Captive - FourTris

Forty-Six

SEPTEMBER 19
2 WEEKS, 6 DAYS

I'm sitting on a stool at our kitchen counter, swinging my legs and slurping at the milk at the bottom of my cereal bowl. There are cartoons on in the background, even though I'm too old for them. I don't really watch them anymore, but it wouldn't be Saturday if they weren't on.

My mum is up. I can hear the water running. Sometimes her showers last forty-five minutes, and I have no idea what she does during that time, but when she emerges she never looks fresh and relaxed; her eyes are puffy and she looks like the walking dead.

I don't really know what she does at any time, really. We're strangers in the same house. I want it to be different. I want to hug her and say I love you. But I don't think she'll magically hug me and smile and say I love you too, and that's what she does in my mind when I say it to her, and I'd rather have that than reality.

My dad would be so disappointed if he knew what had happened to "his girls." He tried to so hard to be the glue for so many years, so many rounds of chemo, so many everything. Even as my mum took on that haunted look toward the end and even as I cried myself to sleep those last couple months, he couldn't change the facts, and then one day it was done and he was gone.

I try to remember my mum before he died. Those days before she died with him. I try to remember the times she'd declare it was girls' day and no dads were allowed, and I'd grin at him when she said it, and we'd get our nails done and go shopping and eat six-pound (or seven-dollar) fruit smoothies.

She was a good mum. She was everything I ever needed or wanted. And cruel reality stole her from me, and she became something else, and I became no one to her, because she can't see through her own tears long enough to realize how much it hurts me.

I know if it had been reversed, Dad wouldn't do this. Even when he was really dying he stayed strong and was there for me. Even when he was sick he would sit in a lawn chair, all wrapped up in a blanket, shivering against the cold just so he could hang out at the park with me. And my mom was next to him, every single time. We were a real family then.

I wish one day I would look up and she would be standing there at the finish line of a race, beaming at me. I wish she would stop wallowing long enough to be proud of me, long enough to see that I'm growing and becoming someone, something. But she never will.

She doesn't really even have friends anymore. They just drifted away like sand on the wind, and it became just us. And now it is just her.

Eventually her shower turns off and after several long moments of silence, I hear her walking across the ceiling, down the hall, and down the steps. Her footsteps are soft and quiet, like a mouse.

I finish the last drop of Fruity Pebbles–flavoured milk and turn to see her.

Her blond hair is still damp and tangled, but her mask of makeup is on and she's wearing a cute button-up blouse with khaki pants.

Even on weekends she looks like a lawyer. I think that's all she wants to be. Just a thing and not a person.

She sits down next to me and grabs the cereal box, and I twist around and watch the cartoons from my seat at the counter, and for a long time we just sit there and I listen to her eat and try to concentrate on the cartoon dog on the screen.

"Sleep okay?" she asks.

I don't know why that's her favorite question. Maybe because I think she doesn't sleep at all. Maybe it's her veiled way of asking if I'm okay.

"Yep. You?"

"Uh-huh."

I want to tell her it's a lie, that she would look rested if she slept at all, but I don't.

And I decide I can't do this same song and dance today.

So I just blurt out, "Do you want to ... I don't know, do something today?"

She stops chewing even though her mouth is full and looks over at me. "I have a lot of new cases to review. Some other time?"

Some other time. It's always some other time. I want to know when that other time is, but maybe if I knew, I'd never ask again.

"Yeah. Sure."

And then I slide off my stool and go upstairs to change into jeans and a tank top, and I will leave and be gone all day, because that is what I do.

And today will just be another day in a long chain of disappointments, but that is how it is now.

That's just how it works.