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She doesn’t tell me anything about herself, and I don’t ask.
Then she says, “Are you coming home for Thanksgiving?”
“No.”
“No?” She sounds surprised. Hurt, almost. “Why not?”
I shiver.
Out of all the questions she could ask, all the things she could want to know about the last four months, the last four years, she wants to know why her daughter isn’t taking a bus home for a holiday she didn’t show up for last year.
“I can’t afford Thanksgiving and Christmas,” I say. “So I’m doing Christmas.”
She’s quiet. I already knew she wasn’t very bright because of her life choices, but I thought she’d have enough common sense to know I, too, have no money. This college tuition is something I will be paying off for the rest of my life. I doubt she knows how much a bus ticket costs. She doesn’t know about my little business or the sticky note on the inside of my closet door. She doesn’t know about grandma’s electricity bill. And that isn’t her fault, exactly. It’s just what happens when you aren’t there.
“Oh, baby,” she says. “I could probably help with—”
“No.”
It comes out fast. Faster than I mean it to.
“It’s okay,” I say, softer. “I’ve got it. Really.”
I don’t say the rest of it. That I learned what probably means from her. That I spent my whole childhood building things on probably and watching them come down. That I sat on a bus in August with my forehead against the window because she said I’ll be there, baby, I’ll be there, and I believed her. I can’t build a plan on probably. Not even a small one. Not even a bus ticket.
And I don’t think she means it badly. That’s what makes it so hard. I think she wants to help. I think right now, tonight, sitting wherever she’s sitting, she means it. She just can’t keep it when the day has changed.
“Okay,” she says, quieter. “Then I’ll see you at Christmas.”
I close my eyes.
I want to believe her. That’s the stupid part, the part that never learns. Some small, soft, idiot piece of me hears I’ll see you at Christmas and is already looking forward to it.
“Okay,” I say.
We hang up a few minutes later. She tells me she loves me. I tell her I love her too, and it’s true. It doesn’t fix anything, and it never has, but I do love her. More than she’ll ever know.
I sit there for a long time after.
Then I open my spreadsheet.
The jewelry box went for fifty, which I’m still mad about. The Levi’s went in a day, like I thought they would. The scarf went to a woman in Vermont who sent me a message afterward that said it’s perfect with three exclamation points, and I read it more times than I’d admit because it felt good to see something positive for once in my life. Two weeks of listing every night and walking mailers to the post office every afternoon, and the number at the bottom of the column says two hundred and sixty-eight dollars.
Two-sixty-eight. From forty-two. I’m proud of it. I let myself be proud of it for about four seconds. Then I do the math for the bus. It’s ninety-four dollars round trip, because it’s a holiday, and everything costs more when everybody needs it at the same time. That’s supply and demand. I learned it in micro. Ninety-four dollars, plus food on the road, plus two days I can’t list or source or ship. And then three weeks later, the bus again, for Christmas, plus presents, plus the nice dinner I promised myself.
I can do one. I can’t do both.
So I do what I always do. I make the decision that makes sense, and I make it fast, before the part of me that wants things can get a word in.
Thanksgiving is one Thursday. Christmas is the one I actually care about. Christmas is my grandma’s kitchen, the tree she still decorates with ornaments I made in high school. Thanksgiving is just a turkey.
I can survive one Thursday.
I update the Christmas list at the bottom of the spreadsheet. Bus. Grandma’s present. Dinner. And I look at the line I added in September, the one that just says Mom? with a question mark.
I don’t delete it. I don’t put a number next to it, either.
By Monday, I find, when I ask around, that staying isn’t as bleak as it sounds.
