The Astonishing Color of After(50)

A car pulled into our driveway, and there was Dad, hauling his suitcase up the porch steps, coming in the front door. I had the fleeting thought that everything would be right again. He was here; he would fix it. Mom would go back to normal.

Inside the house, he kicked off his shoes and walked into the dining room.

“What happened?”

He didn’t look at me. Mom didn’t look at him. Slowly, though, she rose out of her slump and pushed her back against her chair. Her eyes stayed closed.

“I’m okay,” she said. Her voice came out in a scratchy whisper.

Dad stared at her hard. “Are you really?”

“I’m okay,” she said again.

His expression changed. “Give me something concrete here, Dory. Talk to me.”

Mom shook her head. She opened her mouth and closed it again.

Dad was shaking. His face was red and pinched and horrible. His feelings emanated like heat and debris from an atomic bomb. I was only a bystander and I was getting scorched.

“It’s gotten worse again, hasn’t it?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I had the feeling he was talking about something I didn’t totally grasp. I watched her face carefully. She didn’t say anything.

“It’s a school night,” he said finally. “We should all get to bed.”

But I didn’t go to school the next day. In the morning Dad was out—he left a note saying he was taking care of errands and getting groceries. There was nobody downstairs to make sure I actually left to catch my bus. I checked the garage; Mom’s car was still there.

She was upstairs in bed, facing away from me. I could tell she was awake.

“Hey, Mom.” My mother turned, tightening the blankets around her. She looked up at me with eyes like a little bird’s, uncertain and fearful.

“Are you okay?” I said. It was obvious she was not.

She shook her head. There seemed to be nothing to do but get in bed next to her and crawl under the blankets. She curled toward me until our foreheads touched. I fell asleep like that, and when I woke up, my mother was no longer in bed, but my hair was wet, and there were dark patches on her pillow. She’d been crying. I crawled out of bed to look for her.

Mom was downstairs, leaning on the counter with a mug between her hands, peering into the hot chocolate.

I knew she’d heard me come down, but she didn’t turn around. It was like she wanted me to notice the little orange bottle wrapped in its pharmaceutical label, perched on the edge of the counter.

“What’s that?” I said, glancing at the pills through the orange. I had a strange sense of déjà vu—as if I’d seen her just like this before, standing next to a prescription bottle, her body shaped with defeat and gloom.

Or was it a vague memory, forgotten until now?

Mom knew what I was referring to. She didn’t look up. “That is my new life.”

I went and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, set my temple against hers. “If they can help, then it’s a good thing. It’s a good life.”

I waited to feel her nod, but she never did.





At one in the morning a text came buzzing through my phone, and I realized I’d failed to respond to any of Axel’s messages over the last seventeen hours.

Hey, I texted back.

Are you okay? What’s going on?

I sighed and texted, Can I come over?

Of course

I had to sneak out of the house, which was easy enough. When I cut diagonally through other people’s yards, it only took five minutes to run to Axel’s, even with the snow ankle-deep.

In his basement, he slumped down on the couch next to me. “So what happened?”

“Ugh.”

I fell over sideways so that the top of my hair was grazing the side of his thigh. It occurred to me that if I had shifted my body differently, I could’ve put my head right in his lap. Would that have freaked him out?

He gently nudged my shoulder.

It was easier to talk with my eyes focused on the little dots of light on his keyboard, the giant headphones lying in a puddle of cords. I didn’t have to look at Axel. I didn’t have to see his reaction.

I told him about going to the hospital. I told him how I found Mom in bed in the morning, and how in that moment it felt like I would be guilty of something if I just left her and went to school.

I didn’t use the word depression, which had been thudding around in my skull all day.

“But I still don’t get it,” he said quietly. “Why did she call nine-one-one?”

I shrugged, which made my head bump against his leg. I could feel the static gathering in my hair. “I don’t know, either.”

I mean, I could have speculated. I didn’t really want to.

“God. I’m so sorry, Leigh.”

I let my eyes fall shut.

When I woke in the morning, I was still on his couch. A quilt was draped over me. I sat up slowly. Axel was asleep, curled up on his twin bed in the back corner. I watched his body swell and fall with each breath.

A cyprus-green pang struck me between the ribs. He’d removed himself from the couch. We could’ve fallen asleep touching, but he didn’t let that happen. I guess it would’ve been weird.

But maybe really nice.

I stood up and stretched. Axel’s watercolor pad leaned against the music stand on his keyboard. My fingers itched for it. I loved seeing his paintings. Sometimes he’d let me flip through, and he’d explain how each bold stroke or swirl of color was going to translate to a solo bassoon, the trill of a piccolo, arpeggios on a Spanish guitar.