That’s my mistake. Maybe it wouldn’t be one on a different day, but I see it happen in her. See her jaw tighten, her eyes narrow.
“Make?” she says.
I can save it. I can pull it back. “Yeah,” I say, grabbing the hot dogs from the fridge, ignoring the horrible slide of the liquid in the package. I have to show her I meant I’d do it for the both of us. That I don’t expect anything more from her than what she’s already given. “I could sauté the peppers, or—”
“If what I brought home isn’t good enough,” Mom snaps, “you can go back out yourself.”
She pulls the car keys out of her pocket, tosses them down on the counter. I will myself into stillness. If I take the keys, the argument has started, and I won’t be able to end it without getting into the driver’s seat and weaving to the nearest gas station for a bag of pretzels. Mom’s like that. So am I—I learned it from her. Ride it until the end, no matter what.
“No,” I say carefully, “it’s fine.”
But she’s picking up steam. “Take some of my money, too, and just go get whatever you want.” She leans into me, pressing the keys against my chest, the metal cold and scratching. “Go on. If you don’t want to drive, you can walk.”
I knot my fingers together, squeezing tight to keep from snatching the keys and taking the bait. She’s feeling guilty. That’s why she’s picking a fight. But understanding that doesn’t make it feel any better.
“Really,” I say. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
That’s not what she wants from me. I know it’s not. But if I can get out of this without giving that to her, I will.
“Do you want me to make you a plate?” I try instead. I can end this fight. I can. I’ve done it before. “I’m not hungry.”
“Since when does it matter what I want?” Mom says, turning away from me and going to the sink, twisting the tap until water is pouring over her wrists, cooling her blood.
“It always does.” And fine, fine, if it gets us out of this stalemate, I will give up some ground. I will take another piece of blame—those pieces are the only things I can really call my own. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It was my fault.”
For a moment she doesn’t acknowledge that I’ve spoken. And then she looks up, an emptiness in her eyes like I’m one of the bodies she sees at work. The water running over her paper skin, until I reach across her to turn it off.
She blinks. Reaches up to touch my cheek, brushing the spot on my skin where the scar sits on hers. Her palm is cold and wet, but all the same I can feel my face flushing, feel my eyes flutter shut.
She moves then, and there’s a tug at my hairline. When she draws back, it’s with a long gray hair pinched between her fingers. She went gray right at my age, later than I did, but I can’t remember who told me that, and suddenly it’s seeming like it couldn’t have been her.
“Oh,” I say, blinking back a moment of dizziness to watch as she winds the hair around her finger so tightly the skin turns red.
“What a shame,” she says, almost to herself.
She leaves me to handle my own dinner and disappears into her room. Runs the bath all night, and at first I think she must be cooling down, but when I go in later to brush my teeth, the mirror is fogged and the taps are hot.
How to keep a fire burning. How to stitch a fight up until it’s only a scar. That’s the kind of thing you learn with a mother like mine. Mostly, though, you learn how to be loved without any proof. Seventeen years and I’m still getting that part wrong.
two
mom wakes me up before she goes to work. My room is right next to hers, not even really separate. A speckled beige partition we bought at an office supply store, a foot too short, cutting the room in half, and on the other side, her bed. Now, in the early gray light, she perches on the foot of mine, yesterday’s candle cupped in her hands.
I sit up, rub the sleep from my eyes, and fumble for the lighter on my nightstand. The day’s already too hot, my sheets sticking to my legs.
“Let’s go,” Mom says. “I’m running late.”
Her hair damp from a shower, dripping onto her lilac work shirt. She’ll leave the windows down in the car and it’ll be dry by the time she gets to the funeral home.
“Sorry,” I say. “Okay.”
The flame jumps up, stands steady and stark. My hand used to shake when I did this, but it doesn’t anymore. No nerves as I hold the fire to the wick until it catches. No fear as I let the lighter go out, lean in to feel the heat on my skin.
This is the part that matters to Mom. Watching me. On good days it comes with a kiss to my temple, with her favorite rule whispered in my ear. On most days it comes with nothing at all. Just the feeling that this is a test, somehow, and I’ve only barely passed.
“All right.” She gets up, firelight gathering under her chin. “Go back to sleep.”
She leaves the candle on my nightstand. I lie down, turn my back to it. One of these days it’ll burn us both down. I don’t even know if I’ll care.
It’s late, full morning when I wake up again. Don’t bother checking my phone—my data’s run out, and besides, nobody’s looking for me. Now that school’s out I have nothing to do, and nobody to do it with. Too many days laid out in a line. Nothing to put inside them. It used to be Mom would take me to work with her. She’d stick me under her desk and I’d watch her stomach move, watch her suck it in whenever the phone rang. The gaps between the buttons of her shirt, the paleness of her skin and the wrinkles pressed red into it. For a while that was what I thought of when I pictured her. That shadow and curve, and the smell of the funeral home, like powder, like roses, like dust.
I get to my feet. I can hear the kettle whistling. Just faintly, but there, and when I lean out my door I can see through the living room to the kitchen. Burner still on. She must have forgotten to turn it off. I can picture her rushing, gulping down a cup of weak tea, no breakfast because she bought all the wrong groceries. Shut my eyes, ignore the pang in my chest.
I love her so much more when she’s not here.
Our fight yesterday wasn’t new. We’ve had a hundred just like it, and we’ll have a hundred more. But I still feel sick after every one, still find myself trying to wring something out of this town that will qualify as amends, since I know I’ll never get them from her. Not that there’s much to get out of Calhoun, either. Why Mom chose to settle us here is beyond me, but I think I’d say that about anywhere. There’s never been one minute Mom’s looked like she was somewhere she wanted to be.