Page 45 of The Heartbreak Hotel

Thirty-Three

The Columbus airport is gilded for Christmas—all flocked trees and string-light stars and snowflake window clings in the souvenir shops. Quinn points out every decoration as we make our way toward the car rentals. He’s holding my hand, like the one grounding force tethering me to this earth.

“So this is Ohio,” Mei says, taking in the gray morning through the terminal’s tall windows.

“This is Ohio,” Goldie confirms. She’s been full throttle since we met her at her gate twenty minutes ago; before I could even give Quinn a hug she’d thrust her phone into my hand, open to her notes app riddled with residential treatment facilities in Columbus.

This is where Goldie shines: not with feelings, but with logistics.

I’d handed it back to her and picked up my nephew.

“Are you ready to see the pool?” I ask him now. We step onto the escalator and he clenches my hand for balance.

“Yeah,” Quinn says. “Mom packed my Christmas swim trunks.”

“Christmas swim trunks,” I say, raising my eyebrows at Goldie. “How appropriate.”

“I do what I can,” she mumbles, still scrolling through her phone. The plan is for Mei to bring Quinn to the hotel so Goldie and I can meet Mom at Mark’s house. She knows we’re coming, but doesn’t seem to see this for what it is—an intervention, an eviction, the demise of her relationship.

“Mei, did you bring your swimsuit?” Quinn cranes around to look at her over one shoulder, and I pick him up to set him on the solid ground at the end of the escalator.

“Duh,” Mei says. “We’re gonna play mermaids until you’re wrinkled up like a prune.”

Quinn giggles, hopping a little. “ Gross! ”

Mei smiles at him and then finds my eyes, reaching forward to squeeze my shoulder.

I spent the plane ride studying for the NCE, which I’m retaking in a couple weeks.

With Mei asleep in the window seat beside me, there was no one to see me do it—to pull up the practice test on my computer, tick through the multiple-choice questions until my eyes felt twitchy and sharp.

It was easier than thinking about what waited for me on the other end of the flight: my mother, my hometown, all of my memories.

Easier, too, than thinking about what I was leaving behind: Henry.

He’d agreed to manage things at the house without hesitation.

Even after I told him the money was gone; even after I told him I had three more people checking in this week.

His low voice was right there, the entire plane ride: Whatever you need .

I pushed it away. Narrowed the world until it was only my practice test and me.

“When do I see Grandma?” Quinn asks as Goldie clips him into his car seat. Our rental is a microscopic Kia, its back seat barely big enough for Mei and Quinn. She’s holding her suitcase on her lap because there isn’t room for it in the trunk.

“Probably tomorrow,” Goldie tells him. “Mom and Aunt Lou-Lou need to help her with some grown-up stuff first.”

Quinn nods seriously, like he understands the gravity of the situation.

When his eyes meet mine, I feel like I could cry.

I drive so that Goldie can make her phone calls—checking availability at the facilities she’s found.

Checking if they take Medicare. Checking if Medicare covers the costs in their entirety.

Columbus spreads flat and familiar before me.

I feel sixteen again, driving home from whoever’s house I’d spent the night at so I wouldn’t be home alone with Mom.

Eighteen, leaving for college and feeling it like the deepest breath I’d ever taken.

Twenty, with Goldie for Christmas and missing Nate, desperate to get back to the life we’d made together.

And twenty-six, as I am now. Henry here like a stitch in my side, an ache I can’t knead out.

Mark lives in a development near the mall where I worked in high school. When I turn left into his neighborhood, we pass the gas station where I used to buy Sour Patch Kids before my shifts. There’s leftover snow slushed into brown piles in the gutters.

“I hate this,” I say, the first words either Goldie or I have spoken since dropping Mei and Quinn at the hotel.

She looks over at me. We haven’t talked about our own shit, about what went down when she visited in October or how tense things have been between us since then.

I haven’t talked to her about what Mei said to me, about the double standard Goldie’s held me to all these years.

But the way she’s taken on communication with Mark and inpatient research tells me she feels bad for dropping the Thanksgiving rent situation on me.

“Yeah, well.” She looks out the window, leaving it at that.

Mom’s car is parked on the street in front of a low brick bungalow.

It’s the 1990s Maxima she’s had since we were kids—faded maroon and rusted around the wheels.

I want to sit in the car for a minute, to take a deep breath and remind myself that I’m not in danger and push Henry’s face out of my mind for the one millionth time since leaving Colorado.

But Goldie’s already opening her door and stepping out into the frigid morning.

“Let’s go,” she says, so I do.

Mom answers the door in jeans and a hoodie, dark eyeliner, her hair dyed a deep red that’s faded to bruised purple.

“My babies!” she cries, pulling us in for hugs. Mark isn’t here; he asked us to deal with Mom while he was at work, like a coward. Mom smells like she always has: the stale cling of cigarettes, not quite masked by her favorite perfume. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

“We’re not home ,” Goldie says, closing the front door behind us. “We’re here to clean up your mess.”

“Goldie,” I say, releasing our mother.

“What?” Goldie’s eyes flick to mine before looking back at Mom. “She needs to hear it.”

It’s unsurprising. Goldie wears her honesty like a medal of honor, like a gift—but in this situation, as in so many situations before, it’s not helpful.

“Oh, Marigold,” Mom says, swatting a hand at her. “Don’t start with me. Let me show you girls what I’ve been working on.”

She doesn’t wait for us to reply, just starts across the living room. It’s depressingly male in here: overstuffed, lumpy armchairs with plastic-handled recliners; a couch with thin, matching throw pillows; empty beer cans lined up like chess pieces on the coffee table.

“I’m decorating,” Mom says, leading us down a dim hallway and into a bedroom.

There are shopping bags strewn over the floor, the desk, the unmade bed.

“Dani at work told me about this great store over at the mall, you remember Dani, she’s Yolanda the owner’s daughter, sweet kid.

Younger than you, Lou.” Mom reaches for a throw pillow, intricately beaded and distinctly uncomfortable looking.

“Mark, bless him, has no taste. So I’m sprucing up.

I ordered some bedding this morning, and there’s—”

“Who’s paying?” Goldie says.

Mom blinks. She starts reaching for discarded bags, arranging them into a stack. Goldie moves toward her and I put my hand on her arm.

“Mom,” I say, gently. “Where are your things? From your house—your clothes?”

She looks up at me, stack of bags suspended between us. “At home, baby. I’ve just got the one bag.” She waves vaguely at the corner of the room, where a black suitcase sits open on the floor. “I’ll be back there soon, so I only brought my necessities.”

“Okay,” I hear myself say. I imagine the rest of her things rounded up by a maid service, hauled to a dumpster or dropped in a Goodwill bin.

I imagine Goldie and me back here in a month, when Mom is stable and back on her own somewhere, helping her rebuy everything she left at her old apartment.

But that’s a problem for later. “Can we help you pack up so we can all leave together?”

Mom stares at me. Since I was a kid, I’ve pictured these moments as a game of Operation. Thread the needle, remove the organ, avoid her triggers. She’s always been one wrong word from exploding. I’ve always been so much better at steering her than Goldie.

“Leave?” she says, every trace of excitement dropping out of her voice. “Why would I leave?”

“This is Mark’s house—” Goldie says, and I hold up my hand to silence her. For once, she does as I ask.

“Goldie and I want to bring you somewhere safe,” I say. Mom stares at me. “You can’t stay with Mark. He asked us to help you move out.”

Silence stutters between us. Mom swallows. “He did?”

I nod. It would be easier to lie, maybe—to trick her somehow, to get her out of here. But she deserves the truth. “You can’t stay here anymore, and you can’t go back to your apartment because you didn’t pay the rent.”

Mom blinks rapidly, her cheeks diffusing pink. I glance at Goldie before looking back at her. “We found somewhere you can go, until you find another apartment. Residential treatment.”

I wait for her to respond to this, but her eyes only dart back and forth over mine.

“You’ll be safe there,” I say. My voice only wavers a little. “You’ll be able to talk to a therapist, and—”

“I don’t want to talk to a therapist.” The words shoot out of our mother, loud and sharp.

“Well, you need to,” Goldie says. “It’s not a negotiation.”

“Goldie,” I say, cutting my eyes at her. “Stop.” I can feel Mom teetering on the precarious edge of her anger, and Goldie’s only going to make it worse. I reach for Mom’s arm, and she looks up at me.

“I don’t need therapy, Lou.” Her voice has a shredded quality: she’s scared. “This was just a silly mistake with the rent. It isn’t about therapy. It isn’t about that.”

“Okay,” I say. My chest is tight and suffocating, but I force my voice to come out smooth. “Then it can just be about a safe place for you to stay until you find a new apartment. We’ll go there together, okay?” I glance at my sister, whose arms are crossed. “All three of us. You trust me, right?”

Slowly, my mother nods. She looks at Goldie, then back at me. “Mhm,” she says, not quite a word. But it’s enough—enough for me to ease the bags out of her hands, for Goldie to zip up her suitcase, for us to pick through the rest of Mark’s house for our mother’s scattered things.

By the time we settle her into the back seat of the Kia, Mom’s eyes are wet with tears. She reminds me of Quinn, back here—small and helpless.

“Mom,” I say. My mother looks up at me, and then I do lie to her. “Everything’s okay.”

After dropping her off at the only treatment option Goldie could find with an immediate opening, we meet Quinn and Mei at the hotel pool.

Goldie hauls Quinn out of the water without hesitation—even as he splashes her, even as he protests.

She wraps him in a towel and whisks him up to the room for a nap and doesn’t say anything to either of us.

We haven’t spoken since leaving the facility.

The last image I have of our mother—scorched into me like a sunburn—is her red face, mottled with anger and fear.

Realizing she has no option but to stay where we’ve taken her; that another man has let her down; that she needs more help than she knows how to get on her own.

I haven’t been able to take a full breath since we showed up at Mark’s house.

Mei watches me sit down on the pool chair beside her, stretching my legs out in front of me. The whole room feels humid and close, no one here but us, the pool water still swaying with the echo of Quinn’s kicking feet. I stare at my shoes and try to remember how to breathe.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mei asks.

I press my eyes shut. My mother crying, two nurses with their hands on her elbows, everyone in the waiting room watching us pass through. I shake my head.

“Okay,” Mei says. Her hand lands on mine, unclenching it from its fist and winding our fingers together. “You’re a good daughter and a good person and I love you.”

I squeeze her fingers. “I’m an idiot.”

“No, Lou. This was the right thing to do, even if it feels like shit.”

“Not that,” I whisper. I’ve been here before, breaking my mother’s heart. I’ve felt this specific brand of impossible. But there’s another hurt, rattling between my ribs—a new, bottomless sort of loss.

“I thought I had this so figured out,” I say, finally opening my eyes.

Mei’s right there, blurry. “With my stupid heartbreak hotel. I was doing so well about Nate. I thought I was so strong and had it so together and could teach everyone else how to recover because I was so—so good at it.” I sniff, and Mei squeezes my hand.

“But I was never good at it, Mei, I just didn’t love him anymore.

I thought I had it all figured out, but I just didn’t care enough.

And now—” My voice squeaks off. I shake my head, looking out over the pool.

Today, with my mom, dislodged all of it: How devastated I am that Henry’s held back with me. How embarrassed I am that he’s known I’ve been lying about my license for months. How absolutely miserable I am without him. How entirely wrecked.

Every time I felt scared today—as I shushed my sister, as I parented my mom, as I left her in an unfamiliar place full of strangers—it was Henry I wanted.

Henry I wished was there with me: the solid wall of his body, the low rumble of his voice.

I understand , that day in the fall at Polliwog’s.

His own loss shaking through him that night on my living room couch.

He’s become my safe place, the feeling I yearn for when I’m afraid. And I’ve gone and pushed him away.

“I had no idea what I was talking about,” I tell Mei now. “None at all.”

She scoots onto my pool chair, wrapping her arms around me until we’re twisted on the rubber slats like a couple of snakes—clunky and uncomfortable and too warm. I tuck my face into her shoulder. She squeezes me even closer. We stay like that, breathing, until I lose track of time.