Later

19

I’ll tell you about the other time Liz picked me up from school very soon, but first I have to tell you about the day they broke up. That was a scary morning, believe me.

I woke up that day even before my alarm clock went off, because Mom was yelling. I’d heard her mad before, but never that mad.

“You brought it into the apartment? Where I live with my son?”

Liz answered something, but it was little more than a mumble and I couldn’t hear.

“Do you think that matters to me?” Mom shouted. “On the cop shows that’s what they call serious weight! I could go to jail as an accessory!”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Liz said. Louder now. “There was never any chance of—”

“That doesn’t matter!” Mom yelled. “It was here! It still is here! On the fucking table beside the fucking sugar bowl! You brought drugs into my house! Serious weight!”

“Would you stop saying that? This isn’t an episode of Law and Order.” Now Liz was also getting loud. Getting mad. I stood with one ear pressed against my bedroom door, barefoot and dressed in my pajamas, my heart starting to pound. This wasn’t a discussion or even an argument. This was more. Worse. “If you hadn’t been going through my pockets—”

“Searching your stuff, is that what you think? I was trying to do you a favor! I was going to take your extra uniform coat to the cleaners along with my wool skirt. How long has it been there?”

“Only a little while. The guy it belongs to is out of town. He’s going to be back tomor—”

“How long?”

Liz’s reply was again too low for me to hear.

“Then why bring it here? I don’t understand that. Why not put it in the gun safe at your place?”

“I don’t…” She stopped.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t actually have a gun safe. And there have been break-ins in my building. Besides, I was going to be here. We were going to spend the week together. I thought it would save me a trip.”

“Save you a trip?”

To this Liz made no reply.

“No gun safe in your apartment. How many other things have you been lying to me about?” Mom didn’t sound mad anymore. At least not right then. She sounded hurt. Like she wanted to cry. I felt like going out and telling Liz to leave my mother alone, even if my mother had started it by finding whatever she’d found—the serious weight. But I just stood there, listening. Trembling, too.

Liz mumbled some more.

“Is this why you’re in trouble at the Department? Are you using as well as… I don’t know couriering the stuff? Distributing the stuff?”

“I’m not using and I’m not distributing!”

“Well, you’re passing it on!” Mom’s voice was rising again. “That sounds like distributing to me.” Then she went back to what was really troubling her. Well, not the only thing, but the one that was troubling her the most. “You brought it into my apartment. Where my son is. You lock your gun in your car, I always insisted on that, but now I find two pounds of cocaine in your spare jacket.” She actually laughed, but not the way people do when something is funny. “Your spare police jacket!”

“It’s not two pounds.” Sounding sulky.

“I grew up weighing meat in my father’s market,” Mom said. “I know two pounds when I’ve got it in my hand.”

“I’ll get it out,” she said. “Right now.”

“You do that, Liz. Posthaste. And you can come back to get your things. By appointment. When I’m here and Jamie’s not. Otherwise never.”

“You don’t mean that,” Liz said, but even through the door I could tell she didn’t believe what she was saying.

“I absolutely do. I’m going to do you a favor and not report what I found to your watch captain, but if you ever show your face here again—except for that one time to pick up your shit—I will. That’s a promise.”

“You’re throwing me out? Really?”

“Really. Take your dope and fuck off.”

Liz started to cry. That was horrible. Then, after she was gone, Mom started to cry and that was even worse. I went out into the kitchen and hugged her.

“How much of that did you hear?” Mom asked, and before I could answer: “All of it, I imagine. I’m not going to lie to you, Jamie. Or gloss it over. She had dope, a lot of dope, and I never want you to say a word about it, okay?”

“Was it really cocaine?” I had also been crying, but didn’t realize it until I heard my voice come out all husky.

“It was. And since you already know so much, I might as well tell you I tried it in college, just a couple of times. I tasted what was in the Baggie I found, and my tongue went numb. It was coke, all right.”

“But it’s gone. She took it.”

Moms know what kids are scared of, if they’re good moms. A critic might call that a romantic notion, but I think it’s just a practical fact. “She did and we’re fine. It was a nasty way to start the day, but it’s over. We’ll draw a line under it and move on.”

“Okay, but… is Liz really not your friend anymore?”

Mom used a dishtowel to wipe her face. “I don’t think she’s been my friend for quite awhile now. I just didn’t know it. Now get ready for school.”

That night while I was doing my homework, I heard a glug-glug-glug coming from the kitchen and smelled wine. The smell was a lot stronger than usual, even on nights when Mom and Liz put away a lot of vino. I came out of my room to see if she’d spilled a bottle (although there had been no crash of glass) and saw Mom standing over the sink with a jug of red wine in one hand and a jug of white in the other. She was pouring it down the drain.

“Why are you throwing it away? Did it go bad?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “I think it started to go bad about eight months ago. It’s time to stop.”

I found out later that my mother went to AA for awhile after she broke up with Liz, then decided she didn’t need it. (“Old men pissing and moaning about a drink they took thirty years ago,” she said.) And I don’t think she quit completely, because once or twice I thought I smelled wine on her breath when she kissed me goodnight. Maybe from dinner with a client. If she kept a bottle in the apartment, I never knew where she stashed it (not that I looked very hard). What I do know is that in the years that followed, I never saw her drunk and I never saw her hungover. That was good enough for me.