Bones and Roses Read Free Page A

confessed I slept with your boyfriend?”
    â€œYou don’t even like Daniel,” I remind her, seizing the chance to change the subject. I take a sip of my Perrier, wishing it was a gin and tonic. I haven’t touched a drop in three and a half years, but right now it feels like the first thirty days when every hour of every day was an uphill battle.
    â€œI never said I didn’t like him,” she corrects me. “All I said was I didn’t think he was right for you.”
    â€œLike you’re such an expert. You’ve never been in a relationship that lasted longer than the milk cartons in your fridge.”
    â€œIt’s no use trying to pick a fight,” she replies with maddening calm. She does know me too well—that much is true. “We’re not talking about me. Or men. We’re talking about you .”
    I give a sigh of surrender. “All right, I admit it’s been on my mind. But I’m not doing some stupid ceremony.” Why bother when each year the anniversary of my mother’s defection is marked by the black cloud that descends on me? “Even if I saw the point, it’s not just me—there’s Arthur to consider. You know how he gets.” My brother is unpredictable to say the least.
    â€œShe’s his mom, too.” I’m grateful for her use of the present tense. It’s easy to imagine the worst when you haven’t heard from someone in twenty-five years. “He might want to say his own good-byes.”
    â€œHe talks to her all the time.” Along with the other voices in his head.
    â€œIt doesn’t have to be a huge deal. Light a candle, say a prayer.”
    â€œI stopped going to church when I was twelve.” I guess Dad didn’t see the point after Mom went away. God didn’t want to be his friend? Fine, he wasn’t going to play over at God’s house.
    â€œSay a prayer to your Higher Power, then.”
    I only pray to my Higher Power for the strength to resist temptation, but no point getting into that. I reply grudgingly, “I’ll think about it.” We go back to eating our sandwiches—or rather, Ivy eats while I pick. “I didn’t have it so bad, you know,” I point out, as if in saying it, I can make it so. “Dad did the best he could.” Never mind it was what the Big Book of AA calls “half measures.” As in Half measures availed us nothing . The truth is, my brother and I would have been better off if we’d gone to live with our grandparents. “Lots of kids had it way worse.”
    â€œYeah, I know. Macaulay Culkin and the poor kids in Africa.”
    â€œFunny you should mention Africa.” Ivy’s mom is a doctor who gave up her private practice some years ago to start a free clinic in a remote village in Malawi, leaving then twelve-year-old Ivy in the care of her dad and grandmother. Ivy sees her only once or twice a year, when she visits Malawi or on the rare occasion when Dr. Ladeaux can fly home between cholera outbreaks and dengue fever epidemics.
    If my intention was to point out that Ivy might have abandonment issues of her own, I’m not getting any traction. “At least I always knew where my mom was,” she says with a sanguine shrug.
    She isn’t being cruel, just stating a fact, but I feel a dull throb nonetheless. “Okay, so mine cared more about her boyfriend than about us. That doesn’t make her Mommie Dearest.”
    â€œNo,” she agrees, adding gently, “but you don’t have to be beaten with a coat hanger to have scars.”
    I have nothing to say to that; I can only swallow against the lump in my throat.
    The last time I saw my mother was when she was waving good-bye as I ran to catch the school bus that day. She was dressed for work, in a yellow wraparound dress with poppies on it that matched her bright red lipstick and red slingback heels: an outfit more appropriate for a pool