I offered her the freshly rolled joint. She grinned as I placed it between her lips and lit her up. She inhaled deeply, like a pro. Didn’t even cough.
“You can talk now,” she said, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth. “I’m done. And a little stoned.”
“Already?”
We both laughed.
“Okay,” I said. “No more bullshit. Agreed.” I chewed at my thumbnail. “You should know though.” Just say it, I thought. Just tell her.
“Jess, I’m in love with Connor.”
“Oh, honey,” she said. She reached over and touched my hand. “I know.”
54.
I went to visit Mom at the Castle Motel on a day that the sky was thick with storm clouds. The humidity clung to the air, leaving a sticky, sweaty residue on my skin.
Summer was coming up, which meant no school for a few months. Which meant I probably should take summer classes, or at least get a job of some kind if I had any hope of getting out of here, or—maybe, just maybe—going to college someday.
It was the same motel Mom had taken me to when I was little, when I thought she was rescuing me from my father by whisking me away to the magic castle.
There were leaks in the ceiling, prostitutes hanging around outside. Cockroaches skittered around the dirty tiles of the bathroom floor. It was definitely no castle, and nothing like I’d remembered it. But she seemed happy. Her face was bright and clean, and she was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She looked years younger.
I sat down with her on the bed with the broken box spring and took her hands in mine. “Mom,” I said. “I miss you. You should come home.”
She gave my hands a squeeze. “I can’t do that, sweetie. You know, I’m going somewhere great. I’m going to go see the world, Jack. You have to understand that I need to go. And I can’t take you with me, baby.”
She really meant it. She really thought she was going to go on some grand adventure. Or at least, that’s what she wanted me to believe.
I kissed both of her hands. “I love you, Mom. Promise you’ll come visit sometime, yeah?”
She grinned that knowing grin of hers. “How about you come visit me when I make it rich and move to Vegas, huh?” she asked, pressing a handful of lotto tickets against my chest. I didn’t ask where she’d scrounged together the money to buy them. It didn’t really matter.
She said she wanted to see the bison in Wyoming, the Rocky Mountains, and the Statue of Liberty. She promised she would write me and text me photos of everything new along the way. And that she would visit me. I swallowed hard to stop myself from crying and hugged her goodbye, telling myself it was better this way, even though it hurt more than I thought it would.
A few days later, her brother drove down from L.A. to get her. Dad said she’d be staying with him for a while so he could get her some real help. He had the money and the means.
Dad was still drinking, but he was calmer now that Mom was gone. Quieter. He didn’t yell or come home blasted drunk anymore. He fed and walked Gunther and did the dishes and even the laundry. For a solid week, he went to work, came home, and watched TV before going to bed. One night we even watched Pulp Fiction together and laughed at all of the same parts. I cooked a few times, or at least I tried to. Not that Mom had ever done much cooking. Mostly we ordered pizza and Chinese and ate frozen dinners.
It was good. It was fine. I didn’t explain anything about Connor and me or the night of the attack, and he didn’t ask. Maybe, I thought, he didn’t really want to know.
There were rumors at school that Jess had been the one to seduce Toby and then called the cops after he’d dumped her to get revenge. Others whispered that Toby was a serial rapist and a kingpin and was probably going to prison for at least twenty years.
The truth was, Toby was in deep shit—like, really deep shit—but not twenty years deep, exactly. He’d gotten a good public defender who’d convinced the
