I think I’ll get home before two in the morning for once. Bar’s closed—they had a leak in the roof from Monday’s storm and chicks were crying over soggy carpets. They grabbed their purses and sighed, said New Jersey rainwater isn’t nice in your mouth. But thanks to them I didn’t get that feeling I love, and I’m pissed over it. The feeling I can drink a river, red or copper or maybe beige, and feel just fine after. I’d like to call it a power. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think Mattie would’ve. The bipolar meds killed him eventually, but I like to pretend it was the alcohol. Maybe the cocktails were spoiled and poisoned for a few weeks. I always check the fruit for rotted spots, bruised sections, just because of the thought. For the future and for always. No rusty rivers to swallow tonight. What’s Ellie doing? Chess again, guarding the queen with her knights, I’m sure—she’s alright, I’m sure. Home safe and sound. I’m pretty sure, sure enough. Trying the bar’s handle leaves my hand feeling numb—it’s frigid out. I stick it into my purse once I find the car and yank it around blindly, looking for keys and secretly warmth. I thought I felt a roach or a stray cricket, another one, but it’s so good to be wrong. The panic came cold and went quick, evaporated with the buttery wind —forgettable. It was just that silver coin from Ellie, flat and cold from 1890, bustling times I’m sure. Exciting and all. She thought it was pretty. The feel of it pressed deeply into my palm freezes my blood into brilliant vermillion crystals. A sharp reminder of the switches coated in frozen red honey. Ellie would be honey in some far away place. Silky, soft skin, loose golden curls. “It has to do with probability, the coin,” she told me once. She always likes to twist her loose curls around her pointer finger. “I have one too, from Ms. Baker. When I flip it, I’ll know if you’re there or not, Mommy.” Whatever that means. Would coins from her third grade teacher be worth any good amount of cash? Any extra dollars I can burn on a new lighter? I asked her about it and she waddled away. She knows I’d try to sell hers. Smart girl. I sold a china doll from her grandma once and got a couple hundred for it. I spent it on a cart filled with skinny bottles of cheap golden liquor. Mom called me a villain. The car door unlocks and I’m welcomed in. Hello, love. I catch a look at myself in the rearview mirror as I pull out of an empty lot, headlights flickering. Moist specks of hail coat my pale lips, and I have to remind myself it’s only clumped rain and not sticky peach fish eggs —a silly fear after stale sushi. I can hardly see the whites in my eyes. My skin is puffy and pink, inflated around swollen blue bags. Ellie’s come to hate cotton candy for it, revealed at some small town carnival. She refuses to eat it because it looks like Mommy when she comes home late. It killed me to hear. And of course, Todd used that against me. ‘Look at what our daughter is scared of at her age. She should live with me and my wife. That damn judge had a silicon brain and stiff plastic for brain cells—he took pity on you.’ There’s filth in my hair, and I look dirty blonde. I remember those words. ‘I know I deserve full custody.’ Not so blonde, just dirty. And then I picture the oranges on the counter. Rotten, maybe? Maybe not. Ellie is peeling one with her thumb the way I taught her. Black fluid floods her nail, and she tells me it stings. I shake my head, hard. I checked the fruit more than once before I left this morning —stroked all the bumpy peels I could see, felt every nook and made sure they were only textured flesh. I think insects and poison and big black spiders can fit inside anything spoiled, and that one’s not so silly. See the cocktails? Killers. Maybe that’s where it came from, the fear; when Mattie slipped out of my grasp. Then I could say tarantulas in the alcohol did it, took him—mutated just right for swimming. I had a crib delivered my third month, when it all looked set in stone. I run my fingers through my hair and squeeze hard. I cleared out the guest room, painted the walls a nice sage green. I have to remind myself to breathe. What did Sis teach you? Inhale first. Suddenly I see our drafty wooden kitchen. A low, mechanical hum floods in from the walls—our faulty heating system. Then almonds drop like rain to the floor, the newest bag. Ellie opened it and lifted it up wrong, upside-down. I grip the wheel. My tongue burns white, taste buds burst, and all that because I told her not to open the cabinet. I left her food already. She doesn’t need more. Or was that yesterday? Then exhale. A grin stretches my cracked lips, and my front teeth dig into my white tongue. Black spots dance in and out of my vision. I might’ve forgotten to feed my daughter. Oh, here comes Todd’s words! A bad, bad mother. Exhale. It’s fine. It’s only dinner. She’ll be fine, I’m sure. Ellie would tell me not to drive home yet. She’d say I should make sure I can count to one- hundred without stopping before I press on the gas. “Count that far, and then cover your mouth. Say haa and make sure you only smell water or juice.” I remember when she used to pronounce it as ‘guish,’ just a little while ago. When did she become so mature? But she spilled the almonds and I need to get her for it. They were salted, just the right texture. Besides, I’m just a bit tipsy. I paid some homeless man for a couple sips of his whisky. Caught him in some back alley. And then I realize I imagined the whole thing, and my forehead hits the wheel. The car swerves left. I feel my brain purple because I know how to bruise quickly, and thunder pounds through my body. I think I’ll take her advice. You need to exhale. Oh wait, I’m driving. My sweet daughter, an angel. Someone sent her to keep me sane —I like to think it was Mattie. I hope she ends up more like anyone besides her mother. Dear god, anyone. I can’t bear the thought of her sipping rivers in hopes of gaining leverage over the world. She has too much ahead of her for that. Did I lock the front door? That’s alright. Again. Inhale first. I stroke the wheel in thought and pretend I don’t notice the dents from my head and thumbs in the dark leather and old marks that have finally begun to fade. I’m fond of this car. We’ve gone surfing over shallow curbs and skating through winter wonderlands, special dates. A dizzying dance through red and white light, we’d skid across the road without a care. Without a care for others, either. Sometimes on the way to class, too. Should’ve taken morning courses. I might’ve survived —med school, I mean. I can push through hangovers if I really want to. I had all this passion for it, all the love in the world for it. Spoiled fruit, spoiled dreams. I smile. A spoiled dream can crust syrupy sweet, fester like a sore, hang saggy and low. Untouchable after a while. I resist the urge to bite my jagged nails. It’s untouchable now, infested with maggots and empty roach shells. Untouchable, when the PhD has lost its silver shimmer. I want nothing to do with medicine after Mattie. What can I say? I wanted to heal others before I fixed up myself. Me and my little visions, thoughts of marriage and motherhood. I bite my lip —I’m not going through stage four cancer or any disease so debilitating, but god, my little worries debilitate me anyway. And then, deer. He stands and stares at my little car as I’m coming, seemingly without a care in the world. He’d been there before, I’m sure, but I didn’t know it. I gasp and swerve right, chest heavy. I missed him, just barely, and now I’m expected to forget that it happened. I burst into laughter —the worst sort. My face contorts in strange new ways. Muscles I’ve never felt burn in my stomach and chest. I throw my head back away from the wheel and shake hard against the seat. My vocal chords, they’re on fire. “Hello?” I manage to say. “Gods in the clouds? You want me to kill something else, don't you? You threw that thing at me. Placed it in front of the damn car. Mattie doesn’t need a friend! He’s fine up there with you all, with other little babies stuck in river-drinker’s bellies!” I only quit laughing when I reach the house, short and stout. I crawl out of the car, collapse onto the sidewalk, and stick my nose in damp snow that coated the side of the road for a minute. I give myself one minute to freeze, and then I enter the house. Salt rolls down my eyes in tears. Ellie runs to greet me at the door —I see her when I open it. She tackles me in a hug, and I sink to reach her, my daughter. “Mommy! You’re here, I knew it! My special coin worked —it said you’d be here when you walk inside, the real you!” I quietly cry into my daughter’s hair. “I sure am here, honey.” The switches left me be for a minute. I came to my daughter as myself, and knew not to accuse her of spilling imaginary almonds. Thank you, to anyone who will accept it. “I’m sorry,” I whisper into her ear. My shoulder grows wet with Ellie’s own tears, tears of relief perhaps. I’m sorry, sweet girl, that you have a river drinker as your mother. Hardly stable, hardly sane.
