Sometimes I Lie

It is now the Wednesday after Christmas. Amber has been hospitalized for two days. She is relieved to hear her parents arrive. Their love, she admits, has been difficult, “the kind of love that makes me feel sad and empty, a love based on habit and dependence; it isn’t real” (64). Although their presence in the hospital room is comforting, Amber worries that she may never come out of the coma, that she will be trapped. In and out of consciousness, she dreams about the accident, feeling the cold rain, seeing the tree and the little girl in the pink dressing gown, and hearing the voices of the emergency rescue team. Then she is aware a man is whispering in her ear, “You did this to yourself” (68).

The next morning, Amber recalls a conversation she had with her mother back when she and Paul were trying to have a baby. Her own mother had told her that maybe she was not cut out for motherhood: “You have to put your children first. You’ve always been very selfish” (81). More shockingly, the mother reveals to Amber that she never wanted kids and that Amber herself was an accident: “I despised you” (82).