The Astonishing Color of After(58)

My father sat down. “Yes. I took her to the doctor, and we talked about it together. She explicitly consented to it. She could’ve changed her mind at any point, but she didn’t. Your mom was in a bad place, Leigh. She wasn’t eating. She wasn’t talking. If she kept it up, she was going to die.” His voice cracked on that last word.

I shook my head. My mother was not going to die. My mother with her sunny voice, her strong piano-slaying fingers, hugs that melted your heart. My mother who made the best waffles, the best pastries. Who had smiled so sweetly at me just last night.

He cleared his throat. “Electroconvulsive therapy changes the brain chemistry fast. It can bring a person out of really bad depression when other things aren’t working.”

I stared at the kitchen tiles. I imagined my mother in an operating chair, hooked up to a million wires, getting zapped over and over again. Body lighting up blue and white, eyes rolling in the back of her head, mouth open in a soundless scream.

“It’s really not what it sounds like,” my father said, as if he could hear my thoughts. “Shock treatment is very much misunderstood. I needed the doctor to explain it to me, too. They gave her a muscle relaxant, and they put her to sleep. Then they applied an electric current to induce a quick seizure, change the brain chemistry. She doesn’t even remember it.”

“Was that the only option?” I asked.

Dad drew in a shaky breath. “The doctor said it was a good option, because she’s been treatment-resistant. She’s tried psychotherapy. She’s tried so many medications. They work well for a lot of people, but they haven’t really worked on her.”

“Right,” I said, though this was news to me.

“Leigh… we didn’t want you to worry. But—well. This whole thing was not… a recent development. Your mother’s been fighting depression for many, many years. I’d guess longer than you’ve been alive.”

I’d figured out that much, lying in my bed sleepless for countless nights, running through the backlog of my mother’s behavior. The months when it seemed she’d forgotten how to form a real smile. The long naps she would take, often forgetting to do something she’d promised. The conversations when she was barely responsive.

I realized that I’d known for a long time without truly understanding. Her illness was something I’d been afraid to look at head-on.

But there was also the fiery, lit-up version of my mother. How could a person like her be depressed? She was full of energy and life and passion. The word depressed made me think of this group of kids at school who wore all black and thick eyeliner and listened to angry music and never showed their teeth. The ones who people sometimes called emo, making it sound like a bad word.

My mother wasn’t like that. Not at all.

And then a small voice in the back of my head whisper-wondered: Was it my fault? I was the one who was around her the most. Was I somehow preventing her from getting better?

“When was it?” I asked. “The treatment?”

“The last appointment was the day before yesterday. She’s gone six times over the last two weeks.”

I sucked in a fast breath. Six times. “You should’ve told me. I could’ve handled it. I could’ve been here to help. You can’t just send me away like I’m a task on a to-do list that someone else can check off.”

He bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Leigh.” It was probably the first time in my life my father had ever apologized to me.

I sat down. My stomach uncoiled and exhaustion took over, seeping into my limbs.

“The confusion and short-term memory loss are just side effects. But she’s been coming out of it fast. It worked—and better than I’d hoped. As far as I can tell, she’s really only confused about these last couple of weeks.”

I nodded slowly. “Does she remember—what she was like before? How she used to feel?”

“I think so.”

The floorboards creaked overhead and both of us fell silent. We listened to the noise of my mother’s feet, easing from one side of the room to the other. We listened as she made her way down the stairs, one slow step at a time.

I got up and started boiling water for tea.

That was where we were when my mother rounded the corner into the kitchen. Me dipping a tea bag into a mug, watching the water change. Dad at the table, sipping his coffee with one hand on the edge of a newspaper.

“Good morning,” she said. She was still in her bathrobe, but she’d brushed her hair until it was shiny and sleek. She beamed at us, and I felt so certain in that moment that everything was going to end up just fine.





60





When I finish weaving the net, it’s nearly as wide as the smallest wall in my room—thank goodness I overpacked on baggy T-shirts and stretchy sweatpants. It’s just large enough that it might be able to hold the bird and stop her from flying off again, if I can figure out the right way to use it. Tomorrow I’ll figure out where to set it up, and how I’m going to launch it.

But still I can’t sleep, and my room is too quiet, the night too heavy, the hours dragging by.

The harsh words I said to Feng keep echoing back to me. I thumb through the box, looking for a distraction from the brown and muddy guilt clouding my mind.

What I pull out is a beige piece of paper, stiff and pebbly, folded up. The memory of the assignment bursts to the surface. I’d partnered with Axel, and we’d folded the sheet in half so that I could sketch him on one side, and he could sketch me on the other. We weren’t allowed to look at what the other person had done until we were both finished. When we unfolded the page, it looked like our black-and-white selves were smiling at each other.