“Usually it is cleaner,” I said. What could I offer up to her? “What with the holidays and all.”
“Catherine,” she said. I waited for her to yell at me to clean up my room, but she did not yell. She opened her arms to me. “Come here,” she said. She wrapped herself around me but I could not feel it. Something inside me tossed and turned. A bad night’s sleep jammed up in my body. “I’m worried,” she said. I listened to the sound of her voice. I listened for the truth. The warmth in her voice was not working on me. I had passed the point of believing her. It was a scam. She knew I knew. “You’re flipping out in front of the entire town. You don’t know how many calls I’ve gotten. Everyone knows something’s wrong.” She grabbed a fistful of my hair and sniffed it. I pulled back. I could see in her eyes she wanted to cut my hair, but I liked the way it was, knotted and dusty. “People talk,” she said. “That’s all they have to do around here is talk. You know that.” I pulled back. I stood against the wall and slid to the ground. I pushed some papers away from underneath me.
“How many crosses must one mother bear in her life?” she snapped suddenly. “Why do I need two crazy daughters?”
I looked at her feet. She was wearing high heels. Snow was melting around the edge of one heel. She walked over to me and slid down on the floor next to me, slapping her purse between us.
“Did I tell you that your father and I are going to see chamber music now in Lincoln? Once a month, we’re subscribers. It was a Christmas present. The series starts today. Festive songs of the season.”
“Dad’s here?”
“He’s downstairs getting coffee.”
I pictured him looking down into the coffee, searching for a secret escape route.
“He’s trying, is the point. We’re trying.”
She opened her purse and pulled a flask out of it and unscrewed the top. Well, that’s new, I thought.
“To keep me warm,” she said. She took a swig. “It’s cold out there.” And then it only took a second before the liquor hit her gut and she turned a little mean. “He’s not as smart as he thinks he is though. Not even half as smart. I’m way smarter than him.”
“Of course you are,” I said. I stared out into the clutter of the apartment.
She put her hand on mine and tried to make me meet her eyes, but I wouldn’t. We both stared out across the apartment.
“There’s a lot of paper in here,” she said.
“I’ve been very busy,” I said.
“Whether or not I’m smarter than your father—and I am—is not the point. I’m trying to ask you something. Did you do everything you could to save your marriage?”
I sobbed. I did not know if she meant to be cruel, but it was the worst question she could have asked. “I loved him as true as I could, Mommy. I tried to support him in everything. But there are some things you can’t fix.”
“Then let it go. That’s it. It’s time to move on.”
I said nothing but I was thinking: I am not done yet. I would know when I was done. There was going to be something solid and fixed inside me. That was how love had felt for so long. And when the love was destroyed, it was like all these little pieces went in crazy directions in search of somewhere to land. I was waiting for everything to re-form into something new. But for now it was in the money, the stacks of money inside the oven.
My mother touched my cheek and turned my face toward hers. If she meant it to be gentle it did not feel that way.
“Thomas has moved on, Moonie.”
“Good for him,” I said. I did not believe her. I was weak and the words felt all mumbly in my mouth.
“I understand what it’s like to lose it,” she said. “I won’t lie and say it hasn’t happened to me before or it won’t happen to me again. Your sister could push me over the deep edge at any minute.” She took another drink from the flask, this one longer, and I could hear her gulp a few times loudly, like a clogged-up drain finally letting the water through the muck. “But you have to keep it together, at least out in public. Keep the craziness behind closed doors, where it belongs.” She leaned in close and whispered, “Keep everything inside. Where it belongs. Just hold it in tight. If you hold it in long enough, you won’t feel a thing.”
I clutched at her and she clutched back at me.
“Is there anything I can do to fix you? I would do it. I would,” she said.
But you’re the one who broke me, I thought.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” said Valka.
“I don’t know,” I said. But it was a lie. I knew exactly what I meant.