Shit.
I know right away that it’s too late. She has read my text messages, but I think that maybe she hasn’t heard me. So, I try to tiptoe out of the room. Please, don’t hear me. Please, please, please.
“Alice,” my mom says quietly. She has a stern tone in her voice, very much unlike her usual tone.
“Hey,” I whisper. My mouth is completely dry. I cough a little.
“What is this?” she asks, turning to face me.
Her back straightens out and her chin flies into the air. She’s no longer sad. Now, she’s angry.
“What?” I ask. Even though I know exactly what she’s looking at. I don’t know what it is about me, but I have this tendency to deny when I’m put on the spot.
“These text messages,” she says, shaking my phone in her extended hand, “from Dylan.”
I shake my head. I don’t know what to say.
Of course, I can get angry about her going through my phone and reading my private messages, but something holds me back from going that route. I hate to admit it, but a small part of me is happy that my mom found out. This has been a heavy burden to carry around with me and now it’s out.
“Alice?” my mom asks. “Do you care to explain?”
I look away and shrug. She throws my phone on the bed. After crossing her arms, she taps her foot a little, waiting for me to say something. I glance over at the screen.
You’ve been dragging your feet enough about this. My message is highlighted in green.
Sorry. Dylan’s message appears in gray.
That’s not good enough. When are we finally going to get a divorce?
It’s happening, don’t fret!
How can I not? It has been forever since we got married. At first, you promised me an annulment and then that was not possible. Now you’ve been playing games with this divorce. I want to know when.
I don’t know.
I can only see part of the exchange on the screen, but I know it word for word.
“When did you get married?” my mom asks. “Oh my God, I never thought that I would ask my daughter that question!”
“Mom, it was an accident. I was really drunk. Hudson and I just sort of broke up. I don’t even remember it happening, really.”
Her blank face tells me that she doesn’t quite get it.
So, I start from the beginning. I fill in all the details about every little thing and, close to an hour later, she seems to finally get it.
After listening carefully and intently, my mom takes a deep breath. I’m shaking from the cold—I’m still wearing my towel, after all. So much time has passed that my hair is dry in parts and some of the puddles that I’ve made walking barefoot on the hardwood floor have dried up.
“I have to go get ready,” I say, turning to walk back toward the bathroom. “I have a flight to catch.”
My mom nods. She isn’t angry or upset anymore. She just looks lost. Despondent. Not quite here.
“Before you do that,” she says to me, “regardless of all of this, and how hurt and disappointed I am that you didn’t tell me about this, I still want you to remember what I said to you before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s a little clearer why you want to transfer to USC, but before you do that, I want you to think about this for a moment. It seems like transferring will make you leave all of your troubles behind in New York and that by simply getting away from New York, you won’t have any of those problems anymore. Yu may very well be right, but the thing about problems is that they tend to haunt us. They tend to follow us around, as if they’re on a leash because they’re not tied to geographical locations, they’re tied to us.”
I nod.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Alice?” my mom asks.
“Yes, I do. I’ll think about it.”
I mean it. Truly.
31
On the plane back to New York, I’m wedged into the middle seat between an old woman with bright orange nails who looks like she’s about to chat me up for the whole flight and a large man who spills over into my seat and doesn’t even try to contain himself in his. I quickly put in my earbuds and turn up the music on my phone. I want to zone out. This is going to be a really long flight.
No matter how hard I try to fall asleep, my mind keeps racing. I try a breathing exercise from yoga—breathe in through my nose and breathe out through my mouth. After a few minutes, I’m just as awake as before.
The thing that I keep coming back to is how disappointed my mom looked after I told her what had happened. The flicker and brightness in her eyes seemed to have dimmed. She sighed these big, exasperating breaths and her skin seemed to lose all color in a matter of seconds.
I wanted her to yell at me, curse me out, anything but this. I felt like I had actually physically hurt her and I’ve never wanted to take something back more than I did that.
Shit. I really messed up. I kick myself over practically every decision I’ve made this semester. Even getting back with Hudson at the end of last semester now seems like a completely foolish idea. If we had never gotten back together, we’d still be friends. I wouldn’t have cared about his busy schedule so much and I might’ve even started dating someone new. Huh, what an idea.
I haven’t given that much thought, but I am young. Not even twenty yet and I’ve only really been in one serious relationship and a very not-serious marriage. Dylan,
