Ghost Time

smart-ass , I thought, covering my face with both hands, because who else could have done this but Cam? No one: it had to be him. It was crazy—those numbers were completely crazy, but it was so beautiful. Cam always said math was beauty, and I got it—at long last, I got it—I saw how beautiful it is. And seeing Cam right there, plain as day, but nowhere to be found, I was laughing, but I was crying. Same difference.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 30, 2011
    (NINE WEEKS EARLIER)
    8:11 PM
    I can always tell when they’ve had a fight, my mom and Rain Man. Like the second I walk in the door at night, or getting up, first thing in the morning on a Saturday, I’ll know they’ve had a fight, because my mom always broadcasts the fact. Like if I walk in the door and she’s playing Hole or Chrissie Hynde, that’s a good sign: that’s the sign that Mom’s in her I-am-woman-hear-me-roar mode, and we have a fighting chance of her walking away from Raymond once and for all. But if I walk in and she’s listening to the Afghan Whigs, I know I should turn back around and stay away for a couple days, let her burn the song off like a terrible hangover. Seriously, there’s this Afghan Whigs song “My Curse,” that she’ll play over and over and over, all day long, and I just want to bang my head on the wall. Like, Seriously, Mom, have you no shame?
    Reminds me of this story my dad told me once about how, in law school, he used to live below this woman who was up all night, every night, playing “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” over and over on the piano, right above his bedroom. Dad said he’d lie awake in bed, three, four in the morning, finally done studying, and night after night, just as he was drifting off, the piano part would start, and he’d shout at the ceiling: You have got to be kidding me! So, finally, one night, my dad had enough, and he got up and went upstairs to tell the woman to stop playing that song or he was calling the cops.
    So he starts pounding on her door with his fist, demanding she open up the door, and turns out, the woman had cancer. She couldn’t sleep because she was in so much pain, and looking at her, with a scarf wrapped around her head, totally gaunt and pale, my dad couldn’t even speak. He looked at the poor woman, and then he turned and sulked back to his bedroom, completely ashamed.
    The point is, I can’t even yell at my mom, really, because it’s so pathetic. I mean, come on, I’m the teenager—at long last, I made it to fifteen, right—and she’s ruining it for me. I’m not kidding: every time she does it, I’m just like, Now how am I ever going to spend an entire day, locked up in my room, listening to the same stupid sad song over and over again, feeling sorrier for myself than any girl in history, without thinking I’m just like my mom? See what I mean? Ruined.
    Even worse, she’ll start smoking again, chain-smoking. Like Friday night, she’ll decide she can have one cigarette with her vodka and cranberry or whatever, just one or two cigarettes, andby the next day, she’ll be up to half a pack a day, easy. So of course she’ll lose a ton of weight, and then, like clockwork, she’ll break down and call Rain Man, because she hasn’t eaten in days, so she’s not thinking clearly, reassuring herself he’s left a sufficient number of messages for her to dignify returning his call. And of course he’ll tell her it didn’t mean anything, whoever it was he was screwing on the side, or on his desk more like it, whatever.
    I know because I hear it, every word. Every time they fight, I hear her in the next room, not all the words, necessarily, but the tone of her voice, all pleading and needy, and it’s sickening. It is, that she needs so badly and doesn’t believe she can do any better than Raymond at this point in her life, and it makes me so angry with her. It’s hard because I know she did what she had to do, moving us here, because it was the first job she could get, and it wasn’t about what she wanted, and I know that. But any confidence she used to have, it’s gone. But more than that, sometimes I look at her, all curled up on the couch at night, drinking and smoking, and I’m like, What is wrong with you? You’re supposed to be the strong one: because you’re the mom, remember? Then I’ll say something cruel, cutting, provoking her, because it’s all I can do to get it out. And there are lots of ways to cut yourself, you know?
    I remember this one time