Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

Maddy waits for the elevator in the lobby of her dorm building, holding a food-truck chicken taco wrapped in a napkin, her regular Thursday night meal. She has dinner with her mother on Mondays, lunch with her on Wednesdays, and dinner with her mother and Phil on Friday nights. She and Emily meet for brunch on Sundays and have dinner one night a week. She is well fed and regularly monitored.

As Maddy is chewing a mouthful of taco, the elevator doors open. About ten students, including her new roommate, Stella, pour out like clowns from a tiny car, clad in similar leather jackets and miniskirts, glossy, perfumed, and giggling.

“Maddy!” yells Stella amid the pack. “We’re all going to Verve now. You should come!”

“No thanks,” says Maddy, stepping into the elevator and holding up her taco as the doors begin to close. “Have fun.”

Stella is a bubbly blonde extrovert who’s always going out somewhere—a Broadway show, dinner in Brooklyn, a party on the fifth floor. She invites Maddy to join her every time, which is sweet, but Maddy always declines. She’s laser-focused on keeping her grades up enough to stay in school and, most important, housed in New York City. She’s in bed at eleven, up at seven. At the comedy clubs, she drinks sparkling water with lime instead of vodka, and she stays away from all drugs except for the pharmacy of prescribed pills she takes daily.

Her life would be tediously empty if it weren’t for comedy. She goes to open mics three to four nights a week, pretty much every evening she isn’t dining with her mother or Emily. Paying for stage time is a challenge because she has no job and drained her bank account back in April on a first-class ticket to Houston. Anticipating this financial pickle, she smuggled all the “nice” dresses from her closet that could fit into an extra duffel bag when she moved back to school, and she’s been selling them on Poshmark. If her mother knew she was hawking all her country club apparel to fund time onstage in comedy clubs, she’d be apoplectic. And Maddy would be on the next train home to Connecticut.

Maddy opens the door to her dorm room, and her stomach plummets into a bottomless free fall. Her mother is sitting on her bed, coat on, her purse hugging her hip, arms crossed, her face pinched tight, icy.

“Wait, what day is it?” asks Maddy, frozen in place.

She knows it’s Thursday. This is a mother-free evening. But she can tell by the tension cords in her mother’s neck and her bulging forehead vein that this isn’t an innocent mix-up in the days. This is an intentional, unannounced visit.

“It’s Thursday.”

“Oh, good, for a second I thought I messed up the days, and I already got food,” she says, holding up her taco.

“So where were you?”

“I told you, studying in the library.”

“You’re lying.”

Her mother stares at her, her gaze unflinching, the tilt of her crossed foot so sure of itself, and Maddy feels pinned in place, exposed with nowhere to run or hide. This is a setup, a sting, a drug bust. She doesn’t know how her mother knows, but she knows.

“Fine, I was at a comedy club.”

“Jesus, Maddy!”

“It’s okay, Mom.”

“It’s a hundred percent not okay. After all we’ve been through, I can’t believe you’re so casually rolling the dice with your mental health.”

“I’m not. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to.”

“Oh, how is that exactly? You agreed no more comedy.”

“No, you said no more comedy. I never agreed.”

“Every time you have a manic episode, there’s Taylor Swift,” she says, extending her thumb, “and there’s comedy,” adding her index finger, holding her hand out like a gun.

“I know you think those are triggers, but they’re not. They’re just along for the ride.”

“They’re delusions.”

“Yes, when I’m manic, I believe things about Taylor and comedy that aren’t real.”

“Thank you—”

“But when I’m not manic, I’m not delusional about comedy.”

“Maddy, please—”

“I’m not. Have you even listened to any of the clips I’ve sent you?”

Maddy’s texted her mother at least a dozen one-minute recordings from her spring sets. Her mother hasn’t responded to any of them.

“No, I’m not going to encourage this.”

“Well, I’ve been doing open mics four nights a week for the past month, and I’m not manic now, so doesn’t that refute your whole argument against comedy?”

“All that tells me is you’ve been lying and deliberately flirting with fire.”

“I’m not manic, Mom. And I’m not depressed. Look at me.”

Her mother is looking straight at her, but Maddy can tell she doesn’t actually see her. She doesn’t care about the evidence. She’s already decided what’s real. Maddy is damaged, broken but pieced back together, the glue not yet dry. If the wind blows the wrong way, she could shatter again. Her mother is looking right at her, and all she sees is bipolar.

“We’re not going to keep paying full tuition for you to go to comedy clubs when you should be here, studying.”

“I am studying. I have time to do both.”

“You of all people need to take your education seriously.”

Maddy tumbles her mother’s sentence over in her head several times, of all people banging repeatedly against her skull like wet shoes in a dryer.

“I am.”

“Then what are you majoring in? Because I can’t tell from the hodgepodge of classes you’re taking. Are you premed or prelaw or going into business or teaching?”

Teaching like Emily. Business like Jack.

“I asked for creative writing and improvisational acting, but I didn’t get them. That’s not my fault.”

Her mother shakes her head while squeezing her folded arms with her manicured fingers.

“We already spent an entire college education on your stays at Garrison.”

At a loss for words, Maddy’s mouth hangs open. Would her mother be throwing the cost of care in her face if she’d needed treatment for cancer? It’s not like she was relaxing at an exclusive spa resort in the Maldives. Each stay was brutal and saved her life. She knows she’s lucky to still be here.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say ‘no more comedy clubs.’?”

“No,” Maddy says, her heart weightless, suspended between empowered and terrified.

“You are here to be an NYU student. Period,” says her mother, her voice raised, emphatic but also shaking.

“I don’t even want to be a student. I want to be a comedian.”

The muscles holding her mother’s clenched jaw twitch. Then she uncrosses her legs and arms, grabs her purse, hangs it on her shoulder, and stands.

“Fine, then consider this your last semester.”

“Fine.”

Her mother marches past Maddy and storms out the door.

Maddy stands alone in the sudden stillness of her dorm room, her taco smooshed in her tremoring fist, her heart pounding as she tries to process what just happened through a flood of emotion, waves of exhilaration and fear crashing at her shore.