The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

by Katya Apekina

I’m not gonna lie. I also felt a moment of sudden completeness when he touched me, like the wires in my Bullshit Alarm had been cut. But at least I recognize it for what it is. Two weeks have gone by since Mom disappeared into the hospital and we’re betraying her already.

I’m sick of strangers acting as if they are continuing some sort of conversation with me, as if they’d just stepped into the other room for a minute as opposed to, you know, abandoning Mae and me completely for over a decade. With Dennis you’d think he’d tripped and fell into a time portal. Oops. I forgot all about my daughters and made my wife go crazy. My bad.

I’d want to come sit by her but I knew better than to bother her. When you have a mom like our mom you develop an instinct for this sort of thing. Bother her too much and she’ll leave.

It wasn’t really a letter. There was no “Dear” or “Love.” It was a poem. How coy of Mom, how opaque to communicate with us in this way, to demand that we guess what it was she was trying to say, like she was Sylvia fucking Plath.

What was it like to meet the woman who was the basis of all my sexual fantasies? I don’t know. I never met her. Cassandra had existed for such a short moment on the pages of Dennis’s books—burning fast and bright. The woman in my truck was the pile of ash left over.

Her mother’s suffering was so huge it was like its own person: it needed to be constantly fed and tended to. I don’t know what it would have done to me to grow up with a mother like that.

No matter how long, or how dark the depression was, she always emerged—maybe not exactly the same as before, but close. Why would this time be any different?

Rose looks at me anxiously, waiting for me to smile back. I do, but I wish she’d stop handing me a knife to cut her with. It’s only a matter of time before I’m not able to resist.