Read Online If Only You People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir by Jessica Hendry Nelson - Free Book Online

and I spent three months in my mother’s basement, idly peeling glow-in-the-dark pot leaves from the walls and trying to convince ourselves that we were going somewhere. Occasionally, one of us would climb upstairs to make toast and, at some point in mid-April, I filled out a bunch of last-minute applications to colleges in New England. Meanwhile, my mother gave up any pretense of ignoring our pot habit and started joining us for bong sessions in the basement. It was like family dinner, but without dinner. Instead, we ate only things that could be peeled or buttered. Jordan went to parties and called me to pick him up at odd hours of the morning. I didn’t really mind. I was sleeping in snapshots.
    In September, I climbed out of the basement, packed my bags, and drove to New Hampshire with my mother. As wecrossed the bridge into Durham, I saw white sailboats bobbing innocuously in the bay and a pair of sleek silver birds dive into the water like bullets, one and then the other. Yes, I felt I would finish what my father could not. Yes, I had never felt more his child. I was grieving, and those boats, this place—it was the closest I could get. It was home before I’d ever arrived. “This is it,” I told my mother. “So long for now.”
    My mother laughed and giddily slapped my knee. I smelled pine needles and, inexplicably, Tabasco sauce. I watched the herons placidly drift beneath the bridge and a woman shaking a blanket over the stern of an old wooden boat. The sky faded to black. We saw the stars then, so far from the familiar city lights. Nobody honked, even when we forgot to go.
    “Almost there,” said my mother, “and just in time.”
    III
    Rachel calls on a sunny day in April. She’s recently finished college and moved back home, sort of, to a place called Manayunk just outside the city limits. I am busy fishing the remnants of a taco dinner from deep in the kitchen drain. My hair is wet from the shower and I have to keep putting the phone down to wipe it away from my face. She tells me that Jordan is in town for a few days, that an old beau paid for a round-trip plane ticket from Austin. And yet, he showed up at her apartment and is now sleeping on her sofa and leaving swathes of liquid foundation on her bathroom counter. He is also eating her food and helping himself to the good wine she received as a Christmas present. I am living in New York now, just north of Manhattan in Yonkers, and recently started graduate school at Sarah Lawrence College. But still , I think, he could have called .
    “He’s so skinny, I can see his black little heart,” she says.
    I don’t ask why she’s letting him stay in the first place. I know I’d probably do the same. And then, as if she is reading my mind, she says, “I’m not driving him to the airport. That is where I draw the line.”
    Later, I work a fine, dark topsoil into my garden while wearing new magenta gloves. I get tomato seeds from my landlord. I sit back in the sun, chewing and squinting into the sky. My arms feel tight and strong. There is the smell of cilantro, like soap, and the buzz of the cicadas on the tree trunks. I sip a glass of ice water and imagine swimming. It is a Sunday, which means that tonight I will make a salmon dinner and wash my hair and read a book and fall asleep early. I am working toward a Masters of Fine Arts in writing, a degree I suspect will not help me find a job and I’m certain will sink me $40,000 in debt. Right now, I don’t care. Everything is white. I am hooked to an IV of words and ideas and I am fading, faded, and gone. In the morning, I will drink coffee with cream and go to class and this is just fine. I am taking care of my body, my nerves, my feathery brain. I am saying I forgive you , this missive to myself.
    Two days later, Rachel calls me back. She is on her way home from the airport.
    I sit outside on a lawn chair, remembering. I am searching for usable scraps, memories of what was good and pure betweenJordan