Authors: Carmen Rodrigues
“Sarah, I know this is hard for you, but can you try? Ellie was your best friend. I’m sure you’re incredibly confused right now. Can we talk about that a little?”
This is not a subject I want to talk about, but it
is
a subject I
have
to talk about. Tomorrow I’ll be released from the hospital, and before they discharge me, I have to perform this song and dance. “It’s sad, and I’m really upset about it,” I say finally.
Concerned Therapist motions for me to continue. Because it’s true, I say, “It was an accident, a stupid accident.” Then I stop talking, because here it is again, the bubble in my chest. The last time I felt it was when I overheard the doctors tell my parents, “You’re lucky she’s alive. An overdose like this . . . Well, she’s lucky things didn’t turn out for her the way they did for her friend.”
This isn’t true—this whole overdose business. At least not the way the doctors make it sound. I tried to explain this to one of my doctors, but all he did was nod politely, like he didn’t believe me. And that made me hold on to this truth: I don’t have to explain anything to anyone. I just have to tell them enough to be released.
Stoic.
That’s the word I keep putting in my mind. I hold it there like a ball suspended in midair. It takes a lot of energy to keep a ball in midair when you’re not using your hands. When you’re just using your mind, it’s a miracle if you can get the ball off the ground.
And so that’s what I do: I use all my energy to stoically stare at this woman’s pinched face, but after a while it doesn’t seem so pinched. That’s because she continues to speak to me in that encouraging way of hers. And her face starts to seem kind and generous. And my heart breaks open a little and comes into contact with the thoughts that pop into my head:
How can Ellie be dead? And where does that minute go, that minute that separates life from death? I want those sixty seconds back.
Concerned Therapist studies me. “Tell me about the accident, Sarah.”
“We did this before,” I remind her, and luckily her pinched face returns.
“But tell me again,” she says.
“Because . . .” The word fades, like I don’t have the strength to make it whole, and I hate myself for sounding weak in front of her.
“Because?” Concerned Therapist says. Her bony shoulders curve forward. Her hand flickers at her side. I wonder if she wants to reach out to me. “Sarah, this is a safe place. You can say anything.”
This is the big lie adults tell you: that you can say anything. But the minute you say anything about anything, you’re given this lecture about how you can make your life better and what you should do but aren’t doing. And you’re told how
you
screwed it up and what
they’re
going to do to make it better. And how this will be the absolute last time they help you, and isn’t it time you grew up already?
I could even hear my mom’s voice whispering in my ear:
It’s simple, Sarah. A + B + C = Problem solved.
So I don’t say anything. Instead I close my eyes, and even though I don’t want it, Ellie is there. And it’s five days before, and she’s twirling and laughing and holding the pills. And she’s calling out to me. She’s saying,
Catch up, Sarah. Catch up.
“Sarah?” Concerned Therapist places her hand lightly on my
arm. Goose bumps spread across my flesh. “Are you okay?” she asks, but I hold still.
I hold still, and when I am composed, I say, “It was an accident. I’m sorry about Ellie, but we never meant for any of this to happen. We were just being stupid. We just—”
It is here that I put my hand to my mouth. The therapist hands me a tissue and nods her approval. The bubble in my chest expands but does not burst. It holds steady. Waiting.
* * *
There is one solid truth in my life: When visiting hours are over, Glenn will still come to see me.
Glenn isn’t my biological dad—no, that man abandoned me before I was born—but he’s my
real dad
and so I call him Dad, because he’s always been there for me. When I look at him, I see all these pictures. Pictures of him in his marines uniform the day he married my mom, my life still forming in her swollen belly. Pictures of him at my third birthday party, our hands covered in sticky white icing. Pictures of him at the births of my younger sisters, his real daughters—first Jessie, then Meg, then Mattie. Even now, I snap a picture of this moment to place in my internal box of proof that Glenn loves me.
My dad is a handsome man with large eyes and limbs as solid as tree trunks. He understands that I haven’t looked at
anyone in days. He says, “I should have been here. I should’ve known.”
“She can come home tomorrow, Glenn.” That’s my mom speaking. She’s not at all like my dad. She’s small, with blond hair, pale skin, and nervous hands. Mom hates her nervous hands. For a second she stands beside my dad, her hands buried deep in her pockets. But before long she’s tidying up the space and making small talk. She says things like, “How are you today? Did you sleep well? Do you need something? Look at that tree outside. Isn’t it lovely? Tommy asked after you. Isn’t that nice? Do you need more pillows? I can ask the nurse for more pillows. Why is it impossibly cold in here?”
“Sarah.” Here is my dad, again. His smile is cautious. “You can come home tomorrow. That’s good, isn’t it?”
And here’s where I nod. I do this so they can see I’m responsive. “Responsive” is a big word in the junior psych ward. If I stop acting responsive, I might never get out. So I’m careful to respond and to hide that I’ve been crying a lot. But when I speak, my throat is parched. “I want to go to Ellie’s funeral so I can say good-bye.” These are difficult words to string together. Especially the part about my best friend’s funeral. Especially the part about good-bye.
There is a silence that’s not silent at all. It’s exchanged
glances and shuffling hands. My father clears his throat. “Sarah,” he says. “Sarah, that’s not going to be possible—”
And my mom gently touches the side of my face and says, “Honey . . .” But the word is soft, more like a prayer.
Then Dad says, “Sarah . . .”
And I say, “I’m here.” Because I think that’s what they need me to say, but now my dad is looking beyond me. He’s looking outside the room to the beech tree visible from my hospital window. I look too. The branches are like a thousand arms pleading with the sky. When I look back, my dad is watching me. He swipes a quick hand beneath his eyes. Then he calls to my mom like he doesn’t know what to say. He says, “Serena . . .”
“Glenn . . .” Mom places her hand on my dad’s neck. He is the person she understands best, not the rest of us, who came from her body. I think we’re a mystery to her. “Just tell her.”
And this is where he looks at me. He rests his palm on the back of my head. His hand encompasses my entire scalp, and there is safety in this knowledge that he can still fit parts of me beneath the callused strength of his fingertips. He says, “Ellie was cremated. They’re spreading her ashes today before her mother leaves on some kind of retreat.”
And then there is silence and gasping. Minutes later, I realize I am the one gasping. I make myself stop. I tell them I am sorry.
“It’s okay” is what my dad says.
“You’ll get better. Give it time,” is what my mom says.
We are silent for a long while. We are silent until we are a calm, picture-perfect family: a good mommy, a good daddy, a good daughter. And in the silence I suddenly understand the many ways a person can die but still be alive.
That year Dad left us, I pressed my ear t
o
the wall
b
etween
o
ur
b
edr
oo
ms, listening t
o
y
o
ur quiet cries.
AFTER. NOVEMBER.
Mom says, “There’s no way you could have known.” After I came home from NYU, after I accompanied her to the morgue, after she dug manicured nails into the center of my palm, after the funeral arrangements were made, after the viewing of my sister’s body, Mom finally looks at me and says, “Jake . . .” Then she taps her foot nervously against the bottom of the sofa and looks away.
Her eyes are bloodshot, but she is uncharacteristically sober, and because of this and her grief, her hands shake cigarette ash everywhere, coating the beige carpet with a thin layer of gray. She says, “There’s no way you could have known.” Then she lays a cold compress against her skin.
I look away, toward Ellie’s room. The door is locked, as if my mother wants to lock away the memory of that night when Tommy found Ellie’s body cold and motionless on the bedroom floor. One part of me is relieved the room is inaccessible, but another part wants to break that door down and bury myself in the pieces of her abandoned life.
Mom scoots closer on the sofa, presses her wet hand over mine. I try, like always, not to cringe. I don’t confess,
I knew something was wrong.
I don’t confess,
It was my fault.
Instead I watch her eyes search the room for an anchor, something to weigh her down, and I think about the slight tremor that takes her voice and spins it like a Ferris wheel.
“I want to scream,” Mom says quietly, but I know she won’t. She doesn’t know how. She’s a doctor, a mother, and an alcoholic, but, surprisingly, none of these pursuits ever prompt her to raise her voice, not at me or my sister or any of her three idiot husbands. My mother turns things inward, so that her insides must be as black and murky as a landfill.
She clears her throat. “Your father will be here for the service tomorrow. We’ll bury Ellie’s ashes underneath a tree, beside that creek she loved when she was little.” Her voice reduces then, suddenly the density of decomposing leaves. She struggles for breath, but I do not turn my head. “Do you remember Falling Creek?”
I cover her hand with mine and say, “It’s a good spot, Mom. A real good spot.” She starts to cry then. Her shoulder slumps against mine; her tears hit the collar of my shirt. A low moan emerges from her lips. I wait for it to grow, to swirl around the room until it settles across our shoulders like a shroud. But the whimper stays low, the frequency of a turned-down radio. Eventually it stops, but not the crying. The crying remains.
BEFORE. JUNE.
The thick black smoke from the U-Haul’s exhaust pipe burned the sides of my legs, and Ellie stood, swinging her willowy arms, scratching her nose. I was leaving her to go to college, and she was edgy, her cigarette nearly gone. She tossed it to the ground, stomped it out with the tip of her flip-flop, and said, “Can’t you go to community college here or something? Why do you have to go so far? Why NYU?”
“Ellie, please.”
“I just don’t understand why you have to leave so early. Why can’t you leave in August like everyone else?”
“Because,” I said. “I have to take those summer classes. You know they told me I have to.” She was silent because she knew all of this to be true. That a nearly perfect SAT score and solid essay earned me my spot at NYU, but Admissions, worried about
my spotty GPA, insisted I take summer classes to “improve my chances of succeeding at the collegiate level.” What she didn’t know was how grateful I was to leave early.
Our uncle was in the U-Haul, impatiently waiting. I glanced at him, took in his newly shaved head, the bright white of his eyes, and remembered how only years before, after the holidays I would find him slumped over the kitchen table, still too drunk to drive, his hand clutching the carcass of a cigarette.
My uncle was an asshole when he drank, and during those moments of his incapacitation, I’d take my revenge. Prop my feet dangerously close to the curl of his lip. Set the sole of my shoe against that slip of pink flesh. Still he slept. So I’d slide a hand into his back pocket, steal whatever I could find. Then I’d ride my bike to the bookstore. Buy a graphic novel or a CD. And when I returned, he’d still be there, his hand still clutching.
Now he was sober. Had been ever since he met his second wife, Matilda. And he was blowing the horn again and giving me a look that said,
Come on already
. And then he leaned out the window and yelled, “Jake, hurry up already!”
“You know I have to go.” I looked past Ellie’s sad eyes to Sarah and Tommy, who stood just a short distance away, holding hands. And even farther away, behind them, stood my mom with her husband, the latest—and, hopefully, last—asshole.
I don’t know why, because you would think seeing Tommy with Sarah or seeing my mom with the jerk would make me want to leave, but in that moment I realized leaving was harder than I imagined. Still, there was a part of me that just wanted out and away from all of this confusion. From my on-and-off-again situation with Sarah. From those moments between us that seemed real but dissolved in memory. From the drama of Ellie, her moodiness and urges to self-destruct. From the weirdness that had started with Tommy ever since he and Sarah began hooking up last year.
“Ellie, I’ve got to get out of here.” I touched her arm, wrapped my hand around her wrist and swung it back and forth, like when we were kids and touching each other wasn’t so awkward.
Behind her, Tommy said, “Jake, your uncle, man. He’s, like, hitting the steering wheel and shit.” I glanced at my uncle. He was hitting the steering wheel with his balled-up fist.