Page 9 of When People Leave

Morgan

How could I go two weeks with only a five-minute call with my mother? she thought. Her remorse pulled her down like an anchor plunging to the sea floor. Lately, things at work had been busy, and the little free time she had she spent working her program--the one thing that kept her sane and sober.

Morgan loved her mother, but her relationship with her was complicated. Carla had done her best as a single parent, but for Morgan, seeing her mom struggle was a constant reminder that her father had left them. The feelings of abandonment made Morgan crave bourbon.

Morgan was five when her mother told her that her father would not be joining them at their new home.

“Your dad left us,” Carla had said when Morgan got home from school.

“Where did he go?” Morgan asked.

“That’s not important,” Carla said.

“But I didn’t get to say goodbye,” Morgan said.

“We’re better off without him,” Carla said, ending the conversation.

Even at that young age, Morgan couldn’t understand that the father who left was the same man who taught her how to play the harmonica when she was four.

The “music” she played sounded like a crescendo into madness, yet he happily encouraged her.

That same year, her father also taught her how to ride a bike.

While all the other kids her age still used training wheels, he convinced her she didn’t need them.

He bought her a tiny spring-green Schwinn, and although she kept falling off, he continued to encourage her without getting frustrated.

Looking back, Morgan wondered if her happy memories were real or if her mind had fabricated a fantasy so she could torture herself on what she missed out on in life.

When Morgan turned seven, Carla told her and her sisters that their father had died.

Knowing that she’d never see him again brought out all the emotions that Morgan had pushed down when he left.

She became angry that her dad could no longer come to his senses and return home.

Morgan refused to go to school, vacillating between sobbing and denial.

Not having any male role models affected her, Charlie, and Abby differently. None of the Weiss daughters had grown into adults without being scarred.

At twelve, Morgan started drinking with her first boyfriend, who was two years older than her.

At fifteen, she smoked weed with her eighteen-year-old crush, and at seventeen, a college guy introduced her to opioids.

Her desperate need for the wrong kind of male attention had not only been her downfall but was embarrassingly cliché.

Morgan dropped out of high school her senior year but had trouble keeping a job.

She’d worked at a market, at a McDonald’s, and even drove an ice cream truck.

Being high and moving a heavy machine that played jingles as kids ran after her was a sure way to get arrested.

She got her first DUI when a group of six-year-olds witnessed her jump the sidewalk and crash into a stoplight pole.

Four years ago, she joined Alcoholics Anonymous, got sober, and received her GED. Since then, she’d struggled through completing two years of community college.

During her first year in college, when she sat across the desk from one of the school counselors, Morgan heard words that made her smile from deep inside.

“I think it’s time you got tested for learning difficulties,” Harvey, the counselor, said.

“You think I have a learning disorder?” Morgan asked.

“I can’t diagnose you, but my educated guess would be an audio processing issue and ADHD.”

Morgan stared at him.

“What?” Harvey asked.

“It’s just hearing you say that hit me like a bolt of thunder.”

“You mean lightning?”

“See, I do have a learning disorder,” she said. “All this time, I thought I had a hard time in school because I drank myself stupid.”

Morgan floated out of that meeting with happy tears in her eyes. She wanted to sing joyfully and hug the first person she saw, but she changed her mind when she got on the elevator with a slovenly guy with hair coming out of his ears.

Morgan planned to get formally diagnosed, then find the money to go back to school, earn her bachelor’s degree, and become a substance abuse counselor. She tried hard to save money, but her car died, her refrigerator broke, and her job didn’t pay enough for her to work less and go back to school.

As tough as these obstacles were, there was one thing that stood in Morgan’s way more than money: her fear of failing.

From her disastrous years in school to all the times she was drunk at important family events, Morgan couldn’t get the look of disappointment on her mother’s face erased from her mind.

If she had gone back to school to get her degree only to drop out again, she would have gotten her mom’s hopes up for nothing.

School wasn’t the only thing Morgan hadn’t been able to follow through with.

The first time she tried to get sober, she thought she could do it on her own.

That didn’t work. The next time, she took Charlie’s advice and went into therapy.

This would be the first time she spoke to anyone about her past mistakes.

Morgan was relieved that things were progressing slowly and the therapist hadn’t pushed her out of her comfort zone.

Until two months later, when her therapist started the session a little differently.

“I’ve been seeing you for a while and noticed we haven’t yet delved into why you first began drinking,” the therapist said. “Is it possible that you were trying to numb the feelings of abandonment of a father you barely remembered?”

Morgan clasped her hands together for a minute, then began cracking her knuckles.

“I know this is difficult,” the therapist said, “but it will help you if we explore how not having a male role model in your life has affected you.”

“I don’t need to talk about it,” Morgan said.

“From what you’ve already told me, there are some things we should go deeper on that will help you work through old trauma.”

“I don’t want to talk about my father,” Morgan said sharply.

Morgan finished the session with clenched teeth. When the hour was over, she headed to the nearest bar.

After a brief slip, Morgan returned to sobriety with a vengeance. She threw herself into AA, relied on her sponsor, and went to conferences as often as she could. AA became a new addiction—one she could thrive on.

Sobriety was Morgan’s first goal, and her second was to get a job where the people she worked with appreciated her.

She accomplished that when she was hired at Bloomington’s Mortuary.

When Morgan applied, the competition was far from fierce, so having been arrested for a DUI didn’t seem to bother her soon-to-be employer.

“The job is yours as long as you can stay off Facebook long enough to reorder embalming fluid,” her boss Carl said during the interview. “With our last employee, we got so backed up we had to put up a sign for two weeks that said, If deceased, drive to Samson’s Mortuary .”

Morgan liked the job, but even more, she liked the security that there would always be dead people, so being laid off for lack of work wasn’t likely.

Her responsibilities mainly consisted of paying vendors and overseeing the stock of coffins and urns.

She made a deal with Carl that she could hide in the back when a funeral took place.

She didn’t want to deal with mourners; sad people depressed her.

Morgan’s plane landed back in Oregon half an hour early, so it was only ten p.m. when she pulled up to her apartment with Albert in tow. Her building, the color of curdled milk, boasted an oversized sign that said Lake Oswego’s Luxury Living. The only factual words in that sign were Lake Oswego.

Morgan could have afforded to live in an apartment with all the amenities in an area where she wouldn’t have felt safe, but she chose a crappy building in a nicer neighborhood.

A building where elderly men in their shortie pajamas, knee socks, and crocs sunbathed next to the pool.

A pool that had water the color of wet cardboard and smelled like a gaggle of teenage boys’ sneakers.

Morgan worried that if she even dipped a single toe in that pool, it would fall off, which meant she’d have to trash her collection of flip-flops.

She headed down the ramp into the underground parking structure and backed into her spot, trying not to scrape her car on the yellow pole again. When she opened her car door, Albert sprinted like a kid getting out of school for the summer.

“Albert, wait!” Morgan yelled as she grabbed him and hoisted him into her arms. He was much heavier than he looked.

Albert had been Carla’s constant companion for years, so the warmth of his fur against Morgan’s chest made her think about her mother and how much she had already missed her.

She balanced the little sausage in her arms while reaching for her apartment key in her purse.

Albert’s juicy tongue slid from her chin to her nose as if he knew she was now his meal ticket.

Albert ran inside Morgan’s apartment like he had always lived there.

She couldn’t help smiling; it would be nice having the company.

After all the partying she’d done in her youth, the quieter life she led now suited her, but at times it could be lonely.

Her friends were mainly a few women from her program, most of whom were married.

Morgan wasn’t interested in dating because she had been prone to being with the wrong men; the right ones didn’t want her.

Albert wandered into the living room. Immediately, his hackles raised as he stuck his nose under the couch. She now knew exactly where her cat, Brigitta, was.

“You’ll get used to our guest, Brigitta,” Morgan called out. “But for now, I’ll protect you.” She picked up Albert, brought him into her bedroom, and closed the door.

Then she picked up her phone and called her boss. “Hi, Carl, it’s Morgan.”

“Hi, I’ve been thinking about you. How’re you doing?” Carl asked.

“Not great. I’m home for a few days, but I need to head back to California and take care of some things. I hope taking a short leave of absence from work is okay.”

“Of course, the dead don’t wait, but I can. Take care of yourself, and don’t worry about us. If we get backed up, I still have the sign sending corpses to Samson’s Mortuary.”

Morgan thanked him and hung up. She thought about what she needed to pack for a more extended stay.

The weather in Los Angeles was warmer than in Oregon, so she stuffed some of her lighter clothes from her closet and drawers into her biggest suitcase.

Then, she googled AA meetings close to her mother’s house and printed the list. She needed to stay on track, especially during this time.

Following her program had become the one constant she couldn’t do without.

Morgan did laundry, then packed again, grabbing a few more toiletries to add to her suitcase.

She wasn’t leaving for four more days, but she liked to pack early, so she had more time not to forget something.

She left room in the suitcase for the three books she kept on her nightstand.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, John Purkiss’s The Power of Letting Go , and Nick Trenton’s 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind and Focus on the Present.

Morgan wasn’t one to see a bright light at the end of the tunnel; she only saw a tiny flicker.

All of these books helped her stay positive and continue moving forward.

The next few days went by quickly. When it was time for Morgan to head back to her mom’s, she went into the closet to get the cat carrier.

Brigitta, who had been watching from the bathroom, scurried by Morgan, racing under the bed so fast that some of her fur flew into the air.

Morgan stuck her tongue out and fished the hair out of her mouth.

“Brigitta…” she called out but knew it was useless.

Morgan got down on her stomach and looked under the bed. Next to a long plastic container holding mementos from her past and journals that she had written in over the years were two of the most beautiful copper eyes staring back at her.

“Come on, honey, we have to go.” Morgan pushed the crate toward the bed, hoping Brigitta would get in it.

“There’s a salmon treat in there,” Morgan said in a singsong voice.

Brigitta shook her head as if to say, ‘No flipping way.’ Brigitta didn’t like to swear; she was a lady.

“We aren’t going to the vet. We’re going on an airplane, and then we’ll be staying at a much nicer place than this.

” Brigitta yawned indifferently and still didn’t move.

Morgan tried a different tack: “If I leave without you, you will starve and shrivel up and die under there, and then my whole room will stink.”

When Brigitta still didn’t come out, Morgan reached her hand under the bed and grabbed Brigitta, hoping she wouldn’t claw her.

“Ha, I got you now,” Morgan said.

She stroked Brigitta’s fur, which was the color of oatmeal, and Brigitta purred happily. Morgan put her in the carrier, then got Brigitta’s food and catnip and took them to her car. Lastly, she retrieved Albert and her suitcase and headed to the airport.