Before My Eyes (21 page)

“I would have taken a bath if I had known,” adds Izzy. “But Mommy says I'm fine. I don't have to take a bath.”

“You have to take a bath, Izzy,” I say.

“Mommy says I don't. She's back and she's the boss again.” Izzy runs over and hugs our mother around her waist.

“Gentle,” says my father to her, as he shoves the garbage down into the pail with more force than needed. “See, I told you, our Claire isn't a kid anymore. Are you, kiddo?” says my father, attempting to be funny, pouring fresh yellow batter onto the griddle, splattering it. “Let's try this again.” My father is someone who always believes in second chances, in do-overs.

“Are you done with your pancakes, Izzy?” I ask, clearing her dish away so quickly she has to grab at one final bite. I wish it could be only me and Izzy. I want yesterday back. I want the beach.

“Don't you want some, Claire? They're good. Come on, have some.”

“No.”

“Can I watch TV now?” Izzy asks.

“Go,” I say. I want to say run. Get your bathing suit. Get in the minivan.

“Mommy?” she asks. She races over to my mother and then leaps over to me. I kneel in front of her. I want to bury my head in her blond curls.

“Aren't you glad that she's home, Claire?”

I say nothing. I am, but I'm not. I don't like surprises, maybe that's it.

My mother is following this; my father is not. This is how it always was. She would know when things were wrong. She would know somehow. But then, maybe I'm imagining this. My mother can't be the same. It will never be like it was.

“I love you, Claire,” says Izzy.

“I love you more, Izzy. Now go. You don't want to miss your TV show.”

Izzy hugs me first, and then my father and then her. My mother can hug Izzy back only with one arm. But that's enough for Izzy, who blurts out, “I love you. I love you. I love you,” at top speed, and she's off, downstairs, the television on too loud.

I will not look at her, at the other hand, which is folded, immobile across her waist.

“I missed,” she says, “you.” Each word has its own emphasis, like my mother is from another country and practicing her English.

“Isn't this our dream, our hope?” my father asks me, touching her shoulders as if to confirm that it isn't a dream. “To have your mother home?”

“Our dream? Did you know I dreamt of her every night? Do you even care about me? You couldn't tell me she was coming home?” My stomach churns. I run tepid tap water into a cup. I chug it down.

“If only we could,” says my mother with so much exertion that she has to sit back, “live in our dreams.”

She searches for my eyes. “In no time, life changed. But I have more to do.” She takes a deep breath. “Much more.”

I can't bear to look at her in the kitchen, in her old seat. Near the window, birds, plain sparrows, build nests in our oak tree. I don't know why I feel trapped as if in someone else's house, someone else's kitchen, as if the world is suddenly off-balance.

My father cuts off his happy voice. “Laurie. I'm sorry. I don't know why she's acting this way. Claire, can't you see this is your mother and she's home. Give her a hug.”

The birds swoop in and out of that old oak tree, a grand tree, gathering sticks and grass. I used to like to climb its branches, sometimes too high, imagining that if I fell, I'd grow wings. I'd fly, too.

She flutters the fingers on her good hand toward me. The other is lifeless. The fingers are curved. The thick nails need to be cut. If I touch the skin it will be dry and scaly. I should have made that 911 call faster, realized something was wrong sooner. Maybe then, she wouldn't be like this. “I didn't recognize myself, Claire. Didn't know who I was. Didn't know my own name.”

I still don't know who this person is. I want my mother. I want her whole. Send this one back.

“But you. That day. You saved me. Because of you—and your sister and your father—I will recover.”

It takes me a minute for what she is saying to sink in. To feel like my head is above water.
Save her?
I was foolish and unthinking—and the birds are swirling, chirping, urgent about a storm coming or winter—and I didn't save her or anyone. I didn't act fast enough. Maybe the doctors did. But not me.

Her eyes flutter closed. The words having flooded out of her, a burst of fluency, and she is more exhausted and even paler than a moment before. “Last night, I dreamed of being a bird. Flying. Over the ocean. At night.”

My father hurries to her. “Claire, if I could have found more money for the rehabilitation center, I would have. I want your mother to be a hundred percent, too. But she's well enough to be home. We'll all pull together. You'll still have to do a lot around the house, but you don't mind, Claire, do you? Your mother is here. Her thoughts are clear. That's what matters.”

“I want,” she says pushing the words out, “to be home.”

“Your mother will have weekly physical therapy, weekly speech therapy for as long we can, as long as the insurance allows. I've been going out of my mind, thinking of ways to make more money. I'm going to get a second job. Any job.”

“Mitch,” she says. “I'm home. Speak to me like I'm here.”

My father drops to his knees. She strokes his head with her functioning hand. He kisses her face and her hands, both of them.

“Can you believe, Mitch,” she says, haltingly, “I dreamed, my dream, of being a bird?”

“Laurie.” He buries his head in her lap. A man of few words, he has abandoned them. I had forgotten how much they loved each other.

I pour myself more tap water, letting my glass overflow and soak my fingers and the countertop. I concentrate on sipping the warm water as if my life depends on it, as if I have never been this in need of a basic sustenance.

Embarrassed, my father jumps up and bangs over to the sink and soaps up the pots and pans with a steel-backed intensity. My mother attempts to turn to me, but can't easily shift in her chair. From behind her thick purple glasses, her soft brown eyes strain in my direction, wanting me to look at her. I gaze over her head, out the window, at the heat burning off the dew, scorching the uncut grass.

“I'm not what I was,” she says. “You see that. My speech is broken. My heart is not.”

“You dreamed of being a bird?” I ask, holding back my breath, or tears.

“Yes, angel.”

I finish off the glass of water. I'm struggling to come up for air. “So did I.”

Max

Sunday, 9:00
P.M.

This is not the way summer is supposed to end.

No one is showing up at this party. I know everybody has this fear: you have a party and nobody comes. Nobody is responding to my texts. Nobody has left me any messages, anywhere. I'm pacing in front of the living room windows. King is scratching and whimpering behind my bedroom door, wanting to be with me even though I explained to him that he had to be a good dog and stay.

“Why don't you call one of your friends?” asks my mother again.

“No.”

“Why don't I call some of the parents, see if something came up? Or maybe everyone is just running late?”

“Don't. Please don't. I thought you and Dad were going out?”

“We're going. Just to the diner. Just for a cup of coffee. Maybe we'll split one piece of pie between us. I have a campaign to run.”

“How could I forget?”

“Don't worry. We won't be gone long. I don't want you to think at seventeen you can throw wild parties.”

“At what age do I get to throw wild parties?”

“We're going to be five minutes down the road, Max. We can come home at any time, and we will. Remember last year.”

Last year we got a little drunk and played soccer in the backyard. My mother and father came home while all the beer bottles were in full sight. They had a fit, but I sometimes wonder whether they were angry because they had to see the beer bottles on the deck, see us running into each other, see their son act stupid. Or, were they just concerned it would make the local news:
Underage state senator's son drinks a beer
. I should text everyone and let them know: the party is off. Yup, I should take a pill, party by my pathetic birthday boy self.

“What's going on, Max? Worried about school starting?” She hovers around me, stroking my side, fixing the collar on my polo shirt. “Is something wrong?”

“Nope. Nothing wrong.” For some reason, my back stiffens, but not unbearably. Pain is at a minimum tonight. I'd rather it be more, give me an excuse to blot this all out.

“You are so handsome. The most handsome. You know you have that nice pink polo shirt to wear tomorrow. Now I know it's pink, but it's a fun boy pink.”

“I don't wear pink.”

“Maybe you'll wear it tomorrow—to the meet-and-greet for your father. You'll look so nice in a pink polo under the white tent.”

“Stop it, Mom.”

“Stop what, handsome boy?”

She means well, but she doesn't know anything, not a thing about me anymore.

“Okay. Nothing's wrong. That's what you and your father think.” She glances outside and throws out her told-you-so smile. A car has rattled up. Maybe I was wrong and she was right.

But it's only Trish and Peter in a beat-up Toyota, and even my mother knows that these aren't my real friends. The bigger her smiles, the worse things are.

“Look, Max, who's here,” she says too loudly.

Peter tumbles out of the car. Trish looks glum, squeezed into a T-shirt one size too small. I'm not sure if she thinks it makes her look thinner, or if she just outgrew it.

My mother whispers to me, “What's happened to you, Max? To us? You always had a lot of friends.” She's clutching my arm with her bright nails. “Where are all the nice boys that you've always been friends with? Jackson? Andrew? Ethan? Michael, Alex? I can name a dozen boys you've been friends with since kindergarten. I can call their parents. What did you do?”

“Not enough.”

“What does that mean?”

Trish brings Peter through our open backyard gate adorned with two dozen helium balloons at my request. I walk away from my mother, through the house to the kitchen, where there are chips and dip and sodas laid out for the party. Trish leads Peter through the backyard, up to the deck. He stumbles anyway, but she is as sturdy as ever. Peter is wearing a pressed checkered shirt and slacks. I'm sure his mother helped him get dressed. He's waving at me as if we haven't seen each other in a long time, and even though he's just across the deck, I have to wave back.

My mother turns her back to them. “Who are these two?”

“My friends.” I step around her and greet Peter and Trish like they are long-lost friends, even giving Trish an unexpected and unwarranted hug, squishing her back fat in. She doesn't return the hug, as if she knows my hug is a fake. However, she does smell nice, not like sweat or sand or sour milk from the ice cream machine. I want to say, “I'm sorry. Here's a real hug,” but I can't do that.

“Mom,” I mumble, “meet Trish and Peter. I talked a lot about them this summer.”

“You did,” she says, showing no recognition.

“I work with them. At the Snack Shack.”

She opens her eyes wide. Now she knows who they are, and she flashes on her state senator's wife smile. “Great to meet you. But I'm not going to hang around—though you should tell your parents to vote for Glenn Cooper, Max's dad, in November. State Senate. You're okay, Max? Your father and I are going to get a cup of coffee and some pie at the diner.”

“What kind of pie?” asks Peter, startling my mother.

“Apple.”

“With ice cream?”

“No, honey. I'm on a diet, so no. No pie à la mode for me.” My mother glances at Trish with a knowing look that really says: I hope you're listening.

“Vanilla is my favorite,” Peter continues.

“Why don't you guys go hang outside, and I'll be right there?” I say to Trish and Peter, and Peter follows Trish out the sliding doors.

My mother's smile is tight. Behind her, my father appears, talking and walking, not aware that we have guests. “Deb! Max! I think we should give that dog a Xanax.”

“What?” I don't want him giving King a pill. In fact, I think I could use a pill. One of the ones from Barkley still in my knapsack.

“Max, your dog needs something to calm him down while all the kids are here,” my father is explaining.

“My dog doesn't need a pill.”

“Well, I left it for him in his dish. Hid it in the food. I don't want him tearing up the place. And who is out there? Have we met?” King has never taken Xanax before. How does my father know how he'll react to it?

“Why did you do that? Why'd you give him a pill to knock him out?”

“It will just calm him down. It's from the vet.”

“You went to the vet for a pill?”

“Yes, I asked your mother to go to the vet for your dog because I was thinking of you and your party, Max.”

“I'm going to make sure he's okay.”

“He's fine. And your friends are here.” My mother glares at my father.

“He's fine, Max,” says my father, sliding open the glass.

“Hey, sweetie, go to your dog,” says Trish to me. “Don't worry about us.”

My father quickly takes her in. I see he's trying not to make a face. “Are you going to introduce us, Max?”

“These are my friends,” I say to my father. “From the Snack Shack,” I add, moving to the side of the deck, which suddenly feels crowded. Let him see who I had to work with all summer. “Glenn Cooper, your neighbor, running for reelection as state senator,” I announce. My father actually offers his hand to Peter, who gladly pumps it up and down.

“Max is a great kid,” says Trish to my father, surprising me. “We had a terrific summer together. Didn't we, Peter?”