Like most addicts, at first, she was very good at hiding her behavior. But eventually, the life insurance money ran out, and the welfare money must not have covered her mounting addiction needs. Then items went missing from the house. And random visitors accompanied her home in the evening, men whose faces I never saw but I knew them intimately from their tone of voice and primal noises of both frustration and ecstasy.

By the time I was fifteen, we had lost the house and bounced around between women’s shelters and motel rooms. I waitressed early mornings before school and on nights and weekends to afford the necessities like food, clothing, and shelter, while my mother prostituted herself to afford her growing addictions. I stayed under the radar at school by keeping out of trouble and maintaining a high GPA. I preferred taking care of myself than living in some foster home.

On my sixteenth birthday, I found my mother’s body in a cockroach-infested motel room we had been staying at. She had overdosed on heroin, her gift to me. I would no longer have to care for her, work forty hours a week to support us both, have to fight off the men that thought I would be a sweet indulgence after she had passed out.

I stared at her pale, thin body for over an hour, a hollow, lifeless shell. Four empty needles were stuck into her arm. I packed up our things and walked to a pay phone to call 911. That was the last I ever saw of my mother, and I vowed to never be like her.

But even my mother still did more for me than Eleanor has for Adam. My mother made me wise, made me independent, made me learn how to fight for myself.

Eleanor made Adam weak, her love smothering out his ability to exist on his own. My mother and Eleanor aren’t so different, the way most addicts aren’t, the only difference is that Eleanor is still feeding her addiction, while my mother’s took her long ago.

52. Adam Morgan

52

Adam Morgan

Moments after Scott Summers stormed out of the interview room, I notice the door slightly ajar. I stand and pace, listening intently for anyone in the hall. I tap the large mirror, seeing if anyone is in there watching me.

After a few minutes, I work up the courage to do something I’m most certainly going to regret. Pulling open the door slowly, I peek out into the hall and I’m met with silence. I creep out of the interview room and make for the front of the building, crossing paths with no one.

Before entering the lobby, I spot Marge at the front desk muttering to herself as she pushes papers around. She picks up her coffee cup and disappears into a side room.