Page 46 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says when I answer. “I just heard about your mom. I’m so, so, so sorry.”

“Thank you.” I hide my drunkenness by using as few words as possible.

“If you need more time, if you need anything at all—”

“Margot killed my peace lilies.”

“What?”

I knock back the vodka soda, light on the vodka, in two gulps. I lift up my glass to tell the bartender I’m ready for another. “She sent me a picture. They’re dead.”

“You’re drunk.”

“And I’m sad about my plants. Will you buy me new ones?”

“You better not be driving home,” Kiera warns. In the background, her son laughs and shrieks. I can feel the jealousy oozing from my pores. For Kiera—for nearly everyone else I know—life marches on unchanged. This time tomorrow, she won’t be thinking of me or my mother. “Grief is no excuse to drive drunk,” she says.

“I’ll promise not to drive home if you promise to buy me new peace lilies.”

“Okay. I’ll buy you new peace lilies.”

The pause between us stretches too long. Even the sounds of the bar cannot make it comfortable. By the time I’m ready to speak again, I have a fresh vodka soda. I squeeze my lemon slice with one hand and watch the juice, pulp, and seeds drip into the glass. I don’t care how gross it is. At this point, I’d drink ethanol if it would numb me. “I don’t miss her, you know. My mom. My mother. She’s dead, and I know it’s sad and permanent, but lots of people have dead moms. Is your mom dead?”

“She drank herself to death when I was a kid.”

“What was her drink of choice?”

“Whiskey,” Kiera says.

“My mother liked gin. Beer too, if we were out of gin. She used to get so drunk she couldn’t walk to the bathroom to puke, so she had this blanket on the floor she’d vomit into. My dad always held his liquor better, but he had a blanket he’d piss onso he didn’t have to get out of his recliner. The living room always smelled like piss and vomit.”

Kiera is quiet for a moment. “My mom was never that bad.”

“I found out she was addicted to oxy too. The painkiller?”

“I know what oxy is.”

“It’s my fault. I broke so many bones when I hit her with the car. She was probably in agony all the time. Suffering. I didn’t want her to suffer. God, what a stupid thing to say. Fucking joke, right?Boo-hoo, I got my mother hooked on painkillers, okay, Providence, but you tried to kill her, so how bad can you really feel?”

“You’ve never grieved anyone before, have you?” Kiera asks.

It’s imperative that I redirect the conversation before Kiera can plumb the depths of my grief. “Do you miss your mom?” I swallow an ice cube whole. It hurts, but the pain grounds me. I am still here. It feels like I’m disintegrating, the way oceanside cliffs do after being centuries of being battered by waves, but somehow, I’m still here.

“I didn’t know her enough to miss her.”

“Well, I don’t miss my mother.”

“I think you do,” she says tenderly, “otherwise you wouldn’t be drowning your sorrows like this.”

“I need to go.”

“I mean it, Providence. Call someone. Don’t drive home.”

People love me. I am lovable.

“Maybe slow down after this one, if you don’t mind my saying so.” The bartender arranges canned beers like a bouquet in a bucket of ice. It’s the same bartender who brought me the stouts from Coach Romanoff and my father. Even while I’m dressed in funeral garb, he cannot help but steal glances at my chest.

“I mind, but only a little bit.” After trying and failing half a dozen times to stow my phone in my pocket, I give up and slide it into my bra.