“Eventually that’s going to have to stop,” Zack says before taking a big bite of his burger.
There’s mayonnaise on his lip. I wipe it away with my finger.
“Thanks,” he says.
My phone vibrates again. I have no choice but to pick it up. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to deal with whatever crisis she is having at the moment and then continue on with my evening for another thirty minutes, maybe an hour, although that’s probably pushing it. If I’m not, I’ll eat my burger in the car with the windows rolled down so the smell won’t stick around and make her suspicious that I’ve done something fun without her.
“Hi, Mom,” I say.
“How’s your appointment going? How much longer do you think you’ll be? Can you bring home a bottle of wine and a pint of ice cream? I thought maybe we could have a movie night?”
“Going fine. At least a half an hour, maybe longer. And sure.” I answer the questions in order. Of course, they’re all lies. And I don’t feel bad about it in the slightest. I’m a grown-ass woman, and I don’t need to be taking care of my perfectly healthy mother at the expense of the rest of my life. I don’t mind helping out or spending time together, but this is ridiculous. If this is the rest of my life, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to make it.
“Okay, sweetie,” she says sounding a bit sad, like she usually does.
“Bye, Mom,” I say, and put the phone down before she can get another word in.
It’s not that I don’t love my mom; of course I do. She’s my mom, and up until I moved away to go to college and then get a job, we were fine. Along with my dad, we had a tight, happy little family. She seemed normal, like all the other moms out there: loving, maybe a bit overprotective, just the right amount of annoying and embarrassing.
Once I left, she apparently lost control. She’d call me all hours—in the middle of class, the middle of the night, the middle of the year-end debate competition, crying, complaining, telling me stories my dad would later refute. Maybe she needed a therapist. Maybe she needed medication that she undoubtedly would have refused to take. Maybe she just needed to be institutionalized. My dad and I couldn’t force her to do any of those things, even if it was to our detriment. You have to support the people you love, even if it means going along with their wishes.
“What are you thinking about?” Zack asks, making me suddenly aware that I’ve spent the past minute or so since I hung up with my mom staring into the distance at nothing in particular.
“That I have no idea what to do or where my life is going.”
“Luckily we don’t have to, since we’re still in our twenties.”
“Oh, so it’s okay for us to be messed up.”
“Yeah, but it’s not okay for your mom to be so fucked up and ruin your life.”
I say nothing. I’m not offended, because he’s right; I just don’t know what to say.
“Sorry,” Zack says. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He reaches for my hand. He does that sometimes. When our hands touch, I have this amazing feeling and I want to kiss him, but I don’t, because after a couple months he still hasn’t made a move, and I’ve got this distorted view of the world, thanks to being stuck in the black hole that is my mom, so I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
“No, you should have,” I say. “You’re right. She is, and I know it. I am watching her do it, but I don’t know how to stop it.”
“I’ll help you,” he says, and leans close to me. Closer. Our lips meet. We are kissing.
It is everything I hoped it would be.
“Okay,” I say after we pull away from each other, both of us smiling.
“Okay,” he says.
We finish our dinner as leisurely as two people can while watching the clock, wishing the minutes would stop ticking away. In fact, it’s difficult to even call this dinner. It’s just after five by the time we are done. The latest I could convince my mom I needed to schedule an appointment of any kind was three-thirty. I’d left the house at three and met Zack at four, the earliest he could get out of work, and the earliest any restaurants worth eating at open.
The only reason he was able to get out of work early was that he told his boss he’s trying to recruit me. Because he is trying to recruit me. I’m pretty much thrilled about it. I am at a crossroads in my life and I have to make a decision. I have to choose whether I will take the path that leads me down the road of forever living with my parents and comforting my mother, who may or may not be insane, or the road that leads to my own life, whatever that may be.
I think I have decided to live my own life, but when I get home I may change my mind. My mom will be so happy to see me and she’ll give me a big hug. It’s like coming home to a dog or a child that has missed me all day long. That’s a feeling that is hard to deny. She guilts me into liking her, loving her, even, forget about all the drama she causes.
But only for so long. One day, when both of my parents are dead, I will have no one, because I’ve shut everyone else out.
I pick up the requested ice cream and wine, along with some grape juice. Then I pull behind the grocery store and dump the wine, refilling the bottle, sloppily, with the juice. I wipe off the bottle and head home.
When I open the door, just as I expected, I am greeted with a giant hug. My dad
