A Fistful of God Page 5

  Mom held another picture from the same trip and her fingers curled around it, crumpling it.

  “What are you doing? Don’t ruin them.” I snatched the picture and tried to flatten it.

  “Sometimes I am still so mad at him,” she whispered. “Why did he have to leave us? Don’t you ever wonder?”

  “He had cancer.” Mom knew this. I backed away. She hadn’t acted this confused in weeks. “It wasn’t Daddy’s fault.”

  “No, it’s all mine. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?” She looked up and I saw her tears. “Why am I the only one you hate? He’s the one who left you.”

  I stood up, my heart pounding. “Mom?”

  She dragged her hands though her hair, grabbing, pulling. “Sometimes I think I’m going crazy. I don’t think I can do this.” She thrust armfuls of photos back into the box. I knelt to help but she pushed my hands away, and I could only watch.

  Did she want me to tell her I didn’t hate her? If I did, would that be a lie? I tried to feel, really feel, how I felt about Mom, and all I knew was that I wanted to cry.

  “Why’d you wreck his picture?”

  She shrugged. “I just got angry. I don’t think I meant to.” She peered up at me, blinking.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “No.” She stood and lifted the box in one easy movement, glaring at me as if to say, “See, I can still function. That proves it.” Instead, she said, “You don’t have to be drunk to ruin something.”

  She carried the box back to her room, and I stared after her. I’d expected her to be sober. Depended on it. Now, I wondered, and wondering hurt so much. Hadn’t I learned? I couldn’t depend on her.

  Mom came back into the living room before I could escape with my pain, holding out the picture I’d picked up. “You keep this. You remember him, don’t you, baby? You remember how much he loved us?”

  I nodded, swallowed. As I took the picture, I wiped away a drop and wondered, whose tear?

  “He wanted us to learn to be happy again. He wanted so much for us.” Mom pulled the curtain away from the window. “Happiness, health, strength. All the things he had to give up.”

  “Daddy was happy.” I stroked his printed face. Wouldn’t he want me to be happy, too, and safe? Heart-safe, in a place where I didn’t hope, didn’t take any risks by depending on Mom. Daddy believed in risks. He climbed mountains. He camped in the wild. He trusted people who could hurt him. He’d trusted Mom and me. He didn’t think much of safety. Yet I craved it.

  By Friday, I was so ready for that party. I didn’t want to be around the kids from the youth group, but I needed an escape from Mom. Her edgy mood had grown explosive. At times I wanted her to give in, get the waiting over with. But for once, I knew better than to tell her.

  She came home late that evening and tossed an armful of library books onto the coffee table. I straightened them into a neater pile and she glared.

  “When’s this party of yours?” she growled.

  “In forty-five minutes.”

  “You getting dinner there?”

  “They said it’s a pizza party. Last I heard that meant they’d feed us.”

  “Don’t start with me, Aidyn.”

  I stomped into the bathroom and smeared mascara under my lashes and inside my glasses, but I heard Mom mumbling in the hall. I had to scrape the lenses with my nails to get the black off. Why did I bother? No one would see my eyes anyway.

  “What time is this thing over?” Mom called through the door.

  “Jackson said he’d bring me home by ten.”

  “Jackson said?” Her voice rose. “I thought I was coming back to get you. Is this a date?”

  “With you driving me? Hardly. He just offered to bring me home.”

  “Oh, so I’m only allowed to drive one way?”

  “Mom—” I yanked the door open to argue, but she interrupted.

  “I’ll pick you up. I don’t want some crazy kid bringing you home.”

  That would have been funny if it hadn’t been so scary. “You just don’t want me to go.” Well, I didn’t either. Better to pick a fight now than to get there and be miserable and alone. Then, as the silence stretched, I realized I was right. “I might as well stay home. That’s what you want, and you always end up getting your way.”

  She sucked in a long breath and stared at me though slitted eyelids. I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to stay home so she’d have someone stronger than she was to keep her from drinking. How could she think I could do that? I never had before. I wasn’t strong.

  “Fine!” I slammed out of the bathroom door, as mad that I’d wasted mascara as anything else. “I’ll stay home. Jackson’ll figure out I’m not coming.”

  “I never said you couldn’t go.”

  “No, that’s just what you want, though, isn’t it?”

  She bit her lip and looked away.

  I jerked my sweater over my head and threw it on my bedroom floor. “So I’ll stay home and hold your hand or whatever I’m supposed to do—”

  “I don’t need you to babysit me!”

  “Don’t you?”

  She rubbed her eyes and seemed to shrink. “Yeah.” The word came out in a sigh. “You’re right, baby. I feel like I could use a little support tonight, but I’m not going to get it from you, am I?” She followed me and picked up my sweater, holding it out to me. “But I’m picking you up.”

  “No—”

  “Aidyn, I’ll pick you up.”

  All I could see were horrible pictures in my mind. After hours of getting wasted, Mom would come careening down night streets looking for me. If she remembered she had promised she’d get me. If she hadn’t passed out. “I want Jackson to bring me home.”

  Her lips pinched together. “Does he know you have a crush on him?”

  “I don’t. I just don’t want to die tonight.”

  She screamed. The sound filled my head, guttural, frustrated, like sand. I covered my ears and crouched to hide and knew I couldn’t go anywhere.

  When I uncurled she’d gone.

  I heard her car peeling from the carport. Even if I’d wanted to go, I couldn’t. I had to wait for Mom to get home, to clean her up. Or wait for a call from the police.

  And it would be my fault. Whatever happened to Mom now would be my fault.

  I’d had a week to forget that shame and fear, and it had stolen the time to grow bigger than I could handle. I couldn’t stuff it back inside. It exploded out of my mouth and scared me as much as Mom’s scream had. Besides, how could I hide from myself?

  I bolted outside, charged down the stairs and stopped on the curb. What did I think I could do? Find her? I could only wait for her to stagger home with her booze, get whatever she had left over away from her, and wait until she got sober enough to listen when I begged her to stop.

  I hadn’t done that in a long time.

  A car skidded in front of me, and Mom reached across to open the passenger door. “Is he coming to get you?”

  Relief filled my heart and to hold it in, I wrapped my arms around my waist. “No.”

  “Are you ready to go then?” She acted as though nothing had happened. “Come on, I’ll take you. Where’s the map that girl sent you?”

  I pulled it from my pocket, and Mom studied it before she took off again. “Did you call him?”

  “Jackson? No. Why?”

  “Why were you waiting outside?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe looking for you.” But the “maybe” made it a lie.

  “Why?”

  “Maybe I don’t want you making love to a bottle, OK?”

  She drove for a long time, her knuckles white on the steering wheel, her lip caught tight between her teeth. We stopped in front of a small house, and I checked the address. Lucy’s, but I didn’t want to get out. I didn’t want to leave my mother like this and wondered what kind of sickness I had, to want the crap she put me through. But I didn’t—I didn’t.

  I reached for t
he door handle, and she slid her hand toward me, as if she needed to anchor me. “Honesty’s a good thing, isn’t it? Thank you, baby.” After a minute she released my hand. “I don’t want that, either.”

  I turned my hand palm up and let hers rest in mine. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d touched her willingly, except to clean her up or drag her someplace safer than where she’d passed out.

  “Were you, Mom?” I whispered. “Is that where you were going?”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes.”

  I tightened my fingers. “I don’t want to go. I want to go home.”

  Mom laughed, though her tears almost made it a sob. “You’re here, already. You’re staying. I’ve wasted enough of your fun, haven’t I?” In the shadows and streetlight tricks I saw more tears. “As much as I want you with me right now, I’m not going to keep you, OK?” She pulled my hand to her face, and I let my fingers curl against her cheek, slide on the loose, damp skin. “I know almost everything I’ve done has hurt you, baby, and I’m sorry.”

  “I won’t have any fun.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “I don’t want to stay, Mom.”

  “Aidyn, I’m OK. I don’t want a drink now. I want my daughter to go to this party and have fun with her friends.”

  “They’re not—”

  “They are. Go on. I’ll call my sponsor when I get home, OK? Don’t start worrying about me.”

  As if I’d ever stopped. “But Mom—”

  “There’s Jackson. Go on, Aidyn. I’m OK.” She kissed my palm before I could pull away. Maybe I didn’t want to. “Ten, right? I’ll be here.”

  My door opened and Jackson leaned down. “Hey, Mrs. Pierce. Aidyn, you made it. Great. Come on.”

  I got out and tried to wait at the curb until Mom turned the corner, but Jackson hauled me up the walk and I didn’t hear her engine start until he shut the front door behind me.

  6

  Inside the dim room, a rug covered the wood floors between the couch and some chairs. Miguel slumped on the couch, alone, a soda balanced on his stomach.

  “You remember Miguel?” Jackson asked.

  I nodded. “Who could forget him?” But the Miguel at Lucy’s house seemed a different person from the clown I knew from school and church.

  Jackson laughed, but his mirth died quickly. “We’ve got a tiny bit of a crisis in the other room. Shannon had a big fight with her mom, and now she’s doing the meltdown. Would you mind letting people in for us?”

  Without waiting to hear if either of us agreed, Jackson left. Poor little Shannon, I thought. Poor, lucky little Shannon. She has a fight with her mother, and the whole world shores her up. I have a fight with mine, and no one knows. I wondered what Shannon would do if she had to deal with my mom.

  I wandered around the room, watched Miguel’s soda rise and dip with his breathing. I edged to one of the chairs and perched on the seat. “Are you all right?” I whispered.

  He shrugged. “My dad’s hitting the bottle again.” His voice came out flat, like he’s been working hard at feeling nothing, and succeeded. “Had to get out before he started hitting me.” He laughed and took a drink of soda while I froze, shocked.

  Why was he telling me? Because he didn’t know me? Maybe Jackson, the take-care-of-the-world-guy, should have stayed. Everybody turned to Jackson. Everybody but me. I wondered what Miguel would do when he realized he’d been talking to me, or if he’d learned not to care.

  “This is the first party you’ve ever come to, isn’t it?” Miguel asked. “I mean, with the group.”

  So he knew who I was, after all. “Yeah.”

  “You’ll like it. Really.” He laughed again, as though I ought to understand the joke. “Usually we’re a lot more fun than this.”

  He stood and walked around, stretching his back and finishing off his soda. “I hate my dad. What’s the point of quitting when you know you’re just gonna start again? He never means it. Makes all kinds of promises, but he never means to keep them.”

  He paced, and I couldn’t find an answer. He didn’t seem to need one.

  “Sometimes I think he does that so he can knock me and Mom down, you know? ‘Cause we start to hope, and we think everything’s gonna be normal. And then, nothing ever stays good, not around my house.”

  Or mine. Panic picked up my heartbeat’s tempo. “It’s stupid,” I said. “Hoping is stupid. It never does any good. Just wastes time.” Until everything crashed.

  He grunted, and he looked as if he saw me for the first time—saw me and not my shadow. I wished I’d never said a word then took the wish back.

  Miguel held out his empty can. “You want another one?”

  I said, “Sure,” even though I hadn’t had a first one.

  When he brought it back, cold and moist and something to keep my hands busy, he sat down, leaning close. “Your dad?”

  “What?”

  “Your dad’s a drunk?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He stared at his can, wiped a ring out of the frost. “I saw your mom Sunday, and she looked OK.”

  “She is.”

  He laughed softly and in the back of his throat. He didn’t believe me, and I could tell I’d hurt him. He’d been open with me, after all. But how could I say anything more? And yet, before I could stop them, words poured out, words that I’d always heard in the silence of my head, when I cried to my Dad. I’d never even said them to the imaginary Jackson who cared.

  “For right now, she’s OK. I guess. She says she is, anyway.”

  And he nodded. “How long?”

  I swallowed. “A week and a half. I think.”

  “Is that long for her?”

  I nodded. Please, no more questions, no more words, no more hurts, no more.

  “Is she in a program?”

  “A program? You mean like AA?”

  He nodded.

  “She says she is.”

  “Yeah. That’s good, you know? They work the program, and it’s like they made a commitment. You’re lucky. It might stick. Not my dad, though. He won’t do no program.” He took a long drink. “My mom, she does it, works it like crazy all the time, especially when he starts. But him? Nah. He’s better’n all that.”

  I forgot Mom for a minute. “Both your parents?”

  “Yeah, but Mom’s been good for three years. Since my brother died. Guess how he died? Killed himself driving a motorcycle drunk. Idiot. And Dad’s like, he doesn’t even care. Me, I’m the one’s never gonna touch that stuff. Look what it did to them.”

  As he talked, his voice grew rough, and I could tell he felt it. He wasn’t just making words. I wondered if I could ever talk about my mother the way he did his, say my mom has been sober three years, and be proud. I wondered if I could talk about these last two weeks with the same kind of pride, or if I should.

  “I don’t want to do that either. Be a drunk. They’re disgusting.”

  He snorted as the bell rang. I looked at him, but he seemed to have forgotten we were supposed to answer the door, so I let in what seemed like a dozen people, all armed with pizza boxes.

  “Pizza’s here!” Wallis pushed past me. “Hey, it’s the quiet one. Where’s Lucy? Where’s the plates? I’m starving. Gonna eat the box too if she doesn’t save it from me.”

  Lucy ran in, laughing, and in a minute they were all in the middle of a pizza party that headed to the kitchen. Miguel left, too, but I cowered in the dark room. I thought about sneaking outside, sitting on the porch until Mom showed up, but I couldn’t work up the energy to move.

  “Three years,” I whispered to my hands. Dad had died almost seven years ago, when I was nine. And Mom had been drinking hard since then. I tried to look ahead three years. I’d be in college. Maybe. Maybe I’d be out on my own. I could see myself but not Mom. I put the can down carefully on a coaster and stood. I’d walk those few miles home.

  “Aidyn?” Lucy tiptoed into her own living room. “What’s wrong? Come and ea
t, girl.”

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “Then come in and just hang out with us, OK? That’s why we invited you.”

  We? Who was we? The whole group? Couldn’t be. Shannon was part of it.

  Lucy pushed me ahead of her into the lighted kitchen, and the first thing I saw was Miguel, wearing his clown-persona again, on his knees in front of Shannon, begging for something everyone else found hilarious but I hadn’t heard.

  I leaned against the oven and let Jackson hand me a slice dripping with cheese and extra grease, the paper plate nearly transparent under it. I didn’t belong here, I never would. I had a secret, even if I couldn’t keep it. And maybe that secret wasn’t all about my mom.

  After a while, people began moving around, and I threw what was left of my pizza in the trash. I followed a couple of kids I didn’t know into the backyard, and skirted a pool that reflected shine but no light.

  I shouldn’t have come. How could I be so stupid? I’d left Mom, and now she was probably bombed. I’d let Miguel know I didn’t care enough to get excited that she’d managed a week and a half. And I’d ruined that all by myself. Not that it mattered. Nothing good ever lasted. I just reduced it to crap.

  No wonder Miguel gravitated to Shannon. Who wouldn’t? Normal Shannon lived a real life. Who would want to hang around someone who couldn’t even laugh?

  And me. Miguel’s smile did more to my heart than jogging a straight mile. I couldn’t catch my breath. Didn’t want to. Out of nowhere, I fell for a pair of brown eyes when I’d been dying to catch the attention of blue. Fickle me. Did normal girls fall in and out of love and back in again, in an instant? But I’d abandoned lusting after Shannon’s boyfriend and latched onto the boy who lusted after her. Human, I might be. Sane, never. I hated being Shannon’s shadow.