Page 9 of The Moment Promised

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever experience anything like it. A love strong enough to give a healthy man a heart attack.

But she loved her boutique; she loved fashion and picking out special pieces to display in her store. I miss that version of her.

The stairs are cold beneath my bare feet, and I slowly creep up them, knowing there’s only one last place she could be. The door to her bedroom is cracked. I brace myself for whatever disaster lays on the other side.

I lightly tap on the white chipped paint. “Mom, I’m home.” Bile rises to my throat at the smell of vomit.

I step over the obstacle of clothes mixed with garbage to get to her side of the bed. “Hi, Mom,” I whisper to the shell of her left behind, limp on the sheetless mattress.

I wonder if it will ever hurt less to see her like this.

A sound similar to a groan vibrates through her body.

I gasp as she shoots up from lying face down, quickly grabbing the salad bowl next to her vomit-stained pillow.

I touch my chest while I catch my breath.

“Fucking A,” my mom curses into the bowl between dry heaves.

I stand still, watching the aftermath of her binge drinking play out like I do every morning. Only some days consist of puking, when she surpasses her limit.

When she finally runs out of stomach acid, she sits up in her bed, leaning against the headboard. “Hi honey, I checked on you before I went to bed last night, but you were asleep.”

I don’t bother calling her out, explaining how I was at Finn’s last night. I’m just glad she made it to her room without falling down the stairs or something. “Thanks, Mom.” I smile. “Do you need a Gatorade or something?” I turn on my heel, ready to grab her one from the stash beneath her bed.

“You look different,” she says, not answering because I’m already ducking beneath the bed to pull out a purple one.

I screw off the lid, handing it to her. “I haven’t gotten any taller since yesterday.”

She holds it to her cracked lips, cringing at the taste. I watch her pull open the drawer to her night table, grab a bottle of clear liquid, and take a large gulp of it.

I cower a little, but there’s no use in explaining the detriments excessive alcohol consumption has on the body.

She knows. She’s the one living it.

“Would you grab me my pills, puffin?” She gulps her vodka between Gatorade sips.

“Does your foot even hurt?” I attempt to talk her out of “needing” her pain killers, but she just rolls her eyes and holds out her hand.

Her doctor prescribed her pain killers when she broke her foot, but that was nearly five years ago. I don’t even want to know where she gets the pills now, but she claims the doctor forever messed up her foot, that the pain isso badshe needs medicine to put it to rest.

I twist open the white cap while reading the prescription for a lady named Betty, which is obviously not my mom’sname. I hesitantly hand her two pills. She shakes her head in disappointment, grabs the bottle from my hand, and shakes a few more pills into her palm.

Each rattle of pills against pills sends my organs into failure, or at least it feels that way.

“Don’t you have to be at work?” she asks after swallowing who knows how many pills.

“It’s Saturday.”

“So?” She stares up at me through fierce yellow-green eyes.

“I don’t work Saturdays,” I remind her for the hundredth time.

“Oh yeah.” She slowly lays back down, resting her head on the stained pillow.

I watch her for a few moments, the way her breath slows, and a snore takes over the quiet. I try my best not to make noise as I snatch the vodka from the nightstand, walk over to her bathroom, and replace it with tap water.

Once I’ve set the bottle back where she left it, I carry on with my day.

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