WE BURIED THE SOBRIETY badge in my parents’ backyard, along with a pocketful of baubles that I fished out of my mother’s costume jewelry box. I gave Charlotte a trowel that I found in the gardening shed and then followed her around the garden as she dug holes. While she carefully placed each rhinestone earring in its own little grave and covered it with dirt, I dutifully marked its location on a map that I’d sketched on the back of an old health food flyer I’d found in the kitchen.
After we’d finished burying everything, I gave Charlotte a hibiscus Popsicle from my parents’ freezer and we sat side by side on the porch looking out at the garden. My mother had planted Mexican sage, lavender, and bougainvillea, and in the full bloom of summer the yard was a sea of purple. After our acting careers imploded and our mother’s career as our manager fizzled, she had started a little business in landscape design; so most of the homes on the street now featured “Linda Logan yards,” with burbling fountains and thickets of drought-tolerant flowers. As a result, their neighborhood seemed to have an unusually high per capita number of hummingbirds, butterflies, and bumblebees. I had to give my mother credit for that.
I smiled at Charlotte. “How is your mama?” I asked her softly. “I miss her.”
Charlotte was busy chasing a melting slab of Popsicle with a neon pink tongue. She cocked her head and slurped. “Why?”
“Why? Because I screwed up a while back, and now she’s mad at me.”
“Why?”
I didn’t know how to answer this. The child stared gravely back at me, unable to compute. I supposed this wasn’t an appropriate conversation to have with someone who didn’t even know the alphabet yet, but how was I to know how to speak to a toddler? Charlotte seemed unperturbed. She ate the last melting bit of pink sludge and let the naked stick drop to the porch. Then she grabbed the trowel and the map and scampered back off into the garden to dig her treasure back up.
My father came out to join me on the deck, his joints popping as he sat next to me on the bench. He still wore the coat and tie that he’d worn to work—he had been an accountant at a paper supply company for the last three decades—and they tugged at the buttons where his body now sagged in the middle. He looked tired, I thought, and a little diminished, as if someone had put a giant thumb on his head and pushed him right back down into himself. It was five-thirty, time for his nightly G&T, but he was drinking a can of lime sparkling water, because of me, surely. I couldn’t decide if I was touched by this gesture or insulted by his lack of faith in my self-control.
He lit up when he saw Charlotte out digging under the giant oak that enveloped the back of the yard. He waved, and she waved back at him. “Tweasure!” she called, jewels sparkling in her fist.
“Is that your mother’s earring she’s holding?” he asked me. “For God’s sake, don’t let Linda see that. She’ll lose her mind.”
But my mother was already standing there behind him, drinking a glass of chardonnay. (Apparently she was unconcerned about testing my sobriety.) “It’s fine,” she said. “They’re paste.” She dimpled at the little girl in the garden. She’d really lowered her standards for this kid.
I turned to face them. “So, let’s talk. What’s the story with Elli? What’s going on? Where is she?”
My mother stuffed her nose into the mouth of her wineglass. “I think single motherhood was turning out to be a bit much for her, that’s all,” she said breezily. “It’s a lot to have a small child all by yourself, you know? When I had you two there were certainly months when I just wanted to disappear and leave your father to take care of things for a while.” She gulped some wine, licked her teeth. “Plus with the whole divorce debacle…She just wanted some downtime and she went to a spa. She said it was in Ojai.”
“What’s the name of the spa? Is it that fancy golf place? Ojai Valley Inn?” I imagined my sister swaddled in terry cloth, mud cracking on her face, the cucumber slices on her eyes conveniently blinding her to any memory of her responsibilities back home. A vision that was hard to reconcile with the sister I knew. And yet who knew what I’d missed over the last year? Apparently, quite a lot.
“I don’t think so. But I’m not sure what it’s called. Did she say the name to you?” My mother looked inquisitively at my father, who shook his head. “Actually, I think she might have called it a ‘healing retreat.’ So maybe not a ‘spa,’ exactly, but some kind of wellness destination.”
“Taking an awful long time to get well,” my father grumbled. “Seems like it should have taken a weekend, tops.”
“The heart and mind need what they need.” My mother puffed herself up, her hair a nimbus of hennaed curls. She looked like an indignant dandelion. “Just because you don’t feel the need for personal growth, Frank, you shouldn’t judge others who want to find themselves a little. I’m just glad she’s finally doing some self-care after such a trying year.”
“I just think she should have at least answered your texts. Seems to me that something might not be right with her. Maybe she’s having a breakdown. Maybe she’s sick.” My father frowned at his can of fizzy water, as if unsure why he was holding it and not a G&T at this unpleasant moment in time.
My father tended toward cynicism and my mother toward blind optimism. It was a miracle, frankly, that they were still married; but apparently opposites really do attract. Our childhood had been a tug-of-war between them, with my mother usually winning. My father had wanted to send me to rehab when I was seventeen but my mother insisted I was just “going through a phase.” And although I was thrilled at the time that my mother won that particular argument, in retrospect I was the real loser in that battle.
“Elli sent me a text a few days ago, she seemed to be fine. The last thing she needs is us intruding on her emotional life.” She sipped at her wine. “Anyway, your father’s just being dramatic, as always.”
“Pretty selfish of her, don’t you think?” My mom gave me a sharp look. Who are you to judge? “I mean, it’s not very Elli-like behavior, don’t you think?”
“And how would you know, Sam? You’ve been absent all year. Longer than that, to be honest.”
I flushed at the rebuke. She was right. “Can I at least see the text she sent?”
She pulled her cellphone out of her pocket. The home screen photo was a snapshot of Charlotte squinting into the sun. Something small and primal inside me stung at this tiny rejection: that I, her daughter, no longer qualified for my mother’s landing screen. But, of course, I was in my thirties now. I’d outgrown that primacy a long time ago.
I looked over my mother’s shoulder as she pulled up her text history with Elli and handed the phone to me. Curious, I scrolled back through my sister’s old messages to my mom. There in 10. And Stopping at Vons, need anything? And Charlotte’s got a cold, we’re staying in. And Turn on GMA, that chef you love is on. The mundane intimacy between my sister and my mother took my breath away: Is this what I’d been missing all these years? Did I want it, too? Or would I have found this claustrophobic?
My mother must have noticed my curiosity because she grabbed the phone and quickly scrolled down to the last few messages in the chain before handing it back to me. The string began a week earlier, on the previous Thursday, with a Thanks so much for watching C, back Sunday. This was followed up, over the next seventy-two hours, by some unanswered texts from my mother to Elli: Hope retreat is going well. OK to give her M&Ms? And Don’t want to interrupt your me time but how long is C supposed to nap? And She’s not allergic to bees, is she?