Page 46 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
“Do youenjoymaking other people miserable?” my dad had accused, and I couldn’t help it anymore. I was caught between two sides of a war, and by pure protective instinct, I stepped out in front of my mom. Chose my alliances without thinking.
“Don’t talk to my mom like that,” I’d said. Quietly, at first, then louder. “You’re upsetting her. Just—just go away.” I hadn’t meant it. I was only sick and scared of their fighting. I only wanted the argument to stop.
Hurt had flickered over his face, and I got the sense I’d committed some terrible act of betrayal, before his thick brows drew together, his hands balled into fists. “You all want me to go? Fine,” he spat. “I will.”
Then he was leaving because I’d all but asked him to, and my mom was right there, watching him, witnessing our lives collapse in on themselves. “Don’t come back,” she yelled, and he never did.
Once the dust had settled, she told me it had nothing to do with me. It had been her choice. They were grown adults; they made decisions for themselves. All the expected, hollow excuses. But I didn’t believe her.Couldn’t.Every time I played the scene back, I saw myself poised at both the starting and end point. I had been the trigger, and all that came after had happened for what? Because I hadn’t listened to her. Because I hadn’t been well-behaved. Because I’d been impulsive.
Because some mistakes were irreversible, like glitter in the carpet, a wine stain on a favorite dress.
“What’s really going on, Sadie?” my mom asks, peering at my face.
I can’t bring myself to tell her about the emails, so I settle for the closest answer I can find. “Everyone hates me,” I whisper. “I did something to make them all hate me, and I thought . . . I thought I could change their minds.”
She absorbs this for a moment. “Well, I doubt that’s true. And even if it is, it’s not the end of the world.”
I let out a shaky laugh. Adults are always saying that. Other thanIf someone asked you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?(which simply doesn’t strike me as a realistic scenario; who would benefit from making somebody else hurl themselves off a cliff?) andYou’ll understand when you have children of your own(even though I don’t plan on ever having children), this seems to be their favorite line.It’s not the end of the world.And maybe there’s some tiny grain of truth in it. Maybe I’ll grow up and change my mind a decade later. Except for now, thisismy whole world. The people I sit next to in class, the faces I have to see at school every single day, the teachers who determine the grades that get sent to the university that determines the trajectory of the rest of my life.
“Why don’t you just give it some time?” she suggests. “The more you force something, the less it works. Haven’t you heard the saying? A melon picked too soon is seldom sweet.”
I stare. “You mean . . . do nothing?” It’s an absurd notion. It’s the route people who turn their essays in two days late would choose. But all of a sudden I’m aware of how exhausted I am.
“Yes, do nothing,” she says firmly. “Live your life and see what happens. Of course, I don’t mean around the house,” she adds. “I expect you to clean up all the rooms and return everything to its original place.”
“I— Okay.” I start to stand up but she yanks me back down onto the couch.
“Tomorrow,”she says. “Tonight, all you need to do is drink the chicken soup I’m about to make you and go to bed, okay?”
“Okay,” I repeat again, stunned. I must still be very drunk, because I can’t help the next words that tumble out of my mouth: “I’m really sorry.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t have to apologize for the party—”
“Not about the party,” I say. “About—about my father.”
Silence.
It’s the one topic in the house we never bring up. It’s like a rash you’re told not to scratch, even when it pains you, for fear of making it worse. I already regret it, already want to take the words back, but my mom’s gaze is calm.
“Sadie. It’s not your fault.”
“But—”
“It happened,” she says, “and it was inevitable, and now we have the rest of our lives to live.”
“Inevitable?How? You never fought. You were both so happy up until that night,” I whisper.
“Oh, no, we weren’t happy. We weren’t in love with each other. We were simplypolite,” she says, looking over my shoulder now, as if she can see her past projected onto the bare walls. “I almost wish that we had fought more, that we’d cared enough to challenge each other and bicker over the little things. Better that than just swallowing our resentment and staying quiet until we couldn’t take it anymore.”
I feel like somebody has knocked me upside down. Like I might throw up at any moment. “That’s not possible,” I tell her. “I should have sensed it. I would have known—”
“You were so young,” she says. “You’restillso young. And we didn’t want you to know.” She squeezes my wrist lightly.
“But then . . . you’re not happy now,” I say, scanning her face, noting the familiar signs of fatigue in the faint purple around her eyes, the downward turn of her lips. “It’s because he’s gone, isn’t it?”
She shakes her head. “If there’s any reason why I’d be unhappy, it’s becauseyou’renot happy.”
I am. I’m fine, I try to say, except the lie won’t even make its way past my lips.
