Page 26 of As a Last Resort

SAMANTHA

Austin was already gone when I woke up. My side still hurt from last night.

He had me in stitches. After half an hour of deep dive googling ducks versus swans in The Notebook , we eventually passed out on the couch foot to foot with Serendipity playing in the background.

A horribly embarrassing night turned into one of the best nights I’ve had in a long time.

There were two piping hot lattes on the kitchen counter. How he snuck them in without waking me up is a feat of magic. I’m the lightest sleeper known to humankind.

I looked around for the first time as I sat at the little kitchen bar counter with my coffee.

The counter was perfectly spotless and wiped down.

A fresh vase of flowers sat on the windowsill.

Not a single dirty dish in the sink. One clean coffee mug sat by the single cup coffee maker.

A cheery yellow and white striped Williams Sonoma dish towel draped over the sink edge.

Perfectly put together and tied up, the way it’s always seemed.

“Well, look who the cat dragged in.” A raspy voice pierced the air from behind me followed by the flop of her slippers.

I took a really deep breath and bit my tongue. “Good morning, Mom. How are you feeling?”

“Wonderful, actually. To what do I owe this special morning visit?”

Was there really a possibility she didn’t remember the night before?

From the time we left Mr. Johnson’s house to the time Austin laid her in bed, she was completely and totally passed out.

She never woke up. In all the chaos (and unintended distractions) of the night, it didn’t dawn on me she could have no recollection of the evening.

Well. This should be fun.

“The house looks nice.”

“It looks exactly the same as when you lived here. Is this for me?” She held up the latte.

“It is. Compliments of Austin Marcs, actually.” She turned her back to me. “Need some ibuprofen to go with it?”

She completely ignored my question and turned on the faucet. “Well, that was nice of him.”

I raised my voice over the stream of water. “I saw Mr. Johnson last night.”

No response.

“Did you hear what I said? I saw Mr. Johnson.”

“Oh yeah?” she called over her shoulder.

“Yeah, I got to see him at his house last night. When I picked you up.”

She stilled, but for just a second. “Really? Huh. He was always such a fan of yours. He asked how you were doing. Asked if you liked New York. He always follows his favorites.”

“So which part do we want to dive into first? The fact that you’re sleeping with my old principal or the fact that you passed out on his couch at midnight from mixing too many substances?”

She turned around abruptly. “The first is none of your business, young lady. And the second, I didn’t feel well. I’ve been having a stomach thing the last few days and it must have taken me out last night.”

“You were not sick. You were passed out drunk. Or high. Or both.”

“That’s absolutely not true.” She puttered around the kitchen wiping the clean countertop off again and again, avoiding eye contact.

“I had to call Austin to help me carry you since I can’t actually transport your dead weight by myself.”

Anger flared in her eyes. “Austin carried me?” She looked absolutely horrified.

“And tucked you into bed, safe and sound,” I sang as I brought the latte against my mouth.

“Samantha Leigh, how dare you bring a grown man into the house to see me in that state?”

“You mean your stomach bug state? I didn’t have a choice, Mom.

A random guy calls me from your phone, tells me you passed out on the couch and he can’t wake you up.

I don’t recognize his first name, don’t know the address, but I know I can’t actually carry you by myself. What other option did I have exactly?”

“How long did he stay?”

“He spent the night. Just in case, oh I don’t know, you stopped breathing in the middle of the night again, and I needed someone to help me get you to the ER.”

“You’re blowing this a bit out of proportion.”

“Am I? You were completely unresponsive. We probably should have taken you straight to the hospital to have your stomach pumped.”

Having sensed my anxiety building, she deployed her first tactic.

She’d try her best to swing the pendulum the other way.

She came over and placed one hand gently on my shoulder as she slowly stroked a piece of hair behind my ear with the other.

I hated how my body responded to that small display of maternal affection.

Regardless of what she put me through, what she continued to put herself through, when she fell back into the mother role I felt myself curl underneath her, desperately wanting her attention, approval, love—whatever you want to call it.

“I haven’t been feeling very well.” She slowly stroked my back. “And I shouldn’t have mixed my medicine with wine last night. It was my fault. I’m sorry you had to deal with that. I really am. No more drinking on medicine. I promise.”

“How about no more drinking, period?” I countered, which she ignored as she went back to wiping her clean counters.

She smiled to herself after a minute. “Mr. Johnson’s pretty cute, isn’t he?”

“I’m serious, Mom. I think it’s time we had a real conversation about this again.”

“Samantha, I don’t need you meddling around in my personal life for the few weeks you’ve decided to grace me with your presence.”

She knew every button to push that would send me over the edge. I saw it coming and wasn’t going to lose the war on this one.

“And you refuse to even stay here, in your own home, when you do come,” she continued. “You’d rather pay money out of your own pocket to stay at a motel. It’s ludicrous.”

“The company pays for it, Mom, and I need a place to work ,” I answered. “Should we address the Zoom call that you decided to crash in a bathing suit that has the real possibility of getting me fired?”

“Oh please, those tight pants needed a little levity. They should be sending me a thank-you note for the show. It was probably the most exhilarating part of their day.”

I had learned over the years if I poked at the small details, she’d almost always justify her actions like she was doing a favor for the general public. I took a breath. This was much bigger than my job. Or the latest teacher she was dating.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around more,” I said, treading carefully. “But I would hope that you of all people would understand my severe hesitation in coming back considering what happened graduation week.”

She turned, looked straight at me, and threw her dish towel on the counter. “We are not getting into this again.”

“You never even apologized.” My voice came out even and controlled, the exact opposite of how I actually felt.

“It was an accident. Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Dramatic? I have twenty-three screws in my arm. I think I earned the right to be factual .”

She turned away from me and started to walk back down the hallway to her room.

“I was in the hospital in a coma, Mom. For three days. You don’t think that deserves an apology?”

“Well, if your father hadn’t left—” she started over her shoulder.

“He didn’t leave, Mom. It wasn’t a choice,” I called out after her. “It’s not like he packed up a suitcase one day and said he didn’t want us anymore and walked out the door.”

This was the argument I walked away from every single time, but I wasn’t going to walk away this time.

I was tired of being scared to pick up the phone, terrified of getting the call where she did something irreversible.

Again. And maybe this time, they didn’t get to walk away with just a few screws.

“He wasn’t here anymore and that’s not what I signed up for.”

“Taking care of a drunk while I’m trying to deal with losing my dad isn’t what I signed up for either. You think that was an easy thing to do? You think that’s a fair weight to carry for a teenage girl?”

“He left us, Samantha.”

“Yeah, well, you left too. Your body just hung around a little longer than his did.”

She looked at me like I had slapped her across the face.

“It’s time for you to leave.”

“I’m tired of ignoring the fact there’s no oxygen in the room. It’s suffocating both of us. I can’t live with this on my chest anymore. Something has to give.”

“How about you do what you need to for work, then run back off to New York again and pretend like I don’t exist down here. That’s been working well for you for the past seven years. I don’t see a need to change that now.”

“You didn’t give me a choice in leaving, Mom. I was out of options.”

“You always have a choice.”

“Ironic advice coming from you.”

“Out,” she ordered.

“If you’re not up for talking about this now, fine, but this conversation isn’t over.

” I pushed myself up from the counter. “Oh, and you’re welcome, for coming and getting you last night so you didn’t puke all over cute Mr. Johnson’s couch and floor.

I’ll tell Austin you said thanks for the coffee. ”

I walked back to my room to grab the few things I had brought for the night.

I hadn’t noticed it the night before, but the air in the room smelled stale, like it hadn’t moved since I left seven years ago.

Third-place dance trophies stuck in time sat on a shelf collecting dust. Pictures were frozen on the mirror dying to grow older.

My bedspread reeked of that unmistakable mustiness of mismatched linens forgotten in the back of a closet that didn’t belong anymore but never got thrown away.

I opened the top drawer of my desk, and underneath the stacks of handwritten poems and papers, school announcements and homecoming court pamphlets, I knew was the folded newspaper article.

I pried open the top of it: LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR IN COMA AFTER MOTHER’S ACCIDENT SHAKES SMALL COMMUNITY.

Most people say they don’t remember the first few days after losing a loved one. I’m not one of those people.

I remember every single moment after my dad died.

I remember the way the slices of bread I would leave beside my mom’s sleeping body on the couch would get stale.

I remember the smell of rotten casseroles piling up in the garbage—too many, too quickly—and taking out the trash took energy I didn’t have.

I remember crawling into their bed when she refused to leave the couch and smelling every single inch of fabric, trying to find a trace of my dad.

I remember screaming into his pillow as loud as I could, hoping my mom didn’t hear me because I was so embarrassed that I just couldn’t keep it in and quiet like she did.

Then, I remember years of watching her waste away, pound after pound.

I remember watching her pour vodka into her coffee in the morning when she thought I wasn’t looking.

I remember opening the refrigerator to find only string cheese and yogurt past its expiration date.

I remember getting into her car after the senior graduation pep rally, turning to wave goodbye to my friends, calling out to them that I’d see them later at the game.

I remember riding in the front seat, reaching down to get ChapStick out of my backpack, and not opening my eyes again until I heard the beeping of a heart monitor three days later.

LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR IN COMA AFTER MOTHER’S ACCIDENT SHAKES SMALL COMMUNITY

May 31, 2016—Rock Island, Florida—Rock Island citizen’s car crash puts daughter into ICU.

The small community of Rock Island is still shaken from the news of local Rock Island High School upcoming graduate Samantha Leigh in the hospital.

Leigh remains in a medically induced coma after her mother, Bonnie Leigh, veered off the road and impacted a streetlight after traveling southbound on Main Street in her 1996 Honda Civic at a high rate of speed.

Witnesses report the car was going far over the speed limit, although that has yet to be confirmed by the local authorities.

Dr. Neal Nguyen, head trauma surgeon at Tampa Medical Center, who is not treating Leigh, told us a medically induced coma is sometimes necessary to decrease swelling of the brain.

“Inducing a coma allows the brain to rest and decreases the brain’s activity and metabolic rate,” Dr. Nguyen said.

“Ultimately, this state helps decrease brain swelling and protects the brain from further damage.”

“Sam [Leigh] is the perfect student,” a close, personal friend of Leigh’s said, also a senior at Rock Island High School who has asked to remain anonymous.

“But her mom’s had a problem for a while now.

It was just a matter of time before she hurt herself or someone else.

I just can’t believe it was Sam in the end. ”

Bonnie Leigh’s toxicology report has yet to be confirmed.

I smoothed out the creases, laid it carefully on top of the desk, and walked out the front door without saying goodbye.