I was trying so hard to work, and the crying-it just-it wouldn't let me. I went to find you, I looked everywhere and I called you, but you were gone. Where were you? I wanted so badly to wait, but they wouldn't let me. I went out in the yard and I called your name and you didn't answer, but the walls were crying, crying, and they wouldn't leave me alone. And you were gone!"

"Okay," I say, tears lodged behind my tonsils. "Okay, Mom."

"I had to," Mom insists. "The walls were crying. Loud. Crying. The roots were trying to break through the walls. I could hear them. And those thorns, Aura. The thorns were so sharp and the bushes were trying to grow right through. And the walls-I couldn't let them suffer. Could I? I had to help. And I looked for you, but I couldn't find you. Where were you?"

Guilt fizzes and pours over the top of me like I'm a just-opened two liter of Dr Pepper.

"I'm really tired now," Mom says. She looks tired. The kind of tired that saturates. She's dripping with tired.

"It's okay, Mom," I say. "I'm just-so sorry."

"I did good, though, right?" she says. "I fixed it? Did you see how I fixed it?"

I stare at the uprooted bushes, thinking I could still maybe rescue them, replant every single one. But then again, if the bushes upset her so much, maybe we're better off this way.

"Yeah, Mom," I say. "You fixed it." I lead her inside, wash her muddy hands in the sink. After I've dried her off, I get her to stretch out on the living room couch. I prop a pillow under her head, and pull the afghan off the back cushions to cover her up.

"You get some rest," I say, smoothing her hair from her face. "I'll be right outside, cleaning up, if you need me."

"You're a good girl," she says, and for a split second I think I see her there-Grace Ambrose, born April 3, 1970. She is still alive. I even think I see something a little like an apology: I am far away right now but hang on I will come back please Aura you are a good girl you will not make me go down there in the dark bottom of a pill bottle I hate them Aura the chemicals but I love you love you love you.

But then the murky tides roll in, darkening the depths of her eyes. "Did I ever tell you about my dad?" she asks. "And how amazing he was? He was a writer, you know, and my own mom had him put away. He was my dad. He was mine, we were kindred spirits. And my mom, she put him away, someplace where everybody sucked the life out of him. Like bloodletting, only with his soul. They used little soul razors on him until his soul was gone. They killed him. Killed."

"Shh," I tell her, choking back a sob.

"But I'm going to get away from her," Mom promises. "I'm going to run away to my Keith, and we will-happily ever after. "

I pull the blanket up to her chin. "Just rest, okay?"

I grab a box of lawn and leaf trash bags from the garage, along with some hedge clippers, and head outside, where I slide into the gloves Mom dropped on the October ground.

I attack the bush closest to me, using the clippers to snip the limbs into manageable chunks. I drop the clippers and start shoving handfuls of limbs into a trash bag.

"Garbage man won't take that, you know." The voice jumps out at me like fake snakes from a magic store can of peanut brittle.

I yelp, putting a hand to my chest.

"Sorry," Joey says from the opposite side of the fence. "Didn't mean to scare you."

I keep clipping and shoving, hoping he'll go back in the house soon. He doesn't get the hint, though, and watches me like I'm some topless dancer with a mouth-watering pitcher of Bud in my hand. But I'm a little afraid to tell him right out to leave me alone, because I remember Dad's warning. Steer clear ofJoey. What had Dad known? Why didn't he ever really talk to me?

"Hey, Aura," Joey says, his voice as thick and sweet as Kato Syrup. "If you like yard work so much, you can come over here and help me rake leaves."

"I don't think so, Joey," I growl, infusing the words with plenty of I hope you realize how much trouble I could cause for you ifyou don't turn around right now. After all, I'm only sixteen years old, you nasty old perverted drunken druggie.

I turn back to the bushes, listening as Joey's feet crunch in the opposite direction. Once he's disappeared back inside his house, my stomach finally starts to unwind a little.

But it's impossible to shove these limbs into a trash bag that keeps getting tossed around by the October wind. I need someone to hold the bag open-or, I think, as my eyes settle on a metal trash can behind the Pilkingtons' shed, something to hold it open. I rush to the back of the yard, hoist myself over the chain link, and reach for the can. But as soon as I start to move it, the inside rattles-clink, clink-like a whole room of glasses coming together in a toast. When I pop the lid off, I find whiskey bottles. Two empties, one half-full, one never opened.

My stomach kind of twists, and instantly, I wish I'd never seen them at all. Sure, I could snitch. But who would I snitch to? Whose bottles are they? Joey's mother's, most likely, the way things are looking right now-but with the Pilkingtons, you could never be sure. Obviously, though, it's a hiding place for one of them, and I figure I should do something-pour the whiskey out. Or toss the bottles into my yard, get rid of them later that night when no one's watching from the twenty or so windows that fill the back of the Pilkington house. Then maybe the rightful owner of the hooch would think they'd been found out by their lush of a family member. Might even be a way to shame that person into stopping. Head them out to rehab for the 142nd time.

My eyes trail over to the window on the back of my own house-the one that leads straight into the living room, where I tucked Mom in. The uprooted bushes lie just below it, in ugly, frantic-looking piles.

The back door bursts open, and Mom emerges from the house with tubes of red paint in her hands. Starts squirting the acrylic all over the plants, screaming, "Fix, fix it. Fix." As if red paint is all her bushes need to come back to life again.

I've still got the lid to the Pilkingtons' trash can in my hand. I stare down-two empties, one half-full, one never opened. What are you going to do, Aura? All my options swarm like the bees that will never again be drawn to the sweet smell of Mom's bushes. But the Pilkingtons' mess is none of my business, is it? I've got my own problems right now.

So I slam the lid back on the trash can, pretend I haven't seen a thing. Rush to grab Mom's arm and haul her back into the house, before anyone can see how bad she is.