You'd Be Home Now (14)

“What’s on your face?”

“Shut up. I just came from circus class. Did you think I was joking about that?”

I hand Joey the phone. He takes it, jumping on her bed and settling back against her batik pillows. “Hello, weird one. You fixing to run away to the circus now? That’ll really piss Mom off.”

“It’s a summer class. I get credit. It’s done wonders for my self-esteem and fear of heights. And I really might just join the circus. Wouldn’t that just make Mom ballistic? Now, how are you, baby boy? Clean as a whistle? How do you like my room?”

“Your room is like living inside My Little Pony. If anything is going to make me relapse, it’s this room.”

I wince. Relapse. The Blue Spruce website said forty to sixty percent of people with substance addictions relapse during the first year of recovery.

I don’t want that to be Joey. I have to make sure that isn’t Joey.

“Joe.” Her voice is soft. “I miss you. I was worried about you. I’m here for you. You’re my brother. Everything doesn’t have to be sarcastic.”

Joey doesn’t say anything.

    I can tell she’s crying now. “I’m just so glad you’re alive.”

“Okay.” He closes his eyes. “Okay. I’m going to try. I am. I learned stuff. Okay? Talk later.”

He gets off the bed and hands the phone to me and goes into her bathroom and shuts the door.

Maddie wipes her eyes. “Sorry. I’m very emotional right now. You’ll tell me how he’s doing, yes? I won’t be back until Thanksgiving.”

“Of course,” I tell her.

“You two are so close. You know I’ve always been jealous about that, right?” She breathes deeply. “I have to go. Call me, okay? Or text. Is Mom getting him another phone?”

“Probably. She’s Mom.”

“I love you, Emmy-bear.”

“Love you, too.”

Her face disappears.



* * *



—

I help my mother put out the cartons of lo mein, orange chicken, egg rolls, plates, utensils. She pours a glass of wine. I wonder if that’s a good idea now. Like, shouldn’t she—well, she and Dad—both not drink, if we’re trying to keep Joey safe? I looked at the Blue Spruce website. I read the advice on bringing the patient home and how to create a supportive and sober environment.

Tentatively, I open my mouth.

Without looking up from her phone, my mother murmurs, “Alcohol was not his issue, Emory. Go tell your brother it’s time for dinner.”

When I go upstairs to Maddie’s room to get Joey, he’s lying facedown on the bed, perfectly still.

Out of habit, I panic. What if he took something in the bathroom? Mom swept the place of all painkillers, aspirins, everything except alcohol, but maybe she missed something. A fallen pill, a bottle of cough syrup pushed way back in the cabinet beneath the sink—

    My heart starts to pound, thinking of those mornings last year when I had to throw cold water on Joey’s face in the attic to get him up for school before my mother could see how wasted he was. Sometimes I had to slap his cheeks so hard I left red marks. Wait up for him to come home, watching endless reruns of Friends in the living room with the volume turned low, and help him up the stairs, worried the entire time we might wake up our mom and dad.

I do not want to go back to those exhausting and lie-filled months.

“I’m not high,” Joey mumbles. “Just tired. Not hungry.”

In a minute, he starts snoring.

Mom’s forehead creases in annoyance when I tell her he’s asleep. “Well, I’m not really hungry, anyway. I’m going to check my email. I’ve lost a lot of work time. Eat, Emory. I don’t want you getting too thin.”

And there I am, in the kitchen, surrounded by food again, with only Fuzzy staring hopefully up at me.



* * *



—

I’m woken up by the sound of grunting and drilling. I get out of bed and go into the hallway.

My dad is taking the door off Maddie’s room. Joey leans against the wall, still in his clothes from yesterday, frowning.

“No, Neil, I think you can just use a screwdriver, I don’t—”

My dad holds the drill out to my mother. “Be my guest, Abigail.”

    “What’s going on?” I say.

Everyone looks at me.

“I don’t get to have a door,” Joey says angrily. “I don’t get to have privacy. Do I have that right, Mom?”

My mother says, “No, Joe. You don’t. We gave you an attic and you did god knows what up there. This is part of your recovery. You can earn back your door when we see good grades, good behavior, a real effort on your part. I don’t want any more locked doors. I don’t want you hiding anymore.”

“I’m not allowed a place to think, at least? Do my homework so I can concentrate?”

My mother gives him the Look.

“Joey,” I say. “Just…let it go.”

My dad starts drilling again, raising his voice over the sound of the drill. “You can do your homework downstairs, with Emory. You can do it together. Do you think I like doing this? Do you think this makes me—”