I Liked My Life(5)

The match starts on time. Refusing to give the crowd even a frown, I take everything I’ve lost and put it in the force of my racket. Each time I connect with the ball I think, Screw all of you. My form suffers when I go all in with strength, causing a few stupid errors that catch the net or fall out-of-bounds, but I win all three matches. The losers will play it off as intentional. They’ll go home to their intact families, proud of their sensitivity in pretending Mother’s Day didn’t exist. “I’m glad she won,” they’ll lie. “She needed it more than me.”

Screw all of you.

No matter how people justify it, these cover-ups are not about comforting me. They’re so people can skip the depressing conversation. Or not feel guilty they still have a mother. Or stall a private consideration that if it happened to me it could happen to them.

A week after the funeral I went back to school because Dad and I were such a mess together I was afraid we’d off ourselves too. It’s hard to say which is worse. At school people are so desperate for me to talk that when I finally speak, even if it’s just to say I have to use the restroom, they’re all like, “Really, Eve? Wow. That’s soooooo amazing.” It drives me apeshit. Unlike the deep pain I experience with my dad, I feel nothing at all with my friends. In some ways it’s creepier.

At lunch there’s pressure to eat. Nothing is more loved at my school than a good eating disorder to diagnose, so I’m careful to finish what I pack. Anything is better than sitting through a food intervention with a bunch of teary-eyed girls and our clueless guidance counselor. We had one for Becky when she was making herself puke. I was all into it at the time. Lindsey told her mom, who told the guidance counselor, who helped us set Becky on the right course. All Becky took from it was the tip that everyone knows the sound of someone throwing up, so unless you’re in a private stall, anorexia is a better option.

I’m at no risk for that particular societal trap. I despise puking and get wicked headaches when I go too long without eating. My problem is mental. Whole days pass where I don’t remember physically walking from one class to the next. The dismissal bell rings and I can’t remember where I parked or even driving to school. Teachers are divided on how to react. A few completely ignore what happened. They have no idea how to respond, so they treat me no differently than they did when I had a living, breathing mom at home. Most of the older ones are on a compassion mission. They ask how I’m doing before and after each class. No matter what I say, they flip their lips into their teeth and nod. The remaining teachers believe life is hard and, although it doesn’t seem like it now, my mom’s suicide will somehow serve me well later in life. They use the word grit a lot. Most of these assholes are now tougher when grading, as if to prove nothing is fair and life hasn’t come to a stop.

But it has. This is a small town. I’ll forever be branded the daughter of the stay-at-home mom who jumped off the Wellesley College library. My mom took my life with hers. I considered taking off in her BMW, but that only ever works out in movies. If I showed up in New York with no money I’d be spit right back out and my story would be even sorrier than it is now. This neighborhood already grieves my potential like a lost life. College is my ticket out, but I can’t handle another year of this shit. I use Kara and her mom’s silence over their devastating loss to finalize my plan.

When we pull into the driveway, I say good-bye and hop out. Kara doesn’t say a word. No amount of pity could turn her into a good sport. When she didn’t make varsity freshman year, she smashed her two-hundred-dollar V?lkl racket into the court, probably causing that crack she’s been bitching about all season. How was I ever friends with her?

Mrs. Anderson offers an insincere congratulations as I shut the car door. Her excessive mascara is smeared under one eye, so I know tears were shed over the loss. Real tears. From a grown woman. Over a tennis tournament. My mom was never that ridiculous. When I lost she’d sing that Sugarland chorus “Let go laughing,” then ask what I wanted for dinner. She could’ve picked sound tracks for movies—the woman had a song for every situation. Like when she belted out the Rolling Stones that time I sulked because she refused to buy me Tory Burch flats: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” I never admitted it, but the unique delivery did make her point stick. I wonder what she’d sing now? Would she encourage leaving Wellesley or want me to stick it out for senior year? As if in response, that Cat Stevens song she loved floats to my mind: It’s not time to make a change.… I shiver, looking around the kitchen as if she could really be here, offering an opinion. The words echo through my head once more before I shake them free. Screw that. She’s the one who ditched me; changing wasn’t my call.

Dad isn’t home yet, thank God. I leave the admissions folder I’ve been carrying around for a week on the kitchen counter with a sticky note that reads: I want to be a boarder at Exeter next year. Need fresh start. Here’s the info. He’ll worry what people will think—first Mom bails, then me—but in the end he’ll agree. He has no energy to fight, and I know when he looks at me he sees her.

She died on Good Friday. She wasn’t religious but maybe it was symbolic, like her death was a sacrifice or something. Everyone at the funeral went on about how my mom was a giver, which means everyone at the funeral thought of Dad and me as takers. So that’s it. We were both taking and taking and taking, and my mother, like a keg after only a few hours at a crowded party, was tapped. Her nod and smile meant the same thing as my middle finger. I just didn’t know it. She certainly made her point. I imagine her looking down and shouting, “Do you see all I did for the two of you? Are you capable of being grateful yet?”