Everything Is Fine. (11 page)

“Good,” I said.

At home Mom would be laughing and singing and Dad would come home early.

Mom was going to make the art room the nursery, but I said, “She should sleep in my room.”

“Baby, you don’t want a newborn in with you.”

“Yes, I do.”

And I did.

So my room was the nursery, and me and Mom found all sorts of cool things to paint and do to my room.

There’s this one song:
If a thing is hard to do, I’ll not sit and cry. I’ll just sing a merry song and try try try.

Tra la la la la la la la Tra la la la la Tra la la la la la la la Try Try Try.

I make that song go in my head to stop everything. To make everything stop.

It’s a stupid song I learned in choir.

It takes me nine minutes to find the screwdriver.

Dad had moved everything around since Mom stopped doing things, and it was stuffed in a cupboard in the kitchen.

The whole time I’m thinking, be okay, be okay, be okay.

Because there was a time when she did something that wasn’t okay.

It happened just before Dad left.

She did it with pills but she said it was an accident.

“I just needed to sleep,” she said. “I just needed some sleep.”

Dad and I sat with her at the hospital for two days.

Dad paced and paced and paced and I ate M&Ms.

When Mom woke up, she looked at him and said, “I just needed some sleep.”

Dad swore.

Later, in the hallway, I heard the doctor say it would be better if Mom checked in somewhere.

“She needs around-the-clock care.”

Dad said he understood, and he came in and told Mom. She just stared at the ceiling. He cleared his throat and his voice was
shaky, but he said that he thought the doctor was right. “I can’t do this, Roxie. I can’t be here. And there’s that ESPN thing.
I have to go soon.” It was his last chance. He said, “Mazzy can stay with Agnes. It won’t be for long, hon. The doctor said
it’s best.” I felt sick.

Mom’s face was stone. “I just needed sleep,” she whispered.

Later, when Dad went out to get some fresh air, Mom said this: “Mazzy, I’m going to talk to your dad, but you need to help
me, okay? I don’t want to go to a facility. I am not going to a facility.”

“I don’t want to live with Aunt Agnes,” I said.

“You don’t have to. We’ll do this together. Do you understand?”

I didn’t exactly but I said, “Yeah, Mom.”

When Dad got back, Mom sat up and said, “Dave, Mazzy needs me. She just told me that she needs me and she doesn’t want me
to go. I’m not going to a treatment center.”

Dad looked at me but Mom said, “She can hear this. She’s a big girl.”

He sighed and Mom went on. “We can hire someone to help around the house. We could even have Bill come. I’ll go to therapy.
Whatever. We can figure it out, but Mazzy needs me, and I need Mazzy.” Her voice was clear.

Dad was shaking his head.

“I’m not going, Dave,” she said, and sat up taller.

Dad leaned against the wall and let out a long breath.

“We can handle this. I just got tired. That’s all.” Her voice ran out.

Finally Dad looked up. “Roxie, I have to go to Connecticut. The job can’t wait any longer and I can’t leave the two of you
alone.”

“We’ll be fine,” Mom said. “Right, Maz?” She looked at me.

“Yeah, Dad,” I said. “I’ll take care of Mom. We’ll be fine.”

“See?” Mom said.

And Dad sighed again.

That night Dad said he really wanted me to go to Kansas.

“I can’t leave you and your mom alone.”

“Dad, please. Please don’t make me go.”

He said if I didn’t want to go to Kansas maybe he could find something else.

He said, “Couldn’t you stay with one of your friends?”

Dad didn’t get how nothing was the same anymore. He wasn’t there. I just wanted to be with Mom. “No, Dad.”

“What about summer camp?”

“No. I want to be home. We’ll be fine.”

He closed his eyes and I said, “I promise, Dad. It’ll be okay.”

That night I heard him on the phone with a whole bunch of nurses.

And then with Bill.

I’ve tried to paint Olivia.

I’ve tried and tried.

I can’t do it.

I can see her face but I can’t paint it.

I wonder if she hates me.

N
OT
O
LIVIA
: oils on canvas

So far, Mom hasn’t done anything stupid. She’s stopped talking. She’s stopped eating. She’s stopped moving. She’s stopped
showering. She’s stopped everything. But she hasn’t done anything STUPID.

“Be okay, be okay,” I say over and over while I look for the screwdriver. When I finally find it, I run to the bathroom, and
just before I put it in the door, I say three more times, “Be okay, be okay, be okay,” and do a yoga breath.

Colby comes home on his bike wobbling around because he has on cleats and football pants and a big bag on his back.

I say, “I didn’t even know our school had a team.”

“Yeah, duh.”

“Oh,” I say. “So did you make it?”

Colby wipes some sweat from his forehead. “Not yet,” he says, and he comes and sits in the sprinklers with me. “I’m dead.
Two-a-days are killing me.”

“What are two-a-days?”

“Two practices in a day. I’d think you’d know that with your dad and everything.”

“Oh,” I say, and pull out a dandelion. “But you’re not on the team?”

“Not yet.”

I look at him. “Then why do you have to do two-a-days?”

He just shakes his head, which is lying in the wet grass, and then he opens his mouth so the water can get in.

Then I say how I might be a cheerleader.

He opens his eyes and says, “Yeah right.”

“What?”

“You’re not going to be a cheerleader.”

“Why not?”

He closes his eyes again.

“Why not?” I say again.

“Because.”

“Because why?”

He crosses his ankles and starts rubbing his stomach.

“Or I could be on the football team.”

He laughs loud then. “Dream on,” he said.

“I could. I could be an LB.”

“An LB?” Now he flips over on his stomach and is looking at me. I pull out another dandelion and eat it.

“Sick.”

“What?”

“You just ate a dandelion.”

“I know.”

“You are so weird.”

“So?”

“So you are.”

“So?”

“And you are not going to be an LB. You are way too little. Plus they don’t even call them LBs. That sounds so dumb. You don’t
even know what you’re talking about.”

But I do.

And Colby probably knows I do, because of my dad and everything.

Dad played football in college. His dream was to go to the NFL — the Steelers or the Bears.

But he tore his Achilles his senior year.

He tried to play after that but he was never really the same.

So then his dream was to work
Monday Night Football.
He almost has his dream.

I am going to ask Dad if calling a linebacker an LB sounds dumb.

D
AD AS A FOOTBALL PLAYER
: paint on canvas

I rattle the screwdriver but the door won’t open.

There is no sound from the other side of the door.

I rattle some more. “Mom,” I say, “please open the door.”

Quiet.

“Mom, what are you doing in there? You told Dad you wouldn’t do anything stupid.”

Still quiet.

I rattle and rattle and rattle until finally the lock clicks and the door swings open.

The lights are glaring and her makeup is spread across the counter. Her brushes are out, her hair dryer, hair spray, gel,
mask, almost every ounce of every bathroom product is crammed on the counter.

I look at the tub — the shower curtain is pulled.

“Mom?”

She doesn’t answer but I do hear a sort of whimper.

I yank the curtain.

Her clothes are off and she is huddled in the corner of the empty jetted double tub.

“Mom?”

The whimpering gets a little louder and she just sits there.

“Mom?” I kneel down by the tub.

Her face is in her knees.

“Mom, it’s okay. I can help you. Do you want me to help you?”

She doesn’t say anything. I reach out to touch her shoulder and she moves away.

She is shivering and her shoulder blades stick out. Her skin looks like Elmer’s glue.

I don’t know what to do.

Until I think of what to do: I get her blanket.

Then I crawl in the tub and sit facing her.

She looks up. “What are you doing?” she whispers. Her lips are blue.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Mom just watches. And finally smiles.

I smile back.

We sit like that for a while.

And a while.

Until she suddenly says, “I can’t do this.”

Her face crumples and she is back in her knees.

“Do what, Mom?”

She sniffs and says even more quietly, “I can’t be normal. I can’t face Dave. I can’t face anyone.” She looks up at me. “And
I can’t be a mom.”

I try to do three yoga breaths because for some reason I can’t get air.

“Mom, don’t say that. You’re a good mom.”

She is shaking now, and the Elmer’s glue looks almost transparent.

“I let her die, Mazzy. I watched my own baby girl die.” She is shaking harder now and I can feel tears coming up in my head
but I don’t want them to come. I don’t want them to come. “I shouldn’t be talking about this with you,” she says. “I have
no one to talk to.” And then her voice trails off.

“Mom,” I whisper. She is shaking and shaking and then sobbing. Sobbing so loud — louder than anything I’ve ever heard in my
life and suddenly I’m shaking too.

“Mom,” I whisper louder. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault.”

Her head snaps up. “Then whose fault was it?” Her voice all of a sudden steady, her face a mess of snot and tears.

For some reason I feel scared. I’m scared.

“Nobody’s,” I say.

“What?” she says back.

“Nobody’s.”

“Mazzy, if it wasn’t my fault, whose fault do you think it was?” she asks, her voice suddenly more than strong, almost a yell.

I take a deep breath.

Three deep breaths.

And then I say it.

I whisper it.

“Mazzy, I can’t hear you.” There is a tremor in the air. “What did you say?”

Finally, I look straight at her and say what we both know is the truth. What Dad knows is the truth. What probably the whole
neighborhood and the cops and the paramedics and everybody know is the truth. “Mine, Mom. I said it was my fault.”

The day Olivia died it was hot outside just like now.

Sweaty hot.

And it was 9:43. My first gymnastics class ever started at 10:00 and it was in Springville, which was a half hour away.

For two weeks I had put up signs: Gymnastics 10:00 Saturday, August 4th, Springville Center.

I put them up in the kitchen, in my parents bathroom, on the fridge, on my dad’s steering wheel. Everywhere.

It was because I saw this flyer at the grocery store for Xtreme Gymnastics and I wanted to do it and I got all my friends
to sign up and it was going to be perfect.

But sometimes things didn’t always happen how they were supposed to.

Dad said, “Mazzy, you’ve papered the whole house,” and then he laughed. “You’d think this was the most important gymnastics
class on the planet.”

I karate chopped at him and said, “I just don’t want to miss it.”

“Yeah. I get it.” He laughed again. And he karate chopped back.

But then the day of the class he was called in to work.

And Mom was mad because she had art critiques and didn’t have time and she’d have to take Olivia with her and she didn’t have
time for this and why did Dad always do this. I was sitting by the door waiting and Mom was rushing around and I said, “You
can just drop me off early and come back,” but she said, “I don’t have time, Maz. I have to get to the art center by 10:30,”
and then she was getting in the shower but it was 9:15 and she wouldn’t be ready in time.