The Comeback(2)

I sit next to her, carefully avoiding the pink blanket that covers her lap. I tuck my legs underneath me, and my dad passes each of us a tray with a beanbag underneath so that we can eat from our laps. My mom’s tray has a watercolor picture of poppies on it, and mine has sleeping cocker spaniels. He takes a seat on the green corduroy armchair next to my mother, and I know that he will be watching her with an affectionate look on his face. The one that annoys her when she catches him doing it. Weakness has always repelled us both, which is somewhat ironic given my current state.

I eat the broccoli first from the head down to the stem, and I wish I hadn’t made such a thing about salt being the devil. It’s overcooked to the point of oblivion. I coat it in ketchup instead until it’s nearly edible, and then I start to cut the ham. The Kardashians break for a commercial, and my mom mutes the TV. It’s her way of beating the system—she will never buy a mop just because some newly promoted advertising executive thinks she needs one.

I watch my mom push a piece of ham around her plate. We all know that she’s not going to eat any more than a third of it, but she keeps up the charade for my dad.

“Good day, everyone?” my dad asks, studying a cut on his thumb.

“Excellent,” I say, and my mom lets out a small laugh.

“Just sublime,” she says, before turning the volume back up. I stare out the window and watch my parents’ neighbor Mr. Porter arranging a Thanksgiving display at the end of his drive, soon to be replaced by an elaborate nativity scene. I already know he will back his car into each one at least three times before the New Year and will blame everyone else for it. At times like this, I can almost understand why my parents never left Anaheim. There’s a comfort to be found in the inevitability of it all.



* * *



? ? ?

I arrived on their porch nearly a year ago, with a camouflage duffel bag filled with all the things in the world I thought I couldn’t live without, most of which are now long gone. I was seven hours sober after six months that I remember only in gossamer fragments, and I saw how bad it had gotten in my parents’ faces before I ever looked in a mirror.

Despite what I told the women in CVS, I haven’t really been Grace Hyde since I was fourteen, so I had to work hard to make my return as seamless as possible for my parents. I observed their habits carefully before slotting myself into their schedule, drifting into their spaces only at breakfast and dinner, never in between. I even matched my rootless accent to theirs again, pulling back on my vowels wherever they did to remind them of who I was before we moved here. I, too, have learned how to worship at the altars of TV dinners and reality shows, all the while pretending to be like any other family deeply entrenched in the suburbs of Southern California.

In the middle of the day, when my dad is at work and my mom is painting her nails or watching QVC, I walk the streets of Anaheim, generally ending up at the same manicured park with a pink marble fountain in the center. I am rarely approached here when I go out, and if I am, I politely decline to take any photos. People in small cities are different—they need less from you. I thought it would be hard to disappear, but it turns out it’s the easiest thing in the world. Whoever you may have been, you’re forgotten as soon as you pass the San Fernando Valley.

For my family’s part, they don’t question my presence. Awards season came and went, and we all pretended that my eight-year career never existed. Maybe they’re respecting my privacy, or maybe they really don’t care why I’m here. Maybe I lost that privilege when I moved away, or that first Christmas I didn’t come home, or maybe it was all the ones after that. When I’m being honest with myself, I understand that I only came back here because I knew it would be like this—that as much as I don’t know how to ask for anything, my family also wouldn’t know how to give it to me.





CHAPTER THREE





The air feels crisper than it has in a long time when I wake up, and I’m feeling okay, about to go for a walk when my mom stops me.

“Grace, shall we go for a drive?” she asks.

I stand in the hall, confused because this isn’t how it has worked for the last 360 days that I’ve been home. My parents drive to the supermarket for a food shop once a week, and I supplement this with trips to the drugstore for all the products my mom refuses to buy in front of my dad, even after thirty years of marriage: her diet pills and panty liners and my tampons. Every other Sunday we go for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and my dad orders three Arnold Palmers and extra bread before we’ve even sat down. My parents share the fish tacos, while I alternate between the orange chicken and the pasta carbonara. Very occasionally my parents will drop in to a mixer at a neighbor’s house, and afterward my mother will act as if she spent the entire evening being waterboarded, as opposed to just engaging in polite conversation about the best local schools or how to circumvent Anaheim building code regulations to install a sauna in your guesthouse. We do not go on drives together. It’s funny how easy it is to become a creature of habit, even when those habits are not your own.

“Do you need something?” I ask, trying not to sound suspicious.

“If you have other plans, then just say,” my mom says testily, and I shake my head.

“No I don’t, obviously I don’t,” I say as she gathers up her navy quilted coat and slips her feet into a pair of old UGG boots. The ankles cave inward heavily over the soles and I look away, focusing on zipping up my jacket instead.