It Was Me All Along: A Memoir by Andie Mitchell Read Free Book Online Page A

If
horrified
had a “Which emotion am I?” poster in a psychologist’s office, it was my face.
    He had come to pick me up. To ride along beside me as I walked home from school. I waved to my friends and their parents, letting them know I didn’t need a ride, and began the walk. He followed, keeping up with my chubby-legged superstride. I asked him to “Please, please, please, please, take off your hat.”
    “Wha—no! Why? It’s cold out.”
    “It’s so ugly and I hate it and … you’re embarrassing me.”
    I paused and then said, “I want you to go away.”
    “Andrea, c’mon. That’s crazy talk.” He offered a sheepish smile, continuing to pedal.
    Adamant now, I stopped. He braked as I turned to face him. “I don’t want anyone to see me with you. I don’t want you to ride beside me.”
    And with that, his eyes changed. I could see I’d wounded him. His mouth hung slightly open, as if he had one last plea in him,
but, oh, never mind
.
    I walked away from him, heading right as he steered slowly left. I didn’t turn around. I felt so sure of myself in that moment, so positive that I was making a necessary decision. I believed that avoiding embarrassment, all the dreamed-up humiliation in my head, was worth pushing away a dad who came to pick me up from school.
    An hour later I’d made it home and was unable to acknowledge the shame, the guilt, of what had happened earlier.
    I lingered in the doorway of the kitchen, spilling a cereal supper, and looked at him, seated at the dining room table. He looked back at me and I could see that he’d had a drink when he had gotten home. His eyes looked cloudy and glazed. I wondered if what I’d done had made him veer his bicycle up North Street to the liquor store.
    He turned back to the table, and I looked down at my floating Apple Jacks—milk logged and bloated. “I’m sorry,” I mouthed, so quietly that no one could hear.
    I thought briefly to sit with him, but I walked to the den instead, face downturned to my bowl, tears salting the peach-hued milk.
    For months he continued to drink in the same reckless way he always had. Then spring came, and he went missing.
    Two full days passed before the phone rang and Mom rushed to the kitchen to answer it, while I ran to the one in the living room to catch it, somehow both of us knowing it would be him.
    “Mere,” he began, his voice unsteady.
    She stretched the coiled phone cord from the kitchen wall allthe way down the hallway and leaned into the living room where I was. With her hand over the receiver, she told me to hang up. Her eyes warned me against protesting. I placed the cordless phone back in its base, and she hurried out of the room.
    Impatient, I lasted one minute waiting in the living room before racing down the hallway. By the time I reached her, she was off the phone. She told me to get my coat, that we were going to get Dad.
    I pressed her for details, and she gave me a desperate look. Her eyes scared me. They darted around the room frantically, as if looking for Anthony, who was out with his friends. “Francie, Dad … tried to kill himself.” Her words rolled out like an apology. He had checked into a motel by the highway, where he swallowed a full bottle of pills and drank a handle of vodka.
    Dad entered Tewksbury State Hospital. In the weeks that followed, he underwent intensive group and individual therapy. He was sober for twenty-eight days straight. When he returned home, he told us he’d met a guy in the hospital who became a friend. That friend had a place out west, in Arizona. Dad was sure he could go to the desert, stay with his friend, stay clean, and then come back to us a new person. He said he just needed to get away for a while. He’d come back—he promised—just as soon as he got his feet on the ground again.
    In June he took a train westward with nothing but a box of Saltine crackers and called us from Phoenix three weeks later. We heard in his voice that he had been