The Last Time We Say Goodbye

  “Why?” I asked him, stunned, but I don’t remember how he answered. I just remember that he said he was going to live at a house in town. With a woman, he said. Who he’d fallen in love with.

  I couldn’t get my head around it.

  “Everything is going to be okay, Peanut,” he said.

  That was the last time he ever called me that.

  I said, “I love you, Daddy.” Like maybe I could talk him out of it.

  He said he loved me, too, and he took me by the hand and led me out to the living room, where Mom was sitting on the couch, crying so hard she was having trouble breathing. I sank down beside her.

  Ty appeared in the doorway. He’d heard her crying from the basement. He looked scared, like he wanted to run away. Dad took him by the shoulders and walked him out to the back porch. I could see him through the window as Dad told him, his face folding in on itself as he tried to hold back his tears.

  Dad brought him inside. Ty sat down on the other side of Mom. He took her hand. She stopped crying long enough to say, “Mark. Don’t do this.”

  We looked up at Dad.

  “I love you all,” he said.

  Then he turned and walked out the front door. We listened to his truck rumble to life. We listened to it crunch down the gravel driveway. We listened to the sound of his engine getting farther and farther away. And then he was gone.

  Somewhere over the next few hours the details came out: Dad had been having an affair with the secretary. Mom had known about it for months.

  I could see, in that hindsight-is-20/20 way, that both of my parents had been acting strangely for a while. Dad working late. Coming home smelling of cigarettes. Mom speaking to us more sharply than usual, trying to keep the house perfectly clean and organized, dinner on the table at precisely 6 p.m., running to reapply her lipstick when she heard him coming up the driveway. Like if everything was in place, if our home life was perfect enough, he would stop what he was doing.

  There were signs. I was just too caught up in my own thing to catch on.

  The only clue I’d noticed that summer was the dog. Our golden retriever, Sunny, had been lying around looking mournful. Whimpering. Not eating.

  “What’s wrong with Sunny?” I’d asked about a week before Dad steamrolled us with the news. “I think she’s depressed. Can dogs get depressed?”

  “I don’t know,” Mom had said. A lie.

  “Do you think they make Prozac for dogs?” I’d joked. And she’d laughed. Which was also a lie. Mom knew that Sunny knew. The dog was there after everyone but Mom had gone to sleep. Sunny watched her cry.

  At some point during that day, Mom’s best friend, Gayle, showed up and tried to give my mom a pep talk. Gayle’s husband had divorced her a few years earlier, and I remember that she kept saying, over and over, “You’ll get through this, Joan. You’ll be stronger for it.”

  But Mom just shook her head, wringing the tissue in her hands into smaller and smaller shreds.

  We went out for pizza for dinner. Because Dad never let us go out for pizza. Because Dad was a tightwad. While we were eating, Ty, who’d been quiet for nearly the entire time, said, “I’m glad he’s gone.”

  “Don’t say that, honey,” Mom said.

  “No. I am. I’m glad,” Ty said, his voice cracking on the word glad.

  That night, after Mom went to bed, Ty woke me.

  “Come on,” he said, and I didn’t ask questions; I slipped into some jeans and followed him outside. Under a full moon we walked to the park, to this rocky area behind the baseball field. Ty carried a cloth grocery bag and a metal baseball bat. He handed me the bag. It was full of bottles of Dad’s old cologne.

  “Put one right there,” Ty directed. I set a bottle of Old Spice on the rocks in front of him.

  Ty took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, like he was sending up a prayer or making a wish, then opened them again.

  “He’s a cheater,” he said, and brought the bat down hard. The bottle shattered, and the smell of the cologne washed over us, so strong I felt nauseated.

  “Now you.” Ty handed me the bat.

  I got out another bottle. Polo. My favorite on Dad. I’d given it to him for Father’s Day one year.

  “He’s a liar,” I said, and swung as hard as I could.

  There was a certain relief in the breaking of the glass—the shattering of something other than our pathetic little family.

  We went on breaking bottles. “He’s a cheapskate.”

  “He’s a phony.”

  “He’s an asshole.” Even then, though, I couldn’t say the swear word with any conviction.

  “He’s a fraud.”

  “He’s an adulterer.”

  We paused at this.

  “I will never forgive him,” Ty said, staring down at the reeking shards at our feet.

  “I will never forgive him,” I repeated, and it was as if we were making a vow.

  In a way it felt like Dad had died. The man I knew, the quiet, gentle man who read Harry Potter out loud to me when I was 10, who helped me study for the 5th-grade spelling bee, who laughed over the funnies in the Sunday newspaper, that man was gone. All that was left was the cheater. The liar. The fraud.

  In that moment, I knew it was true.

  I will never forgive him. Not ever.

  “Come on,” Ty said, slinging the bat over his shoulder. He put his arm around me. The man of the house now. “Let’s go home.”

  24.

  WHEN MOM WAKES UP, I’M WAITING FOR HER.

  “What’s this?” she says as she comes into the kitchen and sees me standing at the stove in her blue gingham apron, scraping an only marginally burned portion of scrambled eggs onto a plate.

  “Breakfast.” She watches as I set both of our plates on the table. I take off the apron and put it back on its hook, pour us some juice, and sit down. “Bon appétit.”

  She glances at the oven clock. “This is wonderful, honey, but aren’t you going to be late for school?”

  “I’m not going to school today.”

  She stares at me. I never miss school. I have a perfect attendance record, as a matter of fact, because Ty died during Christmas break.

  “We’re going to take a trip,” I announce.

  “A trip?”

  “You have three days off.” I point to the work calendar she has posted to the refrigerator with magnets. “I will miss only one day of school.”

  She notices the far wall of the kitchen, where I’ve stacked everything we’ll need: pillows and clean pillowcases and blankets to snuggle with in the car, anything resembling a snack that I could find in the pantry, a six-pack of Mom’s lethal Diet Coke (which should get us through the drive there, at the very least), and finally our suitcases, both fully packed, which goes to show just how Valium-and/or-alcohol-induced my mother’s sleep was last night, that I could move around her room opening and closing all her dresser drawers without her waking up.

  “I have it all planned out,” I say.

  She sits down across from me. “You want to go on some kind of road trip?”

  “Yes. A road trip.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see.” On the table there’s a stack of papers I’ve been reviewing—a hotel reservation and directions and other research—which I pull out of her reach. “Just say yes, Mom.”

  She pushes a clump of eggs with her fork. If she doesn’t agree to this, what will come next is that she’ll eat a bite or two, to placate me at least that much, and then she’ll go back to bed.

  “Please, Mom,” I beg. “I need us to do this. I can’t go back to school today, not with how people are going to be after Patrick. I can’t do it.”

  Her lips purse for a few seconds, then relax. “All right,” she says resignedly. “A road trip.”

  That’s the spirit.

  “Just you and me,” I say. “Dave would call it quality mother-daughter bonding.”

  She laughs weakly, not her real laugh, but as good as I??
?m going to get. “Well, we have to do what Dave wants, don’t we?”

  “Hey, you hired him, Mom.”

  She smiles at me, a small but tender smile, and says, “All right. I think it will do us both good to get out of the house.” Like the whole expedition was her idea.

  It’s raining in Memphis. We’ve had a long day’s drive and a night in a cheap-but-fairly-clean Super 8 Motel on the edge of town, and now we’ve finally arrived at our final destination. The sky is a hard gray, an icy drizzle fracturing on the windshield as we pull into the parking lot. For a minute we sit in the car with the heater blowing in our faces and look up at the sign.

  GRACELAND

  My mom’s always been an Elvis fan. He died on August 16, 1977, which just happened to be my mother’s eighth birthday. She still remembered hearing the news about his death on the radio right after she blew out her birthday candles. From that point on she grew up feeling a connection between herself and the King of Rock and Roll. So Tyler and I grew up with Elvis, too. We heard “All Shook Up” when she was trying to make us laugh and “Blue Suede Shoes” when she was feeling sassy, and sometimes, on their anniversary or Valentine’s Day, we’d catch her dancing to “Love Me Tender” with Dad. The week after Dad left, I kept hearing Elvis’s mournful croon muffled from behind her bedroom door as she played that song again and again.

  Elvis was the soundtrack to her life and, by extension, mine.

  “I’ve always wanted to come here,” she says.

  I know.

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go in.”

  When we get inside, we’re both shocked at the prices for the tour. There are three options: the basic mansion tour, which is thirty-three dollars; the “platinum” tour, where you can see Elvis’s airplanes and cars and a few extra exhibits for thirty-seven dollars; and the Graceland Elvis Entourage VIP Tour, which is everything from the first two tours with an extra private tour, front-of-the-line access, an all-day pass to the grounds and mansion, and a special keepsake backstage pass.

  Clearly we’ve got to do the VIP tour. We’ve come all this way.

  It is seventy dollars.

  Per person.

  That’s more than the hotel for the entire trip.

  “Wow,” Mom breathes as we stare up in horror at the board with the different packages on it. “That is pricey.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” I say quickly, whipping out my wallet. “I got it.”

  “With your MIT fund? I don’t think so.” She produces a gold credit card I’ve never seen before and ignores my raised eyebrows. I’ve never known my mother to buy anything on credit.

  “The VIP tour, please,” she says to the woman behind the counter, and slides the gold card across the marble. “We want to see it all.”

  Graceland is what I expected it would be: a lot of sixties and seventies glitz, bright colors, shag carpet, gold-plated handles in the bathroom of the Priscilla—Elvis’s private jet. Mom and I stand in front of a fake backdrop of the famous front gates and have our picture taken. We wander from room to room, Mom oohing and aahing over Elvis’s jumpsuit collection, and chuckling over the one room with the zebra-striped walls and red velvet couches, and standing soberly in front of his grave, staring at his death date, which is also her birth date, where it’s written in stone.

  She’s having a good time, I think, which was the point of this little adventure. I wanted to show her that it’s possible to have a good time.

  We haven’t thought about Ty for the entire day.

  “I needed this,” she says later. We’ve just finished dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Memphis, and Mom is slurping down a giant margarita. I’m obviously going to have to drive us back to the hotel. “I really needed this.”

  “Me too,” I say.

  “Can we just . . . not go home?” she says with a sigh. “We could stay here. Visit Elvis every day.”

  I smile. I know she doesn’t mean it. But this is my cue to tell her about my so-crazy-it-might-actually-work plan.

  “You remember what Gayle said, about selling the house?”

  Mom stirs her drink. “Gayle always has her strong opinions, doesn’t she?”

  “I think it’s a great idea.”

  She stops. “You think we should move.”

  “I think you should move,” I elaborate. “To Massachusetts. With me.”

  “You want me to move to MIT?” she says with a laugh. She thinks I’m joking. “I don’t think I’d fit in your twin bed.”

  “Not my dorm room. An apartment or a little house or something. Freshmen are required to live on campus, but they make an exception if you’re going to live with your parents.” I reach into my backpack and pull out a sheaf of papers, which I set down on the table in front of her. “There are all kinds of places. This one is like a ten-minute walk to campus, two-bedroom, washer-and-dryer hookups, hardwood floors. Nice, see? And it’s not unaffordable. Not when you factor in that I would have been paying around four hundred a month for student housing.”

  She stares down at the paper. “You’ve been giving this some thought, I see. And what would I do in Massachusetts?”

  I rifle through the pages until I land on one with a large red brick building framed by leafy green trees. “This is Mount Auburn Hospital. It’s listed as one of the best places in New England for medical professionals to work, in terms of both pay and environment. It’s attached to Harvard Medical School.” I sit back and let her look at the “About Us” page I printed. “It’s less than two miles from MIT, approximately a nine-minute drive. There are currently sixteen job openings for registered nurses, one in the surgical wing like you’re doing now, but that one’s a night shift.”

  Mom hates night shifts.

  “But”—I keep going before she can shoot me down—“you could always start nights and move to days once you’re established. Or . . .” I bite my lip, then just come out and say it: “There are two positions open in the maternity ward. One in labor and delivery, and one in the nursery.”

  “I could work with the babies,” Mom says.

  “You love babies.”

  “I do love babies,” she agrees, covering her mouth with her hand in a way that suggests she’s considering it.

  “So maybe Gayle is right, just this one time,” I conclude.

  “No.” Mom shakes her head.

  “No?”

  “The babies would be worse, Lexie.”

  “How would babies be worse? Everyone’s so happy around babies. It’s the happiest part of the hospital.”

  “Babies die, too. Most of the time, yes, it would be wonderful to work in maternity. But every once in a while, more often than you might think, I’d have to watch some mother lose her baby. I don’t think I could live with that.” She picks up her drink, licks a piece of salt off the side of her glass. “Besides, those nurses in the nursery don’t need to use their nursing skills. They change diapers and feed babies bottles and give baths all day. I want to do more than that. I want to learn. I want to be an excellent nurse. Not a babysitter.”

  “Okay, well, there are thirteen other RN positions open at Mount Auburn. I’m sure you could be an excellent nurse in one of those.”

  She finishes off her margarita, then sets the glass down and looks at me.

  I can tell by her face that she’s going to say no.

  “What you’ve done here is very sweet, Lexie,” she says. “But I can’t go to Massachusetts with you. You need to live this next part of your life on your own. You deserve that. You deserve to live in the dorms so you can make all of the lifelong friends you’re going to make in the dorms. You need to eat at the cafeteria and stay up all night cramming for finals and go to parties and have fun, without having to worry about anyone else. You need your own life.”

  “Yes, I need my own life. But so do you,” I argue. It’s been kicking around in my brain ever since Sadie asked me if I was bringing my mom to college. At first I was like, no way, who does that? But then I starte
d to see the logic in the idea. The simple beauty of it. If Mom came to MIT with me, it wouldn’t be the way I pictured it, with the late-night discussions in the dorm and strolling down the sidewalks with a group of friends. But it could be better. Because then Mom wouldn’t be alone, and we could escape Nebraska and what happened in our garage. We would never have to go back. We could start fresh. Both of us.

  “My life is over,” Mom says again.

  I exhale a frustrated breath. “Just think about it for a while, okay? It’s a good plan. If you think about it—”

  She sits up straighter. “No. My answer is no, honey. It’s always going to be no. But I love you for the offer.”

  “Mom—”

  “This discussion is over,” she says in her official mother voice. She pulls out the gold credit card. “I’ll get the check.”

  We don’t have much to say to each other for the rest of the night. Or during breakfast the next morning. Or in the car on the way back to Nebraska, which is going to be about an eleven-hour drive. Mom drives for the first forty-eight minutes without saying more than “Looks like good weather today, doesn’t it?” and that’s when I decide I can’t take it anymore.

  “Pull over,” I say.

  “What?” She glances at me. “Do you have to go to the bathroom? You went before we left.”

  “No, just pull over, right here.”

  She brings the car to a stop at the side of the interstate. “What’s the matter? Are you feeling sick?”

  “Your life is not over. That’s bullshit.”

  Her eyes flash. “Alexis. Watch your mouth.”

  “It’s bullshit,” I say again for emphasis, and this time I’m able to swear with conviction. Ty would be proud. “You’re forty-four years old. The average life expectancy for a female in the United States is eighty-one. You’re not overweight, and you don’t smoke, and you’re drinking a lot now, but I like to think that it’s a phase and as soon as you stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself you’ll quit doing that, and you work on your feet for most of the day, and you like vegetables, and you go to church, which studies have shown adds about seven-point-five years to a person’s life, and you brush your teeth. If anyone’s going to live to be a hundred, Mom, it’s you. So stop saying your life is over. It’s not even halfway over. And yes, your son died, and that’s awful, and that hurts, but it’s not your fault. And you know what? Everybody dies, and everybody loses people they love—everybody—and that is not an excuse for you to fucking die. I love you, and I need you to be my mother, and I need you to have a life. So get over yourself.”