Mad Love Read Free Page B

been more forceful, should have shoved the envelope back into his hands—shouldn’t have been so nice. My mother is always nice, which is one of the reasons why the Queen of Romance lives in an old four-unit apartment building and not on a country estate as her readers imagine. You’d like to invest in a seaweed farm in Vermont? Certainly. You’re raising money for orphaned bison? How much do you need? If you caught my mother during one of her spells, you could convince her that anything was a good idea.
    The sun beat upon my feet as I waited for the crosswalk light to turn. The shopping bag’s handle pressed against my fingers. A group of tourists on the Seattle Underground Tour passed by. A cluster of homeless men sat on blankets, mangy dogs at their sides. I needed to stop by the post office before going home. And I hadn’t done any grocery shopping in a week. The light changed. With a sudden craving for an iced mocha, I eyed the nearest espresso stand and headed straight for it. A UPS deliveryman almost tripped me as he charged down the sidewalk. Pushing a handcart stacked with brown boxes, he wove between a couple of chatting old ladies. Then, as he darted around a corner, a small box fell off his cart.
    The little box lay in the middle of the sidewalk. No one grabbed it, no one even looked at it. I could have ignored it, could have bought my mocha and continued on my way. But little boxes can contain wonderful surprises and someone was probably waiting for it. The deliveryman had disappeared, so I picked up the box. Turning it over, I read the label and found, halfway up the block, its destination—Lee’s Antiquities.
    I hate antique stores. The mere sight of one nauseates me. It’s a Pavlovian kind of thing. Why this reaction? Because whenever my mother said, “Come on, we’re going antiquing,” I knew she was heading into one of her spells.
    That’s what bipolar disorder is all about, these spells of super hyperactivity or disruptive depression. Often, just before she got all wound up and took on a speed-of-light intensity, she’d get this urge to collect. So she’d drag me to dusty, creepy antique stores to rummage for things to add to her assorted collections. I’d crawl beneath a sagging dining table and read from a crate of moldy Life magazines while she searched for the latest item she desperately “needed.” Then I’d follow her home, carrying a box of china cups or a bag of costume jewelry or one of those stupid garden gnomes, knowing that over the next few days she’d be lost to me, her mind caught like a writhing fish in a net.
    And then, one night, she forgot me, left me behind in the antique store as she rushed off to find the final blue teacup that would make her collection complete. Too ashamed to tell the clerk, I stayed hidden under the dining table until the shop closed. Once the owner left, I used the shop’s phone and called Mrs. Bobot. After climbing out the back window, I waited in the dark for Mrs. Bobot’s headlights to appear like rescue beacons.
    That wasn’t the only time my mother forgot about me. I try not to dwell on this fact but certain images cling to my memories, like long waits on the school steps, a locked door with no key left behind, an empty apartment with no note. A night all alone, not knowing where she was.
    How’s a kid supposed to sort that out? Days of cuddling and cupcake making, of laughter and bedtime stories, then days of suffocating silence and absence. My mother had lived most of her life undiagnosed, so, until a few years ago, we didn’t have a name for what was wrong with her. Because there’d been no disease to blame when I was little, I came up with my own answer—I’d done something wrong. I hadn’t made the bed correctly. I hadn’t said the right things. I hadn’t been pretty enough or smart enough or nice enough. It was my fault that I’d been left at the antique store.
    Late that same night, after my mother had returned to the