Hattie, Ruthie, and Saul all pile into the Jeep. Agnes agrees to store most of the presents in her garage until Hattie has had a chance to sort through her bedroom. I lead my mom toward Agnes’s Cadillac, and she starts to put up a fight about leaving her car, but Agnes is quick behind me to whisper something to my mom. And whatever it is she says, it’s enough to keep my mom from making a scene.
With her in the backseat, we drive in silence to her apartment. She rides with the window down the whole way, so anything Freddie and I might even say would be drowned out regardless. We hold hands, though, and thatseems to speak more than any words might.
When we arrive, Freddie offers to help me get her up the three flights of stairs, but I decline. She’s reached that sluggish stage of drunkenness where her legs are as useless as limp spaghetti. But she’s also bound to say absolutely anything, and I’ve put Freddie through enough over the last few months as it is.
I sling her arm over my shoulder and pull her along with me one slow step at a time. She helps slightly by steadying her hand on the railing.
We’re halfway up the first flight when she says, “You’re my baby. My beautiful baby. Your daddy and me, we always loved Hattie. But you were the one we planned for.” She laughs to herself. “Not that planning ever does much good anyway.”
I never knew that, but it makes no difference, really. I try to make it feel meaningful—that she really wanted me—but she doesn’t want me now, so I can’t find it in me to care. “Come on,” I say. “Keep moving.”
We make it up to the first landing, and she stops, bracing both hands on the railing. I stand there for a moment, letting her take a break. “I thought I was ready,” she says. “We had your sister and then we decided she couldn’t just be an only child.” She turns to me, her eyes squinting beneath the harsh security lights. “I thought that if we planned you, we must’ve been ready. I must’ve been ready.”
I pull her arm back over my shoulder. I don’t want to hear all the drunken excuses for why she couldn’t be there.There’s only one reason she wasn’t there for us: because she chose not to be.
Wearily, we start up the next flight. “But then that storm came and it wiped everything away. It was like Noah’s flood. Everyone had to start from scratch. And so did I.”
This is unfair for so many reasons. And I don’t even believe in fairness, but if anything were ever wholly unfair, it would be this. My mother in this state, spewing her confessions, like she somehow deserves to feel better. To feel the release of pressure that comes from sharing a horrible truth, but her not sober enough to feel the raw hurt that occurs when you finally admit out loud how wretched you truly are. Instead, I’m left with all the feelings and the memories of this moment, because she will wake up tomorrow and vaguely remember the outline of today.
She shakes her head. “You were always the responsible one. Sometimes I think you just chose being gay, because you had to figure out some kind of way to disappoint us.”
“Wow, Mom. Charming as ever,” I say through gritted teeth.
But she doesn’t even hear me. “I don’t worry about Hattie, though. Not one bit. You know why?”
“Why?” My voice comes out like a scratch against my throat. I don’t even mean to respond to her, but it’s like I can’t resist.
“Because she’s got you. You won’t ever let her fall.That’s true family,” she says. “That’s the kind of family I never was to you girls.”
Hot tears spill down my cheeks, and I yank her the rest of the way up the stairs. I don’t even bother unfolding her couch, but instead let her pass out with a pillow and a blanket on the floor.
I lock her door behind me, and I don’t look back.
THIRTY-SIX
“You okay?” Freddie asks as he clicks on his blinker to turn out of the parking lot.
I nod. “Take me home, please.” I’m exhausted by all the emotional highs and lows today.
“Sure,” he says.
I roll the window down and force myself to feel the harsh chill of this February evening. Pulling my hair loose, I let it tangle into knots that only Hattie will be able to brush out.
As we pull up in front of my house, I turn to Freddie. I force myself to say the words I’ve been forming for weeks now. “I can’t do this anymore.”
He takes my hand and squeezes, and it’s then that I realize he thinks I’m talking about my mother and life in general, which somehow makes this worse.
I wiggle my fingers out of his tight grip. “Freddie, we can’t do this anymore.”
He slides the car into park and turns to me as he throwsan arm over my seat. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” His voice is raspy and full of ache.
“I can’t be your girlfriend.” I wipe a tear away, and I don’t know if it’s a new one or an old one. Inside, the car is dark and my now rolled-up window is cold to the touch. Light from my front porch floods the dashboard, but we remain in shadows. “I love you.”
“Ramona, I love you, too. I wasn’t kidding when I said so.”
I take his hand, and his grip squeezes so tight. “It’s not enough. Sometimes it’s just not. Not right now.”
“You’re not making any sense.” He gets louder with every word. “You’re wrong. I know you can’t see what I see right now, but we can survive this. You... you can’t just cut people out of your life when things get tough.”
