Page 112 of Road Trip
Chapter Twenty-Five
Abra
Gran and I settled into a routine after Mom died. I did the chores when I got home from work, I cooked dinner, and then we’d sit and play cards or board games until she was too tired to stay up. Katie still came during the day, but after the first couple of days of her trying to get me to talk about Kelly, I told her to drop it or get the fuck out. I appreciated she was there during the day for Gran, but I wasn’t going to spend any more energy worrying about him. I couldn’t. I didn’t have any energy for myself.
Work was draining me and I was backsliding into a depression. It was all I could do to pull myself out of bed in the mornings and do the bare minimum to my appearance. Geri asked how I was really doing, and when I got the hint that I was fucking up at work, I made an appointment with my therapist and finally started going and talking it all out.Allof it. She upped my medication and that helped a little, but I was still crying myself to sleep every night.
Crying…what the fuck was that about? I missed Kelly desperately. For the longest time I wore to bed his dirty shirts he’d left over and still had one tucked in my pillow. I wanted to reach out to him so much, but after what I’d said…
Manny came over one week during his break, and Gran invited him to stay for dinner. I packed up some more of Kelly’s stuff and gave it to him, assuring him I just thought Kelly needed it, not that I wanted it gone. He let me know that Kelly had a new partner, a dude who was nearing retirement and was letting Kelly do all the work, something Kelly didn’t mind at all because it kept him busy and focused. I gathered that Kelly wasn’t doing well being apart from me either. Manny’s visits continued weekly to the point where he and Gran became good buddies and ganged up on me frequently. If I had been in my right mind and trusted what I knew about Kelly, I would have recognized that Manny wasn’t just being friendly, but that he was watching out for me on Kelly’s behalf. Probably spying for him, too. But I just couldn’t muster that trust.
Through all of this I talked to Stevie weekly when she came to my school site to pick up and drop off work for her Home Hospital students. We had lunch when we could. She told me Kelly had been by the shop to have his guitar worked on, and he and Aaron had even jammed together a few times at the house.
“Does he seem happy?” I asked her, disgusted with myself that I didn’t have the balls to ask him myself.
“What do you think, Abey? He talks to Aaron some…but no, no, he’s not happy.”
I wanted to ask more, I wanted to. It wasn’t my right anymore.
In mid-October, Aaron came with Stevie to the school and they were extra smiley together.
“So we want you to come to Open Mic on Saturday,” Stevie said with a giggle.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not up for going out. I wouldn’t be any fun,” I said, trying to beg out of it. They weren’t having it. Stevie said she’d drive over and get me herself if I didn’t promise to be there. Aaron and his business partner had organized these nights at the Bistro next door to their shop and I’d been once or twice. It was a good time. I just didn’t want to be around them and their googley-eyed selves. I had a feeling I’d already lost this battle, however.
“Fine! But I’m coming in my sweats and I’m not doing my hair or makeup. I’ll listen to you play with yourself, McShane, then I’m going home.”
They both snickered.
“Do what you want, but be there,” Stevie said with a wink.
I rolled my eyes and shooed them out of my office. Great. I had plans tomorrow night.Fuck me.
For the past few Saturdays, I had been going through Mom’s things. Last weekend I’d gotten all of her stuff sorted into shit to donate and shit to put in the attic to deal with another year or so from now when things weren’t too fresh. ButI kept out her diaries from when she was younger, when she was in her late teens and living a wild life. I thought maybe I could finally see who she really was, but what I got was the musings of a maniac.
I guess in my mind I’d thought that she was like me and that she eventually got worse to the point of non-functioning, but I could tell that wasn’t the case. She ranted like a lunatic in these journals. Everything from detailing her sexcapades, to knock-down, drag-out fights with Gran over what she chose to do with her life, and even to diatribes about the injustices of the world that were completely delusional. I’d never been like her. Even my sexcapades were out of curiosity and the desire to be loved, not like hers. She detailed a relationship she had with a man before she met my father. She went on about how good it felt to fuck his best friends knowing he’d fight with them and then come crawling back to her. It was insane! It was vicious! Their affair was no fairy tale, to be sure. She knew he was a gang member and was excited by his level of violence. I was horrified at the things she described. And then she became pregnant. She was excited about having a baby, actually, and I started to see a change in her. She admitted she’d been reckless, careless and a part of her wanted to change and be a good mother to me.
But then he got arrested. She discovered he’d killed a man, someone they both knew. It was a wake-up call to her and she didn’t want me around any of it, so she cut all ties with him and his family. Sadly, though, she sank into a depression that seemed to get deeper and deeper until there was no coming out. She stopped writing before I was born, so I never even knew how she felt about having a child of her own.
My fear of becoming just like her dissipated. I may have been depressed, but I’d never been delusional. I’d always had a firm grounding in the real world, and other than running away, I’d always dealt with reality. I told my therapist all of this, and she agreed that my mother’s problems were vastly different than mine, and that I shouldn’t compare my mental health trajectory to hers.
“The fact that you are here, Abra, and working on yourself should tell you that.”
I even got up the nerve to talk to Gran about it one night. I told her my fears and what I’d learned in the journals.
“Abra darling. I hate it that you’ve been so worried about that. You are like your mother only in appearance. Well, maybe in temper and that foul mouth of yours. I wish you wouldn’t carry that weight on your shoulders any longer. I’ll never understand what happened to her and I’ll regret some things about her life for the rest of mine. Most of it was her choice; some of it was a result of my decisions. I know she is at peace now. She was never at peace in her life. You have a real chance to find yours.”
She was right. The one area I hadn’t made progress in was my relationship with Kelly. I had no idea what to do.
The Saturday I was expected to drop my moping routine and show up to Open Mic, I dropped off the rest of the donation stuff and shoved the box of keepsakes into a corner of the attic where it wouldn’t get wrecked. When I came back downstairs, Gran was standing there. She’d gotten her cast off a week earlier and was getting around on her own much better.
“Abra, darling, would you please come down here? The delivery man has left a package and I can’t quite pick it up.”
I grumbled under my breath.
“You shouldn’t be picking anything up yet!” I backed down the ladder and pushed it back up into the slot and closed the attic hatch.
Gran was standing there with a mischievous grin on her face.
