The First Time She Drowned (14 page)

IN THE MORNING
Zoey and I have a strenuous debate over which one of us is more hung over. I insist that Zoey must be better off since she actually made it to her 9:00
A
.
M
. class. She contends that my skipping class cannot be an accurate gage of post-party trauma since I do it all the time anyway. It’s a difficult point to refute so I am perfectly thrilled when the phone rings and saves me from losing this argument. I glance at the caller ID. It’s my mother. I pick up.

“Tell her you have a date!” Zoey shouts.

“You have a date?” my mother says, squealing with excitement.

She is happy for me. I matter to her. I am more than just an alibi.

“Um . . . yeah,” I say. I hesitate, consider how much I want to share with her, decide it’s worth a try to let her in just a little bit. “On Sunday. With this guy Chris.”

“Ooh, maybe he’ll be your Pete,” she says. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

I can’t tell if the tightening in my stomach means it would be wonderful or awful. Excitement and anxiety always get mixed up for me, the wires constantly crossing. I wish I could just go on a stupid date like everybody else without feeling like it’s a life-or-death situation.

“Do you know what you’re going to wear? Men love tight.”

I hadn’t even thought about clothes yet. Ugh. I have no idea how to dress for a date. “Maybe you can help me pick something out?” I say, in another small attempt to give this new mother-daughter relationship a shot.

“Wish I could! Unfortunately, Sunday is my last day with Pete.”

“Oh,” I say. I think about asking what about tonight. Or tomorrow. But I don’t. Instead I just hold my breath for a good ten seconds to suffocate the sense of disappointment and rejection so it doesn’t spill out. After all, I alone know how long she has dreamed of this, how long she stayed trapped in the wrong marriage, trying to convince herself it wasn’t so bad. I alone know the depths of misery she reached when she did not have the love she wanted.

• • •

I was just fourteen when my mother told me she was going to die. I was in my first month of high school at the time, still trying to adjust to the enormous new building, the intimidating teachers, and my fellow students, who had all seemed to grow into themselves over the summer while I was still trying to get as much distance from myself as possible. All around me, tight, exclusive cliques were forming, and I remember feeling as if I were in a giant gym class, where instead of being picked last for a team, I wasn’t picked at all, had somewhere along the way taken myself out of the game, and now I didn’t even know the rules.

In class, girls I had once been friends with leaned across my desk to pass notes to each other and chatted around me about
parties they had been to over the weekend. In the hallways, kids shouted greetings to each other over my head. At lunch, I sat alone, certain that no one would want to talk to me, certain that even if they did, I wouldn’t know what to say. I had been cut off from life for so long.

I kept my focus on the teachers and my schoolwork and waited for the hour when I could go home and disappear into the basement, into the safe haven of TV land, where I could be with other people and it didn’t hurt that they didn’t look at me in return.

One afternoon, I arrived home to find my mother lying on the couch in the den with the shades drawn. Ever since Dora’s death, she’d seemed changed. Her boisterous laughter, which had carried through the house when she talked to Dora on the phone or chatted with Matthew, had been replaced with silence. The light in her eyes seemed permanently dimmed. Her beauty seemed to have abandoned her.

Dora had died of a heart attack, but it was my mother’s heart that seemed broken. It made me angry sometimes. I don’t know why.

I tiptoed past the room my mother was in so as not to disturb her as I made my way toward the basement. The house was quiet as a shadow.

“Cassie, come in here,” she said. I paused, my heart thumping faster. She so rarely addressed me that my name sounded strange and unfamiliar coming from her mouth. I figured I must be in trouble for something, so I only took a few steps inside the room, ready to flee when necessary. Even though she had summoned me, she looked surprised to see me standing there, as anyone would upon seeing a ghost.

“You’ve gained more weight,” she said.

“I know,” I said. I hated my body and had tried to diet but I just couldn’t stop eating, stuffing myself to sedation, filling and refilling that hollow place where a self should be.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Come over here. I need to tell you something.”

I went and stood in front of her.

She took a deep, pained breath before she spoke. “I’m sure you’ve noticed the twitch I’ve developed in my face.”

I had not noticed, but now the left side of her mouth jerked subtly toward her left eye as if to prove itself.

“I’ve been reading about it on the Internet, and it’s not good.”

“What is it?”

She paused, started to say something, choked on the words. My legs felt watery, boneless.

“Brain tumor,” she said finally.

“A
brain tumor
?” I said.

“That’s what the symptoms suggest.”

She began to sob. “Oh, Cassie,” she said. “I can’t believe this is happening to me. Why is this happening to me?” Her eyes searched my face. “And of course, your stupid father is off in Europe! And I have to deal with this alone.” Her lips trembled. She wiped a tear. “I should have divorced him when I was still healthy. Now I’m stuck.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

I wanted to pull away. A hazy atmosphere seemed to wrap itself around my thoughts, making my own brain feel blurry.

“Don’t you see?” she cried, and her emotions hurtled through the air as if she had tossed them at me with a bucket. “It’s too late.
My life is over and now I don’t know what to do!”

“Maybe you should see a doctor,” I said. “I mean, there are probably other things it could be besides a brain tumor.”

She dropped my hand. “Oh, forget it. What do you know?” She pushed herself upright and brushed away a few hairs that were sticking to her wet cheeks. She looked newly composed and determined, like a young girl who has just bravely accepted that her date has stood her up.

“Anyway,” she said. Then she smoothed down her blouse and folded her hands primly in her lap. “I want you to know that I have decided to kill myself.”

I stared at her.

“Believe me,” she said. “It’s better this way.” She gave me a small, courageous smile. “Someday, when you grow up, you’ll understand. You’ll know that I did it for you kids. So that you won’t have to care for an invalid mother.”

She watched me impassively as I took this in. Then a strange, satisfied look came over her face. Suddenly our feelings were reversed. Now I was the one who felt sick. I was the one searching her face, scared and alone and wanting something. And somehow, I understood that this wasn’t by accident. I wanted to scream that I would not understand, that it wasn’t fair for her to do this to me. I knew that I should tell her that I loved her and didn’t want her to die, but in that moment, I did not love her. And so the words would not come.

“You don’t have anything to say to that?” she said. “I don’t know why I expected any different.” She lay back and draped her arm across her eyes again. “You’re probably happy about it.”

• • •

Now, years later, I’m determined to prove to my mother what I could not, no matter how hard I tried, prove to her then—that I did want her to be happy, that I had loved her more than anything. If only I could have made her see that, see
me
, then maybe things would have been different. She would have loved me back. She would have been a good mother to me. I am sure of it. So instead of asking, “What about tonight or tomorrow?” I say, “Don’t worry about it. Enjoy your time with Pete.”

“I’ll be back to visit soon,” she says, “and I promise I’ll make it up to you. I’m so proud of how great you’re doing! I don’t tell you that enough.”

I hang up and sit down with Zoey to the cold remains of a large pizza we ordered late last night when there is a knock on our door. It’s the girl who lives next to us announcing that there is a call for me on the pay phone.

Zoey and I freeze midbite and look at each other wide-eyed and spooked. Who would be calling me on the pay phone?

“Maybe it’s Chris!” Zoey whispers as if somehow he can hear her.

Neither of us moves. We continue to stare at each other like deer in headlights until the absurdity of our paralysis sets us giggling.

Finally curiosity gets the better of me and I get up and start down the hall. Zoey follows. The pay-phone receiver dangles in the now empty hallway, waiting for me. I pause and then pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Is this Cassie O’Malley?”

“Yes,” I say warily.

“Hi, Cassie, this is Janice from Dean Wilson’s office.” By the
tone of her voice, I immediately assume someone, perhaps even multiple people, are dead. I wait.

“I’ve been looking over your file, and according to our records you have barely attended any classes in the three weeks that you’ve been here.”

“Oh . . . ah . . .” To Zoey I mouth, “dean’s office” and roll my eyes.

Instead of laughing, she looks worried.

“Your attendance record is so bad, in fact, that we wondered if you’re still enrolled.”

“Uh . . . yep, pretty sure I am.”

“Well, failing to attend classes is not acceptable. Dunton has a reputation and standards we intend to uphold, Cassie,” she continues. “High standards. Showing up for class is the first among them.”

“Right. Sure.”

“Dean Wilson takes these matters quite seriously. If you can’t provide acceptable reasons for your absences, we will have no choice but to initiate a disciplinary hearing before the Academic Conduct Committee.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “Well, thanks for the heads-up.”

I hang up the phone and repeat the conversation to Zoey.

“Oh shit,” she says. She looks pale and alarmed, having never learned that in order for authority to work, you have to actually care.

“Don’t worry,” I say as I start back to our room. Then I echo my
mother’s words. “I’m a smart girl. I’ll catch up.”

“Are you serious?” Zoey says, following me. “Cassie, it doesn’t matter—they can expel you for absences alone.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Didn’t you read the student handbook or the orientation packet?”

The hilarity of this notion is cut short by a sudden slam of panic.

“They can?”

I light a cigarette, try to calm myself. “Well, if they do, they do,” I say finally, trying to summon my own indifference. The only problem is that I actually do care, and it’s only now that I’ve screwed everything up that I realize just how much. After all, where the hell would I go? What would I do? To get kicked out of school would mean never seeing Zoey . . . or Chris. And worse, it would prove to my mother, whose love and approval I have finally achieved, that I really am the irredeemable fuckup she once perceived me to be.

Zoey kicks into crisis-management mode. “It’s okay,” she says with a determined look on her face. “Everything is fixable. We just need to come up with an excuse.”

We sit, staring at each other.

“Like . . . ?”

“Cramps?” she offers weakly.

“I think that only works in gym class.”

Zoey bolts upright like she’s just discovered fire. “What about the doctor in the ER? Couldn’t he write you a note for the pneumonia at least?”

“After we skipped out of there like a couple of criminals?
They’re probably still trying to track me down! Besides, how do I explain all the classes I’ve missed since I’ve been well?”

“Right. Shit.” She continues to worry her lip while I feel myself deflating with the hopelessness of the situation. “What about someone else? Know any other doctors who would be willing? Like a family friend or something?”

I immediately think of the hospital, the first hospital, the mental one. “I know some doctors.”

“Any who would lie for you?”

“The doctors I know are more likely to believe lies than to tell them,” I say.

Zoey looks at me, understandably confused.

Then an idea hits me, and I know what I have to do.

AS I CONSIDER
the details of my emergency plan to stay at Dunton, I can’t help but recognize the irony of my situation. There was a time in my life when I was a perfect student, would never have dreamed of cutting class or skipping an assignment or, as I’m doing now, failing out. The world of school was one of consistency, a place where the rules were clear-cut and easy to follow. Despite the isolation I felt from other students, school was the only place where it seemed like I had any control, where all I had to do to earn my coveted A for Adult Approval was study hard and pay attention.

But after my mother threatened suicide, all of that changed. She was always with me after that. Even when I was away from her at school, she was there in my mind. In dark daydreams I’d imagine myself finding her on the kitchen floor, wonder what her dead body would look like, whom I would call. I spent my classroom hours rehearsing her death in my mind as if I could prepare myself for it, steeling against a future I felt no control over. I never considered telling anyone else what she told me. It did not even occur to me that I had a choice.

Sometimes I would actually wish for it to happen, imagining the compassion and pity I would receive as the “girl with the dead mother.” Then, as self-punishment, I would force myself to picture her corpse in the coffin until the image was so upsetting, and the
grief so real, that when the school bell rang, I came up from the story slightly dazed as if woken by an alarm clock in the middle of the night. It was because of this, because of my head being elsewhere, that I ended up being late to English class one day during freshman year and was issued my very first detention. At the time, it seemed like the world had ended. My last refuge, the last place where I was considered good, had been contaminated.

I walked into the detention hall like I was heading to the gallows. Only one other student was in the room, a boy named Wade Mattell. Wade was one of the popular kids, tall with a long face and eyes so pale they looked like rain. He was slouched at a desk in the back, spinning a basketball on his fingertip.

At the front was Mr. Dobbs, a gym teacher with two bucked front teeth that jutted out in opposite directions from beneath his thatchlike mustache. The entire school called him The Walrus, though not actually to his face. From where I stood, The Walrus appeared to be sleeping. I walked over and cleared my throat.

“Hi,” I said tentatively. “I’ve never had detention before. It was just an accident that I was late. I’m usually always on time. And, um . . . I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Dobbs didn’t even open his eyes. “Grab a seat and be quiet, please,” he said.

“Yeah, sit down and shut up,” Wade called from the back of the room. “Can’t you see The Walrus needs his beauty rest?”

I froze, trying to convince myself that I had not just heard what I thought I had. I had never in my life heard a student be so disrespectful to a teacher.

Mr. Dobbs shot forward, eyes open wide. “What was that, Mr. Mattell?”

I took a step back.

“I was just telling her to sit down, sir,” Wade said sweetly as he spun the ball on his fingertip. “Like you wanted her to.”

Dobbs gave him a stare that could melt wire and then closed his eyes again. I went and took a seat as far away from Wade as possible so I wouldn’t be associated with such a delinquent.

For the next twenty minutes, we all sat in a tedious silence, the universe realigned now that Dobbs seemed back in charge of the room. Then, from the back, came a soft, low moaning sound. I glanced at Mr. Dobbs, but he seemed not to have heard it. Minutes passed, and I wondered if I had imagined it. Then the sound came again. This time, a longer and louder groan. Dobbs looked up and eyed Wade, but the moment he did, the noise stopped. They observed each other in a kind of death-match staring contest until Wade finally shrugged and looked away. Mr. Dobbs watched him for a few more beats and then returned to his nap.

The instant Dobbs closed his eyes again, Wade let out a noise that sounded like a cross between a crying seal and a braying donkey. It was so loud that it seemed like the whole room shook with it. And that’s when I realized with horror what the sound was.

A walrus call.

Oh my God.

Dobbs jumped to his feet.

I sank down as low as I could in my chair.

“If I hear that sound one more time,” Dobbs said, charging toward Wade, “I will have you suspended until you graduate!”

I peeked behind me, praying Wade would shut the hell up.

Instead he looked up innocently at Mr. Dobbs. “What sound?” Wade asked. He didn’t seem the least bit afraid. To my dismay, he
turned to me. “Did you hear something?”

I looked up at Mr. Dobbs, who was staring at me so intently, he appeared to be boring the word
yes
into my forehead. I turned back to Wade, who watched me with a slight smile on his face as if he was curious to see what I would do, enjoying making me squirm. I glanced again at Dobbs, who stood with his arms across his chest, confident in his power and authority over me.

I took a deep breath. “No,” I said quietly. “I didn’t hear anything at all.” I may have been a kiss-ass, but I wasn’t stupid.

Dobbs glared at me, so red-faced and angry, he looked like he might spontaneously combust. Then the bell rang and I bolted out of the room.

I walked home slowly, dragging the day behind me like a broken parachute. Not only was I friendless but I had now made an enemy of a teacher too. Behind me I began to hear the rhythmic smack of a basketball against the sidewalk. I was pretty sure it was Wade, but I didn’t want to turn around and look.

“Hey!” he shouted, and since there appeared to be no one else within a two-block radius, I realized he could only be talking to me. Thus I did the only thing I could think to do: I ducked around the corner and then ran away from him so fast that my own shadow had to catch up. I had no idea what he wanted, but being that he was one of the “cool kids” and I was fat and unpopular, I was pretty sure he was just going to be mean.

As I neared home, the dark daydreams of my mother intruded again. I pictured coming upon a carnival of ambulances and police cars parked in front of our house, the neighbors gathered in small hushed groups on the sidewalk. Or worse, that no one would
be there at all. That I would be the one to find her.

I turned up our driveway to find the back door wide open. Instantly, I knew something was off. I could feel it as a lack of feeling, the way an empty house has a sense of absence about it. I entered through the kitchen. My footsteps were made louder by the silence. I tiptoed toward the den and poked my head inside the door. Empty. I crept up the stairs and peered quickly into each of the four bedrooms. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. A bright panic flared over my gloom like blooms of plankton in a night sea. I went down to the basement. I thought of horror movies.

There were two rooms in the cellar: the one with the television where I spent most of my time by myself, and the creepier room with the laundry machines. The room with the television was vacant. I pushed the other door open quietly, slowly.

My mother was not dead but standing motionless in the middle of the room. A basket of clean laundry sat near her feet as if she had meant to retrieve it only to forget in the process.

Her whole body was perfectly still except for her mouth, which twitched toward her left eye. She did not seem to see me. She just stood there staring fixedly at the laundry machines with the same startled horror I’d seen on her face when she looked at my father’s old yellow boat. As if she’d just woken up and found herself in the wrong life.

“Hi,” I said so she would know I was there.

She turned and her expression did not change but intensified. We stared at each other across a space that seemed made of barbed
wire. I became aware of myself standing there, could see through her eyes the depressed droop of my mouth, the too-long pant cuffs dragged and torn beneath my shoes, the hair in my eyes, the weight, all the weight.

But I saw too that she was my mother and that I was her daughter, and I thought that if only I could confess right then and there how unhappy I was, how alone and friendless and scared I was that she was going to die, the distance between us could finally be breached. So I stood there and stood there, trying to force the words out of my mouth. I didn’t understand my own reluctance.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she said, stepping toward me. She reached out and smacked me across the cheek. “I’m sick of having to see that miserable face of yours.”

I stumbled backward in surprise. She came after me again. The second time was harder but hurt less.

“From now on, every time I see that pathetic look, I’m gonna smack it right off!” She paused to examine the effects of her actions and, failing to find what she was looking for, hit me several more times in a row very quickly like a frenzied bird flapping its wings. “Smile,” she said as she struck. “Smile! Dammit! Smile!”

I wanted to point out that it was impossible to smile when she was smacking me in the face, but by the time I thought to say it, she was already on her way upstairs.

Besides, my smile would have been a lie, and no matter how much my mother wanted me to be, I still wasn’t good at pretending.

“And lose those god-awful jeans,” she yelled. “You look like a beggar.”

I looked down at myself. I felt like a beggar.

A short time later I heard her singing happily, as if her life was everything she ever wanted.

It was that night that I decided to kill myself. That night I stared at myself in the mirror, at my face so easy to hit, and I realized that the person my mother really wanted to die was me.