The Grown Ups (16 page)

Quickly she put the phone down and reached for her bra and shirt, dressing as if the house were on fire. She calculated what it would cost her to miss her classes the following day, when the next Amtrak left for Boston, whether she could get a hold of Michael. Tomorrow night was their only time together for the next ten days and he had hinted at something special.

She grabbed the phone. “Josh, go find out what you can. Be a bulldog, make something up, I don't care. But don't give up and don't let them put you off no matter what. Tell them I'm on my way. And then call me back. I'm headed to Penn Station. Can you do that?” She reached for the bag that she kept for overnight shifts at the hospital and double-checked that she still had a stick of deodorant and an extra toothbrush and toothpaste in the zippered compartment. She yanked open a dresser drawer for a change of underwear and shirt. She had no idea how long
she would be there. Damnit. She did not want to see her father. “Josh?”

“I'm here, I'm here.”

“Can you do what I asked?”

“Yes, but I already told you I—”

“Damnit.” Suzie cut him off. “Try harder, Josh. Try fucking harder. Call me back. Okay? Call me back the second you know anything.”

He mumbled something and hung up. Suzie grabbed her bag and headed out the door.

The ER entrance
at Beth Israel was insane even at five o'clock in the morning, and so Suzie cut Josh some slack. Her brother had called about half an hour after she got on the train with the news that her mother was being charged with an OUI, third offense. Her blood alcohol was twice the legal limit. She had pulled into the wrong driveway and run over a child's bike and banged into a garage door, so there was property damage, but thankfully no human damage other than to herself.

Suzie hadn't been able to talk to Michael at all, which she expected. She'd left him two voice mails, one in which she said where she was going and another that said what had happened. She had been working off very little sleep and her second large black coffee by the time of the second message, and she hoped she had at least been coherent.

When the elevator doors opened she saw her brother directly across from her, leaning against the wall, his hands shoved into his front pockets, ankles crossed, his chin touching his chest. If anyone could sleep standing up in a busy hospital corridor it would be Josh. Suzie approached him slowly, afraid if she startled him he'd fall over. “Hey,” she said softly. “I made it.”

Josh looked up and blinked. He reached out and touched Suzie on the shoulder. “You're here.”

“Where is she?”

Josh yawned, pushed off from the wall, and jutted his chin to the left.

“Does she know I'm coming?”

“She's out of it. They gave her something to sleep.”

“Okay.”

“They think she has some internal injuries, I think. I don't know, they're not really clear.”

Suzie reached over and squeezed his forearm. She felt bad about yelling at him before. “We'll figure it out. Okay?”

Josh nodded and yawned again.

“You're alone?”

“He's not here.”

“You talked to him?”

He shook his head. “Nah.” He touched Suzie's elbow and they started down the hall. “He hasn't called me back.”

Their mother was
unconscious and handcuffed to the gurney. Suzie knew from her own med school rotations that police jurisdiction applied whether in the hospital or not. She had seen her share of handcuffs on a wide range of patients. But this was her mother.

She moved closer to the bed. She hadn't been home in over a year and a half. Even though she tried to call home at least once a week, the last few months had been insane. The best she could remember was talking to her mother on her birthday, and that would have been two months ago.

Looking at her mother now, Suzie could see how much physical deterioration had occurred. Her mother had always been
small-boned, but now she seemed to barely exist beneath the sheet. There were several deep lacerations on her face, one above her left eyebrow and another on her chin, and her skin had the telltale yellow pall of liver damage. Her hair, which had always been thick and dark, was wiry and nearly all gray. If Josh hadn't been there, Suzie would have thought she had the wrong room.

She looked at her watch. The night shifts were beginning to wind down; she knew most nurses would be at the desk making their last notes on charts in preparation for the morning shifts and doctors' rounds. There was probably nothing to be found out until then, so she turned to Josh and said, “Let me buy you breakfast.”

Over yet another
cup of coffee, Suzie said, “What's been going on?”

Josh shrugged as he finished chewing a large bite of bagel. “I only got home from school two days ago. I think I surprised Mom. The calendar on the kitchen counter hasn't been turned since March.”

Suzie blew on her coffee.

“The house looks pretty bad.”

Suzie nodded. If her twenty-year-old brother had noticed the state of the house, things must be far worse than she imagined.

“Eli got home before me and paid some of the bills. I think the cable got shut off and he wanted to watch a game, so he took Mom's checkbook and paid off the gas company, the cable, the electric. If Dad didn't pay for school we probably would have been asked to leave already.”

Suzie ignored his last remark. She felt the familiar reaction flaring up. She had been angry her entire life. In the years since she had left home she had tried so hard to reverse that, and yet
here she was again. She picked up her coffee and took a large swallow. “Do you have any idea where Mom was going? Or coming from when she got in the accident?” The last two OUIs had been misdemeanor offenses. Her mother had gone to counseling, safe driving classes, and some sort of community service that Suzie couldn't immediately recall. But Suzie wasn't so sure the third wouldn't carry a more severe penalty, maybe even jail time. She would have to call the lawyer.

Joshua wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then fumbled for a napkin. “There was a carton with vodka in the car, so likely she had gone to the liquor store. I didn't even know she had left the house, honestly. If she needed the booze I would have gone for her. I would have driven her.”

Suzie shook her head and sighed. She couldn't believe that they had gotten to the place where providing their mother with the alcohol was preferable to getting her to stop drinking. “She's going to drink herself to death.”

Joshua swallowed hard. “Don't be mad at me, please. I called Dad because I panicked. I know you don't want him to be involved, but he is, Suzie.”

She shook her head. “That's your choice, not mine. He's unreliable. He's manipulative. He's a liar.”

Joshua flinched. “It's not like I don't know what he's done. But Mom . . .”

“What? What about Mom?” Suzie lowered her voice. “He's not going to save her, Joshie, he's not.” She hesitated again when she saw the defeat in his posture. “You have an entirely different relationship. He always treated me just like Mom. He likes his women subservient and obedient, and I am neither. Let's just fix whatever we can, Josh. We have to leave him out of it.”

By midmorning Suzie
had a throbbing headache and three missed calls from Michael. She left him a quick voice mail to let him know she was still trying to sort things out. She had been talking for what seemed like days to the doctors; their lawyer, William Bennett; the police; and briefly her mother, who was roused to acknowledge consent of her situation. Suzie had been standing at the end of her mother's bed, and when their eyes made contact her mother smiled vacantly, revealing yellowing teeth. Even though her mother said Suzie's name, Suzie wasn't sure her mother knew who she was.

The medical consensus seemed to be cirrhosis of the liver, advanced enough that Sarah was experiencing disorientation and confusion. The doctors wouldn't know how far gone she was until she really dried out and started a course of treatment. William Bennett seemed to think he could get her into a rehab facility to deter a medical jail facility. He had already approached the neighbors whose garage door and bike Sarah Epstein had destroyed. They had agreed to a check for damages and seemed not to want to press charges.

According to William, who pulled a sheet of rehab facilities out of his briefcase, they could get Sarah into a place as soon as twenty-four hours from now. Suzie's father still provided her mother with an excellent insurance policy; some of these programs were covered in full. William was going to pull strings for availability and then get back to Suzie. Suzie had no idea how he dealt with the arraignment or any of the other legal details, but she was too exhausted to even think about it.

By noon her mother's twist-tie handcuffs had been removed and she was coherent enough to respond when they told her what was about to happen. She had nothing to say when she found out
she would be transferred to a facility the following morning for an indefinite stay. Suzie thought it was just as well. She'd had enough of her mother's histrionics to last a lifetime.

She and Josh drove home in silence. Suzie fidgeted in the passenger seat, unable to sit still, and approached the house with an increasing sense of dread. She hadn't spoken to Eli at all, but Josh had finally been in touch with him and he was at home waiting for them. All Suzie wanted was to take a bath and a nap. But she doubted she was going to get either one of those things anytime soon.

The first thing that she saw as they turned down the block was the overwhelming jungle that had once been her mother's carefully tended gardens. To look at it you would never know it had once been meticulously and obsessively cared for. But if there was one good thing to say about the bramble and chaos of the gardens, it was that at least it took your eyes away from the mess of the house. The shingles on the house had weathered and curled like cornflakes, and the shutters, gap-toothed in sections, needed to be either replaced or painted.

Eli met them at the front door. Suzie noticed that Josh didn't even try to open the garage door, which meant that it was either broken or overrun with stuff. Eli towered over Suzie, and when he moved to give her an awkward hug, she felt the hardness of his arms and chest and was shocked that he was so grown up. “Sorry about last night,” he mumbled.

Suzie stepped back and shot him a look, but Eli's remorse seemed genuine. She shrugged. “We didn't all need to stand at her bedside. There will be plenty of time for that.” She pushed past her brothers and into the hallway. It was obvious Eli had made an attempt at cleaning. The surfaces had been cleared, and
the windows were open to the fresh air. It did nothing to hide the shabbiness, but at least it wasn't horrifying.

She could tell Eli was watching her take it all in. He said, “I've got about thirty garbage bags piled high in the garage. I guess I have to see if I can get someone to pick them up.” He paused. “Your room was actually in pretty good shape. It was stuffy but untouched. I don't think Mom ever goes in there.” He waited for her to say something. When she didn't he added, “I got rid of all of the booze.”

“There was booze in the house? Why did she go out, then?”

Eli looked at her like she had asked a stupid question, and Suzie probably had. He had likely found the bottles their mother had hidden and then forgotten about.

Suzie's throat was scratchy and hot. She didn't want to seem ungrateful for what her brother had attempted to do, but she couldn't stand up anymore. She moved past them down the long hallway to her room, kicked off her shoes, and fell facedown onto her bed. A faint breeze from the open windows lifted the curtains, exposing the splintered wooden frame. Sounds of a suburban spring afternoon drifted in: a neighbor's sprinkler, a basketball hitting asphalt, a child crying. Suzie wasn't sure if it was the influence of being back in her teenage room, but all she wanted to do for a little while was disappear.

The three of them went back to the hospital during evening visiting hours. Suzie wasn't planning on going but then, with a pang of empathy, thought it might be nice for her mother to see her children together.

Sarah Epstein was sitting up propped by pillows, her long, bony fingers picking at the woven cotton blanket around her bloated midsection. Eli and Josh had been ahead of Suzie, so she didn't realize until they parted that their father was sitting in a chair next to the bed. When she saw him she took a step back.

“Suzie Q,” her father said.

Suzie ignored his greeting and looked at her mother. Her eyes seemed brighter, more alert, probably due in part to the meds. “How are you feeling, Mom?”

“Better,” Sarah said quietly. “I wish I knew you were coming. I need some clothes. For tomorrow.” Her voice was thin and raspy.

Suzie wanted to scream at her mother to stop playing the victim. But instead she nodded and said, “We can do that, don't worry.”