by Valentine Mizrahi
My stupid phone, it rings and rings. I can see it’s Asher, my younger son, an urgent ring, pressing, distracting me while I drive. My phone is perched on the console between the front seats. I don’t answer.
It is raining, hard. The phone rings again and again. Then the alarming pings of his texts, one after the other. I move my eyes quickly toward the screen. He is threatening to destroy my vanity table if I don’t answer. Why my vanity? I think. Is that the only thing in the house that is truly mine, with my perfumes, hair things and jewelry, buttons and bobby pins, the little ceramic jar with my scissors and nail file? There, the framed photos of my mother, one of my father strumming his guitar on his wicker couch that is now mine, another of me and my husband, Cyrus, smiling even though we’d just had a fight.
Cyrus is not answering his phone.
I wonder if it is safe to come home.
The relentless ringing and pinging is precise and crisp, like someone tapping my forehead. How do I turn this thing off when I’m driving? I keep both hands on the wheel, navigating large puddles, the traffic in front of me on this raging spring morning. I worry that the storm will affect my flight later this afternoon.
Jolene, my dog, is with me. We’re almost home. We’d just finished our walk in the woods when the sky opened and we ran to my car.
Asher is texting and calling me at the same time. I glance at my phone again and see a string of texts. I wish I had somewhere to go other than home, but I don’t. I park in front of my house and lock the doors of my car. I stare at my front door, the rain battering my shiny car, thrumming on my windshield, making everything outside a blur.
I read all his texts:
“Where are my gummies?”
“You owe me $30”
“I’m going to trash your vanity if you don’t answer”
“You are brainless”
“When you come back, go stay with your terrorist family”
I block him. It takes me a while to figure out how. I go into the house with Jolene, strong, like I own it, which I do.
I start to pack for my trip. He slams the door to his messy room.
Asher was diagnosed at 17 with Borderline Personality Disorder. I didn’t know what that was then. He is 25 now, and I can tell you exactly what it is.
It is a constant crisis, a wild urgency and panic, threats, shouts; things get broken. A cracked garbage can thrown on the floor, its contents strewn. The walls of our house have a memory: if you look closely you can see small dents, blemishes I couldn’t rub out.
I try to steady myself.
I sit with Jolene, who has made herself long on my father’s wicker couch. As I pet her, she starts to snore softly, like a purr. I bend down and put my face in her neck, nuzzle her and wish I could take her with me. Maybe I would never come back. “You are my baby,” I whisper, stroking one velvet ear.
It is still raining outside, the gutter overflowing, making a small waterfall by the window. The room is dark with gloom. I tell Cyrus to take me to the airport, even though it is too early and my flight is delayed. “It’s okay,” I say. “I have a book.”
As I leave, Asher approaches me for a hug. “I love you, Ma,” he says and, “I’m sorry.”
I touch his arm, pat it and leave.
My gynecologist sent me to a physical therapist recently for pelvic floor therapy. The therapist had treated Asher after his knee replacement.
“I love Ash!” she squealed when I told her I was his mother.
She took me to a small, private room and asked me to recline on the cushioned table. She explained what she was about to do. She put her hand inside me to find the source of my pain.
“I’m going to press until the pain goes,” she said.
It was awkward; I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t know what I had expected. She asked if I had ever had this pain before. I paused and remembered. “Only after Asher was born,” I said. You never forget pain, I thought.
As she pressed, she told me that her boyfriend really wanted a baby but, “Me, not so much,” she said. Don’t do it, I wanted to say.
The pain subsided. I got dressed and left with instructions for breathing exercises. “Say hi to Ash for me,” she said. “He is the best!”
I smiled, knowing that he could be, but that mostly he wasn’t the best, or his best, or the best person to me.
Valentine Mizrahi has been published in Burningwood Literary Journal, Persimmon Tree, and Blotter Magazine. Due to the private nature of her work, this is her nom de plume. One of her essays recently won for best nonfiction (Best of the Net Sundress) and several have been shortlisted. She was a banker and a mom who wrote at night and on the train to work. Now she devotes her most creative time to writing.