All Of Me

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 8

Rough Day.

We made it back at a quarter to three, my eyes swimming after over an hour in the car with Gray sleeping next to me. He tried to help keep me alert with I-spy and the alphabet game but the combination of a lot to drink and a little to smoke knocked him right out. He only stirred when I switched off the engine and shook him awake, holding his arm around my shoulders to help him into the house. +

Mom was fast asleep when we got home but her laptop was on in the kitchen, an eerie glow in the dark house, open to a page about a missing man in Long Island City. It killed me to see that. She obsessively keeps track of other disappearances as though she’s trying to spot a theme or prove that less was done for Dad.

When I closed off that page, I saw the second article she had open. The last one anyone wrote about Dad. He vanished on the eighth of September. By the twentieth, it was old news. After that, his name only appeared a couple of times in lists of unsolved cases. Most considered it solved, whether they had decided he had upped and left, or he was missing presumed dead. 1

Mom’s not wrong that people didn’t care as much about him as they do about most other people, but I wish she could find a way to move on. No good comes from drowning herself in the fact that the police would rather search for a teenage girl or a single mother than my dad, nor does it help her when they’re found. Dead or alive.

After I force-fed him a glass of water, Gray crashed on my bed. He was asleep again within minutes, absolutely silent by my side. I wish I could’ve done the same but it’s not so easy for my brain to shut off. It took me a while to drift off, easily four o’clock by the time I lost consciousness, so I’m riddled with the burn of sleeplessness when I wake up at eight.

My body feels too heavy, my head thick with last night’s cloud, and I desperately want to get another couple of hours but it’s too bright and I can hear Mom downstairs. Gray’s gone too, the other side of my bed empty and neatly made. He’s even fluffed the pillow. 14

I tug on a bathrobe for a little decency and head downstairs, ignoring the cries of my lungs and my eyes. The intensity of the side-effects of exhaustion make me realize that since we’ve been here, I’ve been sleeping better. I felt this way most mornings after Dad went missing; I got used to it. Now it feels new, and that feels good. 3

Mom’s making coffee when I drag myself into the kitchen. She looks as tired as I feel, her hair tied up in a loose ponytail, and dark bags underscore her eyes. When she spots me, she gives me a weak smile and pours two mugs of coffee, passing one to Gray. His name sums him up right now. 11

“Hey,” he says, his voice scratchy. The downside of a good night: the morning after. Mom fills the biggest glass with water from her filter jug and pushes it across the table to him.

“You need to hydrate,” she says, her hand on his shoulder like he’s her son. The amount of time he spends here, he might as well be. Whenever his dad’s at work, he’s here, and often even when Tad’s home, they’re both here. 3

“Thanks, Jen,” he says, finishing half of it in a couple of seconds.

“Morning, honey,” Mom says when she’s made sure Gray’s drinking. She holds my gaze, as though she’s trying to guess what I’m going to say before I say it. Her eyes flicker to Gray then back to me. “You didn’t drink, did you?”

“No,” I say. “Not a drop.” 4

Her face clears, relief flooding her. “Good,” she says, and her smile grows a little. “I didn’t realize you drove back last night.”

“I didn’t want to stay the night,” I say, “and I thought it was probably best to get Gray back. And I wanted a break before we go to Cleveland.”

“Thank you,” she says. I’m not sure why. “You’re so sensible.” She gives me a one-armed hug. There’s no strength in her grip, but she holds on for a few seconds, her face pressed into my hair. 1

STORY CONTINUES BELOW

When she lets go, I sink onto the seat beside Gray and pray for energy.

Today’s going to be rough. 3

It’s exactly two years today since Dad disappeared. I know Mom will be fragile. She always tries to put on a brave face, convinced that he’ll turn up on our doorstep hundreds of miles from our old life as though nothing has changed. I know she thinks that, and she knows I know, and she knows I disagree. 6

That was our last big fight. Maybe our only big fight. Neither of us are confrontational and I hate the nausea and shallow breaths that come with being mad, and we have nothing to fight over. We’ve always got on well, far better than most people and their parents, and I can’t bear to do anything to rock that relationship.

Except for that fight. It was over a year ago now. More than a year and a half. I was caught in that horrible stage of denial, when I couldn’t believe Dad was really gone and I couldn’t believe this was what my life looked like now, but I was trying to move on because it hurt too much not to let myself grieve.

Mom kept talking as though he had just gone to the shop and he would be right back. Six months on, her faith in his return had hardly wavered, but I couldn’t take it. I just snapped. She was heating up a lasagna from the store, her hands shaking, but her voice was bright, and I couldn’t take it.

I yelled. I don’t yell. Especially not at Mom. Especially not then. But I yelled at her about how much more painful her hope made it, how we needed to move on. I was angry and I was crying and I couldn’t make sense of myself or my words, but I knew I couldn’t keep hearing her talk about Dad like he’d be right back.

She flipped. Mom never flips.

We were full-on screaming at each other. It’s a wonder the neighbors didn’t call the cops, though that kind of noise was fairly standard in our neighborhood. It would be unthinkable here. The more we fought, the worse I felt, but I couldn’t let go once I had started tugging at that thread. It was as though I had found the weakest point in our lives, and I just kept pulling. 8

I jumped away when I thought Mom was going to slap me. She has never so much as flicked me, but we weren’t ourselves in that moment, and I was terrified. I didn’t recognize myself; I didn’t recognize her. All I could see was the blinding heat of tearful rage, hot despair pouring down my cheeks. 28

Mom broke down when I flinched. She dropped to the floor and sobbed, and it was like someone had cut the thread I was pulling, or there was nothing left to pull. The yelling stopped. I sank to the cold kitchen tile and crawled across to hold her as though we hadn’t been screaming bloody murder moments before. 2

We stayed like that for ages. That night, we slept in the same bed. The next morning, we talked. A proper talk, calm and respectful. I told her I found it easier to accept that Dad was gone, so I could mourn and move forward. She told me that hope kept her going, that she had to believe he was out there someday because she didn’t know how to wake up each day in a world without him.

We both cried. A lot. Then we went for cake and coffee in the city, and that was when we decided to think about moving. Back then, it was just an idea, something to mull over as a way to keep going. And now we’re here. A whole new town, a whole new state, two years after the night that Dad didn’t come home and our world fell to its knees.

• • •

After I put together a meagre breakfast for the three of us, toast and eggs and the last of the bacon, Gray is looking considerably less gray and a lot more Gray. There’s color in his cheeks again, the usual brightness back in his eyes, but I can’t say the same for Mom.

She looks defeated. I wish I could comfort her the way she used to comfort me when I was little, but it doesn’t work when she’s my mother. It just makes her feel like she’s not doing her job, no matter what I say to show her that’s not true.

STORY CONTINUES

“We’ll go soon,” I say as I wash up the dishes and Gray dries them and puts them away. I know the only thing that can help Mom today – except the impossible – is being with Kris and once we’re in the car, we’ll be with him in ninety minutes.

She nods. “Thank you, honey,” she says. Looking down at herself, she adds, “I should change.”

I hate seeing her hopeless. She comes over to me and puts her hand on my arm, and I know she hates it even more, and she’s about to leave when her cheeks turn ashen and her grip tightens. I know exactly what that means, but it doesn’t lessen the blow when her body turns to lead in my arms and she drops to the floor.

Gray knows the drill. When I roll her onto her back and bend her knees, swallowing the dread that hits every time she faints, he grabs a pillow and tucks it under her head. She’s breathing fine. Her pulse is fine. Same as always. But it will never get old, and Gray knows that. He wraps his arms around me so tightly that I can hardly breathe, the only thing that feels right.

Even now, my mind always jumps straight to the worst-case scenario and every moment of uncertainty fuels that fire until I’ve conjured up the most devastating outcomes. The first time I came home to find Mom unconscious on the floor, I was sure she was dead.

She looked dead, crumpled in a heap in the middle of the kitchen, her skin as pale as the tiles and her hair spread out in a morbid halo. The floor was covered in still-hot coffee but the mug was unbroken, a few feet from her. My hands were shaking too hard to find a pulse other than my own, my voice cracking too much for the 911 operator to understand me.

It was a couple of minutes before I realized Mom was alive, when I felt her breath on my arm as I tried to feel her heartbeat in her wrist or her chest or her neck. A lifetime dragged by in the time it took for the ambulance to arrive, though it was only a matter of minutes before the sirens stopped outside our apartment.

I sat in the back of the ambulance and held Mom’s hand until she came to, halfway to the hospital. She was disoriented, and sporting a bruise where her temple met the floor, but she was fine. 3

That was a few weeks after Dad disappeared. The timing couldn’t have been worse, forcing me to think about life without either of my parents for a few minutes, but it made sense. The doctors said she had fainted and knocked herself out when she hit the floor, and they put it down to stress.

We vowed to be more honest with each other, not to bottle ourselves in so much. But it happened again and again, and Mom has pushed our insurance to the limit trying to figure out what’s wrong. Nobody knows. She’s had all the tests, thousands and thousands of dollars flushed away on tests that said her brain’s fine and her heart’s fine, no tumors or misfiring pulses. Every doctor says the same thing: she’s perfectly healthy. 4

Apparently, the worst-case scenario is that she hurts herself when she falls. Now all our floors are carpeted and she can usually predict an oncoming attack in time to sit or grab onto me, but I know it kills her. It kills me.

Her license was revoked after it happened for a third time. She was broken, her body rebelling against her and her freedom stripped away, but I can’t explain my relief. God knows what would have happened if they’d let her stay on the roads. 3

Now, even though I know Mom’s ok when I find her passed out on her bedroom floor or she slumps on the sofa when we’re watching TV, I still panic. Life as an orphan flashes before my eyes. I know what to do to make sure she’s ok; I know if I have to call 911, but every time it happens I worry that there’s something all the doctors missed.

She hates it more than I do: she doesn’t understand why her own body’s turning on her and she cries when she comes to. Not full-on weeping, but she’ll sniff and blink away her shame and she’ll hug me tightly, apologizing as though it’s her fault when the one thing we do know is that she can’t control it.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW

When Gray lets go of me, I sit on the floor and hold Mom’s hand and wait for her to stir. Sometimes it’s within a few seconds; sometimes a few minutes. I count sixty-three seconds before she opens her eyes and the devastation on her face slices through me like a blade. 1

“It’s ok,” I say as she struggles to sit up, tears in her eyes. “Today’s a big day. We knew it was going to be a hard day.”

“I’m so sorry.” Her voice is barely there. When it cracks, she sniffs hard and hides her face in my hair when she hugs me.

“Can I do anything?” Gray asks. I wish I could say yes, but I shake my head. The only thing that will help Mom is closure. She doesn’t need hope: she needs a body. 15

• • •

I’ve never driven to Cleveland before. The quickest route would be to speed down the interstate straight into the city but it’s a nice day and we need anything to lift the mood, so I merge onto the 6 at Sandusky Bay and we drive along the coast of Lake Erie.

Gray would love this. It’s a perfect day. The sky is pure blue, not the slightest hint of a cloud, and the sun is deliciously warm without being too hot. Across the road, the lake is shimmering as though the surface is an azure mirror held up to reflect the sparkling light, and it’s hard to keep my eyes on the road when I want to stare at the water. 5

Most of the way, the glittering blue is visible in snapshots between houses and through trees, and I wish I was the passenger for once so I could enjoy it, but at least Mom has a smile on her face, her arm hanging out of the open window with the lake breeze in her hair. I roll my window down too, and I breathe in the crisp air.

I think that if I went back to Queens now, I’d miss this air. I’d miss how clean it feels; I’d miss the smell of the countryside and the fresh wind that rolls towards us from Canada. I’d miss the quiet and the calm. I’d miss Gray. God, I’d miss Gray. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him. I do know I’d be miserable. 2

Before I met him, I had never had a best friend. I didn’t even buy into the idea, which seemed like some kind of construct to force divides between high school girls and add a bunch of unnecessary drama to school. Even after we met, I was skeptical. It didn’t take him long to prove me wrong. Best friends exist. So do soulmates.

I don’t think soulmates are always romantic. Well, I know they’re not, because I’m fairly certain Gray is my soulmate. He mentioned it once, a few weeks ago, as a joke, but the thought stuck with me. I mulled it over for a sleepless night before I wrote down on a sign that I thought we were soulmates and I taped it in my window. A text wouldn’t suffice.

The next morning, he came over with a couple of those incredible milkshakes and two breakfast sandwiches from the diner and a box of donuts from the store. He knew my favourite everything, from the extra slice of cheese in the sandwich to the donut fillings. Before I could ask what it was for, he told me it was soul food. 19

Kris lives right in the center of the city. He’s got it made. When he jokes about college life, I know he’s doing it for my sake: he’s a genius, and I know he must have worked hard. He aced his computer science degree and he took a few business courses at community college. He started his own company a few years ago and though he keeps his salary to himself, I know it’s high.

He’s not joking when he says he’s living the millennial dream. He owns his own top-floor apartment in the warehouse district with views of downtown from his bedroom and Lake Erie from his living room, and he’s earned it. He works hard and every time he tries to help Mom out when it comes to money, she throws that back at him. She refuses to take what he’s earned.

“You ok?” I ask Mom when I pull up in the space Kris reserved for us. Sometimes the rest of the day will be a write-off after she has an episode but aside from a twenty-minute nap halfway between here and home, she’s been ok.

“I’m ok,” she says, and she takes my hand when I lock the car and we head to the elevator that will carry us all the way to the top floor. I key in the code Kris gave us and neither of us says a word as it carries us higher and higher. When we reach the twentieth floor, the doors peel open and I know the door at the end of the hallway is his.

Mom knocks. We wait. I’m not sure why I feel nervous. Kris is one of my favourite people in the world. But this is his territory. I’m used to the Kris I know from Queens or the Kris who visits Five Oaks; I don’t know the bigshot Kris who lives in the city.

A few seconds pass before the door flings open and he throws his arms around both of us as though it’s been years since we saw each other. It has been weeks, which feels almost as long. He pulls me into a tight embrace and I’m comforted by his familiar scent; when he hugs Mom, she bursts into tears.

“Hey,” he says, his voice soft when he pulls us into his apartment. I see a lot of Mom in him. They have the same eyes, the same honeyed hair, the same smile. “How’re you holding up?” The question is directed at me, not her. He can see how well she’s doing. 3

“I’m ok.” I smile. Kris does too. He squeezes my hand and pulls Mom into a hug again, soothing her as though he’s the older sibling.

I hug my elbows to myself. I can’t shake the guilt I feel for not reacting like Mom. As hard as I’ve worked to not be so destroyed by grief, now I feel bad that I’m not more devastated. But life is good right now. I’m happy. I don’t want to derail that. I just wish I didn’t feel so awful for not feeling awful.