Indiscreet by Nicole French

15

At seven the next morning, there was a knock on the sliding glass door. I was sitting at the kitchen counter sipping coffee while Will was in the bathroom. Mama had never come home, and the text message from last night was still burning in my memory, though the phone itself was still in splinters outside the shack.

Will might have been furious, but I was only scared. “This isn’t over,” he said, again and again as he gathered me close and we fell asleep together. But really, that’s exactly what I was afraid of.

The knock sounded again, and I got up and pushed back the curtains to reveal Lucas and his mother, Linda, standing behind the glass. I pulled open the door to let them in.

“She’s okay,” Lucas said. “At least, she was last night when she left Curly’s with a friend.”

Linda’s mouth pressed into a thin line of judgment—clearly “friend” meant one of the male persuasion, and Linda, with her very strict, church-going moral code, definitely disapproved.

She still gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Hi, hon.”

“Hey, Linda.”

I looked at Lucas, who shrugged. I had only asked him to come today when I’d called on our LAN line—not his mother. As much as I liked Linda, there was no love lost between her and my mother. Mama was grateful enough for all the times Linda had taken care of her daughter when she couldn’t, but she had never appreciated the gossip that often happened afterward, usually in the church basement after services. But aside from that, there was another issue.

“Will’s here,” I told him as they shuffled into the house.

Lucas turned around, frowning. “I thought you said he went back to Hollywood or whatever to make that movie.” His lips curled, like he felt ridiculous for saying it. It did sound far-fetched.

“I did.”

Will emerged from the bathroom rolling his cuffs up, but the shirt hanging open, considering all the buttons had been ripped from it. Any other time, I might have been distracted by the muscles on display. His shirt and pants were both wrinkled after a night air-drying on the boulder next to the shack, his short hair was wet and slightly wavy on top after he had attempted to hand-comb it back into place, and a day’s worth of stubble had grown out around his jaw. He looked a far sight from the near-perfection of last night. And yet, I was even more attracted to him now, after he looked like he’d been rolling on the floor all night long. His imperfections were perfect to me.

“I’m back for the day,” he said as he nodded hello at Linda and Lucas. “No one knows I’m here, and I’d prefer to keep it that way, if you don’t mind.”

Linda gaped. “I—I won’t tell a soul,” she promised with star-filled eyes.

Lucas just rolled his. “Whatever,” he said. “She’ll show up soon. Do you have her things packed?”

I gestured toward the two suitcases I’d stacked by the door. It had been surreal, going through my mother’s drawers that morning. How do you pack someone else for rehab?

We had a plan. Confront Mama with what she’d done and give her an ultimatum: come with us to LA, where we could enroll her in Betty Ford and get her the help she needed, or I would leave on my own, and I wouldn’t be back until the house was dry.

“Anything less is enabling her,” Will had said again and again as he’d helped me fold her clothes this morning. The suitcases were a gesture, of course—more a sign that we were serious than anything else. More than likely, she’d want to redo them, and I’d help her with that too. But anything to convey that this was it.

“You can’t let her addiction control your life anymore,” Will had said.

And he was right. I couldn’t.

There was another knock at the door before it opened and Cathy, the owner of the local store, tiptoed in. I moved into the kitchen to pour her some coffee. Barb, Mama’s best friend from down the way, was in charge of making sure she showed up after their bender last night. That was all we were expecting. We could have gotten more, but they were the only ones up this early when I’d made phone calls at 6 a.m. And besides, these were probably all the people who would care about my mother’s sobriety anyway.

“Hi, honey,” Cathy said as she entered.

She gave me a hug and walked right past to set a tray of cinnamon rolls on the counter. In typical Cathy fashion, she would have only been interested in Will if he had won awards catching bass.

“I brought a little nosh in case anyone is hungry,” she said. “Do you have any paper towels?”

Lucas grabbed a roll.

“Damn,” Will muttered as he looked on with envy. He rolled his eyes at me as I took a big bite of mine.

“Are you watching your figure or something?” Lucas joked after he swallowed.

I snorted. Will watched intensely as I licked a stray bit of frosting off my bottom lip. There hadn’t been anymore time last night or this morning for us to get “reacquainted,” and right now, in front of all these people, was definitely not the time.

“Don’t start,” he muttered as I giggled. “I’ve got two more months of pretending black coffee is a really big milkshake, and then I’m going to eat my weight in fries. You won’t be laughing when you’re grabbing my love handles in the middle of the night.”

I burst out laughing even harder, much to everyone else’s dismay. Really, it was more the idea that Will could ever look anything less than cover-ready that was funny. Will’s face reddened, but his eyes twinkled when he looked at me over the rim of his coffee cup.

But the laughter died down quickly when the sounds of footsteps sounded on the stairs outside the house. We quieted, and my stomach, which I hadn’t even realized was this clenched, softened slightly as I realized my mom was okay.

I set the cinnamon roll on a paper towel and turned to the group. Everyone wore identical expressions of nervous dread.

“Okay,” I said, no longer hungry anymore. “I guess it’s time.”

Everyone filed into the living room and took awkward seats on the couch and chair surrounding the fireplace—Cathy on the couch, Linda in one of the armchairs with Lucas perched on the arm next to her, and Will in the other while I stood to the side. We didn’t have time to get help doing this—no therapist to counsel everyone’s words. We were going to speak from the heart.

The sliding glass door opened, and everyone turned to the entrance as Barb, followed by Mama, entered the house.

“For goodness’ sake, Barb,” Mama was saying blearily. “I would’ve slept right through Roy’s lawn mower, and you know it. I still don’t understand why we had to come home this sec—” She stopped cold when she caught sight of everyone perched in the back of the living room.

She looked exactly as I would have expected her to look after a long night out. Her curly brown hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail at the base of her neck, her jeans and rhinestone-decorated blouse rumpled. A smear of blue eyeliner made her look like she had a black eye, and her skin had that yellow, pallid sheen that came when the body was ridding itself of toxins.

“What in the…” Her eyes sharpened on me. “Maggie, what is going on here?”

I stood up, letting Will hold my hand. “Sit down, Mama. We have something to say.”

“What?” Her face turned red. “What in heavens can y’all possibly have to say that’s so important at seven in the damn morning?”

Linda winced at the mild profanity, and Lucas shook his head.

“Come on, Ellie,” Barb said as she guided her into the room. She handed a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee to Mama, guided her to the armchair we’d left empty, and then took a seat next to Cathy on the couch.

“Margaret.” My mother’s sharp brown eyes danced between me and Will for a moment before settling solely on me. “What is going on?”

I took a deep breath. Will squeezed my hand.

“Mama, we’re here because we all love—”

Mama snorted. “Please. People I hardly know love me?”

“Love and care about you,” I continued. “And we’re worried. Mama, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep wondering, night after night, if you’re going to come home alive, or with someone, or if you’re going to get us both hurt. I—”

“Is that what this is? You’re all here to shame me?” Mama set her coffee down on the floor and stood right back up. “Well, no to that. I’ll say it right now: no.”

“Mama, please!” I begged. “Listen. Afterward, you can do what you want. But everyone here took the time out of their mornings because they have things to say. The least you can do is listen to us!”

“Ellie.” Will’s voice, with its quiet demand, stopped my mother in her tracks. “Please.”

She turned slowly, and after a pause, returned to the chair.

“All right, then,” she said with a wince—I guessed she had a headache. She look a long sip of her coffee. “Talk.”

We glanced around at each other, unsure of where to start.

“Ahem.” Lucas cleared his throat. “I’ll–um—I’ll start.”

He ignored everyone’s surprised faces and sent a kind look to me before pulling a crinkled receipt out of his pocket.

“Ellie,” he said. “I’ve, um, I’ve known you a long time.”

Mama stared at him. “Well, yes, Lucas, you have.”

Lucas laid the receipt down on the coffee table.

“What’s this?” Mama asked.

“It’s your bar tab. From 2008.”

My mouth dropped, and so did my mother’s. Lucas shifted on his feet, looking nervously between me and Will.

“When I was sixteen, I fell in love with your daughter, Ellie. Everyone told me I shouldn’t get involved because her mom was trouble. But I didn’t care. Didn’t really understand what that meant, until this night, when Maggie called me from outside Curly’s, having to break our date because she’d been called to pick you up.”

Mama looked around with shifty eyes. No one seemed surprised by this story but her.

“I knew what you were like, in theory. We’d all seen you have a few too many beers at picnics and things like that. But when I came to the bar to help out, that was when I really learned what it meant for Maggie.”

Mama scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“They wouldn’t let us go,” Lucas replied. “Because you owed the bar a lot of money. They said pay it, or they’d call the cops.”

The room was quiet. This time, Mama didn’t say anything.

“That was your tab,” Lucas continued. “I drained every penny of my savings that summer to pay it off so Maggie wouldn’t have to deal with Curly’s suing you and contacting social services. Maggie was afraid she’d lose her home. She was afraid she’d lose her mother. I was afraid I’d lose her, so I paid it. But I wish to God I hadn’t, because maybe then you would have gotten the help you needed.”

He sat back down, and we all stared at the receipt. The number at the bottom stood out: over two thousand dollars in an accrued bar tab over the course of maybe two weeks. Curly’s didn’t let Mama rack up a tab anymore, and it was because of this.

Mama fingered the receipt for a moment, then sat back in her chair. “I’m sorry for that, Lucas,” she said. “I really am. And I’ll reimburse you, every penny. I swear it. You’ve been nothing but a help to me and Maggie here, and I don’t want you to feel taken advantage of.”

Lucas shrugged, and I shook my head. Obviously that point had passed long ago.

“Just get some help, Ellie,” he said. “That’s reimbursement enough.”

The others continued, offering their stories. Barb talked about how many times she’d had to turn Mama on her side on her couch, how she was afraid to send her home because she worried she’d pass out there and die alone. Cathy told a story about picking up Mama on the side of the road, about when she hit on her husband, and another time when she puked in her car. Mama had no recollection of any of those events. Linda talked about housing me as a teenager at the inn when I didn’t feel like it was safe to come home. With every story, my mother’s face grew redder, her shame becoming thicker and more palpable.

Finally, everyone had taken their turns, and she turned to me. Her eyes had lost their daze. They were dull and defeated, but when they landed on me, sharpened.

“Well,” she said in a voice that had completely lost its previous bravado. “Don’t you have a story to tell me too?”

For a second, I wasn’t sure I could do this. I wasn’t sure I could break my own mother’s heart. Beside me, Will took my hand and squeezed. His strength, warm and solid, flowed through me. This was for the best.

“Most of them you know, Mama,” I said in a quiet voice. “Because you were there. You were there when I learned, at seven years old, how to turn you on your side so you wouldn’t choke on your own vomit. You were there when I had to pretend to my second-grade teacher that the bruise on my cheek wasn’t because you pushed me too hard after I spilled your coffee, but because I was clumsy walking down our stairs.”

Will’s hand squeezed harder as I spoke, but I kept going. There was no stopping now.

“But the biggest problem with all of that wasn’t that I was hurt, or disgusted, or even ashamed of you, Mama. It was that I didn’t feel safe. I had a mother who taught me that my safety wasn’t the most important thing. And I believe that’s the reason I was willing to put myself in other relationships where I wasn’t safe either. Where I was beaten. Where I was r-raped.”

I couldn’t help but stumble over the last word, and stared down at my hands after catching the curious glances from the others in the room. Will knew about Theo, of course, as did Mama. But no one else did—not the full extent. I didn’t have to look up to know that Linda, Barb, and Cathy had guilt written in triplicate over their kind faces. I didn’t even want to know what kind of blend of disgust and anger was on Lucas’s. My pain would be gossip fodder for months—but it was worth it if it woke my mother up.

“Margaret.”

I looked up, and found my mother crying. For the first time in my life, she looked at me openly.

“I’m sorry those things happened to you, baby,” she said as she smeared more of her eyeliner. “I am. And I love you so much. But, Maggie, you cannot blame me for your poor decisions in your life. I’ve made my share of mistakes, but I am not…that man.”

“Mama, I didn’t say that—”

“And frankly, it hurts,” she continued. The tears were drying now. “It hurts that you would make that connection.”

My mouth fell open. She was…was she really mad at me right now?

“Lil.” Will sat forward and quietly handed me his phone.

I looked down. There was a still of a video—nothing notable, but the background was familiar. A bar. Curly’s.

“What?” I shook my head. “Why do you have that on your phone?”

“It’s live,” Will said quietly. “Benny texted me earlier. It went live late last night.”

“What is that?” Mama asked. “Are we done here?”

I turned to her, full of frustration, even a bit of fury.

“No, we’re not done, Mama,” I said. “I have one more thing for you to see.”

I passed the phone to her and pressed play. No one could see the images except Mama, but the familiar sounds of her laughter filled the room.

“That’s Theo, Mama,” I said quietly. “You might remember him, since that’s also you. And until last week, he was trying to hold me and Will hostage with this video. And for a while, we kept it back to save you because you promised to calm down. But now…now it’s out there. And I’m not going to be held hostage anymore. If you—if you don’t come with us to get some help…then I can’t stay. N-none of us can stay any more.”

At first, I thought she might agree. She looked up from the phone with tears seeping down her cheeks in dark blue currents. Her nose was red, and she held her head as if in pain. And maybe she was—she was humiliated and astonished, I thought. I hoped.

“Still think there’s no connection?” I asked softly, hoping to God she’d say no. That she’d see she needed help. That she’d let me help her get it.

But then she said what, in my heart, I knew it still might come down to.

“Go.” Her voice was low, ragged from drink and shame. She tossed the phone back at me as Theo’s laughter and her own grotesque noises bounced off the walls. “Get out. All of you. You think you can come in here, humiliate me, and I’ll roll over and take it?” She looked up, and her big brown eyes, the same she had given to me, seemed sharp as knives. “And you. Get the hell out of my house. Now.”

I stood from my chair, hands reaching out. “Mama, please! Don’t you see that you need help? I can’t—Mama, I can’t be here if you keep going like this—”

“THEN GET OUT!” she shrieked, jumping from her seat and tossing her arms around like a mad woman. The rest of us scattered like seagulls, funneling quickly to the front of the house even as we cried our arguments.

“Come on, Ellie,” Lucas tried.

“Eloise, really, now—”

“Honestly, Ellie, just listen—”

“No, no, no, no, NO!”

As soon as we were all shuttled out the front door, Mama slammed it shut and pulled the blinds. We stood there, the six of us, listening awkwardly as she stomped around the house. There was another slam of a door, and then silence.

From somewhere in the trees, an osprey cried. Will gathered me close and pressed his mouth into my hair.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, again and again. “So fucking sorry.”

I said nothing as my tears steadily flowed and my throat closed completely.

“You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped,” Barb said behind me. “Honey, you did all you could do. And now we have to be good on our word. That’s what’s best for her.”

I pulled away, wiping my wet cheeks. Everyone had the same resigned expressions. They knew it was over. Maybe none of them had believed it would work in the first place.

I turned to Will. “Okay,” I said softly. “Let’s go.”

There wasn’t anything to bring. All of my things were at his house, and his bodyguards had been sent to retrieve them during the night. We followed Lucas, Linda, Barb, and Cathy up the stairs, all of us moving much more slowly than was necessary. At the top, without a single glance at Will, Lucas tugged me toward him and enveloped me in a massive hug.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work, Mags,” he said, unwilling to let go just yet. Lucas knew my struggle with my mother better than anyone.

“I know,” I said, hugging him back. “I know.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “So freaking sorry that happened to you.”

I didn’t have to ask what he was talking about, any more than I needed to wonder if he would ever look at me the same way again.

Lucas released me with watery eyes. “Good luck, Mags.”

I exchanged hugs with everyone, and one by one, they left, driving back to their lives with knowing looks on their faces.

“Ready?” Will asked. He wasn’t saying anything, but I knew we needed to go soon. He was supposed to be back on set hours ago. Being here, he was risking his professional reputation, not to mention Max del Conte’s ire.

I nodded. “Okay.”

We got into the car, and I rolled down the back window one last time to look over the property. For better or worse, it would always be my home on some level. This wasn’t how I wanted to say goodbye.

“Margaret, wait!”

The car stopped, and I looked through my tears to find Mama at the top of the stairs.

“Wait,” I croaked to the drivers. “P-please wait for her.”

Finally, she had come to her senses. I knew she would. I knew it wouldn’t be for nothing.

But then I saw that she wasn’t holding anything. Not a purse. Not a bag. Nothing.

She approached the window and set her hands on the ledge.

“This is really how it’s going to be?” she asked as she wiped a tear under one eye. The movement smeared her blue eyeliner even more than it already had been. “You’re gonna take off again? Seems that’s all you really know how to do anymore.”

My heart broke. It tipped off the lonely ledge where it had been perched since I was a girl and broke clean in half.

“I can’t—” I shook my head, struggling to get the words out. “I can’t let you do this to me anymore, Mama. You—”

“Lily.” Will took my hand, beckoning me back.

“You’re gonna leave your own kin. Your own blood for some stranger you barely know?” She gestured rudely at Will, glaring at him over my shoulder. “If you think a man is going to save you, Maggie Mae, you’re even dumber than your mama.”

And for a moment, I understood. All my doubts about Will and me bubbled up, and I wondered, as I had days before, whether she was right. Maybe this was where I belonged. Maybe I was no better than her, like everyone had always said.

But then she leaned in, and I could smell the stale alcohol that tinged her breath. I could see how stained her teeth had become, the paper-like quality of her skin, the way her choices had taken a toll on her life, physically and mentally, and now, more than ever, were taking their toll on mine.

I couldn’t let her do it.

Maybe I wasn’t the bright-eyed eighteen-year-old I’d been when I left the first time. And maybe I wasn’t full of the bravado I’d had at twenty, when I promised her once before that I’d never come back unless she was sober. I knew even less now what my life had in store for me.

But I didn’t want to be her. I didn’t want to be trapped by her. And if I stayed here, that’s exactly what would happen.

I wasn’t looking for Will to save me. He was helping me save myself.

So I leaned out the window, and for a moment, clasped my hand to her face, my lips to her cheek.

“Good luck with the house, Mama,” I said. “When it’s dry…I’ll come back.”

“Margaret!”

But her cries were swallowed as I closed the window.

“Go, guys,” Will ordered, and with a rumble of dust, we were on our way.