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It doesn’t.
But I have circles under my eyes and I look tired. Iamtired.
I spit the toothpaste into the sink. The tube is empty, so I throw it in the plastic bin next to the toilet and kneel down, open the cabinet under the sink to get another.
I search among boxes of Kleenex, rolls of toilet paper, a spray bottle of bleach. I don’t see any toothpaste, so I stand up and check the medicine cabinet.
It’s still filled with packets of dental floss, bottles of moisturizer, Band-Aids, nasal spray…but what strikes me is whatisn’tthere.
Ibuprofen, Midol, the melatonin gummies Ricci sometimes needs, the NyQuil, even Ricci’s children’s Tylenol.
Oh. I guess we’re going that route, although hiding the ibuprofen seems a little excessive.
I walk into the kitchen, where I find my mom sitting at the kitchen island with her laptop open, Bart Bingleheimer asleep at her feet. I smell coffee and eggs.
“Good morning,” she says cheerfully. “I didn’t want to wake you when I took Ricci to school. Thought you could use the sleep. There’s coffee and eggs.”
I walk to the cabinet where we keep our mugs and open it. Just to check, I glance up to the top shelf, where she keeps unopened wine. She doesn’t drink a lot, but if she has it, it’s on the second shelf, behind the cans of coffee and boxes of tea.
There’s nothing.
I pour myself a cup of coffee and take a sip.
I turn around.
“So just so I know, for future reference, I need to ask you for ibuprofen if I have a headache and Midol if I have cramps and beg for a spoonful of cough syrup from the safe, or wherever you put it?”
My mother sets down her coffee mug. She gazes at me steadily.
“Yes,” she says simply.
“You won’t even trust me with an aspirin?” I say, exasperated. “That seems excessive, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t,” she says. “I read in an article that sometimes when kids come home from…rehab…they can suffer depressive episodes, and I’m just—”
“Jesus, Mom, I’m not going tokillmyself,” I say. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
She blinks. “You did almost kill yourself. You did almost die. It’s my job to prevent that from happening again.”
I look into the deep brown well of my coffee mug.
“Actually, Mom, if I learned anything at that place, I learned that it’s pretty much all up to me, when I die.”
I raise my eyes to meet hers but look away when I see the tears brimming there.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just…I’m still tired, I guess. This is hard.”
“I know.” She takes a sip of her coffee.
But shedoesn’tknow. I’m going to have to do things she’s never done. Our definition ofhardwill never be the same.
I turn around and put my mug on the counter, take the pan off the stove and shovel the cold eggs into my mouth withmy fingers. Then I put the pan in the sink, turn on the water, soap the sponge, and start washing the dishes.
“Bella,” my mother says. “What are you doing?”
“Washing the dishes,” I say.
“We have a dishwasher,” she reminds me.
