When You Were Mine

“And for you,” Emma says shrewdly. “I get that. I’d probably be the same, if I were a parent. But it felt like even more pressure, and I already had more than I could deal with. I felt like I was going to explode—or maybe implode. Just… collapse inside.”

I shake my head slowly. “If it was really that awful for you, I wouldn’t have told you to stick it out.” I want—I need—to believe that.

“You would have, Mom. You always would have.”

“Emma—”

“You told me to take the extra AP class because it would

look good on my college application. To run for yearbook editor because that was another fricking feather in my cap. To play JV tennis even though I was still the worst member on the team my senior year.”

I goggle at her, as gape-mouthed and gormless as a fish. “Emma, you wanted those things.”

“Not as much as you did. And sometimes I think I only wanted them because it made you so happy and proud. Sometimes I think I would have been just as happy—no, happier—to mess around for four years and go to Conn State.”

Conn State, like Beth had been planning to. Her sad story had left me feeling heartbroken for her, but also a little bit relieved, knowing I wouldn’t make the kinds of mistakes her mother had.

And yet it seems I’ve made a boatload of other ones.

I sink back against the sofa cushions, my mind reeling. I can’t process everything Emma has said. I don’t want to. I already felt like a failure, but it was in a way that I could talk myself out of, as I reminded myself of all my successes with my children. Now I can’t. I failed without even knowing it, all along, all the time.

“I never meant to make you feel that way,” I say faintly. I feel as if I can hardly form the words. “I never wanted you to feel pressured. I thought… I thought you were pressuring yourself.”

“Even if I was, you didn’t mind,” Emma returns in that same matter-of-fact voice. “I think you liked it.”

I look away, not wanting to show her the naked hurt I know must be visible on my face. She makes me sound like some sort of maternal monster, and yet there is more than a grain of truth in her words.

Yes, I’d felt pride in the way Emma was, and all she’d achieved. What parent doesn’t want their child to be successful and driven? Is that so wrong? Yet if it had been a clear choice between success and happiness, of course I would have chosen the latter for her.

But, I realize, choices are so rarely that clear.

“I’m sorry,” I say at last, because what else can I say? “I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I’m sorry you felt that you couldn’t tell me. I’m sorry—”

“Oh come on, Mom.” Emma stops my self-pitying litany, sounding a little bit irritable. “Don’t make yourself into a martyr. I’m not saying it was all your fault. It was Dad, too. And it was me. I’m not abdicating all my responsibility. I’m just trying to explain.”

From monster to martyr. I inhale deeply, trying to sound rational instead of devastated. “So it was this pressure that led you to… to…”

“To OD’ing on Xanax? Yeah, I guess.” Emma sounds, to my incredulity, almost amused. I think of what Josh said—they’re like Skittles were in your day, and I wonder if he was actually right. But Skittles don’t kill you. “I didn’t mean it,” Emma continues, and I can only stare. “If I’d meant it, I would have done it seriously—you know, razor blade in the bathtub or maybe hanging myself. There are YouTube videos you can watch to make sure you do it properly.”

“Don’t, Emma.” I can’t keep a visceral shudder from rippling through me. The thought of those videos, of young women or men watching them, suicide as commonplace, something merely tedious or practical… I shake my head. “Please don’t.”

Emma sighs. “Sorry. All I’m saying is, I think I knew I wouldn’t actually die. I was sharing a bedroom with Sasha. I knew she’d find me before too long.”

I think of Sasha’s frightened face at the hospital, the doctor’s serious expression. “That wasn’t a very nice thing to do to your friend,” I say, and then wish I hadn’t. Emma looks wounded.

“It wasn’t like I was playing a prank.”

“I know—”

“It felt like a way out. To be able to leave Harvard that wasn’t just slinking away, another deadbeat dropout who couldn’t hack it.”

Slinking away would have been a hell of a lot easier. I close my eyes briefly as I try to summon yet more strength.

“Now you’re even more disappointed in me,” Emma says flatly.

“No, I’m not—”

“For trying to kill myself as well as quitting Harvard.” She shakes her head disbelievingly, as if I am meeting all her incredibly low expectations of me, and a sudden, surprising spark of anger fires through me.