Read Online The Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Robin Palmer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robin Palmer
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image—this moment—it matters. It’s something I want you to know about me and my life and what I think and what I feel and what I can’t really tell you in words. Because if I try, it’ll just end up sounding stupid and make me feel weird, like my insides are hanging out because I took the risk to let you in, so I’m going to do it in pictures, but then I don’t want to discuss it after. Because if I do, we’ll somehow start talking about my mother because somehow the conversation always ends up getting around to her; and it’s too painful, and right now I’m too angry and too sad and too scared. So if I just don’t talk about it, maybe I can keep pretending that it’s not really happening, or that it’s not really so bad, or that if I wish hard enough, the whole thing will just go away and we can go back to things being normal, whatever that means.
I opened the medicine cabinet. A row of amber-colored prescription bottles stood at attention like soldiers. Unlike the rest of the room, these were in perfect order, their labels facing out. Xanax. Ativan. Klonopin. Ambien. Prozac.
Snap.
Even before I had Googled each one to see what they were for, and the various side effects, and the things you were supposed to avoid when taking them (like, say, alcohol), I had known what they did. What they did was take my mother away from me. The way they made her eyes all glassy and her speech slow was bad enough. But when she took them, it was like I could see part of her—the part that was fun, and funny, and loved life, and had this amazing energy that swept you up whether you wanted it to or not, and got you out of bad moods, and made you laugh when maybe fifteen minutes before you wanted to cry—it was as if I could literally see it waft up and out of her, like smoke trailing out of a chimney. And what was left was just a beautiful five-foot-four, Pilates-ized, yoga-ized shell.
I opened the door to her closet and walked over to her Diane von Furstenberg dresses, wedging myself between them and breathing in her smell. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an old Payless shoebox, up on top of the shelf, its sides dented. I couldn’t believe after all this time she still had it. I carefully took it down and went over to her bed, crawling under the covers and putting two pillows behind me, like we did when we watched TV together. To anyone else looking inside the box, it would’ve just looked like a random bunch of junk. Different-colored crystals and stones, fortunes from fortune cookies, inspirational quotes scribbled on paper about having faith and never giving up, one of those little clip-on koala bears missing its right eye, an empty bottle of a Young Living Essential Oil called Into the Future.
For good or for bad, this junk was what my mother was about—magic and wishes and hope. And—after years of struggling and going without so I could have and choosing to look at our life as an adventure instead of what it had been for so many years, which was chaotic and a little scary—it had paid off. Big time. Mom had gotten what she wanted—she had become famous, and the world knew who she was, and they loved her like her family never had. While Mom suffered from verbal diarrhea most of the time, her childhood was one subject she stayed quiet about. She had grown up in a small town near Pittsburgh that, from the few photos she had in an album she kept stashed on the other side of the closet, looked run-down and depressing. Her father was a mechanic, and her mother had been a secretary for an accountant. It would have been one thing if there had been a lot of love to make up for the fact that there wasn’t any money, but from the stony look on Mom’s face whenever I brought them up, there hadn’t been.
At the bottom of the box was a piece of yellowed notebook paper.
I, Annabelle Meryl Jackson, hearby proclame that I have the best mother in the entirre world and that I love her more than anything—all the way up
I opened the medicine cabinet. A row of amber-colored prescription bottles stood at attention like soldiers. Unlike the rest of the room, these were in perfect order, their labels facing out. Xanax. Ativan. Klonopin. Ambien. Prozac.
Snap.
Even before I had Googled each one to see what they were for, and the various side effects, and the things you were supposed to avoid when taking them (like, say, alcohol), I had known what they did. What they did was take my mother away from me. The way they made her eyes all glassy and her speech slow was bad enough. But when she took them, it was like I could see part of her—the part that was fun, and funny, and loved life, and had this amazing energy that swept you up whether you wanted it to or not, and got you out of bad moods, and made you laugh when maybe fifteen minutes before you wanted to cry—it was as if I could literally see it waft up and out of her, like smoke trailing out of a chimney. And what was left was just a beautiful five-foot-four, Pilates-ized, yoga-ized shell.
I opened the door to her closet and walked over to her Diane von Furstenberg dresses, wedging myself between them and breathing in her smell. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an old Payless shoebox, up on top of the shelf, its sides dented. I couldn’t believe after all this time she still had it. I carefully took it down and went over to her bed, crawling under the covers and putting two pillows behind me, like we did when we watched TV together. To anyone else looking inside the box, it would’ve just looked like a random bunch of junk. Different-colored crystals and stones, fortunes from fortune cookies, inspirational quotes scribbled on paper about having faith and never giving up, one of those little clip-on koala bears missing its right eye, an empty bottle of a Young Living Essential Oil called Into the Future.
For good or for bad, this junk was what my mother was about—magic and wishes and hope. And—after years of struggling and going without so I could have and choosing to look at our life as an adventure instead of what it had been for so many years, which was chaotic and a little scary—it had paid off. Big time. Mom had gotten what she wanted—she had become famous, and the world knew who she was, and they loved her like her family never had. While Mom suffered from verbal diarrhea most of the time, her childhood was one subject she stayed quiet about. She had grown up in a small town near Pittsburgh that, from the few photos she had in an album she kept stashed on the other side of the closet, looked run-down and depressing. Her father was a mechanic, and her mother had been a secretary for an accountant. It would have been one thing if there had been a lot of love to make up for the fact that there wasn’t any money, but from the stony look on Mom’s face whenever I brought them up, there hadn’t been.
At the bottom of the box was a piece of yellowed notebook paper.
I, Annabelle Meryl Jackson, hearby proclame that I have the best mother in the entirre world and that I love her more than anything—all the way up
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