The Last Good Day of the Year (20 page)

 

Summer 1996

“Rinse and spit.”

“There's blood in my mouth.”

“That's a sign you need to floss more often.” Gretchen twirls in her chair, trying to make herself dizzy. “This is a boring job,” she says, standing up only to stumble against the edge of the sink in the little room, knocking my free toothbrush onto the floor. “I have to get my kicks where I can.”

She's full of it; I floss every night before bed. As dental hygienists go, my sister obviously isn't among the elite few who can make a professional cleaning bearable. She rushed through her job on my mouth, complaining for a solid fifteen minutes about the pitiful levels of oral care that she has to deal with on a daily basis. “Do you know what I hear at least once a week, Sam? I'm not making this up, I swear. At least once a week, after I scrape someone's teeth,
they look at what I've dug out and say, ‘Is that popcorn? I don't even remember the last time I ate popcorn!' Once a week at
least
.”

“I know. You say that all the time.”

“Sorry. It's my only interesting work-related anecdote.”

She's all smiles as she walks me back to the waiting room, where our mom is balancing her checkbook, doing subtraction on her fingers. My sister starts calling out random numbers, trying to mess up her math so that she has to start over. “Eleven. Forty-three. Twenty. Sixteen. Four. Eighty-eight.”

“You're rotten,” Mom says, dropping the ledger into her purse. “No cavities, right?”

“Right.” I've never had a cavity in my life. No way do I need to floss more; I could probably stand to floss
less
.

“Do you want to come to lunch with us?” she asks Gretchen. “I was thinking we could try that new Mexican place by the mall.”

My sister pretends to study her fingernails instead of looking at our mom. “No, thanks.”

“Okay. Next time, then.”

“Doesn't Sam have another appointment today?”

My mom glares at her. “Not until one thirty.”

“What other appointment?” I ask.

“You didn't tell her?” My sister lays her southern accent on thicker than usual as she feigns confusion. “Why not, Momma?”

“Gretchen. This is uncalled for.”

My sister yawns. “I need to get back to work. I hope you took a shower this morning, Sam.” She gives me a smirk that makes my stomach drop.

“Why would you say that? Where are we going after lunch, Mom?”

Our mother ignores the question; instead of responding, she takes my arm and guides me toward the door. “We need to hurry if we want to have enough time for a decent lunch.” She gives Gretchen one final try: “You're sure you won't come along? Last chance. I hear they have amazing guacamole.”

“I'm not hungry, and I hate guacamole. I've hated guacamole my entire life. Don't you know that?”

“I'm sorry. I guess I'd forgotten.”

“You're thinking of Hannah. Hannah loves guacamole.”

Let's go. Please, let's just go
, I think, but my mom's hand is frozen on the doorknob.

“You're right. It is Hannah.”

“Wait. No. I'm wrong.” Gretchen taps a finger to her lips in thought. “It was Turtle who loved guacamole. Not Hannah. Turtle. She used to eat it with a spoon.” She smiles. “Remember that, Mom?”

I can tell how hard my mom's working to summon what's left of her training from her days as a beauty queen: how to stay composed and keep smiling when all she wants to do is scream, or hide, or slap Gretchen across the face.

“Make sure you eat something for lunch. You seem tired, sweetie. And you're getting too thin.” She's not wrong. Gretchen has lost ten, maybe fifteen pounds since summer began. Combined with her new haircut, she's starting to look puny.

“I don't care how you think I look.”

“Well, I'm sorry for caring about my own daughter. You need to take it a little easier. I don't understand why Abby can't hire a
private nurse for her father. You're too kind to her, Gretchen. Don't you ever feel like she's taking advantage?”

“She's not taking advantage of me. I want to help.”

“You look like you haven't had a good meal in ages. What are the two of you eating? I can't imagine either of you is much of a cook.”

“Right, well, we all know you can't imagine Abby as much of anything.” Gretchen's jaw goes
click-click-click
as she grinds her teeth together.

“I don't deserve this kind of treatment. Not from my own child.” She pauses. “Especially not from you.”

Even in her most tender moments, my mother has never been as nurturing as, say, Remy's mom. We don't have frequent heart-to-heart talks like I've heard of other mothers and daughters doing. It's not that there's anything
wrong
with her; it's more like I've made a deliberate effort to not need her too much, and the arrangement seems to be working fine for both of us. When I was younger, after Turtle disappeared, she did her best not to let me out of her sight for years unless I was nearby with another adult whom she trusted. But you'd be surprised how easy it is to spend every moment with a person without ever truly getting to know them. You might say she watched without seeing. Even back then, I got the sense that her need to keep me close wasn't so much diligent parenting as self-preservation.

“I know I should have told you about this, but I thought you'd be embarrassed.” There's no missing the big white sign above the
door, announcing what I'm in for: Dr. Glick, Ob-Gyn. My mom fills out the insurance forms before passing me the clipboard so I can fill in the more personal information: Are you sexually active? How many partners have you had in the past twelve months? Did you use protection? If so, what kind? Are you presently using any method of birth control? Have you ever given birth? Have you ever had an abortion? Is there any possibility you might be pregnant? What was the date of your last menstrual cycle? Do you drink? Do you smoke? Do you use recreational drugs? If so, circle all that apply.

I can't even look at her without wanting to scream. She pretends to be engrossed in a months-old issue of
TV Guide
while I fill out the form, but she's obviously stealing glances whenever she thinks I'm not paying attention. So I act as though I don't notice, and then I check off whatever responses will upset her most without being too obviously false. By the time the nurse calls my name, I'm a self-described bisexual who has engaged in unprotected intercourse with “more than ten but fewer than twenty” partners. I also admit a weakness for “very occasional” cocaine use; chronic, moderate pain during urination; and “frequent thoughts of sadness and despair.”

Dr. Glick is youngish and handsome, and I can't think of anything more embarrassing than his examining my naked body while my feet are up in stirrups and my paper gown flops open in the front. I wait with my legs pressed together at the knees while he looks over my chart, wondering whether I should speak up before he orders a massive amount of blood work and antibiotics.

“You're seventeen, Samantha; is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you filled this questionnaire out all by yourself?”

“With my mother sitting beside me, yes. She sort of, uh, surprised me with this appointment.”

“Oh? How lovely of her.” He looks from the chart to my face, then back to the chart. “So, I'm taking a wild guess here: Did you think you'd surprise her with your answers?”

“Something like that.”

“I see.” He crumples the paper into a ball and tosses it into the garbage can, but he's smiling. “Okay. Let's start over. Are you sexually active, Samantha?”

“No.”

“Planning to become sexually active in the future?”

“At some point, I assume.”

“Do you want to be on birth control?”

“No.”

“Do you have any medical issues you'd like to discuss?”

“No.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

I sigh, trying to come up with a decent answer.
Because my mother is a pain in the ass
.

“Because my mother is worried about me.”

“Ah,” he says, nodding in understanding. “As mothers are wont to be.”

“I'm sorry for wasting your time.”

*  *  *

In the car, my mom touches up her makeup in the rearview mirror while I sit stiff and silent beside her. I'm clutching a paper bag filled with free condom samples, which the nurse insisted I take “just in case.”

“What do you have there?” she asks, talking out of the side of her mouth while she colors her lips with coppery liner.

“They're Girl Scout cookies, Mom. Dr. Glick had a few extra boxes lying around beside his speculum.”

“That's very funny, Sam.” I can't tell whether she's frowning at me or her own reflection. “Really, though, what did he give you?”

“They're condoms, Mom. Are you happy? Now I'm protected from all the terrible diseases I'm exposing myself to with all the unprotected sex I've been having with strangers.”

“Sam, I was only trying to be cautious.”

“I don't want to talk about it. Take me home.”

My mom almost never fights with me. She fights with my dad and with Gretchen, and I'm sure she'll fight with Hannah once she's older, but almost never with me. I don't even remember the last time we argued. This is too much, though. A pelvic exam isn't the kind of thing you surprise someone with, especially not your seventeen-year-old daughter. The more I think about it, the angrier I get. “Do you think we should stop to see an ear-nose-and-throat specialist before we get home, Mom? What about a proctologist? That way you can make sure all my orifices have been sufficiently penetrated today.”