He is mad at my mom for questioning his purchase, so now he will sulk. He will not talk to anyone for the rest of the day, I know from experience, so I leave the house and find Tiffany jogging up and down the street.
Tiffany and I run together, but we do not talk.
When I return home, Tiffany keeps jogging without even saying goodbye, and as I jog up the driveway to the back door, Mother’s car is gone.
The “Pat” Box
By 11:00 p.m. my mother has not returned home, and I start to worry because every night at 10:45 p.m. I’m supposed to take pills that help me sleep. It isn’t like Mom to foul up my medication schedule.
I knock on my parents’ bedroom door. When no one answers, I push the door open. My father is sleeping with the small bedroom television on. The blue glow makes his skin look alien—he sort of looks like a big fish in a lit aquarium, only without gills, scales, and fins. I walk over to my dad and shake his shoulder lightly. “Dad?” I shake him a little harder. “Dad?”
“Whaddya want?” he says without opening his eyes. He is lying on his side, and the left side of his mouth is smashed into the pillow.
“Mom’s not home yet. I’m worried.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Where is she?”
Still, he does not say anything.
“I’m worried about Mom. Do you think we should call the police?”
I wait for a reply, but only hear my father snoring softly.
After turning off the television, I leave my parents’ bedroom and go downstairs to the kitchen.
I tell myself if Dad isn’t worried, I shouldn’t be either. But I know it isn’t like Mom to leave me alone without telling me where she will be, especially without talking to me about my medications.
I open the kitchen cabinet and take out the eight bottles of pills that all have my name printed on the labels. So many long, depressing drug names are on the labels as well, but I only know the pills by their colors, so I open all the lids and look for what I need.
Two white-and-reds for sleeping, and also a green one with a yellow stripe, but I do not know what the green one with a yellow stripe does. Maybe antianxiety? I take all three pills because I want to sleep, and also, I know that is what Mom would want me to do. Maybe Mom is testing me. Since my father talked down to her earlier today, I really want to please Mom even more than on regular days, although I am not sure why.
I lie in bed wondering where Mom could be. I want to call her cell phone, but I don’t know the number. Maybe she had a car accident? Maybe she had a stroke or a heart attack? But then I think a police officer or a hospital doctor would have called us by now if any of those things had happened, because she would certainly have her credit cards and license on her. Maybe she got lost while driving? But then she would have used her cell phone to call home and would have told us she was running late. Maybe she got sick of Dad and me and ran away? I think about this and realize that excluding the times when she teases me about Tiffany being “my friend,” I haven’t seen my mother laugh or smile in a very long time—in fact, if I really think about it, I often see Mom crying or looking like she is about to cry. Maybe she got sick of keeping track of my pills? Maybe I forgot to flush one morning and Mom found some of my pills in the toilet and is now mad at me for hiding pills under my tongue? Maybe I have failed to appreciate Mom just like I failed to appreciate Nikki, and now God is taking Mom away from me too? Maybe Mom is never coming home again and—
Just as I start to feel seriously anxious, as if I might need to bang the heel of my hand against my forehead, I hear a car pull into the driveway.
When I look out the window, I see Mom’s red sedan.
I run down the stairs.
I’m out the door before she even reaches the back porch.
“Mom?” I say.
“Is-jus-me,” she says through the shadows in the driveway.
“Where were you?”
“Out.” When she enters into the white circle cast from the outside light, she looks like she might fall backward, so I run down the steps and give her a hand, bracing her shoulders with my arm. Her head is sort of wobbly, but she manages to look me in the eyes; she squints and says, “Nikki-sa-fool t’ave let you getta-way.”
Her mentioning Nikki makes me feel even more anxious, especially what she said about my getting away, because I have not gotten away and would be more than willing to go back to Nikki now or whenever, and it was me who was the fool, never appreciating Nikki for what she was—all of which Mother knows so well. But I can smell the alcohol on her breath; I hear her slurring her words, and I realize it’s probably just the alcohol talking nonsense. Mom does not usually drink, but tonight she is obviously drunk, and this also makes me worry.