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It wasn’t a holiday, not an anniversary. It completely caught me off-guard. And there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. Someone simply came to the hospital where my mother worked wearing the same cologne as my father.
She drove home that night, parked the car in the garage, left the motor running, and never got out.
Not until I came home and found her. That was the first time we realized how bad things had been for her.
“You’re quiet,” Zach says beside me.
I haven’t said a word since we got in the car. “Did you fall asleep?”
“No,” I speak into the window. “Just thinking.”
“Not beating yourself up about this, are you?”
Is it the psychology degree or how well he knows me that forces him to ask this question? “What else am I supposed to do? I should have been there with her. I should have recognized what was going on.”
He reaches across the center console and squeezes my hand. “This isn’t your fault. You can’t control everything your mother does. What? Do you expect you’ll be able to when she gets out? Watch her for twenty-four hours a day?”
“I could certainly try.” I yank my hand away. If I was looking for a pep talk, this was the furthest thing from it. “At least I’d be there when something happens.”
“And when you’re not? I mean, what happens if you need to sleep? You going to hire someone to watch her then?”
All the points he’s making are valid. I would have to sleep eventually. Even if I stayed up for the first forty-eight hours, I’d nod off keeping watch at some point. And then what would happen? Am I never to go back to work again? I would need to still take care of her. I can’t afford a psychiatric facility. She isn’t crazy. Just sad.
Even if he is making sense, I’m in no mood to hear it. “Zach, I’m not looking for a reasonable solution at the moment. If I wanted your input on the matter, I would have asked.”
“You can get mad at me all you want, Aly. But I’m not letting you go down this path.”
The car stops.
He’s pulled over into a parking space along the street. When he faces me, the icicles clinging to the edges of my heart begin to thaw. I’ve shut everyone out this past couple of days, including Lyndsey. A method of self-preservation to keep me from dealing with emotions too intense to handle.
He leans across the console and takes me by the shoulder. His warm green eyes look more like emeralds than jade in this lighting as they lock over mine. “There was nothing you could have done. There is still nothing you can do. Other than getting her the help she needs.”
And what help are they going to prescribe her that we can afford? Antidepressants? Maybe a therapy session once a month? And what is she supposed to do the other twenty-nine days in between sessions? “I need more assurances than medicine and therapy. She was on medicine before. It didn’t help”
“It’s not assurance you need, Aly. It’s control. And you’re not going to get it.”
His words strike me like a slap to the face. Fine, I’ll admit it. I want control. Is there something so wrong with that?
You can’t control everything.
I know I can’t control all the singular factors in my life. But I should be able to control the one remaining parent I have.
What are you going to do? Put her in a little plastic bubble-like some control-freak parent?
My God. The revelation hits me. When did I become the parent? When did I start treating my mother like a child? Even parents must let go of their children every now and then.
“We have as little control over the lives of others as we do on making the world stop,” Zach adds. The roughness in his voice makes me think he’s speaking from personal experience. Someone with Zach’s influence and inexhaustible wealth must have very little trouble controlling everything around him. Yet the pain I see there behind his eyes, the one he is trying so artfully to mask, tells a different story. One I long to hear now more than anything.
“Then what am I supposed to do?” I ask.
“You make sure she has everything she needs,” he says. “You can even ask the doctor about placing her in a facility for a few weeks until the medicine finally kicks in. Then you have to stop placing all the blame on your shoulders.”
I nod. He’s right. Once my mother is recovered, there isn’t much I can do to help her other than meet the recommendations made by the doctor. Maybe with the charity up and running, I’ll be able to admit her as my first patient.
We arrive at a tall iron gate with a security station separating the entrance from the exit on the left. The guards wave to Zach as he punches a code into a black box one row away from where the officers are standing.
As we pass through the gates and drive down the road, the houses tower above the car like small castles ripped from the pages of a fairytale. Each unique design, though not entirely exclusive in the neighborhood itself, conveys elaborate architectural feats I’ve only seen in historic buildings or travel magazines.
