“When did it happen?” I ask, knowing that I’m jumping around, but I want to know at what point she decided to cheat herself of the previous progress she made.
She pulls another cigarette from a pack smushed into the cushion and rests it between her fingers before lighting it. “What the fuck are you talking about now?”
“Your relapse. When exactly did it happen?”
She mumbles, lighting her current focus. “I don’t know what you’re going on about. I’ve been out there working my ass off trying to find a new job to keep this shit box running. All while you’ve been off doing who the hell knows what.”
She's lying, and she knows it. She doesn’t necessarily need to keep a job. Her portion of the life insurance policy my grandparents left behind is more than enough to cover expenses and weekly food hauls. A job for her would have benefits outside of finances, benefits that she’s never been known to run toward. And she knows this, which is why she’s talking out of her ass.
“You know why I left,” I remind her. “You took what wasn’t yours.”
“I did no such thing,” she cries in faked blasphemy.
How does it get so easy to act like this day in and day out? Why is it so hard for her to take responsibility for her actions, to look her son in the eyes and tell him that she messed up but she’s sorry?
I sigh, pushing my frustrations to the back burner. If I blow up, it’ll only push her in the direction that I don’t want her moving in. I don’t want an argument with me to result in her doing more drugs.
“Mom, it’s okay if you relapsed. It happens. Tell me how I can help you. Please.”
Maybe it’s fucked up, but I’d do whatever she’d ask if it led to her getting better, if it stopped her from running to the streets and kept her sober.
“Fuck off, Colson. What I need is what Finn needs.”
“Why’d you do it?”
We’ve never had this conversation, why she made a deal with the Lincolns. I have my assumptions, but she’s never admitted to it for one reason or another.
She sucks on her cancer stick and stares at me.
“Was it about money? If you needed money, why didn’t you ask me? I have a job. I could’ve helped.”
“I don’t need a damn thing from you,” she says calmly. It’s almost eerie, and it makes me wonder if money wasn’t the point behind working with them.
Maybe it was just about having access to drugs this entire time.
“If you’d have come to me, it wouldn’t have blown up in your face.”
She goes quiet, focusing more on the bad habit pinched between her fingers than our conversation. She doesn’t have more to say? Fine. But it’s not going to make this any easier.
“I’ll get him his money,” I tell her, then I pull my wallet from my pocket and toss a few bills on the coffee table. It isn’t much, but it’s something. “Go to the store and get some groceries, Mom. You look like you could use something to eat. And if you need more,ask me. Don’t go out there asking people who you know will want something in return.”
I don’t tell her the best workaround is to stop using the grocery installment money for drugs. That it’d kill two birds with one stone. She already shut down, and I don’t know what’ll come from it if I add fuel to the fire.
I hope to God she hears me—that she understands what I’m saying—but I also know that, oftentimes, it goes in one ear and out the other.
I pull all the compassion in my body to the forefront of my being. “Listen, I understand it’s not easy to stay clean, but you’ve done it before. That means you can do it again. Nothing good is going to come if you continue doing this shit, Mom.”
I fucking love you.
“We’ll figure it out together, I promise. First step is hard, but I’ll help you walk it.”
She says nothing as she tips her head back again and closes her eyes.
Her silence is loud and clear, and I get it. I only know what it’s like from the outside looking in, but to commit to the hard work of getting sober, then relapsing…
I imagine it eats her up inside.
I don’t say another word as I walk out of the house and leave her with her own internal demons.
