Underwater(36)

“It’s not that I don’t want to be there. You get that, right?”

“All I know is if I wanna go somewhere, I go. You can, too.”

My brother is too smart for his own good.

I remember reasoning out those exact same thoughts about my dad that time he didn’t show up for Christmas almost a year and a half ago. I’d worked so hard putting together a scrapbook of the best moments my mom and Ben and I had shared over the past year without him. I thought he’d love it. But he didn’t even show up. He wasn’t in Afghanistan that Christmas. He was right down the coast. He could’ve been with us in a matter of hours. My mom had given him a chance to make things better. He could’ve been unwrapping the presents that Ben had made at preschool and diligently wrapped in tinfoil.

I thought he just didn’t want to come.

I understand more now. I understand how my dad might’ve felt the same way I do at this moment. I understand how humiliating it is to see the look of disappointment on people’s faces when they realize what you’ve become. My mom called back and forth with my grandma and my uncle Matt that Christmas day. She called because my dad had promised to spend the day with us. She called because she wanted to believe him, for my sake and for Ben’s. But that was the night she stopped trying. That was the night she knew we had lost him for good. I knew it, too.

“This is what a promise from my dad looks like,” I told my mom as she hung up the phone for the last time that day. “It looks like nothing.”

I didn’t say it in front of my brother. I’m not that mean. But I was angrier than I’ve ever been. How long will it be before Ben gets that mad at me? Will he stop bothering? I don’t want to do that to him. And I don’t want that to happen to us.

“I’m trying really hard,” I tell Ben. “I want to be there. So much.”

“Okay.” He yawns and stretches his arms up over his head. “Then you will.” The subject is closed for now. Somewhere, somehow, my little brother still believes in me.

It’s only the first week of May. I still have time. I watch the fish swim and listen to Ben sink into sleep.

*

As I’m about to doze off myself, I hear the cell phone vibrate on Ben’s nightstand. He must’ve taken it out of my drawer to play with it. I know it’s Evan. I don’t want to touch that phone. He can’t possibly have anything nice to say. “Ben,” I hiss through the fish. But Ben’s sleeping soundly with his knuckles tucked under his chin and the collar of his dinosaur pajama top popped up to his earlobes. I get out of bed and grab the phone, telling myself I’ll just shut it off and shove it back in the drawer without looking at what it says there.

But I’m a liar.

Evan’s text is too bright, lighting up the screen in the middle of the night.

Evan: You can return the phone since you refuse to use it. You probably won’t even get this because I doubt you’ve turned it on.

This is what he tells me. This is what he wants me to know.

After that, I can’t sleep. I lie flat on my back and stare at the fish. The house is quiet until I hear my mom’s footsteps in the hall. They are soft, barely perceptible. The deadbolt clicks free and the door creaks as she opens and shuts it. And then I hear her making her way down the concrete steps outside my bedroom window. It’s late. She has to work in the morning. She can’t possibly have somewhere to go. I pull aside my curtain, but I don’t see her on the steps or in the courtyard. I tiptoe my way through the apartment. I peek through the crack of the door as I open it.

I still don’t see her.

I step out onto the welcome mat and peer through the starry night. My eyes rake across the doors of each apartment.

They are shut.

The windows are dark.

The curtains are drawn.

The wind is gentle.

The moon is big.

The sound of the water licking the edges of the pool is all I can hear.

But then, in the midst of it all, I see her. My mom. She is in the far corner of the courtyard. She lies on a chaise longue. She smokes a cigarette. I’ve never seen my mom smoke a cigarette. I lean over the railing to peer down at her. I hear her then. She muffles a sob with the crook of her elbow, and I can see her body spasm as the emotions rip through her.

My mom is breaking down in the jasmine-scented courtyard of Paradise Manor on an almost-summer night.

She tries so hard, but she can’t do it all. Tonight, I see what trying to do it all has done to her.

She looks up. She sees me watching. I’ve startled her. Her mouth drops open like she wants to explain, but she doesn’t yell over to me. She swipes at her eyes. She crushes out her cigarette. She stretches her arms wide. She waits. It’s an invitation. It’s an asking. It’s the admittance of her need to hold me. And for me to hold her.

I look at the door behind me. I’ve shut it like I never had any intention of going back inside. I look at the stairs in front of me. They don’t seem that far. I take them, one by one, until I’m at the bottom. My mom is still waiting for me, arms outstretched, on that chaise longue across the courtyard. I don’t think about what I’m doing anymore. I just go. I want to be what she needs. I pick up the pace. I need to get to her fast. I need to get to her before I can’t.

I sink down on the chaise longue and into her. I curl up into a ball, and she hugs me. Her robe smells faintly of cigarette smoke, but more of laundry detergent. And the other smell of her is there, too. The smell that is my mom. It’s a smell I can’t explain, but it makes me feel safe and loved no matter what. She tucks my head under her chin and holds me tight. She holds me in.