“The only time I stopped doing yoga was when I hurt my ankle. And I had to walk around on a cane for a little while—”
“I remember that,” I say, but it’s too quick. I shouldn’t remember that. I shouldn’t have been so quick to admit that I noticed her cane. An old brown carved cane. She walked around with it for at least a month.
“You remember that?”
“I mean, it was a pretty unusual cane.” Trying to shrug it off.
“My dad got me that cane in Africa.”
“He travels a lot? Your dad?”
“Yeah—he’s away a lot. I’m, like, the house babysitter,” she snorts.
“Oh, do you have a younger sister or brother?”
She looks away. I want to ask her where she’s looking, but maybe I already know. It’s the anywhere-but-here look.
“My mother is sick. She has an illness. I shouldn’t say babysitter. I’m just needed around my house.”
“What kind of illness?”
“She’s fucking crazy,” Blythe says. “No. I shouldn’t say that either. That’s mean. She’s bipolar.” She slows her walk down to a stroll. Everyone else is speeding up, but we’re slowing down. She’s told me something now that she can’t take back. I’m supposed to give up something private and secretive about myself in return.
“Well, my mother’s fucking crazy too,” I say.
“Everyone’s mother is crazy,” she says. “But unless you have a crazy mother, a real honest-to-goodness, clinically crazy parent, you just don’t understand what that’s like.”
And so now we’re at a standstill, kind of. And I wish I had a joke. Anything to break that silence.
“You want to have a crazy-off with me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” I say and smile. I drop my hands down like I’m about to fight her. Rock my body back and forth. Hop up and down. “Let’s have a crazy-mom-off. Let’s do it.”
She stops. So I stop too. And everyone walking behind us trips over themselves because when Blythe stops walking, everyone stops walking.
“Greenleaf.”
“I’m serious.”
She takes me by the arm and drags me into her, close to her hip. I’m in a little cocoon with her.
“Did you just say crazy-mom-off to me?”
“Yeah, man. Let’s go. I promise you. My mom can out-crazy your mom.”
“How did you get like this?”
“Years of self-preservation.” Which is true. You can either get really depressed about your life or you can shove that depression so deep inside you and hide it with snarkiness. I’m not saying the second option is healthy. I’m sure I’ll die of an ulcer at age forty-six. It’s just what I’ve done.
“So you want to play?” I say.
Blythe nods. Takes a deep breath. This is weird for her, I can see. She’s not used to talking about private stuff. About stuff that you’re supposed to be ashamed of.
“I’ll go first,” I say. “My mother decided when I was twelve that she didn’t want to be a mother anymore and moved to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to drop out of life.” I draw myself closer to Blythe and slow the pace down even more. People are just bypassing us now, scrambling to their classes. I lower my voice. “My father caught her in bed with another man. In our house. Let’s see . . . she used to be a drunk. She’s on three years of sobriety now.”
“So now that she’s stopped drinking, does she just get high all day?”
“I don’t know, probably. When I go there, I sleep on the couch. She lives in a peach-colored house in the desert.”
“Do you still talk to her?”
“Talk to her? Yes, of course. I mean, she’s my mom.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she says, her voice breaking. “I live with my mom, and I barely talk to her. I try as much as I can to stay away from her.”
I shouldn’t have started this game with Blythe. My mother is crazy, but in the not-so-harmful way. It used to be bad. When I was younger, it was bad. But it’s not destructive anymore.
She stares at me hard, then loops her arm around mine tight, locks it in, so I can’t let go. She leans in as we walk, her breath in my ear.
“My mother used to be one of Oscar de la Renta’s designers in her early twenties. She worked for Louis Vuitton for years. And when she’s not in a robe, everything she wears is tailored or silk. It was good to be manic and have these grandiose episodes when she was creative and when she didn’t have me,” she says, bitter. “My mom got arrested when I was eleven for leaving me in a theme park by myself on purpose and then got institutionalized by the state. Now she’s at home under lock and key and medication, of course, when she decides to take it. She goes up and down. Mostly, I’ve gotten stuck driving her to doctor’s appointments because most of her meds have a sedative side effect and because my father is always traveling.”
She stares at me matter-of-factly, her eyes wide open.
“DAMN.”
“Top that, bitch.”
“I think you won,” I say.
“I think my mother out-crazies your mother by a long shot.”
I’m attached to her, a loop on her belt. We stare at each other so serious and then—I can’t help it. Nerves. The exhilaration of saying it out loud. My mother’s crazy. And like a flash, we’re hysterical. Laughing so hard that we’re going to pee. We keep walking. Part of me wants to hug her, because to get left in an amusement park? That sounds awful. My mother left me too—but not in an amusement park. I can’t imagine being left like that.
Blythe and I can shove the painful shit down. And laugh ourselves to tears until we explode. Look at us. So happy on the outside, neglected on the inside by the women in our lives. That’s what we have in common.
I tell her I’ll meet her after fifth
