“So move to LA.”
He hesitated. “It’s not that simple.”
“How is it not?” I retorted. “Elliot, this could be it, your break. Why the hell wouldn’t you take it?” The notion of Elliot not being in New York was strangely unsettling, but I pushed that aside.
He rubbed a palm over his face. “It’s my … my mom. She’s sick.”
Oh. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, it’s …” He cleared his throat. “I mean, thank you. It’s … the thing is … she’s an alcoholic.”
“Oh shit.” I slumped back in my seat. “It’s bad?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “She struggles with, well everything. She can sometimes get hysterical and, honestly, she’s a danger to herself, as well as everyone else.”
Something occurred to me. “Is she why your lip was split that time?”
He nodded. “She didn’t mean … I was trying to get her to go to bed and she was gesticulating, caught me with her wristwatch.”
I winced in sympathy. No wonder he carried a self-help book around with him. “How long has she been like this?”
“Five, maybe six years. So, you see, I can’t go to LA. How can I?”
“There’s no one else who can help when you’re not around?”
“No,” he said softly. “My dad works. A lot. He tries, but … if he’s away then I have to just …” He waved his hands in the air. “Drop everything.”
The junket made sense now. “She was the emergency.”
“Mom got rushed to the ER.” His voice was so quiet I could barely hear him. “Fell and broke her ankle, but when I got the call I thought—” His voice hitched.
“You thought the worst,” I said.
“The worst … the worst is an ever-descending low point,” he said ruefully. “I keep thinking this is as bad as it gets and then something else happens, something even more disastrous and I just think, how much more am I meant to take? Like, when is my mom coming back to me?”
“I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.
He looked at me, eyes fierce. “No one at work knows, apart from RJ.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“I’m not ashamed,” he said, defiantly. “That’s not why I don’t talk about it. I’m not ashamed of her.”
“I never said you should be,” I said.
“People judge, you know?” he went on. “They assume that because she’s an alcoholic that she’s a bad mom, that she doesn’t care about us, but that’s not true.” His voice cracked.
“Tell me about her,” I said. “Who is she, without the drink?”
“A firebrand.” Elliot smiled wistfully. “She loved to dance, any music at all, she’d start to move. Like, if a song came on the radio at the post office or at the market, she’d just break out into dance. It used to embarrass me as a kid, but I’d give anything to see her dance again.”
“Elliot.” I wanted to reassure him that maybe he would see his mother dance again, but I knew from my own experience that mothers weren’t fairy-tale characters who could be brought back to life if you loved them enough.
“She loved to play pranks, you know? Leap out from behind curtains and, man, the number of fake turds that we used to find around the house.” He laughed softly. “When I got into NYU, she was so proud of me.”
“Of course she was.” I’d never have guessed this was the weight he carried around with him. I’d assumed so much about Elliot Fox, but not once had I imagined he was dealing with such pain.
“Tell me about your home,” he asked suddenly. It was an innocent demand, but it stopped me in my tracks. My eyes drifted to the mother still pacing up and down the balcony, cradling her tiny baby.
