Surprise

Surprise

My car is a slug as it drives through the thick tension that separates me from my mom’s house. I haven’t been there for three months and she calls me out of the blue to come over and visit. I was positive that I hadn’t given her my new number, but apparently I had. I’m drinking vodka out of an old Dr. Pepper bottle as I drive. I always choose vodka before I go to my mom’s. A tribute to my rigid Russian upbringing I suppose. The streets are bare. Wind is blowing snow lazily across them and up around the tall thin trunks of the rickety pines.  The Xanax has travelled its way through my tired body and is exiting through the sweat collecting readily on my top lip. It’s too soon. The booze has yet to take effect. I can feel my shoulders tense as I turn on my signal to make that final left onto my Mom’s street. There are cars lined up in the driveway but the lights are low.

I park two houses down. My drink no longer stings its way into my stomach but slides down smooth and slow like molasses. It coats my throat, takes my shakes away. In the back window of the car in front of me lies a long stuffed poodle. Its ears are flopped over its face as if it’s embarrassed by my fascination with it. Aunt Wendy has a dog like that. I follow the back of the car down to the licence plate. Alberta. I suppose my mom called to have me come and visit my Aunt Wendy. The lights in the front room are off, though. Maybe they’re cooking. My mother won’t notice I’m drunk, but Wendy is a hound and will smell the booze before I’m even in the house. I push the car door silently open and shut it far enough for the interior light to fade. Hunched low with short quick steps I make my way to the looming shadow along the side of the house. The kitchen window sends shards of light through the gaps in the blinds and I creep into it letting the lines fall over me like the bars of a prison cell. My entire family is in there cradling warm cups of decaf and whispering in their tightly woven circle.

 The metal blinds snap back into place as I pull my hand away. I should have known she would be late. I’ve dimmed the lights too early, confining the guests to my kitchen. “What time is she supposed to arrive?” Wendy asks as she pulls something from the fridge. Her bangles clink against its door.

“I told her 7:30, but you know her.” I say following her voice back into the kitchen.  It took me forever to get the printing on the cake right. I haven’t made one since she was a kid and even then I was useless at it. No matter how I tried to hold my hand it wobbled, squiggling the letters along the top of the perfectly smooth chocolate surface leaving me to scrape them off and try again. This cake was unlike those though. The letters curved steadily with their ends curling around each other.

“Well, she’d better get here soon. The lasagna is ready,” Wendy says. I’m not even sure she is going to come. She says she is, but she’s changed her number again and I had to call around to several of her friends just to get a hold of her.

“I think I’m busy that night,” she said and her end went silent.

“Could you try? I need to talk to you.” My voice cut in and out, like a poorly tuned radio when I spoke. I could hear her spark a lighter and exhale.

“I guess I can change my plans.”

“Seven-thirty then?”

“Yeah, fine,” and she hung up. It’s quarter to eight. The guests are sick of hiding in the kitchen.

“Why a surprise party anyways?” Merle asks as he pours too much sugar into his cup. “And you know she’s not a little girl anymore. You could have gotten a little wine, huh?” The heat from the oven strokes the back of my thighs as Wendy peers into it.

“I know she’s not, but wine isn’t a good idea.” I’m pushed aside as Wendy reaches for her lasagna.

“She’s a drunk, just like her father. My lasagna is overdone.”

“Oh Wendy, I’m sure she’s not that bad.” Merle wipes sugar from the sleeve his sweater. “She’s young still, probably just having fun.”

“She’s changed a lot in the past few years. You’ll see, if she ever gets here.”

An intervention? Is that what they’re planning? I slide back into the driver’s seat. I can’t go in there now. I turn the car back on and crank the heat. The frost that has started to gather on my windshield cowers, cracking and creeping to the window’s edge. My phone is buzzing in my pocket. It tingles all the way down to my ankle. I ignore it. How could she do this to me? They’re all there, my aunts and uncles, waiting to confront me about my growing drug problem and send me off to get the help that I don’t need. I light a smoke.

I take my phone from my pocket and dial. “Jake, it’s me. I’m outside my mom’s.” He’ll know what to do. “I know when I was supposed to be there. They’ve planned an intervention.” Jake says nothing. “I’m not going in there. Meet me at Duke’s.” He’s busy. “Fuck, what am I supposed to do?” I can’t believe this. My bottle is almost empty and I’m still sober. I have three pills in my pocket, two uppers and a downer. I reach in and swallow the first one that sticks to my finger. It’s a mystery how I’ll feel when it hits my system. “What do you mean I should go in? Go to rehab?” My heart is hanging in my chest like a broken yoyo. “You’re fucking crazy.”

She’s forty-five minutes late. I might as well let everyone out of the kitchen. They funnel through the door into the living room, settling into the mismatched furniture. “At least I got to see my sister’s again,” Merle says placing his arms loosely around Wendy. “Even you.” He’s balder than he was the last time I saw him. The skin above his eyes is starting to sag and he’ll have to get it removed before it really starts to affect his sight. He taps his thumbs on his thighs and whistles through his teeth. If personality could decide his age, he’d still be forty. Wendy would be dead. I stay back in the kitchen and wait. Should I call her? Food covers my countertops but the steam has long ago escaped from it. The last time I saw her, she was so thin. Her cheeks were beginning to sink into her face they way her father’s did.

“You’re so slim.” I told her.

“I hadn’t noticed,” she said wrapping her jacket tightly around her waist. “I’ve been really busy with my new job.”

“Still working at that bar?”

“The strip club, yeah, but don’t look at me like that. You know I’m not dancing.” I couldn’t believe her and besides she still had to dress like a hooker. A skin tight top with holes cut in all the wrong places, exposing a red beaded bra and red panties that allowed half her bottom to hang out. She was so thin and I knew she was drinking a lot more than she used to. Her bloodshot eyes suggested that it was an everyday thing now.

“Your hair is getting long. Are you going to keep growing it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She used to have the most beautiful hair and she hated it. Red hair was for losers.

“Are you sick?” I asked her.

“No.” She zipped her jacket. “Why do you always have to do this? I’m fine. I’m not dad.” She was angry and comparing herself to a man that she couldn’t even remember. Maybe it was my fault she was like this. The only side of her father she knew was the side I painted for her. Always sucking back whiskey and smoking pot in his worn out lazy boy. Living off what money my dead mother left me and then leaving when it was gone. I’m the reason she ended up being so much like the bad side of him.

Okay, I’ve got to go in. I’m here. I’ll just say no. I’ll thank them for coming, caring, and I’ll decline. She’s going to cry, but that’s all right. She’s got it coming for assuming that I can’t handle my own problems. Or I could go. At least it would get me away from this for a few months. A warm bed, people paid to care. I bet it’s like a hospital in rehab. White walls will keep us in and try to make white lives for all of our bloody souls. My mom knows better than anyone that people like me can’t be saved. I stain everything I touch. I’m a red pen in the washing machine or a greasy finger on a silk dress, forgotten until I damage something beautiful. I’m a weed in my mom’s garden and once I’ve been plucked from it everyone will crowd around her again and comment on how beautiful she looks.

I reach into my pocket and take the remaining two pills. I pull open the console that separates me from my potential passengers and pull out a small packet of weed. I smoke a bowl and finish my vodka. Now I recline my seat and let things mingle in my veins.

“I just wanted to tell her that I miss her.”

“She knows. She’s just stubborn. She gets that from you.” Merle pushes a teacup into my hands. It’s hot. I grip it tighter and let it turn my palms red.

“Let’s eat. She’s clearly not coming.” Wendy says. “I’ll reheat something.” I’m not hungry. She’s twenty-five tomorrow and I’m not sure if I should be relieved that she’s made it this far, or if I should be preparing her funeral. When I was six, our house caught fire. It was an old farm house and my sister and I shared a room in the attic. The smoke slowly seeped through the crack in the door curling up around my ankles. I just sat neatly on my bed letting it fill the room. I knew that this was a problem, I could hear Wendy yelling but I just sat there and waited for her to lift me off my bed and carry me down through the burning hallway. She pushed me into my father’s arms and we stood together in the middle of the dusty road and watched the flashing light of the fire trucks paint the prairie sky red as they stormed the road to our house. If she had left me, I would have burned to death cross legged on my bed. I hoped that this party could carry my daughter out of her burning house. The only thing is, I’m not sure if it’s even on fire.  

My arms are sinking down through my legs, through the seat. The orange numbers of the radio are winking at me. Light shines off the white snow illuminating every crystal, raising up until they kisses the sky. My jacket clings to me and I can feel every fibre of it pressing into my hot skin. 9:15pm burns my eyes. I’ve got to go in. I grip the handle and inch it towards me. I lean on the door and fall out of my car. No need to close it. The snow crunches under me and its sound wobbles into my ears like a violent clap of thunder. I push my hot face into the snowy pavement and rub my cheek on it until it burns. My hair is swallowing me. I pull myself up onto my hands and knees. I’m a lioness. The houses that line the streets lean back as far away from me as they can get. They stretch out their drive ways to protect themselves from the reach of my exposed claws.

“I guess we should clean up then.” I feel like a mother turtle that has just buried her eggs a mile from the ocean’s edge and abandoned them. I’m not sure if my girl is going to make it to the shore. I’ve given her the best chance at life that I know how to give and somehow I feel like this was my last chance to stop her before a swooping bird of prey carried her off to her death. My face is hot.

“You didn’t do anything wrong you know.” Wendy puts a hand on my lower back and guides me the rest of the way into the kitchen. Merle is scraping lasagna into plastic containers. “It was a nice party,” Wendy said. “She’s just young.”

“You were right before. She’s a drunk. I just thought if I showed her that I still love her then she’d want to get healthy again.”

“You know that doesn’t work.” Wendy is putting dishes into the sink while she speaks. “She has to want to stop is all.”

“I was hoping I could help her before she gets too bad.”

The snow is digging in under my fingernails. My jeans are wet and my feet drag behind me like anchors. The roots of the pines are reaching out to me. They are begging me to climb into them so they can rock me to sleep. I’m not stopping. Bits of rock are digging into the palms of my hands leaving spots of blood in the white snow as I make my way to the end of my driveway. The porch light is on. My old bedroom light is on. Maybe I could spend the night before I’m whisked away.

I let her choose the colours for her bedroom when she was young, mostly because I couldn’t decide on my own. The walls in this room used to be blue and red, with handprints. We did it together and all of her tiny prints were so full of paint that they left a long drip to slide down the wall until each one started to run together making a rich purple colour. It took me three coats of primer and two of the blue to hide their remains. Blank walls comfort me now as a turn down the sheet for my guests.

My legs are stiff under my body as I lie in the middle of the driveway. If someone were to step on my hands right now my fingers would shatter under their pressure. I sat right here the day my dad left. He stumbled out of the house in his brown cowboy boots with his shirt unbuttoned. “Your mother finally kicked your old man out,” he slurred. “Fuck ‘er.” I looked up from my sidewalk chalk drawing of a yellow sun and he tossed an empty beer can at me. It bounced on the pavement and hit my foot.

I’m not sure if my eyes are open or closed. I’m using my elbows to pull me up the driveway like a soldier dragging himself through the trenches. The stairs are salted. I can taste it. It gets in the scrapes on my cheeks, the cuts in my palms. Salt soaks through my jeans and stings my bloody knees. My lips stick to the ice on the welcome mat. My finger traces the ‘W’. The cold sucks the air from my lungs and they deflate like a plastic bag under water.

When I called her friends to get her new number, most of them said they hadn’t talk to her in a while and directed me to another friend. It took me three days and six different numbers until I had her number written on the back of that old gas bill. No one questioned why I, as her mother, didn’t have it in the first place. I wonder how many calls I’m going to have to make the next time I want to throw her a surprise party. It’s nearly eleven. I guess I’d better turn the porch light off.