Page 70 of Nothing Like the Movies

Wes

Clark lowered himself to the empty chair and set down his camera. “Where did she go?”

For a half second I thought he was talking about Liz, but then I realized he meant my mother.

I looked at his face, and God help me, I wanted to keep going. It didn’t make sense, but maybe Sarah was right. Maybe ithadbeen too long since I talked about it, or maybe enough time had passed where it was becoming a story instead of something that cut me open and made me bleed.

Even weirder than that was the fact that I was glad Liz was gone. Something about tellingherthe story felt wrong, probably because she’d been there. I’d seen it on her face as I answered, the second she started remembering, and I didn’t want her to have to sit across from me and be reminded of a time that brought her pain.

“Wait—getting ahead of things,” Clark said, and as much as I wanted to hate the dude, he was just so nice that I couldn’t. And I hatedthat. “Why don’t you talk about what happened when you got home.”

I let out my breath and closed my eyes for a second, remembering.

What happened when I got home.

“Obviously everyone was grieving, but it didn’t take very long for me to realize that my mom wasn’t handling the loss very well. That she needed help.”

Understatement of the century. She couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t eat, couldn’t drive, couldn’t work—my mother was a mess.

“But you were eighteen,” Clark said. “What could you do?”

“Everything that needed to be done, I guess.” I shrugged and said, “She tried, but she was the one who found him, and she just never got over that, I think.”

“Is that part of why you left school?” Clark asked, obviously no longer reading prepared questions. “Because your mom couldn’t take care of things?”

How was I supposed to answer that?

My mom tried to find a way to cope, but for her, that meant not being in the house where he died. Which was understandable, but Sarah was still in high school and needed a place to live. A guardian. She wanted my mom to come home, but my mother couldn’t bring herself to leave her sister’s house.

I just said, “She did her best, and I stuck around to help.”

The reality had been slightly more nightmarish. No life insurance, coupled with my mom not being healthy enough to go back to work, left me no choice but to work two jobs to keep the house out of foreclosure.

Thank God for the therapy that eventually brought her back to us.

Clark asked, “So at what point did you realize you were done with school?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest.”

That was a lie. I remembered theexactmoment.

Liz came home for the funeral—all my friends had—and the night before they were heading back to school, everyone was meeting up at Liz’s to hang out. I was getting ready to stop over when my mom called and asked when I was going back.

I was a little surprised that she was calling, as opposed to just coming over since she was going tohaveto come back soon, but that surprise turned into total disbelief when she asked me who was going to take Sarah to school and make her dinner after I left.

Because my mother had no plans to come home.

She’d started crying, telling me she couldn’t handle being in the house where she found my dad and that she couldn’t handlelookingat my sister without remembering that day. I tried everything I could think of to get through to her and make her listen—Sarah needs you!—but I finally gave up when the conversation stopped and the only thing I could hear over the phone was the sound of her sobs.

I didn’t go to Liz’s that night. I sat in the kitchen, drinking mydad’s beers and tearing apart the desk, looking at bills and bank statements and trying to figure out how I was going to cover for my mom while she was out.

Because we didn’t have some big extended family who would jump in and save us. My aunt Claire was my mom’s only sibling, and she was already struggling to make ends meet as a single mom with a deadbeat ex.

And my mom didn’t get along with her parents, so the fact that they didn’t come to the funeral showed just how helpful they might be. And my dad’s parents died before I was born.

So as badly as I wanted to return to my life and go back to LA, how could I?

When I waved goodbye to Liz at the airport the next morning, I could barely manage a fake smile as the oppressive weight of everything lowered its every crushing pound on top of me.

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