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  Her mother cringed, as if stung. She studied her fingernails, nodding slightly. “It’s been hard for Jonny. He remembers his father.”

  “Yeah, but.”

  “I know, you’re right, I shouldn’t make excuses for him,” Mrs. O’Malley said, reading Mary’s thoughts. “I keep making the same mistakes.”

  “And maybe,” Mary ventured, “the screaming doesn’t work?”

  Mary’s mother actually laughed out loud. “You think? Ha! Can I just”—she balled her hands into fists—“mash him on the foot with a bowling ball instead?”

  It was funny and real. Their first true moment in months. The laughter, for that brief instant, chased the sorrow from Mary’s throat.

  Her phone dinged. A text from Griff: Found him.

  15

  [staying]

  Less than an hour later, a car pulled up in front of the house. Jonny got out, gave a two-fingered salute goodbye, and a dented green atrocity of a car sped off. Barefoot Jonny swerved up the walkway. He was dressed oddly, wearing clothes Mary didn’t recognize: shiny baby blue gym shorts and a ratty green sweatshirt. Not his clothes, Mary decided. I wonder what happened to them? Anyway, a weird combination to wear in August. Mary glanced at her mother. She was clenching and unclenching her fists, staring straight ahead. She blew air out of her mouth in a long, slow, determined exhale.

  Trying hard to stay calm.

  “Here comes Jonny,” Mary whispered, recalling that scene from The Shining. It was a bad joke that didn’t land. The timing was off. If Mary and her mother had laughed just minutes before, it now felt like a hundred years ago. Jonny stood before them like a diaphanous phantom. He looked light, delicate, and insubstantial, his skin pale to the point of translucent. If it was possible, he seemed dramatically thinner than just two days ago. Had he eaten anything at all? Had he slept? No matter how bright and shiny the drugs made him feel, this was how he looked when he crashed from that euphoric high. There were scratch marks on his right cheek, near his eye.

  “Oh, Jonny,” his mother gasped. “I’ve been worried sick.”

  He ran a hand through his unkempt hair. “I can explain.”

  “Please.”

  Jonny’s eyes cast about. He seemed unsure whether he should stand or sit or collapse on the floor. “I lost my phone.”

  “You lost—?”

  “I knew you’d flip out,” Jonny snapped. “That’s so typical!” He flailed an arm, a wild gesture that nearly pulled him off-balance.

  Mrs. O’Malley closed her eyes, paused, opened them again. “I will try,” she said, her voice cold but steady, “to not flip out. I apologize. Where is your phone?”

  “I lost it,” Jonny said. “So how would I know where it is? That’s a ridiculous question.”

  Mary interrupted. “Do you want some water? Or juice?”

  Jonny looked at her and nodded. “Juice. Thanks, May.”

  Mary got up, poured a tall glass of orange juice, and brought it to Jonny. He sat hunched over, elbows on his knees, facing his mother. He took a long drink of juice, and Mary could hear the glug, glug, glug as it went down his parched gullet.

  “I didn’t know where you were.”

  “I couldn’t call. I lost my phone,” Jonny insisted.

  Mrs. O’Malley shook her head. “You could have borrowed a phone. You could have—”

  “I didn’t remember your number,” he countered. “No one remembers numbers anymore, Mom.”

  “I called the police. Every hospital. Your friends from school…”

  “Mom! What is the big deal? I lost my phone. Okay, yeah, granted, that sucks. I’ll get a new one. I’m nineteen years old. I lived away at college, remember? I’m used to having my freedom—”

  “I thought you were dead,” Mary’s mother said. Her lips trembled and her voice cracked at the end, that last word splitting in two. Everyone in the room, including Jonny, rocked by the wake of that utterance. Even he had to hear the raw pain and heartbreak of that stark declaration.

  I thought you were dead.

  “I—” Jonny stopped himself, his hands traveling to his temples. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry, Mom.”

  He tried a new tact. “The truth is … I was afraid to call. I knew you’d be angry.”

  “Wait, no,” Mary’s mother said. Her voice took on a sharper edge, the decibels rising. “This is my fault? You didn’t call and it is my fault?”

  “Mom,” Mary said softly.

  Mrs. O’Malley glared for a moment, then nodded. “Mary, I’m not sure you should be here right now. Please give your brother and me some time alone. This is a private conversation between Jonny and myself.”

  “I don’t agree,” Mary replied. She made no move to leave. “This is my family, too. I’m not leaving.”

  16

  [choices]

  “I know I make you miserable,” Jonny said, shifting strategies once again. “I know you hate me, Mom. I don’t blame you. Just let me go.”

  “I don’t hate you. Don’t ever say that,” his mother shot back. “I hate what these drugs are doing to you. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. But I will never let you go, so forget that. Not an option.”

  She opened a drawer from the coffee table and pulled out a handful of objects: a ball of aluminum foil, a plastic medicine bottle half-filled with blue pills, a lighter, a pipe, a spoon, a baggie of weed. “I found this in your room,” Mrs. O’Malley said. Her hand trembled slightly as she held it out like an offering. “This is yours, right? This is what you bring into our home?”

  Jonny didn’t flinch. He just shook his head. “You went searching around in my room?”

  “Don’t, don’t even,” his mother warned.

  Then she surprised both of her children. Mary watched as Mrs. O’Malley took a deep breath, sat up tall, back erect, and calmly dropped the items to the floor. Somehow she had transformed before their eyes. She spoke in a slow, clear voice that surely required her every ounce of self-control. “I’ve learned some things over these past two and a half years,” she began. “Slowly, painfully. Mistake after mistake. And number one: I can’t do anything for you, except love you.

  “I’ve tried yelling, and threatening, and spying—and I see now that it hasn’t worked. You need to make your own choices, Jonny, for your own reasons. You often remind me that you are nineteen years old. That’s true. Legally, I can’t force you to do anything, and,” she raised a hand, “I would not, even if I could, because I no longer believe it would help in the long run. Change has to come from you. I’ve been wrong and I’m sorry. I am so sorry for my failures and my mistakes. But now you have to move out. You can’t live in this house any longer.”

  “Mom,” Jonny began.

  “I’m not finished,” she stated, cutting him off. “I’ve learned that all my worrying hasn’t helped you. It’s only hurt. It’s hurt this family, it’s hurt your sister, it’s hurt my relationships, and it’s hurt me.”

  She rose to her feet, smiled tightly. “I do not approve of the choices you make. I will help you if you sincerely seek help: a program, a therapist, inpatient, outpatient, medication, whatever it takes. If you want to walk that road, if you are ready, I will walk by your side.”

  For a moment, Mary could see her mother almost lose it. She looked down, blinked back the tears, her entire body trembling with emotion, and then miraculously pulled herself together again. All Mary could think during those painful, awful moments, was this:

  Go, Mom.

  “I hope you will come to see that you are harming yourself,” she said. “But what you choose with your life is up to you. I will do nothing that contributes to your substance use disorder. I won’t cook you dinner, I won’t do your laundry, I won’t pay your rent. You must listen to me, Jonny. Because listening to yourself is not working. Nothing changes if nothing changes. If you stay on this path, you will die.”

  Jonny absorbed every word, pale and subdued. He looked exhausted. Mrs. O’Malley picked up her cup and sauce
r. She walked out of the room in an act that took courage and supreme concentration. And she was gone, leaving behind only an echo. Mary heard her mother’s footsteps stop in the hallway, then turn around and march back. Standing at the archway, she pointed a shaking finger at her son. “To be clear, Jonny, so there is no mistaking this conversation. I want you out of this house. You will find a place. You will get a job. Yes, I will help you make this transition. But that’s where it stops. The rest is up to you. By the end of the month, I want you gone, or I will personally throw all your things out into the street for all the neighborhood to see.”

  17

  [griff]

  Griff rolled up to Mary’s house on a silver, fat-wheeled bike. Mary knew he was coming and waited out front with his borrowed bike leaning against a tree.

  Mary gestured to the bike, “I thought you were coming to pick up—”

  “Nah, you keep it. I’ve got this one now.” Griff stepped off his bike and carelessly let it drop to the ground. “You cut your hair.”

  It was true. Mary had cut her hair. Just grabbed a pair of scissors and did it herself last night. She didn’t have complicated hair, long and straight, and now it wasn’t as long—by about six uneven inches. It barely reached her shoulders. “Is it okay?” she asked. “I just felt like doing it.”

  “Wait, you cut it yourself?” Amusement played in Griff’s voice. He mimed frantically snipping at his own hair.

  “So?”

  “It’s awesome—good for you. It’s cool to have the confidence to, you know,” Griff paused, smiling, “not care if your head looks like a mangled bush.”

  “Yeah, I used garden shears,” Mary quipped. “Is it really bad?”

  “You look great,” Griff replied. And the way he said it, there was something there, as if he’d accidentally stumbled into a genuine compliment. He raised his chin, gestured to the house. “How’s your brother? All good?”

  “Sleeping,” Mary said.

  They had texted during the previous night, puzzling together a rough outline of Jonny’s whereabouts. It all centered around him hanging out with Vivvy, Griff’s sister, along with a bunch of their friends at her downtown apartment. Generally speaking, Mary wasn’t eager to share the family secrets—substance use, addiction, a brother thrown out of the house—with friends and neighbors. That stuff was their family’s business, a story they didn’t want to tell. Still, it felt good to have someone to confide in, someone who understood, someone she could trust.

  “Do you think they’re a thing?” Mary asked. “My brother and Vivvy? That’s so weird.”

  “I doubt they define themselves that way,” Griff said, shrugging innocently. “What’s weird about it?”

  Mary blushed, didn’t answer. It was obvious what was weird about it. Griff seemed to enjoy making Mary uncomfortable.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Griff said. “And don’t tell me you don’t have a bicycle, because I know you do.”

  Mary looked back at the house. She should tell someone. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I thought we’d ride around until we find trouble. Old Mill Pond? There’s a decent bike trail that loops around. Go to a deli, grab subs. I have money. That okay with you?”

  They pedaled for twenty minutes, Griffin weaving and chattering and performing minor stunts. Mary enjoyed the ache in her quads, working the pedals, keeping up, the physical freedom of the breeze in her face. Once they arrived at the pond, they pulled off under a great old oak. There weren’t many people around. Griff got up to harass some geese, chasing them around, arms flailing like wings.

  “Griff, don’t,” Mary said. “You’re scaring them.”

  Griff widened his eyes, hands on his chest. “Moi? Seriously? These geese are nasty. Look at the ground, there’s mounds of green poop everywhere. Besides, they will attack. I’m actually risking my life here.”

  But rather than prolong bickering about the wildlife, Griff plopped down beside Mary on the grass.

  “I don’t understand why he won’t stop,” Mary said. “I miss him but can’t stand to be near him. I love him, but I don’t like him. Maybe it’s good he moves out.”

  Griff looked at her, tossed a stone into the water. “You need to start thinking about other things,” he said. “It can’t be Jonny-Jonny all the time.”

  Mary knew he was right.

  But it annoyed her just the same.

  18

  [favor]

  A week later, Jonny was ready to move out. An older guy Jonny knew, Dez Ramirez, had a place in town and for some reason was glad to take Jonny in—provided he paid the first two months’ rent in advance. Maybe Dez wasn’t a dummy after all. Once the plan was decided, the mood in the house lifted. Jonny wasn’t as sour anymore. He was almost giddy. He ate meals, slept, slowly returned to something approximating his former self. Even better, Mary’s mother didn’t seem as jangled and distracted. She accepted the new reality. At peace with it for now. Ernesto showed up one day after work with a friend, sweating and grunting and hauling a used NordicTrack Elliptical Trainer up the stairs and into the master bedroom. Ernesto bought it off Craigslist and decorated it with a big yellow ribbon and bow.

  “Some gift, he just wants me to get back in shape,” Mrs. O’Malley joked, but Mary could tell that she was happy and touched by the gesture.

  “It needs a little work,” Ernesto admitted, winking at Mary, “but don’t we all?”

  Miracle of miracles, Jonny landed a job at a bagel shop in town—“They have the single best garlic bagels on the planet!” he enthused—so it felt like things were moving in the right direction. Summer was winding down, school was starting in less than two weeks. Sure, there was still a lot to worry about. Would Jonny actually go to work? Could he feed himself? Would he slide back into more partying, more drugs, more dangerous decisions? No one knew the answers to those questions. Not even Jonny.

  * * *

  On the day before her brother moved out, Mary sat in the backyard at a reclaimed picnic table that Ernesto had “rescued” from someone’s garbage pile. He did that a lot. Drove around in his pickup truck on garbage day, often returning with curbside items of questionable quality. A riding lawn mower that “only” needed a new fuel pump and starter switch; a boat that leaked; a set of ancient, rusted golf clubs; a battered ping pong table that lacked a net. He has a weakness for broken things, Mary mused. The thought sank down into her belly, like a small stone dropped into a well, and it made her appreciate Ernesto just a little more.

  Mary set out her art supplies. Paper, brushes, watercolors. She painted a seated female figure, facing away, balancing a stack of rocks on her head. It was a strange, almost magical image and it pleased Mary to make it. An hour passed. Very quietly, Jonny sat down beside her. He wore pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. His hair was wet from the shower. Mary didn’t comment, but she felt surprised. He didn’t usually show much interest. Why was he here?

  “That’s pretty good,” Jonny said. “I like it.”

  Mary grunted softly.

  “Do you mind if I—?”

  Mary tilted her head, glanced sideways. She tore out a thick sheet of paper from her spiral-bound sketch pad, slid it over. Jonny picked up a spare brush, dipped it in water, and looked around the yard, seeking inspiration.

  “No paintings of me, please,” Mary said. “I’m still scarred from that drawing you did when I was in first grade. I looked like an anteater!”

  Jonny laughed, a full-throated hoot. It was a sound Mary hadn’t heard in a while. It hung in the air, floated amid the trees, and drifted up to the clouds. Something as simple as a laugh. Mary wished she could paint it. Jonny’s laughter. She missed it.

  They worked in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Then Jonny said, “I’m moving out tomorrow, you know.”

  Mary rocked with her body, a sort of nod.

  “It’ll be good,” he said. “I’m super psyched.”

  Mary didn’t answer. Just listened, hunched over her painting, mixing the
blues.

  “Mom seems cool about it,” he ventured. “Like maybe it’s best.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mary commented.

  Jonny leaned back, studying her. He raised a thumb, squinting like an artist before an easel. “You got your hair cut.”

  “Last week,” Mary said.

  “I know, I know!” Jonny smiled. He hadn’t noticed. It only dawned on him now, when he was suddenly making this awkward attempt to be friendly.

  A show of friendliness.

  A performance.

  Compliments and smiles.

  Mary wondered if it was a real smile or an imitation of one.

  “Remember that time you got bubblegum in your hair?” Jonny asked.

  “I slept on it,” she recalled. “It must have fallen out of my mouth. I was crying.”

  “I tried to cut it out for you,” Jonny recalled, laughing. “That was a bad idea! Your head came out looking lopsided!”

  Mary remembered. Because she was the kind of person who remembered everything. All the good times and the bad. Jonny had lost interest in his painting of the tree. The browns and greens had gotten muddy. It wasn’t very good. He flicked the brush like a dart into the water glass. A splash and a clink.

  “So, um,” he began.

  Mary turned to look directly at him. She placed the palms of both hands on the table as if steadying herself, a gesture that unconsciously imitated her mother. Mary knew what this was. She knew her brother. So she waited for it to come.

  His knee was bobbing up and down again. He was high. Mary was sure of it. Something about the way his gaze couldn’t quite settle on any object, like a butterfly that refused to land. “I feel like a jerk asking. Especially my little sister. Dez and I really want to fix the place up. Get a rug for the living room, a microwave, you know, make it really sharp, like a home.”

  Mary nodded as if she believed every word.

  “But I’m just kind of hurting for money right now,” Jonny said. “It’s totally temporary. I’m going to pay you back. I’m scheduled for a ton of hours at Gateway Bagels, I’ll be working all the time, so I’m totally good for it, but I won’t get paid for, like, at least, I don’t know, two weeks…”