Page 9 of The Heartbreak Hotel
“I know,” Goldie says. “And I’m sorry, Lou. But there are logistical concerns.”
“And I’ll deal with them. Eventually.”
She pulls the phone closer to her face. “Really? What does that even mean? I barely have room for Quinn and me in the apartment and you’re obviously not moving back in with Mom.”
Obviously. I haven’t lived with Mom since I was a preteen; when Goldie moved out for college, I went with her. I had friends whose parents worried about this: Was it a good idea for such a young girl to be living at Ohio State? Exposed to all that chaos, all that drinking? What I didn’t tell them, of course, was that my mother was the source of chaos in my life—and my exposure to drinking.
During those years, we mostly saw Mom at the holidays. We’d go wherever she was staying, a short-term lease or friend’s apartment, and do our best to make merry. It wasn’t that we didn’t love our mother. Mostly, she tried to be on her best behavior with us. She was loving, and loud, and when you told her a story, she really listened to you. But she was unpredictable, naturally, and only more so when she was drinking.
Her moods were a game of roulette. One that always felt, to me, worth playing. Because sometimes I’d get her rasping laugh, her hand clutching mine, an entire evening where all she wanted was to cuddle me on the couch while we watched old movies. But just as often—more often, if I’m honest with myself—I got her anger. Her fury at Goldie fortaking mefrom her, though we all knew she didn’t want to manage my care, or my education. Her rage at the injustice of the world, at how men treated her, at how her bosses didn’t value her. In her worst moments, the thinly veiled threat that we’d all be better off without her.
There was nothing that bothered our mother that she wouldn’t share with us—even when I was nine. Even when I was younger.
Goldie loved me and resented Mom in equal measure. Her college years were consumed by parenting me—a sacrifice that she never complained about, but one that I knew wore on her. How could it not? When I left for college, hightailing it to Colorado, she moved to New York and didn’t look back. We didn’t communicate with Mom much after that; without us close by, she rarely reached out. Goldie and I spent holidays together, or with friends. I missed my mom, and I felt stupid for it—the shock of her disinterest in my life still hasn’t worn away, not even seventeen years after I first moved in with Goldie.
Goldie stayed in Ohio all that time for me. It’s clear, in retrospect, that it wasn’t what she wanted, but what she felt she needed to do. And while my feelings toward our mother are an inextricable knot of longing and fear and loss and love, Goldie’s are simpler. She’s angry.
Now, down in the garden, Joss swings open the gate. I tell my sister, “I’m staying in the house.”
“With what money?”
I take a breath and test out the words. “I’m turning it into a bed-and-breakfast. The landlord’s letting me stay for free in exchange for managing it.”
Goldie’s lips part. “You don’t even know how to scramble an egg.”
I look at my sister. Remind myself that this is how she loves me. “I’ll learn, Goldie.”
“Okay, no.” Mei pulls theplate out of my hand and dumps the eggs back into the pan. “These are too soupy. No one likes a wet egg.”
I shudder. “Don’t say ‘wet egg.’ ”
“Don’tmakea wet egg.” Mei jabs at my mess of scrambled eggs with a spatula. Morning light dances in through the stained glass over the sink, sending small rainbows over her cheeks. “The only runny part of a scrambled egg should be the melted cheese. Wet eggs give people the ick.”
It’s Sunday morning, a week later, and Mei slept over to give me a crash course on breakfast prep. There are six bedrooms upstairs, but Mei passed out in the king bed with me—her breathing soft and even, steadying me as I struggled to fallasleep. When I showed her the recipes I’d printed out for Henry—eggs Benedict, ricotta-stuffed French toast, ginger-lemon muffins—she’d looked me square in the face and said, “I admire your beautiful, ambitious soul, but this is not going to happen.”
So far I’ve mastered dry, crumbly blueberry muffins and oven-baked granola. The eggs are a work in progress.
“Lou?” Joss’s voice sails through the front door. She usually comes through the back, but it’s unseasonably cool for early September and I’ve left the door open for a cross-breeze. It carries down the front hall, smelling like pine and soil and sun. “You’ve got a package—want me to bring it in?”
“Yes!” I crane away from the eggs, and Mei catches my wrist before I yank the pan off the stovetop. “Thank you!”
Joss comes into the kitchen, blond hair hidden under a wide-brimmed sun hat. “Investing in some new security?”
The box she slides onto the dining table is peppered with DefenseLock logos.
“Oh, good. No, those are my—”
“Okay,” Mei says, guiding my hands to slide the pan off the heat, “they’re probably done.”
“—new bedroom locks. To convert the rooms for the vacation rentals.”
Joss’s eyebrows shoot up. “So he said yes?”
“Yep.” I shoot her a smile between shoveling eggs back onto the plate. “At least for a six-month trial.”
Joss had been worried Henry would veto the rentals—grouchywas the single word she’d used to describe him. Now, she grins. “You must’ve made a good pitch.”
I think of my printouts on the exam table. Of the papertowels Henry handed to me when I teared up. Of the bemused look on his face when he agreed to this, like even as he said the words, he couldn’t quite believe them. With the rent check he passed back to me, I have enough money to manage things here for the next six months—updated décor, new locks, food—if I’m scrappy.
