Put Me Back Together(33)

I sucked in a deep breath, trying not to drown in my own bullshit.

“All right,” Mom said in that defeated voice she used when she knew she had to agree even though she didn’t want to. “All right, Katie. If you say so, then I believe you. You’re fine.”

“I’m fine!” I repeated, and this time I almost believed myself.

“How’s art class going?” she asked.

“Which one?” I replied, a purposeful dig just to punish her. I was taking two art classes—one studio, one history—and of course she didn’t know the name of either one.

“Should I guess the name of the course?” my mother replied.

“It’s going well,” I said grudgingly. “We’re on to painting right now, so I’m in my element.”

“Good. I think it’s good that you’re keeping busy.”

I wanted to ask if Dr. Lepore had suggested “keeping busy” as a good way to mitigate the “emotional impact,” but I didn’t think the conversation could handle that many air quotes.

“So how’s the case going?” I asked, eager to change the subject to anything other than my life.

“Which one?” my mother said. I could just picture the ‘gotcha’ expression plastered all over her face.

“The one you almost settled, but then they took back their offer at the last minute,” I replied.

Really the description could have fit any one of her cases. I could have just as easily said the one where the little girl got cancer and you swooped in to help her family, or the one where the evil corporation tried to swindle a whole town out of their land, or the one where you worked for the good of humanity while your daughter sat back painting pictures, having only ever brought evil into this world. Yup, being my mother’s daughter was really the best.

She said, “We’re working on them.”

“How’s Dad?” I asked.

“Your father is your father,” she replied. This is what she always said about him. It reminded me of the phrase from that movie, “Stupid is as stupid does,” which I’d never really understood.

“So back to this boy—”

“Oh, Mother,” I muttered.

“This Lucas,” she went on. Oh terrific, Em had told her his name. “Is he your boyfriend?”

My eyes darted to the hallway, paranoid that he would be standing there eavesdropping, even though there was no way he could have gotten into the apartment. I closed the door anyway. The Lucas-Matthews-is-a-hottie incident had really done a number on me.

“It’s a possibility,” I replied, the first honest answer I’d given her.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s an ‘I don’t know,’ I guess,” I said, rolling my eyes to the ceiling.

“You don’t know or you don’t want to say?” she persisted.

“Overruled, Mom! Stop lawyering. I don’t want to talk about Lucas Matthews anymore.”

“Oh, is that his last name?” she said with barely concealed triumph.

Point to Mom.

“Mom,” I said tiredly, “can I get back to my Saturday now? I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

Or coffee. This whole conversation would have been a lot easier to deal with if I’d had just one tiny cup of coffee first.

“Okay, darling,” she said, and I heard the disappointment in her voice, the wish that this talk had been something entirely different. “Your father sends his love, and so do I. I hope you know that…”

This time I didn’t interrupt her. She just never finished her sentence, and it hung there between us until I said goodbye and hung up.


There was no question in my mind that lying to my mother was the right thing to do. The alternative—telling her the truth about what had happened six years ago—was completely out of the question. Just the thought of it made my entire body clench as though tensing for an explosion. Because that’s what it would be like, my entire life exploding before my eyes. But there were levels of deception, and when she pleaded with me to share my feelings with her, to open up to her, sometimes I wondered if it would be so bad, so wrong, to confide some of my pain to her. I wouldn’t have to tell her everything. I could just unload one of the rocks on my back, or maybe two. I could lighten my load a little.

Then I remembered what my life had been like in high school, back before I’d learned to lie as well as I did now, back when I used to lay on the couch and stare into nothing for hours, when I stopped making or keeping friends, when I wore my self-hatred like a cape and nearly drowned in its folds on a daily basis.

My mother hadn’t been quite so eager to hear about my every worry then. In fact, she’d essentially ignored my distress for months until my father insisted they take me to see Dr. Lepore. As much as she said she wanted me to be honest with her, I knew my mother. She didn’t want to be the parent of a troubled girl again, to have to comfort me as I wept, to have to stop herself from screaming at me to get it together. She wanted a daughter she could understand, even if I had to study art instead of law, even if she could tell that all I fed her were lies. A daughter who lied about being fine was trying. That was far preferable to a miserable daughter who wasn’t trying at all.

Still, all that lying took its toll.