Finding Mr. Brightside

I’m a few bags from getting away with not explaining myself when one of them starts to rip right in the entryway of the building, women’s clothing items leaking out the bottom.

“Wait, are those mine?” Mom asks, rationally. She walks over and sorts through a few garments, picks up a black lingerie number with red cups, and holds it out in front of her. Not hers. She’s frowning. This is tremendously awkward.

“I walked over to Juliette’s house after you went to bed. Saw her hauling this stuff around, so … I helped. And I’m pretty sure that’s not hers.”

Mom drops the nightie (teddy?) when she realizes whose it was.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” Not good enough, of course, but had to be said.

She shakes her head like it’s not my fault, even though this reminder of it is.

“It’s for a great cause, right?” she says.

I carry the rest of our donation to the counter as Mom speaks to the clerk. I overhear her saying that the women’s clothing belongs to a “free-spirited cousin” of hers who moved to Oregon recently, the clerk nodding like, What does that have to do with the 50¢ sticker I’m going to put on all of it, regardless? Anyway, I love my mom and her free-spirited-cousin alibi.

Meanwhile, Juliette is probably leaving for her mysterious Saturday ritual right … about … now.

“I actually feel a little better about … everything,” Mom says on the drive home.

“Me too, Mom.”

She decided to keep four of Dad’s bags.

8

Juliette

THIS CAB SMELLS to the point where I need to distract myself. Where did I leave off?

That’s right, my mother and her Adderall habit. Well, she liked to refer to it as her “vitamin B12,” more so back when I was a little girl who knew something was off about Mommy but couldn’t put my finger on it. Back when we were as close as we were ever going to be. She’d get home twenty minutes before my bedtime every night and read me e-mails from her laptop in lieu of Dr. Seuss. She’d make a comment afterward, like, Can you believe what Bob from legal is saying about this contract? And I’d be all, No, is he kidding us with that, Mommy? Anyway, I was wondering … could you sleep in my bed with me tonight? Sometimes she would, and I’d fall asleep to the sound of her outraged typing. It was nice.

As I blossomed into a grouchy teenager, we drifted apart like all non-television mothers and daughters do. Then, a year or so before the accident, Mom developed a staring problem. I wish I’d reacted more calmly to being her target. Instead, I was more like, What? Not my best phase, but I was angry. Maybe even jealous because she’d begun allowing herself the luxury of giving up on the impossible: my father, his reclusiveness. When she started asking questions like Do you talk to Abram Morgan much at school? I knew. She’d found herself a replacement, a married man right down the road who’d appreciate her for who she truly wasn’t. (It’s easy to be an irresistably, sexy version of yourself for two-hour stretches, especially around someone who doesn’t have to live with you.) From then on, the most I ever saw of her was at “breakfast,” a meal neither of us ate. We’d sip our coffee, and every now and again she’d glance at me from over her mug, probably wondering if I was going to offload my suspicions to Dad. Turned out I didn’t have to.

ABRAM

JULIETTE’S CAB SPEEDS down the road as I’m raking up the grass I should’ve mowed a week ago (that’s what I get for ignoring the future like there’s no tomorrow). Fu

Juliette

MY DAD PAID two-hundred-plus dollars to get my mom’s clothes back from the Salvation Army, not including the bribe I just gave the cab driver for helping me unload the bags into the garage. I don’t anticipate him becoming aware of this, considering I went online and set all his bills to auto-pay a few months ago, after our electric got turned off.

9

Juliette

LATER THAT EVENING, my friend Heidi keeps calling me and getting side-buttoned. I don’t even have the courtesy to silence the ringer and fake my unavailability—just send her straight off to voice mail. She deserves a best friend who doesn’t hate Saturday nights and other people.

I decide to walk to CVS, maybe buy her a just-because-I-suck gift. She really likes those sporty headbands that keep the hair wisps from her eyes; the more vibrant the color, the better she plays te

I slip out into the night in my all-black track jacket and yoga pants combo, your unfriendly neighborhood rape target. I walk down to my favorite jogging path, which happens to run toward the Morgan residence, a coincidence beyond my control. It’s muggy out, the kind of late-September night that sweats on you, summer’s last hurrah.

I take a slight right and weave along a narrower side path, drawing closer and closer to Abram’s house. Someone’s left on every single light in the place, blinds open, probably him. Didn’t he say he lives in the basement? By choice? I creep down the slope of the lawn toward the sliding glass doors of the walk-out basement. I can see the right side of his face in the room adjacent to the living area. He’s lying on what I guess is his bed, eating what looks to be pizza … on a bagel. Jesus. He’s watching a nature show—hey, are those blue whales?—and looks oddly content to be doing what he’s doing, which is nothing. He’s also shirtless, for all my ladies out there who enjoy bare skin with tiny blond hairs on it.

Possessed by something cosmically dumb that I don’t have the energy to question or make fun of, I hold out my fist and knock on the glass, right as it starts to rain. I watch Abram’s brain process the sound, probably doesn’t hear it very often unless he’s got a late-night side-skank I’m unaware of, and he better not. He turns his head, sees me outside getting my bun wet—Hi, I can’t believe I’m here, either—and I’m impressed by how fast and agile he is in jumping off the bed and bounding toward the door. His excitement kind of makes me want to laugh, or run in the opposite direction, or do an aerial cartwheel, which means I must be getting ready for my even-crazier time-of-the-month. Always something to look forward to.

He slides open the door and rushes me inside.

“Hey,” he says, with more eye contact than I’m comfortable with.

“My laptop died,” I say, looking around at nothing in particular. “Can I use yours?”

“Sure, yeah … it’s over there being dusty,” he replies nonchalantly, like I swing by for fake favors all the time. He has a knack for absorbing all the toxic energy I bring to a room.

I walk over to his dresser, pick up the computer, and there really is dust on it, he wasn’t just saying that. I wipe off the top with a Taco Bell napkin I find on the floor and carry the laptop over to his bed. I sit down, sign in to my Dropbox account, pull up my dad’s latest draft, and start typing over any future small talk. Abram must’ve expected me to take the laptop and leave, because he continues to stand off to the side until I give him a look like I’m probably not going to kill myself if he joins me. He flops back down on the bed and reunites with his bagel bite. He holds one out to me, I’m assuming as a joke, but I accept it just to keep him on his toes, biting into the crust. He nods like, Good, aren’t they? He’s going to be waiting awhile for my reply.