Page 60 of As a Last Resort
“Dramatic?I have twenty-three screws in my arm.I think I earned the right to befactual.”
She turned away from me and started to walk back down the hallway to her room.
“I was in the hospital in a coma, Mom.For three days.You don’t think that deserves an apology?”
“Well, if your father hadn’t left—” she started over her shoulder.
“He didn’t leave, Mom.It wasn’t a choice,” I called out after her.“It’s not like he packed up a suitcase one day and said he didn’t want us anymore and walked out the door.”
This was the argument I walked away from every single time, but I wasn’t going to walk away this time.I was tired of being scared to pick up the phone, terrified of getting the call where she did something irreversible.Again.And maybe this time, they didn’t get to walk away with just a few screws.
“He wasn’t here anymore and that’s not what I signed up for.”
“Taking care of a drunk while I’m trying to deal with losing my dad isn’t what I signed up for either.You think that was an easy thing to do?You think that’s a fair weight to carry for a teenage girl?”
“He left us, Samantha.”
“Yeah, well, you left too.Your body just hung around a little longer than his did.”
She looked at me like I had slapped her across the face.
“It’s time for you to leave.”
“I’m tired of ignoring the fact there’s no oxygen in the room.It’s suffocating both of us.I can’t live with this on my chest anymore.Something has to give.”
“How about you do what you need to for work, then run back off to New York again and pretend like I don’t exist down here.That’s been working well for you for the past seven years.I don’t see a need to change that now.”
“You didn’t give me a choice in leaving, Mom.I was out of options.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Ironic advice coming from you.”
“Out,” she ordered.
“If you’re not up for talking about this now, fine, but this conversation isn’t over.”I pushed myself up from the counter.“Oh, and you’re welcome, for coming and getting you last night so you didn’t puke all over cute Mr.Johnson’s couch and floor.I’ll tell Austin you said thanks for the coffee.”
I walked back to my room to grab the few things I had brought for the night.
I hadn’t noticed it the night before, but the air in the room smelled stale, like it hadn’t moved since I left seven years ago.Third-place dance trophies stuck in time sat on a shelf collecting dust.Pictures were frozen on the mirror dying to grow older.My bedspread reeked of that unmistakable mustiness of mismatched linens forgotten in the back of a closet that didn’t belong anymore but never got thrown away.
I opened the top drawer of my desk, and underneath the stacksof handwritten poems and papers, school announcements and homecoming court pamphlets, I knew was the folded newspaper article.
I pried open the top of it:LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR IN COMA AFTER MOTHER’S ACCIDENT SHAKES SMALL COMMUNITY.
Most people say they don’t remember the first few days after losing a loved one.I’m not one of those people.
I remember every single moment after my dad died.
I remember the way the slices of bread I would leave beside my mom’s sleeping body on the couch would get stale.
I remember the smell of rotten casseroles piling up in the garbage—too many, too quickly—and taking out the trash took energy I didn’t have.
I remember crawling into their bed when she refused to leave the couch and smelling every single inch of fabric, trying to find a trace of my dad.
I remember screaming into his pillow as loud as I could, hoping my mom didn’t hear me because I was so embarrassed that I just couldn’t keep it in and quiet like she did.
Then, I remember years of watching her waste away, pound after pound.
