“Wow, what?” I say, unnerved by the way he is studying me.
“Most people would phrase it differently, use words like
love
or
dating
or
boyfriend
or
relationship
to describe someone you slept with for years.”
“I’m a journalist. I pick words carefully. I slept with him. I neither dated him nor
loved him.”
“You said you’d been in love once. Maybe.”
I do not like the turn this conversation has taken. Don’t I already look pathetic
enough with the DUI? I shrug. “I was nineteen. A kid.”
“What happened?”
“I didn’t realize I loved him until I was almost forty.” I try to smile. “Story of
my life. He married a woman named DeeAnna about six years ago.”
“That must have been hard. So what was the other Grant like?”
“Flashy, I guess. I got a lot of flowers and jewelry, but not…”
“Not what?”
“Not the kind of present you give a woman you want to grow old with.”
“What would that be?”
I shrug. How would I know? “Slippers, maybe, or a flannel nightgown.” I sigh. “Look,
Desmond, I’m really tired.” It’s been a terrible day. “Thanks for coming, though.”
I see him set his cup down on the coffee table and turn slowly toward me. He takes
me by the hand and pulls me to my feet. The way he looks at me makes it hard to breathe.
He
sees
me somehow, impossibly, sees my vulnerability and my fear. “You’re like the Lady
of Shalott, Tully, watching the world from the safety of your high-rise tower. You’ve
done it all, succeeded beyond most people’s wildest dreams. So why don’t you have
anyone to call on Christmas Eve or anywhere to be?”
“Leave,” I say tiredly. I hate him for his question, for exposing my loneliness and
my fear, and for acting like I could do something differently. “Please.” My voice
breaks a little, cracks. All I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep.
Tomorrow will be a better day.
Eighteen
By June of 2010, I know I am in trouble, but I don’t know how to care. Depression
has descended like a bell jar around me. I feel detached from everything and everyone.
Even my weekly Wednesday night phone calls from Margie fail to lift my spirits.
I climb wearily out of bed and find that I’m lethargic as I walk to my bathroom. How
many sleeping pills did I take last night? It scares me that I can’t remember.
I take a Xanax to calm my nerves and get in the shower. Honestly, the Xanax isn’t
working so well anymore; I need to take more and more to get the same calming effect.
I know this should bother me, and it does, in a distant, intellectual way.
Afterward, I pull my wet hair into a ponytail and dress in a pair of sweats. My head
is throbbing now.
I try to eat something—it will be good for me—but my stomach is in such a knot I’m
afraid I’ll throw it back up.
The morning crawls by slowly. I try reading a book and watching TV and even vacuuming.
Nothing diverts my attention from how bad I feel.
Maybe a glass of wine will help. Just one. And it is past noon.
It does help, a little. So does the second.
I am deciding—again—to quit drinking when my cell phone rings. I see the caller ID
and dive for the phone as if it is Jesus Christ calling.
“Margie!”
“Hello, Tully.”
I sink down to the sofa, realizing how much I needed to hear from a friend. “It’s
so good to hear from you!”
“I’m in the city. I thought I’d drop by. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Let me in.”
I lurch to my feet, almost crying at how much this means to me. I really am a mess.
I will talk to Margie—my almost-mom. Maybe she can help me. “I’d love that.”
I disconnect the call and rush into the bathroom, where I dry my hair quickly and
put on enough product to bend steel. Then I put on makeup and dress in jeans and a
short-sleeved top. I am pathetically eager to see someone who loves me, to be welcomed
and wanted. I slip into a pair of flats. (I shouldn’t have had those two glasses of
wine; my balance isn’t quite good enough for heels.)
The doorbell rings and I run for it, opening the door.
There stands my mother, looking as thin and ragged as a piece of twine. She is dressed
like a refugee from a seventies commune: baggy pants, Birkenstock sandals, and one
of those embroidered Mexican tunic tops that I haven’t seen in years. Her gray hair
is fighting the leather strap she’s pulled it into; wisps float around her narrow,
wrinkled face. I am so bewildered by the sight of her that I don’t know what to say.
“Margie sent me,” she says. “But it was my idea. I wanted to see you.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s not coming. I’m the one who wanted to see you. I knew you wouldn’t open the
door for me.”
“Why are you here?”
She walks past me, comes into my home as if she has a right to be here.
In the living room, she turns to me. In a hesitant, gravelly voice, she says, “You
have a drug or alcohol problem.”
For a second, my mind goes utterly, terribly blank. I think,
I’ve been caught.
It’s horrifying and humiliating and I feel stripped bare and vulnerable and broken.
I back away, shaking my head. “No,” I say. “
No
. My medications are
prescribed
for me. You make it sound like I’m a drug addict.” I laugh at the idea of that. Does
she think I hang around street corners and score drugs and inject them into my veins
and slump to the street? I go to a
doctor
. I buy my drugs at Walmart, for God’s sake. And then I consider the source of this
accusation.
My mother steps forward. She looks out of place in my designer room. I can see all
the disappointments of my life in her wrinkles, in the sun spots on her cheeks. I
cannot remember a single time she held me or kissed me or told me she loved me. But
now she’s going to call me an addict and
help
me.
“I’ve been through rehab,” she says in a timid, uncertain voice. “I think—”
“You have no right to say anything to me,” I yell at her. “Not a thing, you understand
me? How
dare
you come to judge me?”
“Tully,” my mother says. “Margie says your voice has been slurred the last few times
she’s talked to you. I saw your mug shot on TV. I know what you’re going through.”
“Go away,” I say, my voice breaking.
“Why did you come to see me in Snohomish?”
“I’m writing a book about my life. Not that
you
know anything about it.”
“You had questions.”
I laugh and feel the start of tears, which makes me angry. “Yeah. A lot of good it
did me.”
“Tully, maybe—”
“No maybes. Not from you. Not again. I can’t take it.” I grab her by the arm and drag
her out of the condo—she weighs nothing. Before she can say anything, I shove her
out into the hall and slam the door shut. Then I go into my bedroom and climb into
bed, pulling the covers over my head. I hear my own breathing in the dark.
She is wrong. I don’t have a problem. So what if I need Xanax to keep the panic attacks
at bay and Ambien to sleep? So what if I like a few glasses of wine at night? I can
control all of it, stop whenever I want to.
But, damn, I have a headache now. It’s
her
fault I’m in pain. My mother. She and Margie have betrayed me. That is the cruelest
part of all. I expect nothing from my mother, less than nothing, but Margie has been
one of the few safe harbors of my life. To have her betray me like this is a blow
I can’t handle. At the thought, my anger dissolves into a bleak despair.
I roll sideways and open my nightstand drawer and reach for the Xanax.
* * *
You think it was a betrayal?
Kate says beside me, and her voice brings me out of my memories, pulls me up like
a leash snap.
I remember where I really am. In a hospital bed, connected to a ventilator, a hole
drilled in my head, watching my life flash before my eyes.
“I was in trouble,” I say quietly. And they tried to help me.
How did I not know that? How did I miss the obvious?
You see now, don’t you?
“Stop stop stop. I don’t want to do this anymore.” I roll onto my side and close my
eyes.
You need to remember.
“No. I need to forget.”
September 3, 2010
2:10
P.M.
In the hospital conference room, the police detective stood with his legs spread far
enough apart to hold him steady if an earthquake struck. He had a small notepad open
and was reviewing his notes.
Johnny glanced around the quiet room. Most of the chairs were empty, pushed in close
to the table. Two Kleenex boxes stood at the ready in the middle of the table. Beside
him, Margie was trying her best to sit tall and straight, but this had been a tiring
vigil; she kept slumping in defeat. He’d called her early this morning; she and Bud
had been on a plane from Arizona by nine-fifteen. Now Bud was at Johnny’s house, waiting
for the boys to come home from school. Marah was in with Tully.
He and Margie had been in this room before. Here, they’d been told that the surgeons
had failed to get clean margins on Kate’s cancer and that it had spread to her lymph
nodes and that there were quality-of-life decisions to be made. He reached over to
hold Margie’s cold, big-knuckled hand.
The detective cleared his throat.
Johnny looked up.
“The toxicology report won’t be in for a while, but a search of Ms. Hart’s residence
revealed several prescription drugs—Vicodin, Xanax, and Ambien, primarily. We haven’t
found any witnesses to the accident yet, but our estimate, based on the crime scene
analysis, is that she was driving in excess of fifty miles per hour on Columbia Street,
heading toward the waterfront, in the rain. She hit a concrete stanchion at a high
rate of speed.”
“Were there skid marks?” Johnny asked. He heard Margie draw in a breath, and he knew
that this question hadn’t occurred to her. Skid marks before a collision meant that
the driver had tried to stop. No skid marks meant something else.
The detective looked at Johnny. “I don’t know.”
Johnny nodded. “Thanks, Detective.”
After the detective left, Margie turned to Johnny. He saw the tears in her eyes and
regretted his question. His mother-in-law had already suffered so much. “I’m sorry,
Margie.”
“Are you saying … Do you think she drove into it on purpose?”
The question stripped Johnny of his strength, left him exposed.
“Johnny?”
“You’ve seen her more recently than I have. What do you think?”
Margie sighed. “I think she felt very alone in the last year.”
Johnny got to his feet and mumbled an excuse about needing to use the bathroom and
left the room.
In the hallway, he leaned against the wall and hung his head. When he finally looked
up, he saw a door across the hall from him, and a sign:
CHAPEL.
When was the last time he’d been in a church?
Kate’s funeral
.
He crossed the hall and opened the door. It was a small, narrow room, utilitarian-looking
at best, with a few pews and a makeshift altar at the front. The first thing he noticed
was the quiet. The second was the girl seated off to the right in the front pew. She
was slumped down so far, all he could see was a tuft of gelled pink hair.
He moved forward slowly, his footsteps lost on the carpeted floor. “May I join you?”
Marah looked up sharply. He could see that she’d been crying. “Like I could stop you.”
“Do you want to stop me?” he asked quietly. He had made so many mistakes with her,
he didn’t want to add to the pile by pushing her too hard when she’d come here to
be alone.
She stared at him a long time and then slowly shook her head. She looked so young
right now, like a kid at Halloween, dressing up for attention.
He sat down cautiously, waited a while before he said, “Does praying help you?”
“Not so far.” Tears filled her eyes. “Do you know what I did to Tully last week?”
“No.”
“It’s my fault she’s here.”
“It’s not your fault, baby. It was a car accident. There’s nothing you could have
done—”
“It’s your fault, too,” Marah said, sounding miserable.
To that, Johnny didn’t know what to say. He knew what his daughter meant; he felt
the same thing. They’d let Tully down, cast her out of their life, made her feel alone
,
and here she was.
“I can’t
stand
this,” Marah cried. She bolted to her feet and headed for the door.
“Marah!” he yelled.
At the door, she paused and looked back.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said.
“Too late,” she said quietly, and left the room. The door banged shut behind her.
Johnny got slowly to his feet. Feeling every one of his fifty-five years, he went
back out to the waiting room, where he found Margie seated in the corner, knitting.
He sat down beside her.
“I tried calling Dorothy again,” she said after a while. “No answer.”
“Will she get the note you had Bud put on her door?”
Margie seemed to hunch down at that. “Sooner or later,” she said quietly. And then,
“I hope it’s sooner.”
September 3, 2010
2:59
P.M.
On this cool September afternoon, leaves were falling all over the town of Snohomish,
on the roadsides and in parking lots and on riverbanks. As Dorothy Hart stood in her
stall at the farmers’ market, staring out over the view that had become her life,
she saw little bits of beauty. The last wild roses for sale in Erika’s red buckets
across the way, a young woman with a plump, curly-haired baby on her hip tasting some
of Kent’s smoked salmon, a little boy sipping homemade cider from a Dixie cup. The
farmers’ market was a bustle of color and activity and sights and sounds. Only a few
short blocks from the historic center of town, this lively market sprang up on a patch
of pavement every Friday from noon to five: white tent roofs rose above it all like
ice-cream peaks; beneath them, a dazzling, glittering array of fruits and nuts, berries,
herbs, vegetables, crafts, and honey. The patchwork colors were gorgeous in this fading
autumnal light.