I Liked My Life(86)

She grabs the flask from my hand and tips it back, laughing when some of it misses her mouth. “It’s as close as I’ve ever been to a real live retard. EVERYONE KNEW. I mean, you knew, right?”

She’s so totally out of it. I’m afraid I’ll lose her if I give the wrong answer. “I just want to know what happened to my mom,” I whisper.

“You knew. I can tell you knew. Everyone fucking knew.” She looks at me, disgusted. “Right there on the bathroom floor I saw it so clearly—Mike’s jabs after I slept with Doug when I was dating Noel; the football guys laughing their asses off when I got on the swing after homecoming; making varsity this year even though I totally suck. I’m the only loser who didn’t fucking see it.”

Her body starts to teeter. She can’t pass out, not yet, not here. I hold her up. “Tell me about my mom.”

“I laid on the nasty bathroom floor and played this whacked-out game of connect-the-dots. My parents were whores. People must joke about us all the time. They do, don’t they? DON’T THEY?”

The moment doesn’t seem real, but I slow my brain down enough to understand that Kara won’t go on without an answer. “Yeah,” I admit. “People joke.”

Kara lets out a stink-bomb burp. I back away. She cracks up. She’s legit insane. “I’m SCREWED,” she shouts. “Do you get it, Eve? My parents fucked all the people that’d have them in this little piece-of-shit town and now I’m branded for life.”

She starts to cry, but all I hear is what she hasn’t said. I shake my head. “Who cares about your parents’ fucking soap opera? At least you have parents.” Calm and steady is not getting her attention. I nudge her. Hard. “What happened to my mother?”

“Augh. God! You’re like that bitch who follows me fucking everywhere. This wasn’t my fault! I went to leave, but then I saw through a glass wall that the door to the roof was propped open with a vacuum. It was like a sign or something. I couldn’t imagine going home and facing them. Or going back to school. Or living at all with such a fucked-up family. Who marries a girl with swingers for parents? I might as well have a big fucking scar across my face. So I ran up the staircase. She must have seen me—right?—because as soon as I swung my legs over the barrier I heard your mom. I couldn’t believe my bad fucking luck. She was yelling from the other side of the ledge but there was machinery and shit so I couldn’t hear. I needed to jump before she had time to get help. And, fuck me, I don’t know … maybe she knew that was my plan because instead of running downstairs she came right over the barrier and stood next to me.” She stops for a second to stare at me. “Your mom was such a damn do-gooder.”

Tears gush from my eyes fast enough to carry the current right over the hand that grips my neck. My mother wanted to live. Of course she did. How did I ever believe otherwise? I look at Kara, graduating from shock to relief to rage. I’m having a conversation with the person responsible for her death. I want her out of my house, but not as badly as I want every detail. “Tell me what she said,” I yell. “Or did you push her?”

She shakes her head no. “I didn’t. I swear. I liked your prissy mom. I’d rather sixteen years with her than a lifetime with mine.”

I stand, towering over her. “Sixteen years is all I got.” Wasted as she is, Kara looks scared. Good. She tries to get up but I take my hand to her shoulder and force her back down. I’m taller and stronger. “Tell me what she said.” Kara doesn’t deserve to be the only one who knows my mother’s last words.

She blows her nose right into her hoodie. “She said there’s a reason for everything, that the reason no one else could volunteer that afternoon was so she could be there for me. I didn’t say anything but she kept going on about how life is hard but worth it, that we all need to suffer so we can appreciate when things are good, that she’d been feeling sad too earlier this year so she got help and now she’s stronger. I told her about Courtney Lawrence and she said, ‘So what? Who cares? You don’t have to make the same choices your parents make.’”

My tears have stopped. I’ve moved to hatred. Absolute hatred beyond anything I’ve ever felt before. If only Kara had jumped right away. Then the rest of this story wouldn’t matter. I want her dead.

“Then what?” I want every detail. I need to be there with my mom.

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t … she was looking right at me, right in my eyes, and everything went all slo-mo. I went back over the barrier. I took a step toward the door, assuming she’d follow. I guess maybe she started to but slipped. Or something. I didn’t see it. But I heard the scream. Fucking awful.”

I lunge at Kara, shoving her chest against the back of the couch with everything I have. But then I hear my mom. Forgive her. I laugh. I actually laugh. But I hear her again. Forgive her. Practice love, compassion, and forgiveness. That was Mom’s big mantra. She preached that love, compassion, and forgiveness are capacities you have to actively engage because experiences will strip you of them if you aren’t careful.

I feel none of those things, but her words calm me enough to consider what more I need to know from Kara. “Why didn’t you help her?”

“By the time I looked, it was over. She must have slipped, right? She had on these high-heeled boots and—”