Pretend She's Here(13)

I wanted to break through the concrete, smash into the fresh air, and run until my muscles burned and my feet were tattered. Once I got out of this house, there were so many possibilities: I could run to a neighbor’s, to the police, or all the way home. I could warn my mother, and be with my family, and we would all save each other.

Mrs. Porter had planted another worry in my mind. She had said my mother would start drinking again.

This is the weird thing: When you have a mother who drinks, you love her more than ever, maybe more than other kids love theirs. Partly because sometimes you also hate her, and the emotions swing back and forth, and you feel so guilty. The Magic Mountain of Mom, Tommy called it.

“It’s an amusement park,” he said to me one day about two years ago when I was really upset about something she’d done. “And not always fun. You know how you sometimes get too scared on Batman?”

I nodded. Roller coasters in general weren’t my favorite, and Batman was one of the wildest.

“But then there’s the water park, and you love that. Or Balloon Race—nice and gentle—going on it at night, swinging up high, looking down at all the beautiful lights. I remember how you never wanted to get off that one.”

“But she’s our mom—not a bunch of dumb rides,” I’d said. “Plus you’re out of the house now. Did grad school erase your memory of what it’s like?”

“Of course it didn’t,” he said, his arm around me. “Listen, Em. The Magic Mountain is also a book. An amazing novel by Thomas Mann. I read it last spring. It’s about Europe before World War I. A young guy, Hans, who goes to a sanitarium in the Alps. But it hit me because it reminded me of home, of us. Of her. Hans is sick, he’s in this beautiful place, and he just can’t get better. There’s a blizzard dream, and witches and wizards, this cousin who’s nearly as close to Hans as a brother. Closeness and secrets …”

“Like all of us,” I said.

“Maybe that’s one of the worst parts about Mom’s drinking,” Tommy said. “The way it forces us to keep secrets.”

“But you’re away,” I said again. “You can escape it.”

“You can’t escape love, Em. And I love her, the way you do. The thing is, as bad as it feels when she’s drunk …”

“She falls, she sounds weird, she smells,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “All that. And it’s embarrassing, because as much as we try to keep the secret and protect her, everyone knows. But there are the other times.”

It was true. Our mom gave the best hugs in the world. She was thin but not too thin, and her hugs were warm and soft. Even with seven kids, she made each of us feel she always had time for whatever we needed. She saw what was special in each of us. When she was sober, her blue eyes sparkled. When she wasn’t, they had a dull, faraway look, as if her truest wishes in life had passed her by.

On days when she wasn’t drinking, she surprised us constantly. She was the champion of spur of the moment. So many Saturday mornings she’d tell us to get in the car, and we’d go off on adventures. Once she took us to Vermont, to search for wildflowers on Sugarbush. She’d brought us each a tiny watercolor kit, and we’d sat in the shade painting lady’s slippers, bloodroot, and trillium. Another time we drove to New London, hopped on the high-speed ferry, and spent the day biking around Block Island. We had an ongoing contest, to try all the clam chowder in New England, till we found the best—at the Black Pearl, in Newport, Rhode Island.

My dad loved her. After us kids were in bed, I’d hear my parents put on music, and if I snuck to the top of the stairs and looked down, I’d see them slow-dancing. He knew she loved anything with shamrocks on it, and he’d bring home shamrock earrings, shamrock bracelets, a green hoodie with a white shamrock on the front, a special edition St. Patrick’s Day Boston Celtics jersey. I hated when he watched her too closely, as if gauging whether she had taken a drink or not. Sometimes he’d hug her and I’d hear him sniff the air. It made me cringe, partly because I did those things myself.

But then she went to rehab and got sober—I mean, it’s supposed to be One Day at a Time, but this time she meant it for good, and ever since she came home, she went to a meeting every day. When she’d made it one year without a drink, she had stood in front of her home group to pick up her coin—we all went to hear her qualify. That means standing up in front of the room and telling your story: what happened, what it was like, and what it’s like now.

“The afternoon of my daughter’s dress rehearsal, I had a vodka and soda,” Mom had said. “She had both written and performed in the play, and I was so proud of her. I was going to pick her up, and we were going to celebrate with pizza. I thought, maybe another drink, start the celebration early. I told myself it was no big deal—two drinks never really affected me. Then I had another, but I told myself it was fine, because I was sipping it slowly.

“The next thing I knew, I was passed out in bed. I had missed my daughter’s play and left her standing outside school waiting—but that was the gift. Because I know I’d planned to drive. When I woke up, I had the car keys in my hand. I’d been on my way out the door. I could have killed Emily. Or someone else’s kids. It had been bad before, but that was the moment for me. It brought me to my knees, and I knew I was done. By the grace of God, I haven’t picked up a drink since.”