Mad Max: Unintended Consequences by Betsy Ashton Page A

out.”
    “I'm sorry, dear child.”
    Once again, Emilie slipped into a space that excluded me, yet I understood what she meant.
    “Mom needs you to help her, not argue with her.”
    “She needs more help than I can give her.” I held up the coffeepot.
    “She needs her mommy, just like I do.” Emilie stirred cream into the brew in her cup.
    Merry needed her “mommy”? I hadn't thought of it that way. I treated my daughter like an adult. Maybe, just maybe, Emilie was right. Maybe I needed to go back to being Merry's mother. Except, Merry, too, often told me how I sucked in that role.
    “I mean, she needs someone to understand her. Can't you back off and not poke her all the time?”
    “Is that what you think I'm doing?”
    “Isn't it?”
    I did poke. Well, poking wasn't working. I'd try being nicer to my poor, lost daughter.
    “Treat her like you do Alex and me. You don't poke us. You aren't critical with us all the time.”
    “You're still children. You need guidance, not poking. Support, not criticism.”
    “In a way, Mom is more like a child than I am. She needs the same thing I do.”
    “Got the message. Help me stay on track, okay?”
    Emilie put her cup down and gave me a bear hug. She nodded against my chest.
    I hit paydirt on the second call when Dr. David Silberman answered. I told him everything I could think of about Merry and asked for his help. As luck would have it, he had a slot open on Mondays and Thursdays at ten when Mad Max's Taxi Service was available.
    I made the appointment and picked up my rollerblades. I needed to move, and move a lot, to work off my anxiety. Between Whip's squishiness on what to do about his wife and Merry's decline into drugs and booze, I was barely holding it together. The more I exercised, the better off I'd be. I needed a better sense of balance to keep my promise to Emilie about not poking her mother.
    Merry denied promising to go into therapy. I told her I wouldn't do a thing about her face until we found out what was going on inside her head. Call it blackmail. Call it coercion.
    Merry argued and yelled the night before the first appointment, calling me any variety of names. She was creative in the way she put words together. I kept at her until I wore her down.
    Two weeks later, I sat in the waiting room and mulled over an incident from the previous week.
    On Wednesday afternoon, I read in my room after my Pilates workout. Emilie was home with a cold, and Merry was holed up in her bedroom. No early warning siren sounded before a battle erupted in the hallway outside my closed door.
    “Why do you always shut me out?”
    “I don't shut you out.”
    “You do. You never ask about me, about what I'm doing. You don't care.”
    “I do.”
    “Why can't you just be my mother? Why are you such a bitch?”
    An open palm met a cheek.
    “Don't call me a bitch! I'm your mother. I deserve respect.”
    “Not when you don't act like my mother. Why can't you just go to the swim league awards dinner? You always went in the past.” Emilie's voice was thick, the result of her cold and I suspected also of choking tears. “Or are you going to spend the day drunk again?”
    “I won't go. Have your grandmother take you.”
    “I hate you!” Emilie slammed the door to her room. Merry's door followed a second later.
    I'd first heard the “I hate you” accusation right after Norm died. I couldn't let Emilie think she hated her mother. Maybe I could help her understand before things got any worse.
    I set my book on the bedspread and went to Emilie's door. I tapped and opened it before she could tell me to go away. She lay face down on her bed, sobbing into her pillow. I sat on the edge and pulled her into my arms.
    “I hate her! She's so mean. She hates me too.” Emilie's pain poured out with each fresh batch of tears.
    “I don't think you hate your mother, Em. You don't like how she treats you, do you?”
    “Oh, Grams, she slapped me. She's never slapped me before. Don't you