Weather Girl(45)

Five years. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s been five years since he last had sex with someone. But it could . . . and I can’t say I wouldn’t love to be the person who ends that dry spell. Every so often, I glance at his hands on the steering wheel and remember them on my skin last night. If we slept together, I’d want to see him completely give in. Surrender. The opposite of the measured way he unbuttoned my shirt, unhooked my bra.

An out-of-control Russell, one with his glasses askew and mouth swollen and fingers making imprints above my hips. Jacket tossed in a heap on the floor. A Russell who asks permission with a whispered plea in my ear. Begging me to undo him. To wreck him.

Once he leaves after helping me bring my bags inside, I take a cold, cold shower.

When that doesn’t work, I become very grateful I can move all the fingers on my dominant hand.



* * *



? ? ?

I TAKE THE next day off work to see a doctor, who confirms the elbow fracture with another X-ray. I sign up for physical therapy and grocery deliveries and a credit card with rideshare rewards points, since it’ll be about a month before I can safely drive again.

And then I spend far too much time picking out what to wear to see my mother.

“You didn’t have to throw yourself down a staircase to get out of this,” Alex says when he picks me up.

“Shut it, you.” I readjust my sling, and he reaches over to help me with the seatbelt. “I want to see her.”

It’s half true, at least, and I’m hoping for the other half on the drive to the hospital.

It would take a whole fleet of masseuses to work out the anxiety coiled tight in my body. I’m not sure what I’m expecting her to look like after nearly six months apart, if she’ll be exactly as I remember her, or if I’ll be able to tell, just by looking at her, that something’s different.

I know this isn’t going to be easy. My mom could drag me down better than Garrison, better than any of the guys I tried to project a positive front for. And she was the reason I did it. The reason I pretended to be sunshine, the reason I said everything was okay when nothing was.

Because our father couldn’t handle her darkness, and I couldn’t let that happen to me.

I won’t let her comment on my appearance or my career or my relationship status. I told Alex he could let her know Garrison and I broke up, but she doesn’t know the reason why, and I won’t let her needle me about it.

By the time we arrive, I’ve stuck and unstuck the Velcro on my sling so many times that it’s no longer tacky in certain places.

The hospital is a newer building downtown. After we check in at the front desk and go through a metal detector, a nurse leads us to a bright, cheery room filled with paintings donated by a local artist, all the tables empty except for the one Amelia Abrams is sitting at.

She cut her hair. That’s the first thing I notice. Alex, our dad, and I were a trio of redheads, our blond mom the odd one out. She took such pride in it—it was damaged beyond belief and she was always dyeing out the grays, but it was long and mostly blond and that was what mattered to her. She never wanted to look old, she told us, as though looking your age was some kind of punishment. When I got haircuts, she’d always say, “Not too short!” Like if I lost my hair or had too little of it, I’d be losing some of my value.

Now my mother’s light hair is trimmed to just above her shoulders, shorter than mine, in a style that’s not completely modern yet not outdated. It’s cute—that’s what it is. And her grays have grown out a bit, but she doesn’t look old. Not the way she was always fearful of, at least. What she looks is tired.

“Hey there, Alex. Arielle,” she says as we join her at the table. My full name, used so infrequently these days, yanks me back in time.

Those memories aren’t all bad. There were the Shabbat dinners she tried to make special, the prayers she taught us. The year we went as rock, paper, scissors for Halloween, won an elementary school costume contest, and collected more candy than I could ever hope to eat. Until she made us sell it to the dentist the next day because candy caused breakouts and god forbid her preteen daughter have a zit.

Her boyfriends are only in those memories occasionally, the ones who made an effort to get to know Alex and me, the decent ones who gently encouraged her to talk to someone. “You want to medicate me? Turn me into someone different?” she yelled at one of them, a well-meaning accountant named Charlie. I was eleven and wholly unsure what being medicated meant.

I sit up straighter and summon a smile, as though the force of it can banish the grayest parts of the past.

It’s not until we’ve exchanged pleasantries and I shuck off my jacket that she notices my arm. “Ari!” she gasps. “What happened?”

“A couple of viewers disagreed with my forecasts,” I say, then relent and tell her the almost-truth.

Her mouth forms a small O. “I’m so relieved you’re okay.”

Alex catches her up on the kids and his job, getting out his phone to show her a video of the twins dancing to Starship’s “We Built This City,” which he says is, inexplicably and unfortunately, their favorite song. I catch her up on KSEA, and she nods and laughs when she’s supposed to, even if the laughs sound a little foreign. It’s not that she seems happy, exactly—content is maybe closer to the right word.