I didn’t want Mom with us in this moment. I said mm-hmm quickly and shifted my attention to the pizza before a clear picture of her could form in my mind. “Look how thin the potatoes are sliced.” I peeled one off the pizza and held it up. We could see the glow of the TV right through it.
“I might be sick pretty soon.” She’d eaten her hot fudge sundae first so the ice cream wouldn’t melt, and had slowed down halfway through her salmon.
“Not me.” I could eat and eat; my stomach felt bottomless for this. This wasn’t rock-heavy meat loaf and side dishes from a box like Dad had fixed us. “I want to eat like this every day for the rest of my life,” I said.
Dixie groaned and put down the forkful of food she’d been about to eat. “Maybe we can both get jobs that make us rich,” she said. “We can fly around the world first class and eat potato pizzas in Italy.”
She’d never talked about us as a “we” that would exist at some point in the future. I wondered if the thought came to her just because of this moment, or if it was something she thought about other times but didn’t say.
The money we had wasn’t enough for all that. Anyway, it didn’t really matter to me, world travel and fancy food. All I wanted was to make ends meet without needing anyone else to help me. And I wanted that only because I wanted a home that felt like home should feel. Safe. A place you go where you know there won’t be any bad surprises and you can be even more who you are, not less.
Dixie and I laughed together at the romantic comedy, the stupidity of it. We made fun of how the couple kissed, and we finally gave up and put the trays of what was left of our food out into the hall for the housekeeping people to pick up, like the lady who’d brought it up said to. The big window was rain streaked by the end of our movie. We watched the city lights glisten.
Right then, with the dream of fancy traveling together, and us getting along, full of food, and Dixie believing that soon things would go back to the way she was used to them being, we were as happy as we were going to get.
15.
WHEN I would think about people who could have helped us, either before things got bad or after they did—people who maybe should have helped us—the first one was Uncle Ivan. I never thought he wouldn’t be in our lives. Not like he was the most reliable person in the world—he’d be around, then he’d disappear, like most adults I knew other than my teachers. But he always came back.
When we were younger, Mom would tell us stories from when they were kids, getting into trouble their mother never knew about while she was at work, and then later, running around Portland in their teens. She’d get mad at me and Dixie for fighting. “You guys should be each other’s best friends. You’re the only ones who know what it’s like to be in your family. You’ll see when you’re older,” she said. “In the end, you’re all each other has. Like me and Ivan.”
They talked on the phone all the time. Then not as much. Then, she didn’t have him. He met a woman he loved and moved to Idaho and got married without even inviting us to the wedding. He came that one time to help my mom kick my dad out, and that was the last time we saw him. He has a baby now. My cousin. I don’t know what happened with Uncle Ivan and my mom, but she didn’t seem mad about it. There were a lot of times I thought about trying to find out his number and call him, but whenever I asked my mom if I could, she said, “You leave your uncle Ivan alone. He’s got a good life now.”
I didn’t know what that meant except that us being in it would turn it from good to bad, and I didn’t want to do that to him.
Then there was Roxanne, my mother’s ex-best friend. They’d met at one of my mom’s jobs a long time ago, and they talked every day. She’d come over to our apartment and Mom would tell her what was going on with my dad and his using or his girlfriends or his not having a job, and Roxanne would commiserate and they’d get high together. But also she would look at me and Dixie sometimes, and smile and play with us, and then tell my mom maybe there were certain things my mom shouldn’t say with us sitting right there.
“They can hear you, Adri,” Roxanne would say, nodding her head our way and flipping her black ponytail over her shoulder.
Every year, on the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, they got together to listen to Nevermind—the Nirvana album that came out when Mom and Roxanne were fifteen—and make drinks and light candles in his memory. Sometimes my dad was there. One time, my dad and Roxanne danced around to “Lithium” while my mom went to the freezer to get more ice. Dixie and I were jumping up and down next to them. Then, real fast, Dad moved his hand down Roxanne’s hip and whispered something in her ear. When Mom emerged with the ice, Roxanne was pushing Dad away and saying, “Don’t pull that shit with me, Russ. Especially in front of the girls. Dumbass.”
She turned and danced with me, and Dad got his cigarettes and went out for a smoke.
“Last straw yet, Adri?” Roxanne asked Mom between songs.
Mom took Roxanne’s hands and swayed with her to “Polly” and said, “Not tonight. Tonight is our night. Yours and mine and Kurt’s.”
Later, Roxanne and Mom got sober together. They’d go to meetings and call each other when they wanted to drink or to use, and they’d celebrate every new sober month by ordering pizza and watching a favorite movie. Something with Julia Roberts, usually, or one of the Terminator movies. They’d toast with diet soda and eat chocolate until they got sick.
When I was in fifth grade, I got a cold and then strep throat, and Mom didn’t take me to the doctor soon enough and the strep went into my kidneys. My lower back hurt so bad. I stayed with Roxanne a few days, because it was one of Dad’s gone times and Mom couldn’t get off work to take care of me when I’d normally be at school. Roxanne made me a warm bath every day with bath salts that smelled like eucalyptus and lavender, and I’d sit in it until the water stopped being warm enough, and she’d stay with me in the bathroom, reading a book or a magazine out loud to take my mind off how much my back ached. I remember her reading me a magazine story about how to grow out your bangs.
I didn’t want to go home that time and felt guilty for wishing I didn’t have to. I never thought there would be a time when Roxanne wasn’t there, same as with Uncle Ivan.
Around the time Dad left for good, Mom started drinking again. Then doing more. And she wasn’t going to the meetings or spending very much time at all with Roxanne. They still talked on the phone a lot, but it was mostly fighting. I’d listen to Mom’s side of the conversation and hear stuff like:
I don’t need that. I’m fine.
Only wine and pot! Nothing hard, I swear.
Don’t judge me, Rox. . . . What do you call it, then?