Taylor

Music and light pour from the windows and out the front door as it opens. Taylor giggles back to her friends, her limbs already tingling. She pushes a hand against the doorframe to steady herself, and with the other hand she tugs her skirt down over her thighs. She pushes through bodies under the blaring music and flashing lights. Taylor makes her way to the stairs at the back of the house, brushing her hand across the chest of a former boy toy as she passes him. Upstairs the music is quieter and the voices are louder. Taylor glides through the bedrooms and finds one with a balcony. Her friends grab at her clothes and arms as she hoists herself up and stands on the thin stone railing. She laughs under the night air and the dim moon. She stumbles backwards off the railing. “Drinks!” She cries to her friends and they meander back through the rooms. At the top of the stairs, Taylor misses the first step. She tumbles, then rolls, and when she lands something snaps. She laughs. Someone grabs her underarms and hoists her up, and she slides right back to the floor. Tears squeeze from the corners of her eyes and her hands start to shake. Her friends crowd around her, and the air grows hot and heavy. Someone picks her up and her scream echos down the hallways. Men in uniforms rush forward and then wheel her away. Under the blaring sirens and flashing lights, Taylor tries not to sob.

Sunday: Taylor is languid on the smooth wood of the church pew, one hand clenching tighter and tighter as each punctuated exclamation by the pastor drives a nail further into her left eye. She licks her lips, which still taste like vomit. The screen of Taylor’s phone glows through the pocket of her dress, her friends recounting her escapades from the night before, which she remembers only as she reads the texts through the thin chiffon.

Monday: Taylor drives to her mother’s house after school, using her knees to steer as she paints eyeliner above her lashes. She changes her shoes to something with a heel and glosses her lips. A magazine sits on the kitchen counter and an image of Taylor’s mother pouts on the cover of it. The real woman hands Taylor a cup of coffee and doesn’t ask about her day.

Tuesday: Taylor strides into rehearsal with glasses on and her hair in a ponytail. Eyes follow her in furtive glances. She becomes a mother of two, grieving over her dead husband. The play doesn’t open for another month but she her lines are memorized.

Wednesday: Long candles burn in the middle of the table, each one flickering pretentious, pretentious. Taylor sits across from her father, who says, “I won’t be able to come to your play,” and then “button up your shirt, you look like a whore.” Taylor glares at her untouched sweet potatoes and slips the button through the loop, covering the rest of her collarbones.

Thursday: “I don’t think I can do Theater in the Spring,” Taylor says, twisting the hem of her skirt. “You know, family troubles. Grades.” Ms. Meyer leans forward, her eyeglass cords and sagging breasts jiggling in time. “If you stay,” she whispers, “you can be Miss Sandra Dee.”

Friday: Taylor skips breakfast and eats a small salad for lunch, but no dressing. She is primped at 7:00 and he doesn’t show up until 7:23. They make out in the back of the movie theater.

Saturday: Forgotten.

Taylor stared at the paneled ceiling, sort of wishing that death would just come for her. She weighed the pros and cons of growing old. Pro: I will have met many people and done many things. Con: I will look like an old shoe. Pro: It will probably be easier to be an old woman in a wheelchair than a twenty year old girl in a wheelchair. That thought made me press the heels of my hands into my eyes until I wanted to scream.

Her father came to visit. He lived closest to her, technically. He sat down at the foot of her bed, and then stood up again. He sighed. I wanted to ask him where I was going to stay when I left the hospital, but the words were stuck. He left before my mother came.

Her mother reached out and grasped a lock of Taylor’s hair. It was limp and somehow sort of gray, like the hospital was sucking the color out of her. But that couldn’t be it, because red still rose to Taylor’s cheeks as her mother stared at her face. Taylor wanted to hold up her palm and place it flat against her mother’s. They had the same hands. What I wouldn’t give for a tube of lipstick, or some powder. I lifted my hand to cover my acne, which had flared up in the hospital. My fingers brushed my skin. My mother smacked my hand away from my face.

Taylor’s friends came to visit in shifts between classes and after dinner. They would tell her all the gossip from campus and try to make her laugh without staring too obviously at her legs, which lay at odd angles under the blanket. They didn’t touch her. They hovered around her the way people will hover around a dog that’s been hit by a car. Wanting to help but unable, or unwilling to get too close. Once when I was young, I watched a stray dog disappear under the wheel of a truck, which didn’t so much as slow down. The dog was barely alive, helpless to move, its mange and guts spread on the road. As a child I hovered, wanting to leave but disgustingly curious as to what might happen to the dog. Now I have taken its place.

I push the wheels down and bump over the threshold. The tapping of my father’s foot follows me as I inch over the hardwood. The hallways look like a monster sitting patiently, it’s jaws hanging open, waiting for me to walk through in ignorance. Roll through in ignorance. I reach the end of the hall and turn to glance in the mirror hanging there, and see only the top of my forehead and the greasy roots of my hair peek over the bottom of the gold-leaf frame. The spiral staircase behind me looms in the reflection. I turn and glance up the carpeted stairs. The landing is shadowed, the rooms out of sight. Have the beds been made today? Are the carpets clean? Dust motes float through the air, which is dead silent.

The wheels make a different sound as they hit tile in the kitchen. I lean and swerve to avoid smacking my shoulder on the granite corner of the island. My hand slips and I roll, knees first, into the barstools. They scrape across the floor. My father clucks and pulls me back, and I grip the armrests at the sudden movement, my head jerking forward. My father says something. I stare at my shin where a maroon spot is already forming. I clench my teeth, trying to find some kind of pain. I squeeze the skin of my arm. It’s not the same. Bruises strike bone and then radiate, filling a limb with tiny aching nettles. My little pinch only makes me angry.

My father moves the chair, gentler this time. We go to the guest room, now my bedroom. But it isn’t. That is my desk, with make-up boxes and a lava lamp in the corner, but no chair in front of it. That is my comforter, but the bed has retractable rails and an adjustable mattress. There is no ceiling fan. Instead, a large plastic swing drops from the ceiling, its mount crawling down the wall to a keypad. The room still smells of plaster from where the other wall has been knocked out, and I can see the bathroom beyond. A white monitor sits on the bedside table, next to a smaller white box with a red button. Tears hit my collarbone and roll down my chest.

“Knock knock! Taylor, darling! Are you in your room?”

“...mom? What are you doing here?”

“I’m whisking you away for a girls’ lunch. We can go to that Japanese place you like.”

“...”

“What is all this, Taylor? That’s your father’s suitcase.”

“Why didn’t you call ahead? You--you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Oh, well, I was trying to do something nice for my daughter.”

“Mom, don’t light a cigarette in my room! My god. And...I’m sorry, you just surprised me.”

“Apology accepted. Mm, Is your father taking you somewhere? He hasn’t said anything to me.”

“Yeah, well, you and dad don’t really talk.”

“We talk about you, darling. When we have to. He’s useless otherwise. I can’t believe I stuck around long enough to have a child with him.”

“Oh, thanks, mom.”

“No, that’s no reflection on you, my darling. You were a blessing.”

“Or a curse?”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Taylor.”

“It, uh...it just seems like you took every opportunity to get away from me and dad.”

“Oh, come on now.”

“You left every weekend, and then you moved three hours away. I couldn’t see you unless
you wanted to see me.”

“...So where are you and your father going? Atlanta? You’ve got some heavy sweaters packed.”

“No, put that down, please. So, sushi? You’ll have to help me into the car.”

“Taylor, what is going on?”

“Mom, just--just don’t ask.”

“What is going on here that I can’t know about? I’m your mother, for goodness sakes.”

“And I’m a grown woman, I can make my own choices.”

“You can’t even stand on two legs.”

“Mother!!”

“Oh, alright. I’m sorry! Tell me what’s going on.”

“Fine. God. I’m leaving. Just me...Dad doesn’t know, and you weren’t supposed to know either.”

“What do you mean by leaving?”

“Like, going on a trip. Traveling. Seeing the world. Adventure!”

“Taylor, you’re in a wheelchair. How far do you think you can get?”

“...”

“Don’t look at me like that! I’m just being honest, darling.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think. I already bought the tickets.”

“Oh my. This is one of the silliest things you have ever tried to do. What do you think is going to happen? Ten minutes after you roll off the plane, you’re going to get robbed and raped and left for dead because you can’t defend yourself and you can’t move your legs.”

“...that’s terrible, mom.”

“The world does not revolve around you, Taylor. I’m sorry your father has babied you into thinking that you can just do whatever you want, but the other people in the world have their own agendas and they don’t care about you.”

“Like you?”

“Excuse me?”

“You had your own agenda and you didn’t care about me. If you think dad did such a bad job, why didn’t you come actually be my mother?”

“...Taylor, I tried. But you didn’t want it. You didn’t want me. I tried.”

“You tried to turn me into you. Ballet lessons and...all that pageant bullshit. I didn’t want your life. You--you were vapid, and shallow, and you never showed up to anything. And I would see you in those magazines and try to see my mother, but then you were just a face on a page that sometimes came around on the weekends. You didn’t understand.”

“Oh, how heartless. Tearing down your own mother. I sacrificed so much for you--you couldn’t comprehend it, even if you tried.”

“Well then, I’m sorry that I’m such an inconvenience to you.”

“You know what, you are. If we’re trying to speak some truth here for once, yes. You
make my life harder.”

“Oh my god. It’s not like I wanted to end up like this.”

“All I know is that if you had listened to me, your life would be different.”

“...”

“...”

“You know, I’m sort of glad. That I’m here, that I’m like this. It’s better than
following in your footsteps.”

“...oh. Taylor--”

“I--I think you should go.”

“...well. You know, after that little outburst, darling, I just might not come back.”

“Fine.”

“...fine.”