She sighs and smiles at the same time. “I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t stop my wheels from turning.”
I open the fridge and grab a string cheese, pulling the plastic back like I’m peeling a banana. I’m feeling more charitable toward my mom than usual. It’s nice to have another person awake when it’s this early. “Listen,” I say. “I know that Nate seems like a hopeless case now, but you really don’t need to lie awake worrying about him. Research shows that people can grow out of the ‘extreme doofus’ phase with the proper correction.” This is a joke because she and I both know that Nate is the one person in this house she doesn’t seem to worry about.
“Hey now, not fair teasing your brother when he’s not here to defend himself,” she says automatically. Then she focuses in on my face, pained, and I immediately know what she’s thinking.
Escaping her look, I open the pantry door. I tear open a packet of chai powder and shake it into a mug, fill the kettle,and put it on a burner. Then I turn back to her. “Seriously, Mom, I know you’re stressed that I’m going to end up like Dad, but honestly? He’s got a pretty good life, if you think about it. Good job, good wife, good son,gorgeousdaughter.” I wink at her, trying to lighten her mood. “He could do a lot worse.”
“Mm, I don’t know if you noticed, but he’s also pretty depressed.”
That’s true. Can’t argue with that. But does she want us all to be depressed with him? I go and get a spoon out of the drawer and stand next to the kettle, willing it to whistle through the silence. It resists, punishing me for watching it.
She seems to read my mind in return. “Forget I said anything,” she says, running her hands through her hair, “I don’t want you to worry about him. It’s not a child’s job to worry about their parents.”
Why do parents always say shit like this? Stuff that puts them on one side and kids on the other? It’s so binary, so black and white and … totally unrealistic.
“Look, the fact is I do worry about Dad sometimes, Mom, and I don’t think that’s so terrible. He’s a person, and I’m a person, and people worry about each other. But I’m not worried about him right now. You know why? Because I think this depression is temporary. Like maybe even now he’s starting to come out of it.”
“I hope that’s true.” She pauses. “It’s one of those hard things in life—loving someone who’s struggling, and you can’t really help. All you can do is just keep on loving them. You know how much I love your dad, right?”
“Of course I know, Mom.” Not the worst thing in the world to hear her say it every once in a while, though.
“And what about you?” she says, and I can hear the exhaustion. “How are you going to handle the progression? You always take things sohard, Hattie. You’re sosensitive. I worry about you heading down the same path.”
The kettle finally comes to my rescue. I pour the hot water in and stir. When I speak again, new thoughts are taking hold.
“The RP is not a choice. I’m stuck with it. But what I do while having RPisa choice. A choice that is one hundred percent mine.” Ever since I got my diagnosis, everything has felt like it was happeningtome, like I was out of options. But that’s not true, really. I mean … “Yes, some things are out of my control. I can’t drive no matter how much I want to. But I still have options.” How I move through the world in general will have limitations. But there’s still an infinite number of decision points, as many as there were stars in the sky last night. The thought of all that possibility fills my lungs. I take a sip of the chai and smile. Do I want to be an actor? Maybe I won’t be able to navigate backstage in a theater, but I could do Shakespeare in the Park in the bright summer sun. Or I could do commercials. Or movies! And if I go totally blind? I put my mug down and spread my fingers out on the cold granite countertop. I can’t remember the last time I saw a blind character in a play or a movie. So where is the choice there? I know right away what Mason would say to that. “Well, Murph, maybe you’ll just have to fucking write the play yourself.” Write the play myself. That last thought causes a thrill to shiver through me.
My mom is listening, waiting for me to say something else. Is she getting it? She’s really not that different from Mrs. Leary. Even though I’m alive and breathing and standing right in front of her, she’s holding all this weight, taking all the responsibility for everything that’s ever happened to me in the past and will happen to me in the future.
I sit kitty-corner to her and almost chuckle. Here she is labeling me as sensitive when she takes everything at least as hard as I do. “Mom, I know it’s tough for you whenever you feel like I’m on my own or being independent or whatever. But I also know you know that it’s good for me deep down.”
“Of course. I know you need to individuate. I’ve read the books!” She laughs. “It’s so important,” she says more softly.
“Yeah, except what I think you don’t think about is that it’s good for you, too.”
“Well, you’ll always be my baby,” she says, like it’s a reflex.
“That’s not what I mean. I mean, you don’t have to be scared for me. I’m going to be okay. I really am. And if I’m not okay sometimes, well, that will be okay, too. It’ll be good.” Her hands are folded on the table and I put my hands on top of them, feeling calm in how sure I am about what I just said.
She takes one hand out from under mine and sandwiches my hands in hers. “How did I get such a smart, mature daughter?”
I stand up and toss my hair behind my shoulders, playful. “Who knows?” I tease. “But keep working at it and maybe one day you’ll deserve it.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You’re going to mock me and in the next breath—what?—ask me for a ride?”
I laugh and kiss the top of her head. “Exactly.”
“I know this 5K is in honor of Mason, but he would never approve of anything that started at eight a.m. on a Saturday,” Jeff says when he arrives at the makeshift booth we’ve constructed at the end of Main Street. Two dowels are duct-taped on each side to hold up a butcher paper banner announcing,RUN FOR EPILEPSY AWARENESS!and then, in smaller font underneath,CHECK IN HERE.
“It’s not my fault. That’s what time racesstart,” Lucia says, unfazed as ever by Jeff’s razzing. “Also, you’re complaining to the wrong people. Asha, Hattie, and I have been here since six thirty setting up.”
This reminder that I’ve been working in the freezing cold for an hour causes me to pull my hat farther down over my ears. “At least running will make us warm.” I smile as I hand the tablet to two more runners to sign in and then give them their race numbers, taking off my mittens for the fiftieth time in twenty minutes to pick out eight tiny safety pins from the box so they can pin their bibs to their chests.
Across the street, Asha has her own card table for her speakers, which are pointed directly at us. Once again, she has managed to get out of joining the rest of us lemmings in the prescribed activity by providing the musical accompaniment for said event. Normally, I would watch her in awe, wondering what it must feel like to call your own shots all the time, but ifI’ve learned anything recently, it’s that other people’s lives aren’t as simple or as perfect as they look.
With her headphones over one ear, she transitions to some Lil Nas X, and a few of the runners waiting behind the starting line start to bounce in time to the beat. I catch her eye and jerk my thumb up toward the sky, and she turns the volume up a couple of notches. I show my approval by doing some of my nerdiest dance moves. The lawn mower dance, the sprinkler dance, all the classics.
As she covers her mouth to stifle her laughter at me, Lincoln sneaks up behind her and puts his hands over her eyes. She strokes the hands, seeming to know who they belong to, and then turns toward him, disappearing into his bear hug. It must be refreshing for Asha, to feel small and delicate next to Lincoln, when often she’s the tallest one in class. They are so freaking cute. I never would have picked him for her. I add that to my continually unspooling list of evidence that I have been stupid about people.
