ACT I
CONSCIENCE MAKES COWARDS OF US ALL
When I wake, the house feels empty, so I think it’s safe to get out of bed. I try not to interact with other people because interacting with people makes me question who I am and if I’m wrong to be that person. The fear of interacting with the people in my own house makes my room solitary confinement, though not literally, because my room includes a forty-two-inch television and a PlayStation, which I’m pretty sure inmates don’t get in prison.
Usually it takes a while to work up the courage to leave my room-slash-cell. A pill helps push the worry to the back of my mind. Regular people can do it without the pill. They just think, I’m not going to worry about this right now, and the worry sits obediently in the corner of their mind on time-out.
My worries are not obedient.
I think about staying in bed for the rest of the day, but then I think about coffee and whether there are any Toaster Strudels in the freezer. Mom keeps things like Toaster Strudels in the house now because Eric likes them. Mom says sugar is poison, which I think is a bit of an overstatement. She likes to say things like that—that sugar is poison—right as you are trying to enjoy a slice of cake or something. In any case, she never kept sugary snacks in the house until Chuck and Eric inserted themselves into our lives.
It’s Saturday so, after a quick sniff at my armpits, I head downstairs in the same clothes I wore to school the day before.
Our house is an epic architectural achievement of glass and stucco, boxy in a way that tells you it is intentionally ugly, set back in a deep lot of carefully arranged trees. Despite the trees, during the day sunlight intrudes from all angles because the house has floor-to-ceiling windows in almost every room on the first floor—acres of glass that are a magnet for birds that have lost the will to live. It’s like living on a stage, or a movie screen, with a higher than average bird mortality rate.
All of the surfaces in the house are cold—glass and granite and stainless steel—and kept shiny by an ever-changing cleaning person. The fireplace burns gas and has fake logs that have to be dusted during warmer months. The fireplace gives the appearance of warmth, but casts none.
I open the refrigerator, which doesn’t have any photos or report cards or certificates of achievements on it. As I’m surveying my choices, Mom walks into the kitchen.
Mom has superpowers. She can hear me opening a can of soda (also poison) from another floor of the house and knows exactly when I don’t want her to knock on my bedroom door. Whenever I come downstairs, I do it with a certain amount of fear, as I know she is just waiting to pounce on me. She still sleeps in the master bedroom on the first floor where Dad died. These days she often sleeps there with Chuck.
Obviously Mom and Chuck don’t believe in ghosts.
Even though it’s early on a Saturday, Mom’s hair and makeup are perfect. When Dad was alive she had her morning coffee at the kitchen counter before she brushed her hair or got dressed or put on any makeup. I kind of miss that version of my mom. Now that Chuck is around, she never comes out of her room without looking like she’s ready to pose for a Burberry catalog. The Botox started shortly after Dad died, too. Death is coming for all of us, but for some people, looking good is still important.
“You’re here,” Mom says.
“I’m here,” I agree.
“You’re up.”
“I’m up.”
Though we have been distant from each other these past few months, we have reached a new low.
“Get dressed,” she says. “We have an appointment to see your new therapist today.”
“Absolutely not.” I help myself to a cup of coffee and add fake sugar, the kind that gives rats cancer.
“Get dressed,” Mom says again, “or I’ll report the credit card you have linked to every app on your phone as stolen.”
“I am dressed,” I say. “This is what dressed looks like.”
Mom suppresses a weary sigh as she eyes my vintage Pink Floyd T-shirt and Adidas sweatpants—neck to ankles, and back again—not even attempting to disguise her judgment of me. My Pink Floyd shirt is real vintage, once my dad’s, which he wore when he was young and still close to the size I am now, the size he only became again when he was close to the end.
“It wouldn’t kill you to try to be a bit more agreeable, Dane,” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say as I lean one hip against the counter. “It might.”
“Well, you’d better pull it together before the party tonight. There will be a lot of important people there and I expect you to at least make the effort.”
“The effort at what?” I ask.
“At being a normal, polite person,” Mom says, her voice rising with exasperation. “I don’t want people to think I’m a shitty parent.”
My pause before replying is just long enough to convey my thoughts on how shitty her parenting is. “I don’t understand why you care so much about what anyone thinks,” I say. “I don’t worry about what other people think.” This is a lie, but I’m an above-average liar.
“Yeah,” Mom says with a nod. “Your definition of ‘dressed’ makes that obvious.”
“Very funny.” And, truly, Mom can be kind of funny. She’s very sarcastic. Dad loved that about her, but not everybody does.
“It’s not as if I enjoy this, either,” Mom says, and it isn’t clear if she’s referring to going to therapy, or being a mother. Possibly both. “This Dr. Lineberger is supposed to be absolutely the best family therapist in town. She helped the Landers with their daughter. You remember the Landers?” Mom says, dropping her voice conspiratorially in that way that parents do when they are getting ready to pass judgment on someone else’s kid. “Their daughter has a lot of problems.”
“Their daughter has a problem with vomiting,” I say, because Suzie Landers is bulimic and she’s never made a secret of it. I don’t see how Suzie’s bulimia is relevant because vomiting isn’t my problem. I’ve never once vomited on purpose. I’m just sad, which seems like a completely sane response to the world if you ask me, which Mom doesn’t. She never asks me anything, because she thinks she already knows everything.
The warning look Mom gives me doesn’t even sting. I have been a disappointment to her for my entire adolescence. It is nothing new to me. But I don’t experience the feelings of guilt and shame about it like I used to. The medications help with the worries, and the guilt and shame.
“I heard that Suzie was only eighty-nine pounds when they finally had to put her in residential treatment,” Mom continues, as if I care. “She looks better now.”
“Well, as long as she looks better.”
Mom’s eyes go hard as she simmers, but she doesn’t take the bait. “I know you don’t believe me when I say this, but I’m doing this for your own good. You need help, Dane.”
“I’m going to make a Klonopin smoothie for the road,” I say. “You want one?”
Mom sighs. I get her sense of humor, but she never seems to get mine.
Copyright © 2021 by Kat Spears
