Bad Mommy(19)

I drove north to Mukilteo to a little park near the beach, and I sat with my back leaning against the driftwood as I opened the book. After a while a train rumbled down the tracks, one of those cargo trains, carrying big loads of steel and wide logs. I snapped a picture as it went by and posted it to Instagram. Two minutes later, Jolene texted me.

Where are you? Are you okay?

I paused, wondering why she would ask me that, and then it clicked—the train, my story the other day. She thought I was suicidal.

Yeah, I’m okay. Why?

The little bubble that appears to say she was typing popped up, then disappeared. What would she say? I saw your picture of the train and I’m just making sure you’re not running toward it?

The train- she sent back right away.

I’ll be okay. Just a little down. I set my phone down in the sand and read a couple pages before I looked at it again. When I did I saw that she’d texted twice.

Where are you?

And then:

I’m getting in my car…

I imagined her grabbing her keys, giving a hasty explanation to Darius, who was probably cooking dinner, and jumping in her car to what? Save me? Did she think she could get here in time if I decided to step in front of a train? Or maybe she thought she could talk me down using the generic your life has meaning speech? I hate to tell you this, Jolene, but my life does have meaning. My meaning was Mercy.

I texted her back ten minutes later when I knew she was probably on the freeway.

I’ve already left. I’m alive. Thanks for caring. Then I turned off my phone so I didn’t have to see anything else from her. I was reading her book and that was enough. It was stressful being in the mind of someone so … self-absorbed. Her character, Neena, was all wrapped up in self-loathing, which I had to assume came directly from Jolene’s own experience. I wondered what Darius thought of this book when he read it. And then it dawned on me that maybe he hadn’t read it. Because if he had, surely he would have Baker Acted her ass.

I was grumpy as I made my way to my car ten minutes later, having just finished a chapter where Neena burned her own skin with a lighter. Mary and Joseph—what was wrong with this woman? I tucked the book under the passenger seat so I didn’t have to look at it. Emo—that was the word for it. When I got home forty minutes later, Jolene was sitting on my front porch, a worried expression on her face.

“Are you okay?” she asked, jumping up. “I was so worried.”

“Why?” I asked. “I just needed some time to think. I like it at the water, clears my head.”

“Oh,” she said. “I just saw the train and I assumed…”

“You were wrong,” I said, simply. I decided not to tell her that I was reading her book and instead walked to my door, giving her the cold shoulder.



My sister caught her good-for-nothing husband sending dick pics to a girl from work. She called me sobbing while I was at Darius and Jolene’s, and I had to step outside to talk to her.

“Come visit,” I said, right away. “Book your flight and just come. You need a few days to clear your head. Besides, I don’t like you being alone with that sex maniac right now.”

“All right,” she said, her voice raspy. “I’ll book it now.” I stayed on the phone with her until she had, then I went back inside.

“I hate men,” Jolene said. I saw Darius raise his eyebrows, and I wanted to smile. “You’ll have to bring her by so we can meet her. If she’s up to it, I mean. It’s a really hard thing she’s going through. Maybe we can help cheer her up.”

I nodded. “She’d like that. It’ll be her first time out here, actually.”

“How did he get caught?” Darius asked. He was trying to mash the potatoes for Jolene, making a big show of not knowing how to use the KitchenAid. She shoved him aside with her hip, and he reached out and smacked her butt playfully. I laughed watching them. They always put on a good show.

“His phone. Don’t they always get caught that way?”

Darius nodded. “Technology is the doom of the cheating man.”

“Yuuup,” I said. “But, knowing my sister, she’ll stay with him. So, I can’t talk too much shit, you know. Puts me in a bad place. He’s a bastard, though.”

We moved over to the formal living room and Darius lit a fire. I noticed that Jolene had added a metal replica of the Space Needle to the mantel above the fireplace.

“Where did you get that?” I asked her.

“Incidentally, the Space Needle,” she said. “Why? You gonna buy one too?”

“Not my style,” I tossed back. “It’s a little kitschy.”

Darius choked on his drink. I hadn’t meant to say it. Sometimes that just happened to me and I blurted things out—I had no filter, George always said.

I walked over to the mantel to examine it. You could love Seattle, sure, but putting lowbrow art in your home to illustrate it seemed … desperate. Like, what were you trying to prove? I could guarantee you I loved Seattle more than Jolene, but I wasn’t going to run out and get a tattoo of the Space Needle to prove it. I suddenly felt very competitive about it. She’d only been here a few years longer than me anyway. That didn’t say anything. She thought she was more of a hipster Seattleite than I was, and that was bullshit.