Whatever Doesn't Kill You (5 page)

I sit slumped on the backseat of the bus on the way up the Mountain to meet everyone. I had so much to say to Travis Bingham; how could I have just blanked out like that? It's all I've been thinking of the past two days, and I had a million things running through my head that just didn't come out of my mouth when I had the chance. I sniffle as the snot in my nose starts to thaw in the warmth of the bus, then peel off my gloves to expose fingers raw and red from the cold despite my fuzzy mittens.

I figure I was nervous this time. I wasn't sure what to expect when I met him, and even though I'd sent them away, I still felt a little like Katie and Griffin and Marie-Claire were standing over my shoulder while I talked to him.

“Next time,” I hear myself say out loud. “Next time I'll do better.” I look around, startled at the sound of my own voice, but no one is looking at me. People talking to themselves on the Hamilton Street Railway—which is the name of the bus company, not an actual railway— is not unusual, so I'm sure my mumblings are not too alarming to my fellow passengers. What's most startling to me, though, is how little thought I have to put into the idea that there's going to be a next time. I don't need to consult my posse—heck, I don't even think I'm going to
tell
them next time I pay Mr. Bingham a visit. I wasn't sure before, but now I know. This is something I need to do all by myself.

They're all halfway through their lunch by the time I join them at the food court. The three of them watch me intently as I wait in line at the Taco Bell and come back to the table with my burrito and Fries Supreme.

“So what happened?” Griffin asks through a mouthful of Chinese noodles.

I've been practicing this lie on the bus the entire way up the Mountain. I give him a casual shrug, look him right in the eye.

“Nothing.” I slide into a chair. “I walked around the block a few times, but he never came out.”

SUNDAY

There are twenty-four tiles on the ceiling in my mother's room. I spend a lot of time here, sitting in the plastic visitor's chair with my head tipped all the way back against the cinder-block wall, counting the little black flecks in each acoustic tile.

I love and hate Sundays in just about equal measure. First of all, I get to sleep in, which is great—unless Emily is just coming in from a night out and crashing around the room. And Simon sometimes cooks breakfast, which is also great. I love a hot breakfast: bacon, scrambled eggs, toast with peanut butter. That's what we had this morning, and it beats the hell out of a bowl of store-brand corn flakes, which is what I usually have on a school day. Sunday-morning cartoons aren't great, but sometimes if Wex is busy playing with his Game Boy or something, I can find a cable channel playing reruns of
Happy Days
or
Alf
without him complaining too loud.
Alf
is a little stupid—it's funny enough, but I like to pretend I'm part of the family when I watch
TV
. Somehow I just can't picture myself living with a rude little alien, unless you count Wex.

But then, around ten thirty, the day starts to suck. The three of us—me, Wex and Simon—pile into the cab of Simon's beat-up pickup truck and head up the Mountain to see Momma.

It's a nice enough place she's in, I guess. The hallways are narrow and it always smells a little like pee, but she has her own room and the nurses are always okay to her, even when she's having one of her crazier-than-usual days. Momma's window doesn't look out on anything special; the building is U-shaped, and from her window all you can see is the courtyard in the middle of the U and the windows of rooms identical to hers on the other side of the building. But there's a little sitting room on the other side of the hall with an amazing view: you can see forever, all the way to Toronto on a clear day like this. The steel plants down by the harbor are spewing their usual filth into the sky, but they're far enough away from here that they look almost fake, like an ugly, dirty postcard. Some days they've got

Momma sitting in front of the windows in there, propped up in her wheelchair facing the
TV
, her watery gray eyes staring blankly at
The 700 Club
or
Dr. Phil
or whatever's on, and Wex and I spend the entire visit pretending to look at her while we stare out the window. I don't mind coming to visit on those days, when she's in the
TV
room. But today she's just stuck in her own room, staring at the walls, picking at the little balls of lint on her lap blanket. Simon is off somewhere talking to the nurse on duty about Momma's medication and whether she should go to physical therapy three times a week instead of just two. Grown-up, responsible Simon. So Wex and I are stuck in here, trying to make conversation with my mother.

“It's supposed to snow this week,” I tell her.

“That's nice.” There's a long silence while I tip my head back and count the ceiling tiles again.

“Where is Simon?”

“He's out talking to the nurse. He'll be back in a few minutes.”

“Okay. Who did you say you were again?”

My mother wasn't always like this, but she's been a little…off…for as long as I can remember. Simon says she managed to hold it together for a few years after my dad died, but my own memory of that time is understandably fuzzy. My most vivid memories of life with Momma consist of getting home from school to find her doing something bizarre, like sitting on the front porch naked with a screwdriver in her hand—that's a glass of vodka and orange juice, for the record, not a hand tool. Simon always said she was on so many different kinds of pills that it made her screwy. Some for her sore back, some to help her sleep at night, some to cheer her up, some to keep her from freaking out.

When I was nine and Wex came along, she managed to function well enough to keep him fed and changed when Emily couldn't be bothered, which was most of the time. Simon didn't live with us then—or rather, we didn't live with him. He had his own place and dropped by once or twice a week to help Momma pay her bills or mow the lawn.

And then there was a day when everything changed.

The bus got me home early that afternoon—not by much, maybe ten minutes. A couple of kids were absent from school that day, down with whatever flu was going around that season, and we didn't have to make the first two stops, so it was five after four instead of four fifteen when I got home. A bonus: I would only miss the first five minutes of
Who's the Boss?
on DejaView instead of half of it like I usually did.

I knew there was something wrong when I stepped inside the door. I could hear Wex—he was two at the time—screaming in his playpen, a hoarse, frantic sound like he'd been yelling for hours and nobody was answering. I went there first, picked him up and calmed him down. He was hyperventilating, taking great gasps of air, his whole body quivering as I held him.

“Wexy, Wexy, Wex. Shh, shh. Where's Grandma?”

“G-g-gamma,” he managed, his cheeks stained with snot and tears.

I carried him upstairs, thinking I'd find her passed out on the bed. That had happened before, although I was surprised that Wex's screaming hadn't woken her.

“Mom?!” I alternated between rage and panic on the way upstairs—eleven-year-old me, furious that she would pass out and leave me to care for the screaming baby when I clearly had better things to do, like watch
TV
or go to Katie's house. But on the other hand, I couldn't shake the knot in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that something was horribly wrong. Where was my mother?

I set Wex down in the hallway and checked her bedroom: nothing. The bed was made; that was unusual. The living room was tidier than usual, too, come to think of it. The rugs were vacuumed, the piles of laundry that usually littered the floors were tucked neatly away in the hampers, and the
TV
was off.

I wouldn't have thought to check the bathroom next if it weren't for the tiniest of sounds.

Bloop.

The tap dripped in our bathtub. That's important to know. It dripped all the time, leaving brown rust marks down the side of the bathtub. Simon kept promising he was going to come over and scrub the stains off. He'd been promising to fix the taps for more than a year, but he'd never gotten around to it. I was so used to the sound by then that I never noticed it anymore:
plonk, plonk, plonk
as the water drops hit the metal of the tub. But the sound that day was something different: the
bloop
of a drop of water falling into a full tub.

I froze for what may have only been a second or two in the bathroom doorway, watching the tiny ripples on the surface of the water and my mother's long dark hair floating to the surface, hiding her face.

I hauled my mother as far out of the tub as I could manage, leaving her draped over the side with her head hanging down as I bolted down the hall to her bedroom, where she kept the phone, my clothes soaked through and my heart racing so fast it felt like it was going to pump its way right out of my chest. The doctor at the hospital said if I'd been a few minutes later she wouldn't have made it, but as it was, she'd been out of air long enough that she'd never be right in the head again. Not that there was much right about her to begin with—at least, not that I remember.

Sometimes I think it might have been an accident: she just took too many pills and fell asleep in the tub. Mostly, though, I'm pretty sure she did it on purpose. I look in her eyes now, shiny and pale and as vacant as a doll's, and I wonder if there's maybe some part of her that's mad at me for coming home too early that day.

“Jenna? Do you think we can go out for lunch after this?” Wex is bored, and who could blame him? Talking to Momma is about as exciting as watching grass grow.

“Yeah, probably. We'll have to ask Simon.”

“Where is Simon?” Momma asks again.

“I told you, Momma, he's outside talking to the nurse.”

“That's good. Tell him to make sure they don't give me that tapioca anymore. It makes me gag.”

“I'll tell him. I promise.”

After a while Wex gets up and goes out in the hall to find Simon. Alone with my mother, I stare her down for a few moments as she stares into space. I wonder if there's anyone still in there.

“I saw him, you know, Momma. Travis Bingham. He's out of jail. I met him.”

“Travis?”

“The guy who killed Daddy. Do you remember that?”

“Such a nice boy,” says Momma.

“Who are you talking about? Daddy?”

“Travis. Such a nice boy.”

I stare at my mother for a few minutes, trying to figure out what she's talking about.

“Mom, Travis Bingham is the man who killed Daddy. How can you forget that?”

She blinks, her pale eyes so much like my own but somehow…I don't know, lifeless. Dull.

“I'm sorry, who did you say you were again?”

I want to shake her, scream at her, want to make her understand that Travis Bingham is out roaming the streets again, ask her what I should do next. I wish I had the kind of mother I could ask for advice about things, but somehow I doubt that even at her most lucid Momma would have had any helpful advice on this subject.

After a few more minutes, Simon comes back in. He sits down by Momma's bed and puts his hands on hers.

“Hey, Ma. How's everything?”

“Simon, who is this?” Momma points at me, accusing. “Why is she in my room?”

“This is Jenna, Ma. Remember?”

“Don't be ridiculous. Jenna is a little girl.”

And so it goes.