One night I run out of smokes. I decide to chance it, go out for some. I set off in my bathrobe and flip-flops. It’s cold, but it feels good, bracing, to walk. I pass the bodega on the corner and keep going. I head west toward the water at Sunset Park.
When I hit Fourth Avenue, I cross without looking into a four-lane intersection. A sedan comes barreling toward me out of the dark. I’m so taken aback by the headlights, can barely believe they’re coming at me like they are, that I have to stand and stare to make sure. The car honks. I hold out one hand. I know that will make it stop. It’s just logic.
And for the first time in months, it happens: I am lifted out of my skin and into the space above so I am looking down at myself underneath, staring wide-eyed into the headlights. I see a few stray hairs blow in the breeze. I see the way my shoulders slump forward, like I’m lifting something heavy the wrong way. Who would it hurt, if it happened? Who would they call? What would I leave behind? A stockpile of stank weed. Two rancid apartments. Cartoons they’ll have to censor pretty heavily, should they ever air them on cable again. A man in Louisville, Kentucky, whom I royally, inevitably fucked over. And family I don’t talk to.
I sink back down into my body. The wind flaps my robe. Cool air rushes into my crotch. I forgot to put on underwear before I left the house.
The sedan screeches to a stop. The NYPD cruiser behind it is passing incidentally, slams on the brakes at the sight of my bush. I’m too dazed to protest or explain myself when I’m ushered into the backseat.
Except to tell the cops: “My hand stopped it. Did you see?”
Donnie comes down to bail me out. She greets me with a slip of paper: the number of an attorney. “You need to take care of this one yourself,” she says.
We’re outside the police precinct at Twenty-eighth Street. It’s midnight. Brecky sits at the wheel of Donnie’s BMW. She waves to me, fiddles with the radio. She doesn’t climb out.
I struggle to pull the jeans Donnie brought over my thighs.
Donnie scrubs her face with both hands. Says, “I was looking in the mirror this morning. I just bought this under-eye cream, this fancy hundred-dollar Dior shit. It’s supposed to tighten up the skin around there. Make the circles and lines go away. It’s not working. I look like hell a pretty big portion of the time now.”
“Never took you for the vain type.”
“Shut up.”
I shut up.
“You. Are making. Me old,” she says. “You, and Mel, and everything that’s happened. I have aged more in the past six months than I have in the past ten years.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I realize that you’re sorry. But that doesn’t do much for me here. I can’t do this with you if you don’t at least try to move forward. Get some help. Get some of your shit together. Get out of bed in the morning, for starters. I have other clients. I don’t want to have to worry about you getting creamed by a Mazda because you’re too fucked up to walk.”
“I understand.”
She blows her bangs out of her eyes, bends at the waist, then straightens. “Do you realize how serious I am about this?”
I’m silent.
“Sharon, this is not like you threatening Mel with a bust-up and not coming through on it. When I tell you this, I mean it. Even if it kills me, even if I hate doing it, and by God, Sharon, I love you dearly, but if I say I’ll do it, you better believe I’ll do it.”
I nod, too embarrassed to look at her. I watch the road instead, the traffic. An entire summer has passed. It’s fall again.
She opens the car door for me. “Come on. We’ll take you home.”
—
Two days later I’m on my stoop having a smoke when a yellow cab pulls up and a frowsy, familiar head emerges, struggling with a suitcase. “Nuh uh,” I hear the head say. “You near bout kilt me. You can just forget about a tip, bub.”
The driver burbles something. What it sounds like when fuck you is said in another language.
“Well, same to you.” She smacks the door shut and takes a look around. Squints up at me. There’s a moment of delay before I realize it’s Mom.
We stare at each other for a minute before I scramble up and run for the door. “Don’t you move,” she yells.
I slam the door shut and lock it.
“Sharon Kay.” I can hear the wheels of her suitcase clacking up the stairs. She slaps the door with her hand. “Sharon Kay, I know you’re in there. You best open up this door right now.” There’s a pause. “What in the hell are you lookin at?”
Donnie went behind my back. Called not Mom but Shauna, who then trotted across the mountain and blabbed to Mom. “Every single goddamn one of you have done me dirty,” I tell her when I finally let her in. “Why didn’t Shauna come up herself? If anyone had to come at all, why’d she send you?”
“Shauna’s got two kids and an idiot husband to take care of. What do you mean, I did you dirty. No one’s doin you dirty here. You’re so hateful to me and I don’t even know why.”
“I’m a bastard,” I yell. “Who knows why we do what we do?”
“Are you gonna hang that over my head forever?”
“Yes. I’m gonna hang it over your head forever.”
“You’re actin like a teenager. Just real immature.”