I wanted to go to her, put my arms around her, shield her fromwhatever harm might come her way, from death itself. I wiped at my eyes, hating my own weakness and vulnerability, knowing my mother would never approve of such nonsense.
No more crying. Be my brave trouper.
I felt it then, the invisible thread that she’d once promised was there, keeping us linked together.
I SOMETIMES THOUGHTabout Ben’s theory that our mother had never wanted children. But she had been different once. When our father was still alive.
She was moody and reclusive at times, hiding out in her studio for hours at a time. But never cruel. Not until later, when the drinking started.
Once, Ben and I watched the old black-and-white movieDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and from then on that’s how I saw things with our mother. There was Good Mom, opening the bottle of gin, sipping at the potion until her whole self changed and she was transformed into Bad Mom. Mom who said she wished we’d never been born, Mom who pinched us, Mom who once twisted Ben’s arm so badly she broke it.
The first time I met Bad Mom was right before my father died. I came home from school one afternoon in first grade, and my father was out at the store. My mother came lurching into the hallway, reeking of gin, looking perplexed and angry. Her hands were covered in red paint, which I thought at first was blood. Had she hurt herself? Or done something terrible?
“You,” she said. “What are you doing here?” as if the bus didn’t drop me off every day at the same time.
“I… I just got home from school.”
“Who do you think you are?”
How was I supposed to answer?Don’t you know? I’m your Ali Alligator, remember?
“No one,” I said softly, confused.
She cackled and stumbled toward me, stabbing her index finger into the center of my chest and leaving a red paint mark on my thin T-shirt. “That’s right,” she said, swaying like a snake. “You’re no one. Now get the fuck out.”
She had never spoken to me that way before. I’d heard her snap at my father on occasion after too many drinks, but never me or Ben. And nothing close to this. Biting my cheeks to keep from crying, I turned, school backpack still on, and ran out to the end of the driveway, where I sat and waited until my father came home.
“What’s wrong?” he asked when I threw myself at him, sobbing.
He rocked me in his arms and kissed the top of my head, his face buried there like he was breathing me in. “What’s wrong, Moppet?” he said softly. “What happened?”
And I didn’t know what to say, how to explain that the woman inside was not my mother. Not anymore.
I STOOD INthe doorway of room 412, looking in at my mother in her hospital bed.
She turned, sensing my presence, maybe feeling the tug on her end of the thread.
“You,” she said, and I held my breath as I waited for her to ask me what I was doing there.
Who do you think you are?
No one.
But then her face twitched into a grin, her lips looking pale purple against her waxy skin. Her eyes, sunken in her small face, were rimmed with dark circles.
She looked so different than she had the last time I’d seen her, I wondered if it was really her at all.
“Yes, it’s me,” I said, stepping into the room, then moving slowly toward the bed.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said. Her pale-blue eyes stared up at me, studying me.
“Of course I came.”
Was I supposed to hug her? Take her hand? Kiss her cheek?
I wasn’t sure what was expected, so I just stood there awkwardly, holding my bag. The room smelled like antiseptic with something spoiled beneath it, like rotting fruit.
Her left arm was hooked up to an IV. She had wires running out of her gown to a monitor that displayed green and red squiggles and numbers.
