She reached for the phone, then hung up at the sound of the dial tone. She should be in her car already. She should be approaching the freeway. If she went right now she could make up for the time she had lost. But went where? Where was Liz? What she needed was to call Brody back and ask for more information. But would he be home? Wouldn’t he be with Liz, wherever she was? And if they were together, why hadn’t Liz placed the call? This again, insistent now: why hadn’t Liz placed the call?
Because she couldn’t.
Sarabeth felt a wave of dizziness. She sat up, then quickly lay down again, her heart hammering. She could not see Liz that upset. She couldn’t.
This isn’t about you!
she screamed at herself, but terror came down over her anyway, and she gave herself up to it, trembling, panicked, paralyzed.
12
S
unday night was the first night Liz and Brody were both home at bedtime. She rummaged through her dresser, past her pajamas, until she found what she hadn’t known she was seeking: her old gray knit pants from the Allen Allen catalog, so worn that the so-called cotton cashmere was as pilled as real cashmere, and the seat and knees ballooned. She pulled them on, then found a ragged T-shirt for a top.
She got into bed next to Brody. Joe had gone up early, pleading homework; he’d been asleep when she went to say goodnight.
Brody turned off the light and rolled to face her. She lay still, letting the darkness settle, letting herself settle into the darkness. The exterior walls of the house felt too far away, and then, after a while, not quite so far. Brody put a hand on her shoulder, and she tried to force herself to relax. She would not make love, but she could be touched. And she could touch. She reached for his hand and held it. “I’m—”
“Shhh,” he said, “don’t,” and she withdrew her hand and turned away.
“It’s just,” he said, but then he fell silent, and she waited for more. After a while it was clear there would be no more, and she tried unsuccessfully to remember what she’d been going to say, but it had been replaced by anger.
“Sorry,” he said at last, and she waited for herself to soften, face him again, stroke his cheek. She didn’t.
“Sorry about what?” she said coldly.
“Never mind.”
“What?”
“That I don’t want to talk.”
“Who’s talking?”
“Liz.”
They were side by side, both on their backs, cold as corpses. She felt herself exhale heavily. He touched her hand, and in a second she was on top of him, pressing her mouth against his, straddling his leg and rubbing herself against his thigh until in almost no time she was about to come. She was incredibly aroused, gaping, half an inch from a firestorm. “Oh, God,” she cried, and she felt for his penis, but it was completely limp, and she let go. She ground herself against his leg again, and then she came with a loud, sighing groan.
She lay where she was, half on top of him, panting. “Sorry,” she said.
He stroked her back. “It’s OK.”
She reached for his penis again, but he caught her hand and held it away, and she moved off him and faced the wall. Outside, a tree branch scraped against the house, driven by the wind. She felt sticky, and not just between her legs. Had she showered today? She remembered combing her wet hair in front of the TV and the 49ers had been on, so evidently she had. Before leaving the hospital to come home, she’d asked Brody to call Sarabeth, but she’d forgotten to ask, when she returned, if he had done so. Obviously not.
Lauren’s liver was going to be OK, but Lauren—Lauren was not OK. Dr. Porter, the psychiatrist in charge, had said that she’d consider releasing her to Liz and Brody’s care, but she strongly recommended Lauren be admitted to the adolescent psych ward instead.
“For how long?” Liz had cried, and Dr. Porter had pulled her glasses from her nose and said, “Until she’s less of a danger to herself.”
At night the hospital was full of secrets, but in the morning the secrets were gone and it was just busy. Lauren wasn’t scared anymore, or she was scared in a different way, of the terrible real things that would happen rather than the terrible unreal things that wouldn’t. She would not be attacked in the dark. She would not suffocate in her sleep. But she would leave this room, in a few hours, and with school going on, going on without her, she would go to a place where there were crazy people.
In her peripheral vision she saw the woman whose job it was to watch her. The woman had a magazine, but Lauren didn’t want to turn her head to see if she was reading it. She didn’t want to look at her at all.
The woman was a “sitter.” It was hospital policy that someone watch Lauren to make sure she didn’t try to off herself, which was ridiculous because she wouldn’t do that
in a million years.
Girls burning themselves with lit cigarettes, boys pacing the halls and thinking they were God. It was going to be a nightmare. She’d have a roommate who’d probably sneak some guy in and fuck him while Lauren lay awake in the next bed, and some bitch of a nurse would dole out pills in little paper cups. And school would go on without her; it would go on and on.
She needed to get back—before people found out. She could say she’d gone on a business trip with her dad. Or she could say she’d had…pneumonia. Only how completely idiotic was that when she hadn’t even had a cold? She remembered math, Aimee Berman telling Mr. Pavlovich that she didn’t know the answer, Jeff at the water fountain, Jeff smirking. And then Thursday night at home, lying awake, thinking about…
He hadn’t meant it, the smirk—hadn’t meant that he knew everything about her feelings and found her and them disgusting. She blew everything out of proportion. Here, now, in the hospital: she was mortified. She’d heard there was an operation you could have to make you sweat less; was there one to make you blush less? Couldn’t someone sever some nerves? At once her wrists hurt, and she looked down at them, lying at her sides, wrapped in white bandages. It was almost as if they weren’t hers, except they hurt. At least she didn’t have to drink the stuff anymore. It had been so disgusting, thick and viscous and smelling like rotten eggs. A wave of nausea came over her just thinking about it: this hot, foul feeling in her stomach. She didn’t know how many times she’d puked the stuff up—when she did they made her drink more. Or they stuffed a tube in her nose and pumped it in. She’d had diarrhea like crazy. Her stomach boiled, and she thought, No, and then she barfed on herself.
She sat up and swung her legs to the side, but it was no use: she heaved and barfed again, all over her lap, her bare legs, the floor. The sitter was standing now, looking at Lauren with her pig face pink, eyes wide. Where were Lauren’s parents? Where where where?
“Go ahead,” Brody said, “take him if you want—that’s fine.”
Joe was upstairs getting his backpack, and Brody was watching Liz across the breakfast table, waiting for her to decide what she wanted. Minutes ago, she’d asked him to drive Joe, but now she thought maybe she would. Make up your mind! he thought. It’s not that big a deal!
“You know, maybe I actually
should,
” she said. “Since I drove him on Friday. To sort of—normalize things.”
They exchanged a look—nothing would normalize anything—but he played along. “Yeah, why don’t you? It might be good for you, too.”
“I think I will.” She went to her purse and got out her keys. “You’ll be ready when I get back?”
“Absolutely.”
Joe came into the kitchen, struggling with the zipper on his backpack, stopping at the table for a last bite of toast. “Ready,” he said to Brody.
“Actually, Mom’s going to take you.”
Joe’s face changed a little, a slight dimpling above his left eyebrow that signaled surprise, disappointment, something.
“That OK?” Brody said.
“Sure.”
“I don’t have to,” Liz said.
“God, it’s fine, can we just go?” Joe blushed and then said, in a softer voice: “I don’t want to be late.”
When they were gone Brody got up and cleared the table. He loaded the dishes into the dishwasher, wiped the counters. Apparently there would be paperwork at both ends; the transfer could take most of the day.
He went into his and Liz’s room. He yanked at the covers but stopped short of making the bed. He opened the curtains, then opened the window for good measure.
The outdoors is a big place to heat.
That was his mother, back when he was a kid. Even then he’d had a thing about fresh air. He stood at the open window, waited for the feel of the cold outside to reach him.
In five minutes Liz would be back. He found his laptop and logged into his e-mail. He’d checked his BlackBerry a few times over the weekend, scanned the sender names and subject lines, but he hadn’t read anything. Now he selected a few e-mails at random and just glanced. Kathy, his assistant: “…don’t know if you’ll be…” Fred Rodriguez from sales: “…unless we increase cross-sell activity…” Tim Hilliard at Secur-Soft: “…follow up on our conversation of…” Kathy again: “…really worried, know you’ll be in touch when…”
He heard the front door open. “Brody?” Liz called.
“In here.” He closed the laptop and set it aside. He was almost to the bedroom door when she appeared.
“Ready?” she said.
“Yeah.”
She stood there with her purse hanging from her forearm, a troubled look on her face.
“What?” he said.
“Should we be doing this? Is it the right thing?”
The psychiatrist had said hospitalization significantly reduced the likelihood of repetition, and that was enough for him. Though Lauren’s wails when she found out had nearly cut him open.
“Well,” he said doubtfully, “we could bring her home,” and to his relief Liz looked alarmed.
“I suppose we could,” she said. “But—”
“We already told her she was going.”
“Yeah.” She stayed still for a moment and then began digging around in her purse. “OK,” she said as she produced her keys. “We’d better go then.”
It was the worst day of Liz’s life. The place was shocking in the way the impossible could be shocking: Were she and Brody going to leave Lauren here? Leave her? In a room with barred windows? Near a lounge full of dinged tables and stained linoleum? Among kids who were so plainly sick it made Liz’s stomach hurt?
And there was a terrible smell—like maple syrup and gravy and urine combined.
At home afterward, the sky drained of color, Liz puttered around in the kitchen and did not answer the phone: not when her parents called, not when it was her brother John from Philadelphia, not when it was her brother Steve. Thank God for caller ID.
Lauren hadn’t even cried. They’d delivered her up for whatever would happen—talking, Dr. Porter had said, groups, support, help, the words themselves acquiring a kind of menace as they were spoken—and she’d barely looked at them when they left. “It’s not uncommon,” the intake nurse said, “for kids to clam up when they first get here.”
At dinner, Joe leaned over his food, chewing quickly, strands of wavy hair falling onto his forehead.
“Joe,” she said, suddenly unsure whether or not she’d told him about Thanksgiving.
He looked up. “Yeah?”
“We’re not having Thanksgiving. The dinner. With Steve and Kelly and the twins.”
“You told me.”
Across the table, Brody twirled a forkful of spaghetti. As he chewed he began right away to twirl another.
“It’ll still be Thanksgiving,” she said. “Obviously.”
Brody looked up. “I’m sure Joe wasn’t thinking the president would rescind it.”
“The president?” she said, her face warming.
“It’s a presidential order every year. This day of November shall be the Thanksgiving holiday.”
“It’s the fourth Thursday.”
“Not automatically. And I think it’s the fourth Thursday after the first Monday.”
“That would be automatic.”
“It’s proclaimed every year,” he said. “According to a formula.”
Joe cleared his throat, and she came to her senses. Bickering—how foolish. The question was what to do on Thursday: on Thanksgiving. She wished they had something other than the feast to mark the day, a habit of actually giving thanks somehow. Though perhaps that would be harder.
“What are Grandma and Grandpa doing?” Joe said.
Liz’s mother had been the first to mention it. “What should I tell Steve and Kelly?” The question had flustered Liz not because she hadn’t thought of it but because she had. She was ashamed of having wondered even briefly if they should go on with their plans.
“I guess they’ll be at the condo,” she told Joe.
“Can I go over there?”
“Is that what you’d like?”
Brody sent her a look across the table, but what was he trying to say? Nothing—what he’d been saying all day. He’d been silent on the drive to the hospital, silent on the drive back home.
She didn’t want Joe with her parents, she wanted him here, but she assumed that what she wanted was wrong and therefore in need of correction. So Joe should go. Or maybe they all should, she and Brody and Joe. Her mother had offered. But that felt wrong. Maybe Brody and Joe? She didn’t know where “should” was coming from—from how things felt or how they ought to be.
After dinner she went into her bedroom and closed the door. She had to call Sarabeth. She was glad Brody hadn’t—it was something she needed to do herself, for herself and for Sarabeth. When she said the words to Sarabeth she would cry, which was probably why she hadn’t called yet. Sarabeth would cry, too. For a moment, looking at the phone, she saw Sarabeth’s little house as a refuge, much as Joe seemed to see her parents’ condo; she imagined driving there now, telling Sarabeth not on the phone but face-to-face in Sarabeth’s living room. Sarabeth’s house was too small, though, too quirky-pretty. Arriving there tonight, with her monstrous news: Liz would feel grotesque, a giantess.
She punched in the familiar numbers and listened to the ring. “It’s me,” she said when Sarabeth answered.
There was a pause before Sarabeth said hi.
“Listen,” Liz said. “I have to—”
“I know I’m horrible,” Sarabeth said. “I’m so sorry.”
Puzzled, Liz hesitated for a moment, then started again. “I have something to tell you.”
“I know,” Sarabeth said. “There’s no excuse.”
“What do you mean?” Liz had the strangest feeling that Sarabeth meant for Lauren, for what Lauren had done—that there was no excuse for that. But that made no sense, because Sarabeth didn’t know. “I have something to tell you,” she said again. “Something bad.”
Sarabeth inhaled sharply. “Oh, no.”
“Lauren—” Liz said, but before she could say any more, Sarabeth burst into tears.
“Oh, no,” she cried. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”
Liz waited. In a moment, something would become clear. She was on the edge of the bed, and she reached for a small pillow and held it on her lap.
“How did she do it?”
“Do what?” Liz said.