When Life Gives You Ovals, You Make Ovaltine

The first time Rachel found the blue oval pills in her mother's underwear drawer, she was sixteen. At the time Rachel had assumed herself mature enough to deal with the problem all by herself and put hours upon hours into research. She confronted her mother in their living room a week later, who immediately came clean about her addiction. The woman swore to do better and Rachel assumed that it would be enough. She assumed that Clarissa Blake would change solely because her daughter needed her to, and every day Rachel would check her mother’s underwear drawer for more pills. She did not think to check anyplace else.

Two months after the confrontation, Rachel is pulled out of the class by the principal. She is taken to the office where she sees two police officers standing by the money plant. Her mother was pulled over by the police for reckless driving. They discovered her drugged state and took her to the police station. Rachel went through her mother's room with a fine-toothed comb that very day and found the pills in a shoe box in her closet. The girl was then sent to live with her late father’s old friend and her mother was sent to a facility. Clarissa Blake was a talented surgeon that many hospitals were desperate to snatch, and so was given leave instead of being fired. The facility’s doctors all promised Rachel that her mother would be back to her old self in eight months—they lied.

Rachel spends a year at her school as the druggie, people whisper about her mother's addiction and her father's fatal alcohol poisoning. Her new guardian Mr. Keller was unmarried and had no children, most likely due to the fact that such a man as himself should have no wife or children. Breakfast was at 7:30 am sharp, and the fridge and pantry were locked until dinner time. Dinner was at 7:30 pm sharp, and the fridge and pantry were locked once more until the next morning. Lunch was dependent on whether Rachel could spare the measly sum she made at her job at the coffee shop on the pricey cafeteria food that day.

Clarissa returns home when Rachel is seventeen. She just started twelfth grade and was coming to school regularly, with her head held high, and not shy to make eye contact with every single person that stared—purely out of spite. Her mother acts fidgety and shifty for the two weeks that she is home before she starts working at the hospital again. Rachel finishes high school, and attends prom despite not having a date—again, just purely out of spite. She does not bother dressing up, her hair in a bun and not a single stroke of makeup on her face. She stood next to the giant cake the school bought for the party the entire night. Everyone stood clear of it, not daring to have a single taste. Rachel knew it was because they feared she had drugged it, and enjoyed the cake all by herself. 

Two months into her attending university, Rachel is once again taken to an office where two policemen stand. Rachel cackled when she recognized one of them from last time. A patient died during a low-risk surgery and Clarissa was discovered to be high. She was taken to a different facility where Clarissa was promised her mother would be back to her old self in a year—another lie.

Rachel is twenty-two, with her Bachelor of Fine Arts and works at an art museum when her mother comes back. They talk, they cry, they hug, and they laugh. Promises are made, and hopes are grown. Rachel assumes that her mother must have changed, learned, healed, grew. She was gone for four years after all. Her mother gets a job as an assistant at a local clinic and Rachel gets a boyfriend. Evan is tall, and handsome, and taught history at a high school. He had a younger sister and no parents and only a couple of friends. Rachel would draw for Evan’s history presentations and Evan would come to her place of work and explain the cultural context for why a certain painting depicted what it did. Two years later, the two are still going strong and Rachel’s life is perfect. Her mother had a boyfriend who knew about her past addiction and loved her anyway. 

It was Christmas dinner at her mother's house and Evan was called by his sister for a family emergency in a different city. It was just Rachel, Clarissa, and her boyfriend Mark. The entire dinner was a social affair, with lots of talking, questions and laughter. Clarissa had the widest smile the entire time—a bit too wide, a bit too forced. Mark seemed like a nice man, a good man, a man who truly loved her mother. Rachel had an easy time accepting Mark as a member of her family. It was her mother that seemed off during the entire affair. That night was sleepless for Rachel, she could picture the light blue oval-shaped pills clearly, and the ticking of the clock slowly drove her mad. 

Mark was Catholic and both he and her mother were going to mass that morning. Rachel politely refused and tore her mother's room apart the moment they drove off. She was not satisfied when she found nothing in the bedroom and moved on to the rest of the house. Rachel believed in no god but swore to believe if she truly was able to not find a single one of those blasted pills in the house. Find them she did, in the shed, inside the same shoe box as last time. 

When Mark and Clarissa returned home that afternoon, Rachel threw the baggie of pills in her mother's face and stormed out. She lived two hours away and did not stop until she reached home. 

Mark called that night to inform her that the place his brother worked at was top-notch and that he would be taking her mother there the next morning. When Rachel worked up the courage to visit her mother a week later her mother refused to even look at her. With every admission of her mother to a facility, Rachel visited her every week. They would chat about their day, the weather, or the weirdos around them. Yet this time there was none of that, this time it was Rachel’s fault she was sent in. Four months in, her mother finally looked at her, more of a glare—if looks could kill, Rachel would be six feet under. She stopped visiting after that. Mark would call every day, he seemed lonely and Rachel pitied him. Rachel had moved on in her life, Evan proposed and Rachel had said yes. 

Her mother came out of the facility in eight months, Mark had pulled some strings after being manipulated into believing she had changed. Rachel got married a few months after that, she invited Mark but banned her mother from coming. Mark refused to come without her mother and Rachel cried, she had hoped the man would give her away. Her sister-in-law's boyfriend had to do it instead—had volunteered to do so, and claimed it would be an honour to be able to. 

Rachel would speak to Mark on the phone periodically. Mark and Clarissa had gotten married a year after she did. Rachel was not invited, nor did she have any interest in going. After four years of marriage, Evan finally convinced her to go visit her mother. She arrived at her childhood home with her husband, three-year-old daughter and five-month-old son in tow. Evan had packed for a whole week and was determined to make this work. Mark and Evan loved each other immediately, of course they did. Clarissa had a hard glare to go with her sharp frown that softened and dulled at the sight of her grandchildren. Clarissa spoke to everyone but Rachel, although she did refrain from glaring at her, and Evan was able to convince Rachel that progress was made. No matter where she looked, Rachel could not find a single substance in the house that would prove this all false. No pills, no alcohol, no nothing. 

Rachel made a point to invite her mother to Easter a month later, and she came with Mark in tow. She smiled at Rachel when she came into the house, had a nice conversation with Evan at lunch, and played with the children until it was time to leave—progress. 

Her mother invited her for Christmas dinner, and Rachel arrived with her husband and children in tow. A few months later, Rachel called her mother when she found she was pregnant again. It was a conversation filled with tears and joy. Rachel felt she got her old mother back—her best friend, her therapist, her human diary. Her mother was in the delivery room when her baby, a boy, was born. She came home with them from the hospital and took care of the house and the kids for Rachel for the next two weeks. Evan was happy that he was able to make the two women get along with each other again, and Rachel was happy she had her mother back.

Seven years and two additional years later, her eldest Emily was eleven and her youngest August was four. They had decided that Christmas dinner was to be celebrated every year at Rachel’s mother's, and Easter was for Evan’s sister. That Christmas dinner was chaotic with five children running around. August had started his faze of going through everything in the house and had already emptied three of her mother’s kitchen cabinets. Rachel was just glad that her mother was taking all the chaos in stride. Rachel did not realize when she lost sight of August, but one moment he was banging on pots and the next moment he was bringing her a baggy of pills complaining that the candy grandma kept in her jewelry box was not sweet at all.

Rachel did not know how she got from her mother’s dining table sitting with Mark to the hospital bench sitting with Evan. Everything she heard sounded as though she was drowning. When her head finally broke the surface of the water, all she could think was ‘I should’ve known better’. They stayed at the hospital for three days, and every day Mark called them multiple times. On the drive home, Rachel finally answered and learned that Clarissa had been taken back to his brother's facility. This time, the police were adamant about making an arrest, but with no charges pressed and with multiple professionals citing Clarissa as being ‘mentally unstable’ and ‘chronically depressed’ since her late husband's death, the woman stayed out of jail. 

After years of trying, Mark seemed to give up her mother and moved to the other side of the country. It seemed the man truly realized how hopeless it was to wait on Clarissa Blake. Rachel stayed updated on his life through social media, and five years after moving away that poor old man finally had a new girlfriend. She had three children, two of whom were married and her eldest also had his children. Emily had graduated high school and wanted to travel the country for the summer, which eventually became a permanent thing for her when she met her ‘van life’ boyfriend. Evan went on to become a history professor and Rachel quit her job to start up her own art business selling paintings online. It was more of a pastime as she was more focused on homeschooling August. 

It seemed as though everyone had truly moved on in their lives from Clarissa Blake. In her youth, Rachel felt sorry for her mother. Excused her actions as her way of dealing with the loss of her father. After becoming a mother herself and seeing Clarissa’s addiction harm her own child, it opened her eyes. There is no excuse for putting one’s child in harm's way. Clarissa had once shared with her that she started using a year after her father’s death. 

Rachel remembered her father's death quite vividly, the television playing football in the background and illuminating her father in the dark living room. There was foam coming out of his mouth, his eyes rolled back. She was eleven when she came upon the sight, which meant her mother started using when her only child was twelve. Her mother was bringing drugs into a house with a child. As a daughter Rachel had given her many chances, but as a mother she wished only the deepest depths of hell on that woman.