Until the Day I Die(3)
“Me first,” Ben says, raising his flute and clearing his throat theatrically. “An ode to Shorie. Looks like her daddy, codes like him too. But don’t think you can have her. She’s mine, Yahoo.”
Someone shouts, “What’s Yahoo?” and everybody laughs. Half of me feels suffused with happiness. The other half wants to run down the stairs and out into the street and never return. I really don’t enjoy everybody looking at me like this.
“Okay, that was three sentences,” Sabine says. “And nobody owns Shorie.” She casts Ben a reproving look, but he just grins and points at me. I try to smile back. If he really wanted me, though, he’d talk Mom into letting me stay home and work. I’ve known him since I was a baby, and I love him like family—I even used to call him Uncle Ben before I figured out he wasn’t really related to me—but I’m furious at him too.
Layton Marko, Jax’s lawyer, raises her glass next. “You may be the smartest person I know, Shorie Gaines, but you never rub our noses in it.”
Somebody yells, “Not true!” and breaks everybody up again.
“And comp-sci degree aside,” she continues, “you can still go to law school afterward, like the cool kids.”
I lift my glass to her while everybody hoots and hollers.
“My turn,” Sabine says. She dabs at her nose, and I can see she’s gotten misty-eyed. My heart twists a little. “You take our hearts with you, Shorie . . . so promise you’ll come back.”
Right then, I see Mom. She’s standing beside Ben, who’s got his arm around her. It isn’t that abnormal; they’re both huggers and have been friends forever. But for some reason it irks me. Mom catches my eye and raises her glass. Ben lets his arm fall away.
“Mine isn’t one sentence either . . . ,” she begins. The room quiets immediately, which is a thing that always happens when my mom speaks. “But first I’d like to say, I’m sorry for being late tonight. I lost track of time.”
I gaze down at my sandals and my lemon-yellow toenail polish. It looked cheery in the nail salon, but under the fluorescent office lights, it makes me look like I’ve got a kidney condition. How is it even possible that the room just got quieter?
“That said,” Mom continues, “I want you to know I am in your corner, one hundred percent, no matter what. Woo-hoo, Shorie!”
Ben’s arm pops back up to Mom’s shoulders, and he gives her a squeeze. But, at the same time, I see him and Sabine exchange glances. They’re not falling for Mom’s falsely upbeat tone.
“Anyway. I will always be here for you. I love you. Go get ?em, kiddo.”
The guests clap. It might be my imagination, but the applause seems subdued, polite, like everyone senses there’s something wrong with Mom. They know. I do too.
When Dad found a bug in Jax, there was a simple protocol. He would just assign the problem to someone, and they would work on it until the issue was fixed. If only we could deal with people the way we deal with computers. Mom needs to be fixed. Maybe it’s not that simple with a human being, but I don’t know. I think finding someone smarter than me—a professional with experience—is worth a try.
Because clearly something is very wrong with my mother. And tonight, for the first time, I’m afraid if it doesn’t get fixed, something terrible is going to happen.
4
ERIN
Two days after her party, Shorie and I are hauling her bright-yellow Huffy cruiser up three flights of stairs in Amelia Boynton Hall—the dorm for all incoming freshmen with engineering scholarships—when she abruptly announces that she’s tired and stops dead on the landing.
“We should keep going,” I say, just as a fresh wave of kids and parents surge into the narrow space, filling it up and pressing us back against the wall. They must’ve let in the next group on the schedule, or else someone ahead of us is maneuvering an entire three-piece living room suite through one of the doorways, slowing the traffic. Whatever it is, now we’re in a bottleneck to end all bottlenecks, and I’m reconsidering our decision to bypass the long lines for the elevators.
Lines of kids file slowly past us in both directions, ants bearing armloads of twinkle lights, rugs, microwaves, and coordinated bedding. The girls let their long hair hang down their backs, even in the ruthless, soul-crushing Alabama humidity.
I told you so vibrates through every cell of my body. Gigi’s stupid bike from 1990-something is not a substitute for a car. But Shorie didn’t want a car; she wanted her grandmother’s bike. And insisted we haul it to her room until she can get the right kind of lock for it. I know I can handle getting a rusty, grease-coated bike up a set of college dorm stairs, but there’s no rule book for leaving a daughter at college who distinctly, desperately, angrily does not want to be left. Or maybe there is a guide, and I just haven’t paused long enough from working to google it.
This was always Perry’s area—the delicate handling of our prickly daughter. If he were here, he’d whisper some inside joke in Shorie’s ear, cajole and comfort and coax until she was laughing and charging up these stairs. I can’t help but think the least he could’ve done was impart his secrets. But there was no time for a letter from my husband. And now there is just a big blank negative space where he used to be.
I still haven’t gotten used to this new jagged anger that emanates from my daughter. It started when Perry died. Every once in a while, it shoots out in violent electrified bolts toward me, always taking me off guard, paralyzing me, making me hurt in ways I never expect. It stays constant, a low hum droning on and on underneath any other sound.