glove compartment. After the last few sips of my champagne, I cheat at Pin the Tail on the Donkey, but lose anyway. Everyone takes a swing at the piñata with a splintered tree branch. Katherine finally cracks it with a tire iron she finds in Maria’s trunk. We wrestle on the ground for the candy necklaces, plastic bracelets, and super bouncy rubber balls that rain down.
I use up the last of my energy to convince myself that I am actually having a good time. If for nothing more than to spite him. Then I spend most of the ride home semi-passed out against the passenger-side window, my forehead sticking to the glass. I can hear the conversations around me, but I can’t muster the energy to participate.
“Did you like your champagne, birthday girl?” Maria rustles my hair, and it feels like a tornado across my scalp.
“A little too much, I think,” Beth says, smoothing my bangs and securing them off my face with one of her bobby pins.
“I love you guys,” I mumble.
“That’s just the liquor talking,” Maria jests.
“Here, take this.” The strong scent of mint tickles my nose. I open my bleary eyes and Katherine hands me a mouthwash strip sandwiched between two pieces of gum. “Your mom won’t smell anything on your breath but spearminty freshness. Trust me, it works every time.”
Though it takes a lot of effort, I manage to thank her.
The Volvo shuffles over a wide set of train tracks and we’ve arrived at my street. A respectful silence blankets us as everyone looks at my house. I cover my eyes with my hand but end up peeking through my fingers. The house is dark, the driveway is empty.
Before they say good-bye, all of the girls invite me to sleep over in case I don’t want to go home. I turn them down with a barrage of mumbled and embarrassed thank-yous because I’ve got nothing to run from.
I use the spare key hidden over the porch awning to enter the house. The television in my mom’s bedroom softens. She doesn’t want to talk, only to know that I am home safe. I do her the favor of helping myself to the noisiest glass of water imaginable.
Tonight’s Polaroids are in a stack next to an ashtray in the kitchen. There is only one cigar butt mashed inside, but the entire room reeks like a chimney. I empty the ashtray and think about throwing away the pictures too, knowing the one of Jim is shuffled somewhere in the pile. But I decide against it and hide them in the silverware drawer, in case tonight is really the last time I ever see him.
The thought of that, or maybe the smell of smoke, brings tears to my eyes.
I crack the window before heading up to bed, because I definitely don’t want to smell this in the morning.
His leaving seemed sudden at the time.
I was on the living room floor in my sleeping bag, hair divided into two still-damp pigtails, trying to watch Annie for the millionth time. I say trying, because Dad walked past the screen like every five seconds and ruined all the best dance numbers. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. When I was annoyed enough to make a fuss, I found him snatching the last of his dusty records from the shelf.
This instantly struck me as strange behavior because the records were ancient and I had never heard them played. In fact, we didn’t even own a record player. So I crept behind him toward the master bedroom to investigate.
Mom had wedged herself into the tiny space between the nightstand and her dresser. Her back was up against the wall like a criminal in an alleyway — completely out of Dad’s way.
We watched Dad cram the last of his possessions into an overstuffed trash bag. Two large suitcases had already been filled and waited in the doorway. Mom wasn’t crying or making a scene. She just stood stiff as a statue with her hands folded over her nursing scrubs. She didn’t even acknowledge me when our eyes met for a brief second.
Even though it was already dark and the middle of winter, I ran outside without stopping for a jacket. My bare feet crunched in the iced-over snow that no one had shoveled from that afternoon’s storm. I leapt up on the hood of that blue truck and sat with my back against the frosty windshield. Brisk cold seeped through my gauzy pajamas. I shivered and shook, but there was no way I was going to move. I had to stop him from leaving.
Snow crunched helplessly under his work boots. Dad dropped his things in the bed of his truck. He told me twice to get down, but I didn’t listen. Hot tears streamed off my cheeks.
When he looped his arms under my armpits and lifted me off the hood, I arched my back and let my limbs hang like dead weight. It was a game we used to play when I was little. But instead of tickling me or groaning in fake struggle, my dad set me off to the side of the driveway like it was nothing. And, without a word, he got in his blue truck and drove away.
The salty smell of breakfast seeps underneath my comforter, where I am buried, eyes squinted shut. Bright sun radiates heat and light through the bedding and bakes me like pie filling.
But I shiver, as if I were still freezing cold, still out on the hood of his truck. I haven’t thought of the day he left in years, but suddenly I’m reliving it in such sharp detail that it takes my breath away. It’s not like a dream or a flashback, where things seem all soft and muddy and confused. This is different. This feels as real and painful as it did the first time. I brush away a clump of damp hair from my face and kick the covers off.
Mom stands at the foot of my bed in her mint-green nursing scrubs, staring down at me. The skin around her eyes is dark and puffy, even though she’s put makeup on to try and hide it. She probably hasn’t slept a wink. I doubt I would have either, if not for passing out cold on my pillow after praying that I wouldn’t throw up. I’m never, ever drinking again.
She’s holding a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, toast, and a neat stack of bacon. A huge glass of water and an economy-sized bottle of Advil are wedged in the crook of her arm. I can’t remember the last time she cooked me breakfast, though I doubt my brain is really working properly. It feels like it hates me, the way it pounds and amplifies the steady beat of Mom’s slipper tapping the carpet to a frighteningly loud decibel level.
“You slept right through your alarm this morning. I had to come in here and shut it off myself.”
“Sorry,” I say, reaching for the water with the Advil. My tongue feels like a dried orange peel as it presses two tablets against the scaly roof of my mouth. I start gulping.
Mom shifts her weight from left to right. Her shiny hair flips shoulders accordingly. “I let school know you wouldn’t be in today, seeing as it’s nearly two P.M.”
The red dots on my digital clock look blurry and fat through the bottom of the glass. Every part of me feels heavy, sinking deep into the grooves worn into my old mattress, but I can’t get comfortable. Mom clears some junk from my nightstand and sets the plate down. I keep swallowing until the glass is empty, and then trade it for a fork she’s got stuffed in her pocket.
“Is it safe for your mother to assume that coming home drunk will not be behavior she can expect from you on a regular basis?” Slipping into third person is Mom’s trademark of being annoyed, another way to put more distance between us.
Sharp pain ripples across my forehead, but I force myself to nod through it.
“Good answer. Then suffering through your first hangover will be your only punishment. You can consider this Get Out of Jail Free card a belated birthday present. But know that if you ever come home intoxicated again, you’ll be grounded like there’s no tomorrow.” She plants her hands on her hips and waits for me to formally acknowledge the huge amount of parental slack I’ve just been granted.
So I mumble,