I was seven, Goldie sixteen, when one of Mom’s boyfriends got her into therapy. It was Matthias—his muddy blue pickup a stark contrast to the softness hidden beneath. It was unclear to me, a child, exactly what was going on; I only knew that our mother was suddenly at the doctor with novel regularity. It scared me. It was only after I’d woken Goldie up in the middle of the night for the third time in a week, panicked that our mother was sick and dying, that she told me Mom had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.Finally, Goldie had said, but I didn’t understand what a personality disorder was—or how someone like my own mother, who I’d learned everything from, could have one.
To me, Mom’s temper was part of being human. Her impulsivity was what made her fun. The messes she got us into—forgetting to pay rent, or spending all of it on things we wanted but didn’t need—seemed like honest mistakes. It wasn’t until Matthias—until counseling—that I came to understand some of the things that I thought made my mother who she was weren’t personality traits but symptoms.
When Matthias left, less than a year later, so did the incrementally more even-keeled version of our mom. I understood, later, that he was paying for her psychotherapy and that, without him, we couldn’t afford it. Mom wasn’t in treatment long enoughto experience lasting healing or change. She went back a few times—the first after an unexpected holiday bonus at work when I was in sixth grade; again after an aunt died sophomore year and left her some money. She wanted help. I believed that, more than Goldie did. But she could never get it for long enough to stick, and when her sporadic attempts “didn’t work,” she eventually stopped trying.
Mom’s boyfriends—coming, going, leaving her brokenhearted—remained inextricable, for me. The way she dove in heart-first every time horrified Goldie.She’s sick, she’d tell me, after we listened to Mom rave about someone she’d only just met. But it didn’t feel that way to me. Maybe because I was younger; maybe because I didn’t want to believe that our mother’s unyielding desire to find love—after all the times she’d been burned—could be anything but a virtue.
Maybe because it was me, every time, picking up the bloodied pieces. Me, who she needed; me, who was useful. Me, sliding in beside her on the couch in the most vulnerable hours of the morning, our breaths syncing up in the darkness.
Nine
“No, more charming.” Mei nudgesmy hands off the keyboard and starts typing. I’d writtenRun by an innkeeper with a counseling degree, and she edits it toRun by an empathetic, caring innkeeper with a therapy degree and years of experience counseling clients through heartbreak.
“I don’t want to overpromise,” I say. We’re back on my couch in our pajamas, morning light coming through the stained-glass windows. It’s sunny again today—the drippy butter yellow of September. “Or give the idea that I’m doing free therapy or something illegal like—”
“Show me the lie,” Mei says, gesturing at what she’s written. We have the vacation rentals website up on my laptop, which is propped on our knees between us. Her computer sits open on the coffee table behind it, where she can keep an eye on her work email. “This is all true.”
“I mean, technically—”
“Okay, then.” Mei keeps scrolling, reviewing my work. “What we really need to figure out is what we’re calling it.”
“Calling it,” I repeat, looking at her.
“A name,” Mei says. She tucks hair behind one ear and meets my eyes. “Every trendy spot needs a trendy name. Like, Pewter and Rye. Brimstone Sage. Exhale on the Water.”
I squint. “Those all sound like candles.”
“I think that first one might actually be a restaurant in Denver. My point is: we need a name for the B&B.”
I tap a fingernail against my laptop. “It’s not meant to betrendy, though. It’s meant to be a real experience. Like, with some staying power.”
“Of course,” Mei says, reaching for her coffee mug on the table. “But we’ve still got to market it.”
I draw a long breath, thinking. I’m not good at this kind of thing, and when I say, “Haven House?” Mei rolls her eyes.
“That’s definitely the name of some overpriced rehab in Malibu. What about the Getaway?”
“Too vacationy,” I tell her. “If it needs a name, it should convey that this is, you know, a place to come feel your feelings.”
Mei eyes me. “The Feeling Spot.”
We burst out laughing in unison, and I offer, “The Lightheart Lodge? Like, you could leave more lighthearted than you came?”
Mei rubs her chin. “It’s got potential. A little cute, though.”
I reach for my own coffee, taking a sip. “It’s about working through grief,” I say, thinking out loud. “About a safe place to come and sit in the experience you’re having. Nothing else to focus on, no distractions, just taking care of yourself, and processing, and finding yourself again.” I look at Mei, who’s nodding. “Coming back to yourself.”
“Everyone likes a comeback story,” she says.
“The Comeback? Comeback Cottage?” I raise my eyebrows at Mei, and she tilts her head back and forth, squinting like I haven’t quite hit it yet. “The Comeback Inn?”
Mei gasps. “Yes.”
“It’s not too punny?”
“Peoplelovepuns.” Mei leans closer as she talks, the way she always does when she’s excited. “Plus all the important stuff you said: Come back to yourself. Come back in, because it’s safe here. Yadda yadda.”
“Yadda yadda,” I agree, and Mei starts typing again. It’s good to see her like this—creative; sure of herself; laughing, even—after last night.