Mama looks at me. Her face is pale and blank, her eyes red rimmed. “I’m so sorry, Alvie.”
Everything is broken.
Without those pills . . .
Things were just starting to get better, and now it’s all over.
I’m a failure.
I can’t keep going . . .
She reaches out. “Come here.”
There’s something in Mama’s face that makes me uneasy. I bite my lower lip, then approach. She pulls me into a hug, and I start to tense up, because it’s too tight. I squirm, but Mama just hugs me tighter. It hurts.
At last, she pulls back and smiles at me, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Go wash up and do your homework, then we’ll have dinner.”
“I don’t have homework anymore.”
“Oh.” She rakes a hand through her hair and laughs, a little too shrilly. “Right.”
I go into the bathroom and wash my hands.
Mama calls me into the kitchen. She’s made my favorite dinner, chicken nuggets with macaroni and cheese. She pours herself some chamomile tea and pushes a glass of apple juice toward me.
Her eyes are glassy and a little too wide. When I say, “Mama,” she doesn’t seem to hear me right away. She stares into space for a few seconds, then smiles vaguely across the table and says, “What’s that, honey?”
“Aren’t you hungry,” I ask. She’s barely eaten two bites.
She looks down at her plate and says, “I guess not.”
The chicken nuggets are dry and gritty in my mouth.
“I love you so much, Alvie,” she says. “I want you to know that whatever happens, it’s because I love you. You might not understand, but please believe that.”
“Okay.” I don’t understand at all.
“Make sure you drink all your juice,” she says.
I take another swig of my apple juice. It tastes funny, like chalk, and I hesitate.
“Go on.”
I look at the juice, which is a little cloudy. Mama is staring at me, waiting, so I keep drinking, and it slides thick and bitter down my throat. I gag a little, but I manage to force it all down.
When the last drop is gone, Mama says, “I don’t want you to be in pain.”
“I’m not in pain.”
She doesn’t seem to hear me. She pokes a fork listlessly at her macaroni and cheese. “I never told you much about your father.” Her voice sounds faraway, like sleep talk. “That’s just as well, though. I guess I never told you much about me, either. But there isn’t much to tell. I’ve never achieved anything. School, jobs, relationships . . . none of it really went anywhere. And then when I met him, I thought finally, this was something . . . but then it was over. It isn’t your fault, Alvie.” She lets out a small sigh. “It doesn’t matter now, I suppose.”
Bits of powder slide down the sides of the glass. My vision drifts out of focus, and I blink. My head feels funny. I look down at my half-finished plate of chicken nuggets and macaroni; blobs of orange and brown. My head droops toward my chest, and a thin line of spittle falls from my open mouth and onto my shirt.
What’s happening to me?
“I don’t want you to end up like him.”
“Uhhh.” The moan slides out of my mouth, thick, like syrup.
Chair legs scrape the floor as Mama stands. She walks around the table toward me and places her hands on my shoulders. I sway, woozy. I try to ask her what’s going on, but all that comes out is another moan.
“Shhh.”
She lifts me out of the chair. I hang like a rag doll from her arms, head and limbs flopping as Mama carries me over to the sofa and sits. She hunches over, cradling me in her lap, and holds me tightly as she rocks me back and forth.
My head rolls to one side. Everything is fuzzy. The world spins slowly around me, like I’m on a carousel. Mama strokes my hair.
Usually, she smells like honey and vanilla shampoo. Now a sour, stale smell clings to her, as if she hasn’t washed for a while, and she’s clutching me so painfully tight. Her fingers dig into my ribs, like she’s afraid I’ll float away if she loosens her grip. “I love you so much, Alvie,” she says. “Do you understand that?”
I open my mouth, but all that comes out is more drool.
Something is really wrong. If I could just think clearly, I’d know what it was, but every time I try to hold on to my thoughts, they slip through my fingers, like I’m trying to grab wriggly little fish.
I try to form words: Mama, what’s going on? but my lips and tongue are numb and all that comes out is uhhh, wuh ruhh.
She starts singing. It’s the song she used to sing to me sometimes when I was little, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” But now she sings it with my name. “My Alvie lies over the ocean . . . my Alvie lies over the sea . . .” Tears fall on my face. “My Alvie lies over the ocean . . .”
A gray haze closes around me. I’m falling, and her words follow me down.
“Oh bring back my Alvie to me.”
I open my mouth to tell her that I’m here. But the gray fog swallows me whole.
For a while, I float.
When I surface from the haze, we’re moving. I can hear the car and feel a seat belt across my body. I try to lift my head, but it feels like it’s filled with cement.
“Just relax,” Mama says. Her voice is soft and faraway. “We’re going for a ride. I’m going to take you to your favorite place.”
My eyelids are made of stone, but I manage to pry them open a crack. Mama is driving, her face bathed in the faint glow from the dashboard, her eyes wide and blank. “Everything is going to be okay,” she says.
I don’t know what’s happening. I struggle to put the pieces together, but it’s like looking at a jigsaw where none of the edges quite line up. If only I could think. Why can’t I think?
Within, a small, cold, clear voice whispers, The juice. My heartbeat quickens. I have to move. I have to get out of here. I don’t know what’s happening, except that everything about this is wrong and I have to get out. But my muscles are like spaghetti. It’s like that feeling when I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m only half-asleep but my body won’t move—sleep paralysis—and my eyes won’t quite open and my mind is still fogged with dreams, and I think, Just move one finger, and I try very hard to move my right index finger, but nothing happens.
Move. Move. Move. Move.
I can see out the window. I see the sign that means we’ve reached the lake. This is the place where Mama usually pulls over and parks. But we keep driving, toward the wooden pier that juts out like a finger over the lake.
And my body still won’t move.
It would be easy just to let go and fall asleep. Maybe if I let go, everything will be okay. Maybe I will wake up in my own bed, and this will all be a dream.
As I sink deeper into the warm darkness, her voice follows me: “Whatever happens, it’s because I love you.”