I'm Glad My Mom Died(50)

I don’t like knowing people in the context of things. Oh, that’s the person I work out with. That’s the person I’m in a book club with. That’s the person I did that show with. Because once the context ends, so does the friendship.

I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately—without context, without boxes—and I yearn for them to know me that way, too. And as much as I think I know Miranda deeply and intimately, I don’t like that I know her through the context of iCarly, because iCarly is ending, and I don’t want our friendship to end with it.





50.


“ARE YOU SURE?”

“I’m positive.”

“Now’s not the time to throw us away. Now’s when you need us most.”

“I don’t think so. I think… if I go through these next few months with you, I’ll get too attached.”

“Why don’t you want to be attached? Isn’t being attached to someone a good thing? Isn’t that what love is?”

“I’m just worried about being attached while my mom’s, you know…” I can’t say it out loud. The realer it becomes, the more I can’t say it out loud. Doctors have been saying that Mom’s health is rapidly declining for a while, long enough for me to question their use of the word “rapidly.” Regardless, it’s declining. She’s wheelchair bound. She’s weaker than I’ve ever seen her. The cancer has spread to just about everywhere. The end is near. I bite my nail.

“Like, since I’m more attached to her than anyone, I worry all that attachment toward her will just pile onto whoever I’m with,” I say.

“Well, that’s fine with me. I want the pile. Pile it on.”

Not the response I was hoping for. I backpedal.

“Maybe I misspoke. I just think it’s a distraction from what I need to be focusing on. Family.”

“I’m a distraction?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

I scratch my head. I want out of this moment, this moment in Tony’s Darts Away—Joe’s favorite vegan joint in Burbank.

“Look, if you don’t love me anymore, you can just say it. I can take it,” he says, his voice cracking on the last part, betraying his words.

Just then his vegan sausage and beer come. The timing of food at restaurants is always impeccably in line with the phrase you’d least like someone to overhear. You almost have to appreciate it, it’s like the waiters work on this.

“I do love you.”

“Then why are you breaking up with me?” Joe takes a big bite of his sausage. An obnoxiously big bite. He’s got vegan mayonnaise smeared all over his lip. It’s disgusting.

Maybe this is why. Maybe it’s not about the Mom stuff at all. Maybe I’m just over it. His chewing bothers me most of the time. The baby voice he overuses makes me cringe. His jokes aren’t funny. He lacks ambition. He drinks too much. He has anger issues. Our age gap no longer feels cool to me and instead feels a little embarrassing for both of us.

I wonder what laundry list of flaws he’s racked up about me at this point. What could he say? I’m selfish. I’m possessive. I’m not social enough. I don’t like his friends. I’m too judgmental. I don’t give him enough attention.

Joe’s still chewing the same bite. He’s been chewing this same bite for a goddamned minute. Why not just take smaller bites? There’s an easy solve to this, Joe.

“Did you hear me?” he asks. “If you still love me, why are you breaking up with me?”

Something switches in me in this vegan mayonnaise–filled moment. All my patience is gone. I’m in a vegan dive bar, smelling beer I don’t care to drink with basketball and football games I don’t care to watch blaring from the excessive amount of TVs around me. I’m sitting on a bar stool with uneven legs opposite a man I no longer love. I am numb. I am done.

“Look, I just am.”





51.


MIRANDA’S DRIVING AND I’M SITTING shotgun in her Porsche Cayenne, where we spend 50 percent of our time together these days. And we spend a lot of time together these days. There was no need to worry about context; our friendship has gotten stronger since iCarly ended.

We hang out three or four times a week. Usually one of the nights is a sleepover, like last night. Typically the sleepover is at Miranda’s place, but last night we stayed at the St. Regis Laguna Beach because our series wrap gift was a night there.

The sleepover might as well have been at Miranda’s place because we didn’t do anything that made our sleepover any more St. Regis-y than our other ones. We sat in the room and watched some movie about the porn industry starring Amanda Seyfried, and decided that, even though the movie was mediocre and we don’t know how to pronounce her last name, Amanda Seyfried is a walking angel of beauty. We talked about how sad and miserable we are and how we feel guilty about it because we have so much to be grateful for. We watched Dance Moms until we fell asleep—between Abby Lee Miller’s abusive tactics and the intensity of the parents, we relate deeply.

We left the hotel not long ago. Miranda makes her way toward the nearest freeway on-ramp. We’re complain-laughing about something while Katy Perry’s “Roar” plays in the background (we once saw the Rolling Stones together, but who are we kidding, we’re twenty-one-year-old females and Katy Perry does much more for us than Mick Jagger). My phone rings. Mommy.