The Big Fix Read Online Free PDF Page B

that day, my mind formulated a million excuses.
    My mom gets this look on her face when she is worried. She wears a shade of makeup that is slightly too dark and slightly too thick in a ring around her face. When she gets upset, the makeup crinkles by the corners of her eyes. I have seen this look many times. That day was the first time it was ever directed at me. Twenty years old is pretty late in life to start fucking up. I am making up for lost time. She never saw this coming. My progression from bookworm to party girl has thrown her off guard.
    I had always been the “good girl.” I was the child who had never given my parents any problems. For me, that meant I was invisible to them. My mother focused on my father, my father focused on drinking, and I focused my attention on anything that would get my mind off my misery. Books were my first fix, even before food. I could read a book a day. I could spend hours and hours sitting in my room, absorbed in the stories of other people. I liked to imagine myself as part of the story. I could forget myself as I turned those pages. It was hard for me to live in my own skin. My parents saw me as well-behaved and studious. The reality was I was extremely depressed. I didn’t know a name for it, but I knew this feeling of darkness that would overwhelm me. I would lie around watching television for days at a time trying to escape my surroundings. Inside, I felt as if I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. Or break things if I could muster the energy. I remember the feeling of wanting to disappear, which as a teen became a feeling of wanting to die. It was only in hindsight that my mother realized I’d been having trouble finding ways to cope. I kept things bottled up for so many years that I wasbound to implode or explode. I chose the former. Everything feels like it is crashing around me.
    During that last visit, I had stuffed my face with the food she brought to me. I hadn’t had a solid meal in days.
    â€œTracey . . . I am asking you a question,” she said.
    I tried to put her off by telling her, “I have just been busy, Mom. I have school and work.”
    This was half true and half lie. I did go to work. I needed that money. School was a different story. I had been to five classes since the semester started.
    She tried to get me to look at her. I didn’t want anyone to see me, least of all her.
    â€œYou know how I worry,” she told me. Yes. I know, I thought to myself.
    In fact, I have started to worry about myself. I occasionally hear a faint voice in the back of my mind asking me what the hell I am doing. I suppose it is what is left of my conscience. I drown that voice at happy hour. Let me live my life, I tell it. I spent so many years as a depressed fat girl, this is my time to enjoy life. I almost believe my own lies. Almost. There are moments of sobriety interlaced with the intoxication that creates humiliation. I need more and more substances to cover up the mess I have made of my life.
    My mother loves to talk on the phone on Sundays. My visits have become fewer and farther between, so she depends on those phone calls. Sunday is our day for connection. For a few moments, we can be a normal mother and daughter again. For as long as I can remember, Sunday always has been a special day to us. No matter how much my father drank during the week, he usually made an attempt to be sober onSunday. He would get stuff done around the house, almost as if we were a normal family. He would go out on the lawn mower or do the grocery shopping. My mom would look out the window, setting her hair for the week, while he raked up the leaves. She wore a modified beehive long after it went out of style. She could only sleep on her back for fear any other position would destroy her look. She coated her hair in White Rain hairspray, sipping on her Maxwell House coffee in her frosted green mug. My father worked as an engineer, sixty- to eighty-hour