Mad Honey: A Novel (14 page)

My mother comes into the living room still wearing her uniform. “I thought I heard you come in,” she says, frowning at me. “Are you all right?”

There are circles under her eyes. I wonder if she hasn’t been sleeping, too. I wonder if it’s because she knows
I
haven’t been sleeping. “I’m fine,” I say.

“Where were you?”

I debate what to say. “I was at Asher’s,” I finally reply, which is actually the truth.

My mother squats down next to us and pats Boris’s side. Her hand is a few inches away from mine, as if the fur is a conduit for candor. A lie dogtector. “You know you can talk to me,” she says. “About anything.”

It occurs to me that we are living in a time loop, destined to replay this scene over and over. This isn’t the first time she’s said those words to me, and it’s not the first time that I’ve tried to figure out how to ease her anxiety. She’s given up so much for me that I owe it to her to not be sad anymore.

The year I was sixteen, once I got out of the hospital, she watched me like a hawk. I didn’t blame her; if my child had tried to die I’d probably have done the same. She was careful with her words, parsing them out like coins for beggars, and she kept looking at me like I was breakable and fragile, when in fact, to my great disappointment, the opposite was clearly true.

I managed to smooth my face into the stillest of ponds. To smile when I thought she wanted me to smile. To pretend that the worst had already happened.

My mother pretended along with me and then one day she just lost it.
You’re not the only one who’s forgotten how to be happy,
she said, and that—finally—woke me out of my stupor. I couldn’t sacrifice myself; hell, I’d
tried
. I couldn’t drag her down with me, not after she had given up so much already. So I asked my therapist to help me build a ladder to crawl out of the pit.

My shrink told me that if I couldn’t remember how not to be sad, I had to fake it till I could make it. She suggested setting a goal as a
distraction. If I were busy chasing a rainbow, I guess, I wouldn’t have time to wallow in the swill of my own emotions. So I told my cello tutor I wanted to learn Schubert’s
Arpeggione
Sonata.

It’s one of the hardest pieces for the cello. Like, Yo-Yo Ma hard. It’s a classic combination of stamina, grace, and so much emotion that if you play it right, it actually sounds like the instrument itself is crying. In terms of goals, it’s like setting your sights on lassoing the sun.

I don’t know if you’re quite ready for that,
my tutor had said tactfully.

But let’s be real. When you’ve already failed at killing yourself, anything else you might screw up seems minor.

To my great surprise, my therapist’s advice worked. I practiced that sonata so hard my fingers blistered. It’s a duet with piano, so I downloaded a track and played to it until the notes followed me into my sleep. I spent hours cradling the cello, perfecting the runs and the crescendos.

I didn’t realize that my cello tutor had, on the sly, told my mother he was concerned—that the odds of a teenager, even a talented one, mastering this piece were extremely slim. He knew, of course, why I’d been hospitalized. And he didn’t want to be a party to the reason I relapsed.

Three extraordinary things happened because of that sonata. The first was that, actually, I aced it. My tutor brought in a pianist from a local conservatory to accompany me, and I took my cello in my arms and the room fell away. When I finished, twenty-four minutes and seventeen seconds after I’d first touched my bow to the strings, my hands were shaking and tears streamed down my face.

My mother came to stand in front of me. She put her hands on my shoulders.
Lily,
she said.
You can do anything.
But it wasn’t a command, this time. It was a stunned understanding. She looked at me like I wasn’t a ticking bomb, but instead, an inspiration.
Maybe we
both
can do anything
.
I can get a new job. We’ll move east.

That was the second extraordinary thing that happened: the satisfaction my therapist (and my mother) had promised me would come with achieving an impossible goal…didn’t. I had played a
challenging cello piece…okay, great. I had apparently roused my mother’s courage…awesome. But I was still the same person, and therein lay the problem.

If we move, I’m still me,
I told my mother.
Just in a different location.

The third and most extraordinary thing of all was that after the concert, when I broke down in front of my mother—when I finally lost the will to keep up the act—she didn’t fall apart, like I’d expected. She didn’t try to cheer me up or tell me that I was wrong to think I was a shattered thing that could never be put back together.

She didn’t actually tell me anything, for once. She
listened
.

It is the only time in my life when I let down my guard and didn’t regret it. It’s why I had thought maybe it could be like that with Asher, too.

That night when I was sixteen, my mother and I stopped pretending
we were fine,
everything was fine.
A couple of weeks later, we had a new plan. I felt something so foreign inside me that I couldn’t even name it—like I was carbonated, like if you shook me just a little I’d explode. I couldn’t define it as hope, not even when it was coursing through me.

It came with its own energy, though, and so I reached for my cello again and began to play my favorite parts of the sonata. I usually avoided looking at my wrist, at my scars, but this time, I focused on them and realized my body was more than something I was trapped in. I saw a strong backbone, a big heart, hands that made this cello sing.

Now, almost three years later, my mother and I
are
east. I’m a very different person than I was during those dark days. Or so I like to think. It seems way easier to slip back there than I imagined, like when you think you’ve traveled miles and you check and realize that you’ve only gone a couple of yards.

“Lily?” my mother says now.

I pull my attention back to her, to the present. “Sorry. Just tired,” I reply, pinning a smile on my face, because I owe it to us both.

MAYA HAS DECREED
that boys suck. I mean, I could have told her that, but I listen to her rant anyway. “So you remember Camper Man,” she says.

Maya works part-time at a local newspaper, in the Classifieds department. Three afternoons a week, she sits at a phone bank after school and tries to convince people who are placing ads that, for a small additional fee, putting a banner across the top that says
CREAM PUFF
or
NEW LISTING
will make their ad jump out from the hundreds of others on the page. Never mind that she gets a bonus every time they say yes.

“Yesterday, he admitted to me he sold the camper the first week he placed the ad.” Maya looks at me across the acreage of her bed. “And that he just kept renewing it because he liked my
voice
.”

“Are we feeling this is romantic, or creepy as fuck?” I ask.

“He asked me out.”

“Maya,” I say, wondering when I turned into my own mother, “you cannot do this. You know nothing about him—”

“Actually, I do, because I have his credit card information, and I googled him. Turns out he is forty.
Forty,
Lily. How disgusting is that?”

“Does he know you’re eighteen?”

“I’m not done. When my boss found out, he fired me.
Me!
Even though I wasn’t the one who asked anyone out. Then my moms asked why I didn’t go to work yesterday and I told them the truth—”

“
Why?
”

“Because I couldn’t think fast enough!” Maya explodes. “And now I’m grounded.” She flings herself backward on the mattress. “Okay. Now I’m finished. My life is over because an elderly man with very bad taste in recreational vehicles fell in love with my smoky voice.”

“I’m…sorry,” I say. Sometimes talking to Maya is like walking a rabbit on a leash. “How long are you grounded?”

She leans on an elbow. “I refuse to be. I’m throwing a party and you’re going to help me.”

“Maya, your parents are not going to let you throw a party if you’re being punished.”

“Yes they are,” she counters, “because this Friday we are hosting the Banerjee First Moon Fest.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“A menstruation party,” Maya says. “We are celebrating womanhood and only womanhood and not only will my lesbian mothers condone this, they will probably cater the food.”

I am not so sure. Maya’s parents are notorious for being easily upset. Last year, when Maya brought home some of Asher’s mom’s honey, Sharon had a meltdown because it was a
bee
product
in a vegan household.

Plus, there’s the obvious.

“You are throwing a period party,” I clarify.

“Come on, Lily. It’s about time we got something out of it that’s more than cramps.”

This is how, two weeks after Asher stops speaking to me, I find myself hanging streamers to transform Maya’s living room into a living womb. We have stuck maxi pads to the windows; Maya’s mixed up some god-awful red punch. Her mothers are so excited about her celebrating the female reproductive system that they’ve all but canceled her grounding and have made plans to go out so that Maya can have the house to herself and her girlfriends.

She’s texted about fifteen girls from school—some I know from orchestra, and some I’ve never met. Everyone thinks the theme is hilarious. One of the first girls to arrive dumps a bottle of vodka in the punch. An emo playlist beats through the speakers like a pulse. Within a half hour, that tight knot in my belly that’s been there for two weeks begins to unwind; it turns out a party without guys is like a quiet sigh. No one is checking out their reflection in the window; no one is hooking up in a dark corner. We are just women, draped over couches and pillows, feeling safe. We don’t have to talk about the things that hurt us, because we’ve all been there before.

I like this, I realize. I like being part of the crowd.

I drink the punch and my head gets pleasantly fuzzy. Maya passes around her phone, showing off Camper Man’s profile pic. “On Facebook,” she underscores, “because he’s
old
.”

Maybe this is how it will be, if Asher never speaks to me again. When my star falls from the sky, I will land in the arms of a posse like this.
We get it,
they’ll say.
We’ve got you.

Sisterhood,
I think,
is underrated
.

That’s what is running through my head when, just after 10:00 
p.m
., half the men’s hockey team crashes our party. Dirk comes through the door first, holding tomato juice and more vodka. “Bloody Marys,” he announces, grinning at Maya. “Am I doing it right?”

“You’re disgusting,” she says, but she laughs. Others who had been slouched and lounging are sitting up now. Sucking in their stomachs, finger-combing their hair. Preening.

I grab Maya’s arm. “I thought this was just girls,” I whisper.

“Can I help it if they want to learn about the female body?” She laughs. Meanwhile, there’s a buzzing around me:
Who texted them?
Not
me
.
Not
me.
You?

Then Asher walks in. He looks around at the streamers and the tampons taped to the ceiling, his mouth quirking. Maya throws her arms around his neck. “You made it,” she says, and I realize who told them to come.

Then he sees me, and any amusement on his face is wiped away.

Dirk has insinuated himself in the middle of a love seat between two girls. He doesn’t fit, and that’s the point. Everyone laughs and it sounds like champagne.

Asher turns on his heel and heads for the door before I can reach him, but Maya grabs his arm. “Asher, wait.”

His eyes are dark as tar. “You told me,” he says to Maya, “that Lily wouldn’t be here.”

Doubt flickers over Maya. “You’ve been a fucking wreck. I just want you to be happy, Asher.” She tilts her face up to his. “You know that’s all I want, right?”

Asher shakes her off, quick and firm. He walks out the front door.

Maya looks at me. “Don’t be mad,” she says.

I don’t hate her, but that doesn’t mean I trust myself to speak to her yet. I push past Maya and walk into the kitchen. The punch bowl
is there, and a platter of samosas that Deepa made for us. I reach for a clean plastic cup.

“If you’re thirsty…” a voice says, and when I spin around, it’s Dirk. He shakes his hair out of his eyes and waggles the vodka bottle he’s still holding. “I don’t mind sharing.”

I run the tap water. “I’m good.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Dirk replies, caging me at the sink with his arms on either side of me. His words fall onto my neck. “You’re
exceptional
.”

“Four syllables,” I say. “For you, that’s a big one.”

“You have
no idea
how big.” He grins. “But if you’d
like
to…”

I turn around and shove him with all my strength. “I would not.”

He holds up his palms, backing away. “Relax. Jesus. It was just a joke.”

“I don’t even know why he’s your friend,” I mutter.

Dirk tilts his head. “I don’t know, Lilz. I think Asher and me are tighter right now than Asher and you.”

Usually what comes out of Dirk’s mouth is utter bullshit, but this is true. Abandoning my cup on the counter, I walk out of the back door and into the quiet of Maya’s backyard.

It’s freezing, and I don’t have a coat. After about five minutes of shivering, I go back, hoping that Dirk’s left the kitchen by now, but the door has locked behind me. Wrapping my arms around myself, I walk briskly to the front of the house instead.

Asher’s sitting on the curb, under a streetlight that is gazing at him.

He doesn’t move a muscle, not when my footsteps are close enough to hear; not when I sit down on the curb with six inches between us.

His hand is curled over the concrete, and so is mine. If I stretched out my pinkie I would touch him. Under the glow of the streetlamp I realize that his knuckles are scraped up and bruised.

“What happened to your hand?”