The Fleeting Happy

Fourteen

By the time my 16th birthday came around in January of the following year, my dad still wasn't home.

I spent the day with my mom, who let me skip school and took me out for lunch. All the while, I kept trying to ask her if she knew anything about when Dad was coming home.

"I'm sorry, sweetie, I don't know," she kept saying over her plate of pasta. "But I think you're worrying about it too much. It's your birthday and you need to relax. You still have me!" She laughed the way she always laughed, sweet to the ears of everyone else but uncomfortable to my own.

It wasn't that I didn't love my mother. I loved her very much.

I just didn't always know if I could trust her. She was like my dad in the sense that she was unpredictable, always either up or down, but unlike Dad, her down days could be dangerous.

Like the time I was 7 years old and I came home from school to find her crying on the kitchen floor. She was holding a knife and her wrists were very bloody, painting the white tiles bright red with every drip and every smudge. Before my parents got divorced, Mom was always very, very sad. She cried every day and swallowed a lot of pills and yelled a lot, at Dad especially, but at me, too.

I'd started crying and running over to her, but she kept screaming at me to go away.

And so I did. I'd called Dad. He called the police. Mom disappeared for a while and she came back 2 days later, smiling and laughing sweetly like nothing even happened. No one in my family has mentioned this incident since. I think they're hoping it would just pass by without anyone ever bringing it up again, but I doubt I'll ever forget.

See, my family's really bad at communication. With my parents especially, they hated talking about things. (They never even gave me the sex talk, they kind of just hoped I'd figure it out on my own). They never even talked about the divorce, which might sound nice, but it wasn't. It just meant that everyone awkwardly skirted around the fact that my mom cheated on my dad and the fact that my dad still cares but Mom doesn't and the fact that my mom's in a new relationship but no one talks about The Guy because we don't want to hurt Dad's feelings but he knows that we know and we know that he knows. Basically, we were just one big dysfunctional mess.

My mom was unpredictable. I loved her, but I didn't know if I could trust her. She lied a lot. She bent the truth a lot. She exaggerated things a lot. She's got multiple different personalities, and sometimes I think I know her but then the next day I don't.

I wasn't asking for much, just the truth.

Somehow, the truth was my family's biggest weakness.

"Thanks, Mom," I managed. "I really appreciate the lunch. And everything. I'll try not to worry." I sipped on my iced tea. "Dad's gonna call me tonight, anyways."

"I'm sure he is," Mom said. "In the meantime, I think we need to catch up. I haven't seen much of you lately, I've been so busy with work and struggling to make ends meet—"

In my head, I was kind of groaning and thinking here we go. My mom was an expert at humblebragging and playing the victim. It was very annoying, but I'd never had the heart to tell her to stop. Instead, I tried to tune out her speech about how amazing she was and how I should be sacrificing more for her, because it's all my fault her life's so hard and I should be the one paying the price every single day.

"— so let's just sit and talk, the way we used to. Mother and daughter." She smiled brightly. "How have you been? How's Mitchell?"

"Well," I began uncertainly. I tried to think of what to say. "I've been good. I like my new school. Mitchell? He's, uh... he's good. We're good."