She jerks her head around, her black tangle of hair whipping across her face. Her cheeks are wet. She’s been crying. The sides of her short silk kimono—this one fuchsia with embroidered burgundy flowers trailing down the hem—fall open, revealing too much of her chest.
She looks at me, but doesn’t see me.
I swallow hard and try again, louder, more forcefully. “Mom!
I told Nana she does this—disappears completely—and Nana says she asked Dr. Marsdan about it, and he said the trick is to re-ground her. “Give her facts that might pull her back to the present. She needs a little help focusing, that’s all,” Nana insisted.
Right, whatever.
“When did you get home?” I ask, trying. “Were you out shopping, or did you have an appointment with Dr. Marsdan?” Mom stares past me, eyes damp and distant. “Mom, was Nana with you?”
“What?” Her voice is soft, her question directed somewhere other than me.
“Mom. I’m asking you about today. Did Nana take you to your appointment with Dr. Marsdan, or did you go alone?”
With that, she snaps back, a mix of recognition and confusion playing across her face. “Oh, Jean Louise, yes. That’s right. Nana, yes. She has her bridge group this evening. She went with me, but couldn’t stay.”
Okay, then.
Mom turns away again, sighs deeply, and folds the piece of paper on the table, jamming it into her pocket.
I look around our otherwise pristine kitchen, devoid of any cooking or baking or other culinary endeavor that might amount to a meal resembling dinner, and back at my mother. She’s grown thinner these past weeks. The kimono hangs large at her shoulders.
Amidst the swirl of flowers is an embroidered symbol. It matches one my father sent me when he first moved out to Malibu. It’s the Japanese symbol for patience. I could use some of that right now.
“Mom?” I say, and she turns. “We should order something for dinner?”
“Yes. Yes. Of course we should. Could you call? Get me whatever you’re having. I might need to rest for a bit.” She heads to her room, leaving the pen, but taking the letter with her.
I think about calling Nana. At least last week Nana finally admitted that the doctor says Mom might have something seriously wrong with her. Something called dissociative disorder, which can cause both delusions and hallucinations. “It’s only stress,” Nana had added, reassuring herself, because she sure wasn’t reassuring me. “Nothing to worry about, really. She’ll be fine when your father gets home.”
But what if she isn’t?
And what if Dad never comes home?
Here’s what I’ve learned, Aubrey: If a person is crazy but beautiful like my mother, they get away with it.
If they’re rich and beautiful, even better.
Sure, maybe people talk behind their backs, hint and whisper, but mostly, they excuse it, or laugh it off. No one believes it. Or at least they don’t see it for as serious as it is.
Take Lindsay Lohan or Shia LaBeouf, for example. Take Demi Lovato.
And, let’s face it, my mother has always tended toward the dark and dramatic, the kind of person who has dancing-around-the-room highs, and crash-and-burn lows. Even when we were younger, you and I would say how weird she could act. Dad used to call it “free spirited.”
“She’s spontaneous!” you’d tell me. “Way better than my mom, who can’t even sneeze on a whim.” And, yeah, compared to your mother, with her crisp suits and white blouses, and endlessly booked schedule, my mother could be refreshing with her wild hair and bohemian clothes. She could be fun and exciting, but also mortifying, and not very parental, which, it turns out, only seems like a good thing, until it isn’t.
But whatever you wanted to call it—her—before Dad left, after he left, she deteriorated.
No, worse than that, Aubrey. She unraveled. And not even Nana noticed how bad.
And somehow, you held that against me. As if I had any control over my mother …
I guess what I’m trying to say is, maybe if people saw beyond her beauty, they would have done more than gawk or roll their eyes when she whirled into the kitchen (or across the front lawn, or through the mall, or the bank, or the grocery store) laughing (or crying) in her hot-pink (or electric-blue, or mandarin-orange) kimonos which she had taken to wearing like street clothes. Heads turned, for sure, but nobody thought they should help her … Nobody thought they should try to help me.
God, even I loved those kimonos at first, remember, Aubrey? The matching turquoise ones Dad found in some little store on the beach in Malibu. “They were calling your names,” he told us. “Real silk, for both of my butterflies.”
He still calls me that, Aubrey, his butterfly.
If only I could ever feel like one.
EARLY SPRING
NINTH GRADE
“Wait, why do you have that on, Mom? It’s freezing out. Seriously.”
Mom drops her keys and handbag on the kitchen counter, and sits with her back to me, head in hands. She wears the turquoise kimono Dad sent, with flip-flops, which she apparently wore to take Dad to the airport early this morning, for his flight back to LA.
“I didn’t get out of the car,” she says, as if this makes it better.
It’s nearly noon, and I’m groggy and upset that I overslept and she didn’t wake me to say goodbye. At least he’ll be home for good soon. He’s been in LA for four months, so that means he only has two more to go. Six months gone altogether. “With one option period, two in a pinch. But not likely, so I wouldn’t worry,” he had reassured.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
She turns to me, her eyes red and puffy from crying. “Should I be?”
“Mom, it’s two more months, that’s all. It will go fast. We’ll be okay until he comes back.” I’m trying to comfort her, even though it should be the other way around.
She shakes her head and puts it down on the table.
“Mom?” I watch her slim back rise and fall, swells of turquoise waves. “Mom, did something happen? Is everything okay?”
She shakes her head and gets up, walks to the cabinet, and rifles for some tea, ultimately tossing two open boxes to the floor, before slamming the cabinet shut. “Where the hell is the orange pekoe?”
“Mom?” She looks over at me.
“He’s not coming home,” she says.
“What? Why? Did he say that?”
“Six more months, apparently. Plus, the two remaining.” She pulls a bottle of wine from the refrigerator, and practically slams a wineglass down on the counter. I wait for the shatter of glass. “They rented him his own fucking apartment in Malibu.”
“Seriously? Why didn’t he tell me last night?” Tears spring to my eyes. I fight them back because Mom can’t handle me crying, too. She shrugs and uncorks the bottle. “It’s barely noon, Mom,” I say, but she glares at me, so I shut up. After another minute I ask, “It’s okay, right? I mean, he’s doing what he needs to do?”
She swallows down her wine and pours another. “It’s only been four months,” she says, “and I don’t even recognize him anymore.”
Remember when he came home for that visit, Aubrey? You were shocked by how different he looked, too. Only a few short months and already everything had changed. His ponytail gone, beard shaved, and every last tie-dyed T-shirt traded in for khaki pants, a polo shirt, and those god-awful sockless loafers.