He loves you back, I say.
I should feel better, but I don’t. The anxiety movie is still flickering in my mind, like an old film reel on a projector screen. She’s going to get sick of me, just like Dad did. She’ll stop texting, just like he did, and then everyone else will too, and then I’ll be alone.
“How was studying yesterday?” Mom asks me the moment I drag myself into the kitchen the next morning. It took me a long time to fall asleep, again, and I’m groggy, eyes crusty, stomach growling for breakfast.
“Fine,” I mumble, stretching up to the top shelf of the pantry to grab a couple Pop-Tarts. I cross to the toaster and drop them in, pressing the button and staring as the innards of the appliance glow to life.
“Fine?” Mom leans against the counter, sipping her coffee. Her hair is still wet from the shower, an empty, crumb-covered plate next to the sink beside her.
“Yeah. We started our English essay drafts. I’m going to work on it more today.”
“OK, wonderful.” I can hear the relief in her voice, and she crosses behind me over to the table.
The Tarts pop, and I take them gingerly by the edges, setting them on a plate before sitting down on the other side of the table from her. The first bite of strawberry filling bursts in my mouth, and I feel a little less zombie, a little more human. “Where’s Shar?” I ask.
“Out in the garage,” Mom says, laptop open in front of her, eyes on the screen. From the floor comes Earl Grey’stiny meow, and Mom scoots her chair back slightly, making room for the cat to jump up on her lap.
“Are you working today?” I ask. Mom loves her job, but sometimes I think she loves it a little too much.
“Yeah, you know that client I mentioned the other night?”
I shake my head. I’m sure she told me, but I don’t remember.
“Well, it’s our biggest one yet, a start-up with some major capital behind it, and they want the full package: branding, marketing strategy, social assets, the works.” I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I nod like I do. “It’s really important, so I’m putting in extra time to keep us on top of it.”
“But it’s the weekend.”
She laughs. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks, sweetie.”
“I wish I got paid to do homework,” I mumble, but she doesn’t hear me; her focus is on the computer.
I savor my breakfast one bite at a time, and when I can’t drag it out one moment longer, I shuffle back to my room to change out of the giant T-shirt I sleep in and into something that resembles what a functional human would wear. Brekky trots after me, nosing around my room as I put on pants and a different shirt. My phone buzzes once, twice; probably the morning meme dump in our group chat. I pick it up and see a text from Jayden to all of us, and a text from—
Dad?
I stare at his name. I feel like I’m hallucinating, like I’ll shut my eyes and open them and the alert on my screenwill be gone. The room fades away, the text all that’s left in front of me. I can see the first few lines:Hey kid, I know it’s been a while.
The last time Dad texted me was back in June: a picture of me, him, and Mom at the Grand Canyon when I was six.Best trip ever,he’d written. He sent me texts like that a lot; memories from my childhood, pictures of us camping and hiking, of him and Mom when they were happy. Which was a long time ago, so long ago I barely remember it.
Mom had me in her early twenties, right after she and Dad got married; in the photos of their wedding, she’s a pregnant bride, all smiles, except for the picture right after Dad shoved cake in her face. When I was eleven, they divorced. Dad’s drinking was really bad by then, and all I remember was how much they fought. Not physically. But the yelling felt like fists on the wall between their bedroom and mine. The silence was almost worse, the waiting and wondering what had happened, or what was about to happen.
I don’t want to think about that.
I shake my head to clear out the memories, staring at the notification on my phone screen. I never replied to his last text; I used to try to respond every time, with a reaction at least, but in those last few months I just never knew what to say. Dad had never been a reliable texter unless he wanted something: validation, or a confidant, or whatever, and I knew he wanted me to agree with him about Mom, to say I missed him, that I wished I lived with him, but I didn’t feel any of those things. So I didn’t say anything.
Maybe things would be different if I had. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so angry about everything. Maybe he would have stuck around.
I unlock the phone and open the text.
Hey kid, I know it’s been a while. I wanted to reach out and let you know I just got out of inpatient treatment and I’d love to see you. Text me or call me when you get a chance.
Inpatient treatment. Dad’s never done that before. The first time he got sober, it was cold turkey. That didn’t last long. Since then, he’s gone to Alcoholics Anonymous off and on, emphasis on theoff.When he goes, he stops drinking, and then he decides he doesn’t need AA, and then he decides he can moderate his drinking, THIS time, and then it turns out he can’t. Rinse and repeat.
But ...inpatient treatment. I’ve heard the phrase a thousand times: thrown like a dagger in one of my parents’ countless fights, murmured by Mom on the phone to her Al-Anon sponsor, written in the literature she tried to get me to read when I was younger. “Al-Anon has a group for teens too,” she told me, a few months after the divorce was finalized. She’d started going to meetings soon after she and Dad separated. “They support the kids of addicts just like my meetings support adult loved ones of addicts. It’s a sister program to the one your dad goes to.”
I could tell how much she wanted me to go, but I didn’t want to sit in a room with other kids and talk about what was happening. Just the idea of it felt weird, like I was bad-mouthing Dad by even thinking about it. I didn’t want tothink about it at all; I just wanted to move on and live my life.
But I can’t. Dad’s back. And he’s out of inpatient treatment and wants to see me.
