Bora Bora Bora

15: Blame your parents

Nicky's POV

I'm sitting in a lawyer's office, in a penthouse somewhere in the Upper East Side. My mother is sitting across from me. Things aren't blurred and imprecise, like they usually are in dreams. My subconscious has decided to bless me with a way-too-real memory of the day when I first learned I was going to prison.

My trashy clothes and messy looks contrast with everything around me, so neat and shiny and polished..and most of all, they contrast with my mother.

The neatest, shiniest and most polished lady of all the neat and shiny and polished ladies in the world. No one could think such a nice, composed lady capable of anything bad. Capable of having a daughter like me.

She fits in just right here. She fits in just right anywhere. And maybe that's one of the reasons she resents me, because I never did.

"Even if the burglary charges are dropped, you were carrying a lot of heroine. We're still looking at 5 to 10 years, even if we call the plea," the lawyer says, as if I didn't know I was carrying a shitload of heroine.

I look at my mother unbevielibingly. She looks down. It's been years since she's been able to look me in the eye.

"Up to 10 years? What kind of a plea is that?" I ask.

"We'll work on reducing your sentence," is all he has to say.
There's something about the way he talks that is really fucking bothering, a sort of self-sufficient "I'm a Princeton graduate who feeds of miserable junkies like you" tone.

"To what? Only 8 years? Oh hey, do I get a free mug, too?!" I say, gesturing with my hands like I do when I'm fucking pissed. "I mean this-THIS is just GREAT, right, this is fucking classic, this guy, s-so you're bending over backwards and I'm the one who ends up getting fucked?!"

I've stood up, yelling at both of them, and my mother has no idea what to do with herself- or with me, but that's nothing new.

"It is the best possible outcome at this point, Nicky," she says.

"Well maybe if you'd done something- I don't know, maybe if you'd some sooner, it never would've gotten this bad!"

"What are you talking about? What?"

"Ah, come ON. Alright?! I have a PROBLEM. I needed help! You just gave me money!"

I slump back down in my chair, exhausted. Tired of my mother, tired of myself.

"I gave you money so you wouldn't steal!"

"Apparently not enough."

"What was I supposed to do, Nicky? Lock you in a tower? All the rehabs, all the promises...and it's not just the drugs. It's something about the way you're wired. You have this...unquenchable thirst to self destruct. And you know? Someday you will!"

I reach into my pockets for a pack of cigarettes. "Hey, on the bright side, at least I'm going to jail, so.. I'll be out of your hair!"

"You think that makes me happy?!"

"I don't know! I don't know..."

"I'm your mother. I love you-"

I scoff at her. It's been a long time since I stopped believing that "I'm your mother" and "I love you" come hand in hand.

"-but I'm no match for you. Only you can save yourself at this point, Nicky. So you can decide to take yourself on, or you can let this whole thing play out- until it kills you."

Her voice breaks, and so does that my heart. After all this time. We're both crying, and I wonder why my tears don't seem as heartbreaking to her as hers are to me.

"I'm not the enemy," she goes on. "I never was."

For the past 10 years, we've only seen each other when I'm in big ass trouble. No wonder she hates me so much. When I was little kid, she rarely saw me. When I was a teenager, she only saw me when I was so fucked up she got a phone call from the boarding school. Now we've reached the point where the fuck-ups are all there is to see.

You can blame your parents for A LOT. I have, and I do. We can blame a lot on our childhood. Crime, addiction, madness...they all come from the same place. No, scratch that. It's not so much of a place as it is a feeling. Feeling that somehow, the world didn't want you in it. Absent mothers will give you that feeling just as much as poverty or homelessness. An inside that feeling, there's a question:

"Why would I bother giving anything back to a world that gave so little to me?"

But, as pretty as it sounds, that can't be all there is to it. I guess that's the most terrifying moment of your life: when you realize that maybe it's not all on other people and circumstances. They gave you the feeling and the words, but none of them forced you to build your whole life around that question with no answer.

Yes,you can blame your parents for a lot. But you can't blame them for everything.