I go back to the page, write a few more words, and the pen runs out of ink.
I throw it across the room. I search through my backpack, but I can only find a red pen.
SORRY THE COLOR OF INK JUST CHANGED, BUT MY PEN RAN OUT AND I HAVE TO USE A DIFFERENT PEN. THAT’S ANOTHER THING I HATE ABOUT YOU, MOM. I SHOULD HAVE A COOL LAPTOP LIKE OTHER KIDS. I SHOULDN’T BE USING A PEN AT ALL. THAT’S TECHNOLOGY FROM HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY KIDS HAVE THEIR OWN LAPTOPS IN SCHOOL NOW? ALL OF THEM. THEY DON’T HAVE ONE STUPID NETBOOK THEY HAVE TO SHARE WITH THEIR WHOLE FAMILY.
That’s why I haven’t seen our netbook for so long. It’s been in Mom’s room so she can use it to chat with the guru. That thought makes me angry all over again.
I’M TIRED OF THINKING ABOUT THIS, MOM.
I’M TIRED OF TRYING WITH YOU.
I GIVE UP.
I’M DONE.
I’M NOT YOUR SON ANYMORE.
THAT’S THE TRUTH.
MAYBE YOU’LL BE RELIEVED WHEN YOU READ THIS, OR MAYBE YOU’LL BE UPSET, OR MAYBE YOU’LL BE NOTHING AT ALL. IF YOU READ IT AND YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME ABOUT IT, I MIGHT BE WILLING TO DO THAT. JUST READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT IT. OKAY?
I close the journal. My hand is shaking and I’m sweating.
I lie back in bed and put the journal on my stomach.
I think about dinner, about the guru walking in, about Mom’s happy mask.
I think about the guru in our kitchen the other morning.
I think about how it made me feel.
That’s when I decide I’m going to give Mom the letter.
She needs to know the truth.
I carefully tear it out of the journal and fold it up. I don’t have any envelopes in my room, but I know Mom keeps some in the kitchen drawer for when she has to send bills.
I sneak out of my room and head for the kitchen.
“You can’t eat anything,” Sweet Caroline calls from her bedroom.
“I’m not eating,” I say from the hall.
Sweet Caroline is being a bitch because I yelled at her before.
I swear to God, I would kill for a house with real walls. The Jews might have been slaves in Egypt, but I’ll bet the walls were thick. Those Egyptian stones were heavy. I wouldn’t mind being a slave if it got Sweet Caroline off my back.
“It’s after eight and you’re heading for the kitchen,” Sweet Caroline says through her door. “You know the rules. If you eat, I’ll tell Mom.”
“Good luck finding her.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means she left home and I doubt she’s coming back.”
There’s a pause and then Sweet Caroline’s door opens.
She steps out in pink sweats and a T-shirt. The sweats have a picture of Hello Kitty on the butt. One of Mom’s yoga ladies gives her old clothes to Sweet Caroline. That’s Brentwood. A forty-year-old woman and a twelve-year-old girl are roughly the same size.
“You said she was taking a drive,” Sweet Caroline says.
“Since when does she take drives? She’s got the carbon footprint of a Brussels sprout.”
“What are you saying?”
“Did you notice a man in sheets at breakfast the other day? Do you think it’s strange that Mom is nowhere to be found at ten o’clock at night?”
“So?” she says.
“You’re blind.”
“I’m not blind.”
“We went to dinner tonight, and he was there. Mom invited him without telling me.”
“Why?”
“They wanted to break the news to me. It’s bad, Sweet Caroline. Much worse than we thought.”
Sweet Caroline pulls at her eyebrow. She plucks one of the hairs out and rubs it between her fingers.
“Mom’s had other creepy boyfriends. Why do you hate this one so much?” she says.
“I don’t like how Mom is around him.”
“Happy?”
“Brainwashed.”
She goes to the kitchen trash and drops the hair into it. She claps her hands together like she’s completed an important mission.
“He’s going back to India, Sanskrit.”
Sweet Caroline reaches into a gift basket for some caramel walnut clusters. She tears the package with her teeth.
“That’s how I know we’re going to be okay,” she says. “He doesn’t live in this country.”
“You might be right.”
“See? I’m not blind.”
“Maybe not,” I say.
She scrapes chocolate from the roof of her mouth with a finger. Then she goes down the hall to her bedroom.
As much as I hate her, I have to admit she’s a pretty brilliant kid. But she’s still just a kid.
I know better. I have to protect us. I have to wake Mom up.
I open the drawer where Mom keeps the envelopes. Of course she’s out of envelopes.
I see a stack of bills on the counter. I pick out one that Mom hasn’t opened yet. Her philosophy is that you don’t open bills until they turn red. Before that, it’s like eating fruit that’s not ripe.
This bill is still black, so I know she’s not going to miss it.
I take a steak knife from the drawer and slit the envelope open on the side. Then I slip the bill out and throw it away. I write:
TO: MOM
FROM: YOUR SON
I slide the letter into the envelope so the writing fits into the transparent square.
I go back down the hall, open Mom’s door, and slip inside.
I remember when I was a little kid and I’d go into her room in the middle of the night, only then it was their room, my parents’ room. They tried to send me back to bed, but sometimes I would beg enough that they’d let me stay. I’d snuggle in next to Mom, feel her softness against my back. Mom wasn’t skinny and yoga-body hard back then. She had a human body that could give you comfort. Now she’s all angles and muscles.
I sit on the edge of her bed, arrange her pillows so they’re not a mess, and I lay the envelope on top.
I catch a scent of Mom’s shampoo on the pillow. It smells good to be close to her. Not a whiff of her passing by, but pure Mom, concentrated. It makes me feel like a child being carried, my face buried in her neck.
Suddenly, I feel exhausted.
It’s like everything that’s been happening over the last week fills my body until I can’t move. I lie down on Mom’s bed and close my eyes. Maybe I fall asleep for a minute, but my eyes snap open again.
I can’t be in here when Mom gets home.
I drag myself up from the bed, make sure the envelope is still there, and I go back to my bedroom and wait for Mom to come home.
“Wake up.”
I don’t even remember falling asleep. I was up nearly the entire night, waiting for the front door to open, for Mom’s footsteps in the hall, waiting for her to see the letter, waiting for what might come after.
“Sanskrit?” The voice says.
It’s not Mom. It’s Sweet Caroline.
“Get up,” she says.
She’s standing in the half-open doorway.
“What do you want?” I say.
“It’s Mom.”
“What about her?”
“She didn’t come home last night.”
“The letter—” I start to say, but I stop myself. It’s none of Sweet Caroline’s business.
“Mom wrote a letter?” Sweet Caroline says.
“No.”
“You said a letter—”
“I was dreaming it,” I say.
I sit up fast in bed. It’s six on Tuesday morning.
I rub my eyes, trying to wake up.
“How do you know Mom didn’t come home?” I say. “Maybe she had an early class.”
“Her bed is still made. I’m worried, Sanskrit.”
I’m worried, too. Mom has done a lot of irresponsible things, but staying out all night isn’t one of them.
“I think we should call the police,” Sweet Caroline says.
“You have to calm down,” I say. “I am calm. That’s why I think we should call the police.”
“Bad idea. They’ve already got the Child Protective Services report because of you.”
“That was a long time ago. And it got discredited, remember?”
“My point is if the police find out Mom didn’t come home, things could get complicated.”
Sweet Caroline thinks about it, biting at a nail. Mom clicks her nails on her teeth when she’s worried, but Sweet Caroline bites until she bleeds.
“This is a crisis. We need to call Dad,” she says.
“That’s the worst time to call Dad.”
Dad’s idea of a crisis is having to make dinner on a weeknight.
“Why don’t you call the yoga studio just to make sure she’s not there,” I say.
“What will you do?”
“I’ll check the house.”
“Don’t leave, Sanskrit.”
“I’m not leaving. I’m going down the hall.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Stay here and call the yoga studio. I swear I’ll be right back.”
Sweet Caroline stretches out her arms like she’s going to reach for me, but she doesn’t. It’s funny how she’s so tough and so vulnerable at the same time. She gets scared and suddenly she wants a big brother.
I wait for Sweet Caroline to get on her phone, and I head down the hall.
I slip into Mom’s room.
It’s dark. I crack open the blinds, and light floods in. I look at her pillow. The letter is gone.
I check between the sheets and under the bed, just in case it fell. Then I look back at the pillow.
Gone.
Does that mean Mom came home and found it?
I rush back into the living room.
“Your wife has disappeared,” Sweet Caroline is saying into the phone.
“Hang up.”
“It’s our father,” she says, holding her hand over the receiver. “I’m informing him of current events.”
She speaks into the phone: “I don’t know where she went, Daddy. I just know she never came home.”
I hear Dad’s voice coming through the earpiece.
“You have to come and get us,” Sweet Caroline says. “We’ll find Mom and then you can drive us to school.”
Dad’s voice again.
“An hour’s too long!” Sweet Caroline says.
She looks at me, desperate.
What can I say? Everything is difficult for Dad. That’s why we don’t call him when it’s not his weekend.
Sweet Caroline thinks for a second, then she says into the phone, “You have two unsupervised, unfed children here. What if the big one happens and we have no water in the house?”
Dad says something, then Sweet Caroline puts down the phone.
“He’ll be over in five minutes,” she says.
“That was mean of you,” I say.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” she says.