Maybe I still can.
53Amelia Blue
I pick up the file gently, moving slowly, like it’s made of glass. Why is it here, on this desk, away from all the others in the room beside the gym? Inside, there are pages of neatly typed doctor’s notes. After all this time, I can hardly believe I’m about to read exactly what Georgia’s care manager wrote. Did they call her narcissistic, addicted, emotionally immature? Did Georgia share stories she never told me—why she and Naomi never got along; how she met my father and what it was like when they were in love; her thoughts when she found out she was pregnant?
But my eyes pass over the doctor’s words and land on a medium-size spiral notebook beneath the file.
Months ago, when I went through Georgia’s things, the sober diary wasn’t the only notebook stacked in Naomi’s many bins. In fact, there were dozens of them, going back years, some filled with doodles, poems, a couple of the songs from her first albums. My mother was never, not once, without a notebook. Even when she was high, even (according to stories) in the delivery room before I was born—my mother always kept a pad of paper to scribble potential lyrics into. The tattoos that snaked up and down her arms and legs were lyrics she’d etched into her skin for all the world to see.
I went to school for poetry, but I never particularly cared about it. I studied writing because it’s what my parents did, like I was going into the family business, the result of a failure to imagine that I might be capable of something else.
I can smell my mother on this notebook now, her particular combination of hair dye and patchouli, sweat and ink. She must have brought this here, began writing in it after filling the one I found. How could I have thought that one was her final notebook? Ofcourseshe brought another one to rehab.
A lump swells in my throat as I learn something I didn’t know, a fact I hadn’t been looking for but can no longer deny: I miss my mother.
I lay my phone on the cabinet in front of me, the light facing up. My hands shake as I lean over the pages, eager to see what my mother left behind.
Before I can read a single syllable, a hand lands on my wrist, hot and dry, gripping hard like a handcuff.
54Georgia Blue
My teeth are chattering by the time I make it back to my “cottage.” Only people who were born rich would call these mansions cottages, like they’re fucking Marie Antoinette or something, playacting at being poor, pretending to be plain country wives instead of diamond-adorned queens.
Tonight, though, I can see glue poking out where the heavy glass windows meet the sheetrock walls, like whoever put it together was in too much of a hurry to be careful. I see crumbs on the kitchen counter, and a ring left behind by a red wine bottle Andrew set down thoughtlessly. Finally, I see this place for what it is—a shithole, dressed up with shiny glass and gleaming countertops, but a shithole nonetheless. It’s all a trick; this place pretends to be indulgent but it actually robs patients of their agency, calling them guests when they’re really prisoners.
I have to get out of here as soon as motherfucking possible.
I throw my belongings into my bag, my guitar still slung across my back. I certainly don’t bother folding even though the mess is so bad that I have to sit on my suitcase to close it. I pull on a pair of jeans beneath my dress, tucking my notebook into the waistband.
I’m going back to California. I don’t want the icy dark Atlantic but the bright blue Pacific. I want the sun to set over the ocean, not rise from it.
Shit, that’s a lyric. I pull my notebook from my waistband and start scribbling:
I want the sun to set over the ocean,
I need to get back to my side of the sea,
I can’t spend another second
so far from the heart of me.
The words come fast, the chorus rising hard. I sit cross-legged on the floor and write the words to a song from deep inside, every feeling and fear I’ve had since my daughter was born and my husband died and my mother came to stay; how badly I wanted to be a good mother and how terribly I fucked it up. I scrawl the song’s title across the top of the page.
I’m crying. I wipe my eyes, relieved no one can see me like this. Only an asshole would cry at her own lyrics. But the chorus of dead musicians in my head is applauding, Scott most of all.
Great song, babe,he says just like he used to. God, we loved each other so much. And shit did he love Amelia Blue.AB, he called her. I bet she doesn’t remember that, which means no one on this whole earth knows it but me. I have to tell her so it doesn’t get lost.
I hear the sound of heavy footsteps on the floor and then the touch of a hot hand on my bare upper arm, fingers digging into flesh, pulling me up to stand.
“Going somewhere?” Andrew eyes my suitcase, half-zipped, on the floor beside me.
“I’m goinghome.” I try to say the word like I mean it, even though I’ve never felt comfortable calling the house Scott bought, the one he didn’t leave me in his will, my home. My mom is Amelia Blue’s power of attorney, not me—I signed those rights away a long time ago—so she’s the one who controls the house. She could kick me out anytime. I guess I should be grateful she never did.
“You can’t leave.”
“Oh no?” I laugh, but it comes out sounding desperate, weak.
“?‘Imposter Syndrome’ is just as much mine as it is yours.”
