Page 87 of A Deal with the Devil

My mother sits up straight at this, ready to do battle. “She will definitely be going to college.” I love how she thinks she can pull off the concerned parent routine at this late date. “It’s not like she has to be off in a dorm alone. Tali could get an apartment and live with her there off campus.”

My head jerks toward her, and for a moment, I wonder if I heard what I did. I paid for Charlotte’s time at Fairfield, I’m paying my mom’s mortgage, I gave up my life in LA to take care of her and Charlotte this year and now...she wants more?

She didn’t even ask. She just assumed it would happen, as if I’m some chess piece to move around their board, protecting or attacking when called for.

I wait for someone—Liddie or Dr. Shriner—to object. To say enough is enough. But Dr. Shriner simply looks at me with that placid face of hers and Liddie nods, looking toward me on the computer screen, as if my agreement is a given.

I laugh, and the sound is distinctly unhinged. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I demand.

“What?” my mom asks, turning toward me. “You’ll be fine. You can work anywhere.” Her tone is so dismissive. As if I’m needlessly whining.

“Let Tali take care of it. Let Tali pay,” I reply, my hands pressing tight to my scalp. Hayes was right. I’ve been shouldering all the weight...and I’m officially done. I lost Hayes, and I’m not giving up anything else. “Your only plan for this family going forward appears to be me. Has it ever occurred to you maybe I deserve a life of my own? That I’ve been living in an eight-by-eight room and eating ramen for a year to pay for everything you all need? What have any of you given up?”

My mother and sister are both open-mouthed, undoubtedly preparing their arguments. And I already know what they’ll be: It’s easier for you. You don’t have a child, you can work anywhere, you’ll figure it out. And all that may be true, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean I should have to do everything.

“Have you expressed these feelings to everyone before?” asks Dr. Shriner.

“I didn’t think I had to!” I cry. “I thought maybe they already knew I’m a human being with wants and needs of my own, but apparently that has to be pointed out. And I also thought things would eventually sort themselves out. But they don’t seem to be.”

There is absolute silence. Even Dr. Shriner looks a little shocked by my outburst, and there’s a part of me that feels as if I should back down and apologize, but...no. Hell no. I’m here, and I’ve lost Hayes, and I’m so sick over it I no longer care about adding my hurt to theirs. I just don’t care.

“Families—” begins Dr. Shriner.

“Things always work out for you, though,” argues Liddie. “You get scholarships. You date and dump celebrities. You move from coast to coast and get book deals. You just...always land on your feet.”

“How is this landing on my feet?” I ask. “I’m alone and living in my childhood home taking care of our mother, a woman who doesn’t want to work and doesn’t want to stop drinking and is perfectly willing to throw me under the bus. You behave as if everything is so easy for me when the biggest problem you have is that you aren’t getting pregnant fast enough.”

Liddie’s jaw falls. I probably went too far with the pregnancy comment, but at present I’m too irritated to care. She can’t selectively name the high points in my life while ignoring the lows.

“Families tend to assign each child a role—” begins Dr. Shriner, but she is cut off my mother.

“Is that really how you see this?” she asks, her voice tight. She is staring at her lap, her hands tightly clasped.

“How could I not, Mom?” I ask. “You take and take, but don’t seem to have any plan for yourself. You won’t stop drinking even when you know it means I have to move home. How could it possibly be seen any other way?”

She covers her face with her hands, and I feel a tiny pinch of guilt. A voice says she lost her husband, Tali, cut her some slack. But what about everything I’ve lost?

“You always seem so strong,” she says quietly. “And I’m not. I’ve never held a job in my life. Who’s even going to hire me? And with the drinking...I wasn’t trying to force you to come home. But I thought Dr. Shriner was wrong, and it felt like you were taking her side. Why didn’t you say anything?”

I try to come up with an answer, but my mind is blank. “I have no idea,” I reply. “It just seemed best to keep it to myself.”

This is the point where I’d normally apologize. I’d tell Liddie my comment was insensitive. I’d assure my mother that it’s fine that I’m here, that I’m happy to help as long as she needs me. For once in my life, though, I stay silent.

“Tali, it sounds like your role in the family is ‘the competent one’,” says Dr. Shriner, finally able to get a word in edgewise. “The question is whether you want to keep playing it.”

I think of Hayes again at the airport and that lost, crushed look on his face I refused to acknowledge. For the past year, I’ve shoved down everything I felt, like I was a soldier in the trenches just trying to survive. And I took Hayes down with me. “No,” I reply, rising, my voice rasping. “I don’t.”

I walk out of the house and down the street, trying not to cry as I picture Hayes’s face at the airport, or the way he looked at me that last time we were together. My hatred for Ella could fuel the state’s power grid, yet I was hardly any better to him, in the end. I go up and down the street until Mrs. Deal next door calls out to me from her garden to ask if it’s good to be home.

I feel myself gearing up to fake a smile and give her the answer she wants, but quell it.

“At the moment,” I reply, “not especially.”

I return to the house, fully expecting recrimination from my mother, now that Dr. Shriner is no longer online to witness it. But her shoulders slump when she sees me.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I had no idea you wanted to stay in LA that much. And I did try...I tried to get a job. I sent out resumés, but when I studied marketing, there was no Twitter or Facebook or Google. My degree is useless, and I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about that. But I’ll try to pull myself together. I promise.”

I nod, but my eyes pinch with tears. It no longer matters. Without Hayes to go back to, LA is just a city with better weather and shopping, and I may as well stay here.