The Corner of Bitter and Sweet Page 6

  “So are you still up for Arcade Fire next weekend?” Olivia asked. Because her father was the head of the television department at one of the big talent agencies, he was always able to get us tickets to concerts. Or, rather, his assistant did.

  “It’s, uh, Family Weekend at the . . . thing,” I replied. I still couldn’t bring myself to say rehab. In fact, the night before, as I lay in bed unable to sleep, I had made a list of synonyms for it—such as wellness center, health spa, place people go after they fuck up royally.

  “Can Jade have her ticket then?” Maya asked. “She loves them.”

  Olivia and Sarah exchanged a quick look. Jade was Maya’s new girlfriend. With their matching black bobs, they sometimes looked like twins, which was a little weird.

  “Actually,” Olivia said, “so does Parker. I think we should ask her.” Parker was Parker Wren, sister of an actress who, in addition to supposedly going out with Ryan Gosling a few times, had just snagged a role in Wes Anderson’s new film, a combination that gave Parker official Sister Of status. Olivia put her hand on my arm again. “We’ll miss you.”

  “Yeah. Totally,” Sarah agreed. “Some other time.”

  “Yeah. Of course. Another time,” I said. Although it made me feel like the world’s worst daughter, I hated my mother at that moment.

  The only place where my mother had good timing was in front of the camera. Other than that, it sucked (see: getting knocked up by almost total stranger), so it made sense that the two weeks following her arrest were super-slow on the gossip front. Not one celebrity (a) announced he or she was gay; (b) got caught cheating via cellphone pictures; or (c) got into a public brawl with the ex of a current boyfriend or girlfriend. Which meant that for the first time since she announced she was leaving Plus Zero, Mom—and, by default, I—were in the news again.

  There were pictures of me on the blogs walking into school with captions like “Devastated by Her Mother’s Breakdown, a Distraught Annabelle Jackson Attempts to Trudge Through the Day!!!” (Actually, on that particular day, I was not distraught. I was exhausted because I had stayed up until two o’clock in the morning watching The Way We Were and crying, not just because it always made me cry but because it was Mom’s and my favorite movie to watch together.) And me outside Whole Foods chugging down a smoothie with the caption “It May Look Healthy, But What’s Really in That Smoothie? Is Annabelle Jackson Going Down the Same Road of Destruction as Her Mother???”

  That one bugged me, mostly because it was never going to happen. Maybe it was because Mom was a poster child for how annoying drunk people could be, or because vomiting wasn’t on my list of fun ways to spend my time, but the one and only time I had gotten wasted had been enough for me. Every time I came close to throwing up, I found myself overcome with the fear that I wouldn’t be able to get to the toilet in time, which would then render me immobile, and so I ended up hurling wherever I happened to be. Which, in that case, happened to be on a very expensive sofa at this girl Sparrow’s house. I already felt out of control enough. I didn’t need alcohol to feel even more out of control and then have a headache to boot.

  Although as I pulled into my driveway on my bike post–Whole Foods smoothie pap attack, I kind of wished I could just walk into the house and pull out the bottle of whiskey I knew was stashed in the head of the giant Ganesha statue on the patio and drink until I passed out. (Although Ganesha was the Indian god who was the remover of obstacles, obviously, he—like the fountain—wasn’t operating on all cylinders.) To be able to shut off my head for a few hours. Or at least turn the volume down on the running commentary about how Mom’s arrest was just the beginning, things were going to get worse, and somehow (even though I wasn’t quite sure how) this was all my fault. Like if I had been a better daughter, watched her more, and told Ben how bad things really had gotten with the drinking and pills, then I could have stopped it. If a drink (or five) would’ve done that, then I totally would’ve poured myself one. But I knew that the half hour (or five minutes) of peace I would’ve gotten would’ve then been followed by even worse fear and worry and regret. Plus, because I would be drunk, it would take that much longer to get back to a state of mind where I could then do something about it. Or at least think I could do something about it.

  Esme was at her book club, and even though the sun was just starting to go down, she had put every light in the house on because she thought it made it a happier place. But when I walked in, there was nothing happy about it. If anything, the space and quiet I found myself standing in the middle of brought all the anxiety that I had been pushing down since Mom left bursting to the surface.

  If I had been Olivia—or at least the old Olivia—I would’ve gone to the kitchen and started stuffing my face with any carb that wasn’t nailed down. Instead, I went straight to my bedroom. Out of habit I locked my door, even though I was the only one there. I went to my closet and took out the pillowcase on the left-hand corner of the floor. As I brought it to my bed and turned it over, four cans of Play-Doh, two Barbies, a Skipper, and a Ken (maybe it was the lack of hair, but none of the Ken heads gave off that rubbery smell that I loved so much) came tumbling out. Followed by some assorted random Colorforms, their smell long gone, that I couldn’t bring myself to throw out because they reminded me of the West Hollywood apartment and a time when Mom was happy and hopeful and had a glass of wine only on very special occasions.

  Picking up the red can, I popped the top off and brought it to my nose, closing my eyes as I inhaled deeply. I counted to five as I held it in my lungs, waiting for the familiar feeling of safety to wash over me, like when I wrapped myself in the blanket that Esme had crocheted for me, but nothing happened. It didn’t happen when I tried the yellow can, or even the blue one. Or with any of the Barbie heads. Instead, my heart beat faster as yet another anxiety attack kicked in.

  Nothing was working.

  Feeling even more anxious and uncomfortable than before, I went over to my desk and took my Nikon out of its case and walked into Mom’s bedroom. Back when we still lived in West Hollywood, she’d go through decorating magazines and tear out photos of bedrooms she loved, talking about how one day her bedroom would be in a magazine. And it had been. A bunch of times. Even though she’d been in rehab for a week her smell was still there—the musky smell of her Agent Provocateur perfume mixed with the tart citrus and sweet gardenia of the different body lotions that were scattered around the room. (“Let me tell you something, Annabelle,” she liked to say. “Sure, dental hygiene is important, but soft supple skin? Just as important, if not more so. I mean, if need be, you can buy new teeth, you know?”) I half expected her to come strolling out of her walk-in closet, wearing only her underwear. Even though it drove me nuts when she did that. (“Sweetie, the human body is a beautiful work of art,” she’d always say when I tried to convince her to put clothes on. “Especially before things start sagging.”) I would have done anything for her to do that right then.

  I walked into her bathroom. All sorts of makeup tubes and bottles and compacts littered the countertops, untouched since she had left. She had enough to open up her own makeup counter. Or at least work at one. Which, once she got out of rehab, might be the only job she’d be able to get.

  I aimed the camera. Snap. I loved the sound of the shutter opening and closing. There was something so purposeful about it. Something that said, I’m not sure why, but this 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 sc
ared. 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 to God, past God, past God—and always will.

  (Even though she won’t let me get that cute beegle we saw in the window of Pet Luv because she says that pet stores are evil because they get their dogs from puppy mills.)

  Signed,

  Annabelle Meryl Jackson,

  Age 7, Los Angeles, CA 90046

  I smiled as I remembered the look on her face when I gave it to her. That was what started the “all the way up to God, past God, past God” thing. I smoothed the paper and leaned it up against the box on the bed and reached for the framed picture on her nightstand—the same one from the Emmys that I had in my bedroom—and put it next to the box. Then I grabbed my camera.

  Snap.

  It was a good thing I just got the viewfinder wet with my tears and not the lens.

  That Saturday, before we drove down to Laguna for Family Weekend, Ben insisted that we go to John O’Groats—a little restaurant on Pico Boulevard that, over the years, had become what we both considered our place. Unlike so much of L.A., it was down to earth, with oatmeal that was just the right consistency and even better biscuits. I so associated it with Ben that once, when Mom was dating this architect named Theo (he was Swedish, with blond hair and pale skin, and he never smiled) and she suggested the three of us go there for breakfast one Saturday, I lied and said that it was closed for remodeling.

  Ben also insisted on singing the entire “Happy Birthday” song off-key when Sioban, our favorite waitress with a thick Irish brogue that took me years to understand, brought over a biscuit with a candle in the middle of it. Although I acted embarrassed, the truth was, the reason I kept my face turned down with my hands covering my eyes wasn’t because Ben was such a bad singer (though he was) but because I was afraid that if I looked at him, the tears that I could feel lodged in my throat—the ones that had signed a lease at the police station and were so settled there they were almost done decorating—would decide to go on a field trip and come out through my eyes.

  “Happy Sweet Sixteen,” he said once I had blown out the candle. Like so many birthdays before, my wish was that my mother would finally get her shit together and marry Ben. “How’s it feel to be the bravest, most beautiful sixteen-year-old on the planet?”

  Ben was always going on about how pretty I was. And even though I always told him he was nuts, every time he said it, my heart was forced to expand to make room for the extra love that I felt for him because of it. Maybe it was because he knew that it kind of sucked being the semi-pretty Daughter Of one of People’s Most Beautiful People, but if he complimented Mom on how she looked, he always complimented me just as much, if not a little bit more. I didn’t actually believe him, but I sure was grateful.

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I love you so much, Annabelle. You know that, right?” I nodded. I did. It was one of the few things in life I was sure of. “I love you, too.”

  He smiled and reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Here’s the third part of your gift.” The first part had been a new portrait lens that I had been stalking at Samy’s Camera on Fairfax, and the second part was a book of Francesca Woodman’s photographs. She had been this amazing artist who took these dreamy black-and-white self-portraits before jumping off a building when she was twenty-two. (“What a fascinating story,” Mom had said when I told her about it. “Maybe I should develop a movie about her. With the right lighting I could probably pull it off, don’t you think?”)

  The smile on my face flickered as I opened the envelope. It was an application for the CalArts photography program summer fellowship for high school students. I had mentioned it in passing to him about a month earlier, and because he was Ben, he remembered. I would have loved to go. “That was really sweet of you to remember, but with everything going on . . .” I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  His own smile faded as well. “Look, obviously this is not a great time. For any of us. But I’m not going to let you put your life on hold because of her, Annabelle. You’ve done that enough.”

  “I have not,” I said defensively.

  His left eyebrow raised the tiniest bit, the way it did when Mom tried to tell him she had only had two drinks and was therefore fine to drive.

  “Even if I did apply, I wouldn’t get it,” I went on.

  “How are you going to know that if you don’t apply?”

  I hated how logical he could be. It had to be the attorney in him.

  He reached for my hand. “Annabelle, give yourself this opportunity. You’re an amazing photographer. Let the world see that. You need to stop hiding.”

  “I am not hiding.” He may have not been my father, but sometimes I sure got mad at him like he was.

  “Will you at least think about it?”

  “Fine,” I lie
d.

  “This is it?” I asked later as we drove up a rolling green hill toward Oasis. In front of us stood a ginormous mansion complete with a gazebo surrounded by blooming flowers, and behind it the sparkling Pacific Ocean. I took out my camera and snapped away.

  “Uh-huh,” he replied. “It’s like something out of The Great Gatsby,” he said as he nodded to a smiling gardener, whom I half expected to break into song.

  I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting a rehab to look like. Glassy-eyed people zoning out in front of a TV tuned to bowling? Some sort of waterboarding setup? Oasis, however, was more like one of those resorts you saw in Condé Nast Traveler magazine—the ones that cost more a night than most people made in a week, where your every need other than someone wiping your butt was taken care of for you before you even realized it was a need. (The first Christmas Mom was on the show, we went to one of those places, in Mexico, and I was so uncomfortable with people coming up behind me and saying “Is there anything I can get you?” that I ended up spending the last two days in the hotel room watching television.)

  “They’re all so happy,” I whispered to Ben as we stood in the lobby watching well-dressed people lounging on the overstuffed sofas, laughing. They turned to us and smiled. “Shouldn’t there be, I don’t know, . . . crying or something?” I murmured as I smiled back.

  “Maybe that only happens at the cheaper rehabs,” Ben whispered back.

  “Bug!”

  I looked up to see Mom sailing down the stairs. Wearing jeans and a light blue T-shirt, her hair hanging loosely around her makeup-free face, she really did look thirty-seven, like it said on her bio on IMDb, instead of forty-two, her actual age. Although she’d probably yell at me, I quickly reached for my camera and started snapping away. She looked too beautiful and too much herself not to.