It’s not particularly cold out, but I am shaking, so I crank up the heat. What the hell is wrong with me? My hand trembles while I touch up my lipstick in the rearview mirror.
Back home, I make it to my room in the guesthouse, undetected. I am exhausted. Every day is an exercise in faking happiness and sociability and enthusiasm for life, none of which I actually have.
I toss my keys on the nightstand and assess the glowing small lamp. It is supposed to be precisely in the middle, but for some reason, I cannot get it to stay there. It is clearly a few inches to the left of the center. I move it back to its spot. A routine check of my desk gives me pause. Something is wrong, but I can’t tell what. The clock tells me it is past midnight. I didn’t know that I’d been gone for so long.
Showering right now is a necessity because I must steam off the aftermath of Jay. The old tub doesn’t drain well, but I don’t mind because I find it comforting to stand in water while the scalding shower pours over me. It’s like I’m a child again, playing in puddles with my sister.
I take the shampoo bottle from the ledge and immediately notice how light it is. It’s empty, and I could have sworn that I just bought this a few days ago. Or maybe last week? It might have been longer. A month? The panic in my chest weighs heavily. I’m losing time, not properly tracking things—even the simple things, like shampoo. It’s concerning.
Tonight, I will work on polishing a final paper. It doesn’t matter that I’ve already gone over it a hundred times because I want to earn another A grade. I applied to other colleges and got into Wesleyan and Pomona, but my mother, of course, wouldn’t pay my tuition. I didn’t receive enough scholarship money to attend either, so I’m stuck at this local community college. Lucinda is only letting me live in the guesthouse because the money I did get won’t cover housing. She tells everyone that she, a single woman, is more than happy to support her daughter’s education, and, oh, what a blessing it is to have her girl still at home.
I pay rent with the money I make doing graphic design work. There is something satisfying in manipulating images. Clients keep finding me online—requesting graphics for websites, book covers, shirts, whatever—and I get to bury myself in design work and collect money. I like the anonymity. I also like that I’m very good at what I do.
Not to mention, I have been squirreling away money for the past three years.
The food I keep in the small fridge in my room doesn’t cost much. I can barely stand to eat most of the time anyway. I don’t have a stove here, and because the kitchen in the main house is off-limits to me, I have become an expert sandwich maker. After my father left, all food in her fridge, beyond the very basics, was labeled with her and Amy’s names to be sure I would not touch anything that was not mine.
Another thing I can’t get myself to touch is a large bank account, one my father left for me. I’m not taking anything from the man who pretended to be my hero and turned out to be my enemy. He broke my heart, and I will never forgive him for leaving.
I touch my bracelet—Adored. It’s such complete bullshit. He doesn’t adore me because he wouldn’t have left if he had. Adoration means that you stay, no matter what. So, I don’t adore him, and I don’t adore my mother or sister, but I stay. Someone has to get my mother to pay her bills. Someone has to do the grocery shopping for her. Someone has to make sure that she can unleash her behavioral eccentricities in the privacy of her house, so the rest of the world does not see them.
So, the bank account remains as full as it was on the day my father left us forever.
I don’t know what I’ll do with my money.
Maybe I’ll burn it.
Maybe I’ll donate it.
Maybe I’ll spend it.
Maybe I’ll buy a gun.
“AREN’T YOU GLAMOROUS? And I’m delighted that you brought Stella with you today!” A woman wearing a shriekingly loud red dress air-kisses my mother while a crowd of gowned women swirl around us.
It’s hard to pay attention to keeping a smile on my face and maintaining perfect posture when the smell of the buffet wafts my way. I am starving. The sweet scent of mimosas is unmistakable, and I inhale with the hope that I might get a secondhand buzz.
Surviving another insufferable charity gathering during which my mother will be honored for her dedication to various sorts of downtrodden is not how I’d choose to spend my Saturday morning. The bright blue dress that she had someone make for me itches like all hell, and I suspect that my body is rejecting the high-quality fabric. I coyly scratch my hip and wonder whether I love or hate my mother for buying me this dress. It might be both.
The red-dress lady leaves us, and my mother entwines her arm with mine as we make our way to our table at the front of the room. My mother’s hair is pinned up in intricate curls, showing off her ageless face. She might be BOTOXed within an inch of her life, but in the expert hands of her dermatologist, her face looks surprisingly natural. Obviously, she tells everyone that she has been decidedly blessed with such incredible genes. She also lies about her age, but that’s to be expected. Everyone at this event shaves off eight or ten years.
My ankle twists under me as I stumble in my heels, and my mother grabs on to me before I totally wipe out.
“Goodness! Are you all right, sweetheart?” She proceeds to make a spectacle of caring for me and helps me to my chair.
Our table is already full with other guests, so her fussing over me is not surprising.
“I’m so sorry. I’m not sure what happened,” I apologize.
My mother laughs. “It happens to all of us.”
The other women at the table engage us in enough small talk to make my ears bleed, but I manage to answer questions about my schoolwork while my mother chimes in with effusively supportive comments about how hard I study and what perfect grades I have.
She smiles at me with admiration. “Did you know that Stella was accepted at Pomona but wanted to stay near her family? It’s such a testament to how close we are! I’m very fortunate to have two successful daughters.”
Yes, I think, one is a drug addict and the other spends half her time in a dissociative state. We are fucking role models.
“Where is Amy today?” The woman who is running the event sits on my mother’s other side. “I haven’t seen her in ages.”
My mother waves a hand. “She is rather late, isn’t she? But I do believe that she was stopping by the children’s center, where she volunteers, before coming here.”
My stomach growls, and I excuse myself to load up at the buffet. My diet of homemade sandwiches has not been cutting it. I return to my seat with a plateful of cheese frittata, fruit, smoked breakfast sausage, and three éclairs. I’m going to make this meal count. Most of the time when I’m at these kinds of events, I don’t get a chance to eat, or Lucinda nearly snarls if I eye lobster or another upscale dish.
I’ve barely made my way through a few bites before my mother whispers to me, “Go call your sister, and find out where the hell she is. She is supposed to introduce me when the ceremony begins in less than an hour. I bet you told her the wrong time. You always get things mixed up. Now, go! And when will you stop wearing that ridiculous bracelet? You look like a lesbian.”
I tug down the sleeve of my dress to hide the bracelet that my father gave me. Calling people lesbians is one of her high insults. As far as I know, she’s never been attacked by a mob of violent lesbians. In fact, I don’t think she even knows any lesbians. It briefly occurs to me that I would delight in becoming a lesbian just to irritate her, but so far, I haven’t found myself attracted to other women. One can hold out hope though.
In the privacy of the ladies’ room, I try Amy’s cell phone four times, and then I text her. There is no response, but she doesn’t often reply when I try to contact her.
“Bitch,” I mutter to myself.
Given the way our mother practically salivates over her—not to mention how she covers up Amy’s narcotics habit to save face—my sister could at le
ast pull her shit together long enough to be here today.
When I get back to the table, I can see how hard it is for my mother not to appear rattled.
She finishes her mimosa. “Drive to Amy’s condo, and get her. Immediately.” Her voice is quiet but unmistakably filled with venom. “And you’ve got chocolate all over your mouth. Clean up, for Christ’s sake.”
It must be frosting from the éclairs. I grab my napkin and blot my mouth. No chocolate appears on the fabric, so I dab again. Still nothing. Wait, I didn’t eat yet, did I? But I look at my plate, and the éclairs are gone, so I must have eaten them before I called Amy. I’m still starving, but I can tell that my mother will lose her mind if I don’t drag Amy back here in the next twenty minutes.
It’s a quick drive to her place, and I leave the car out front, explaining to the doorman that I’m just running in to pick up my sister. He holds open the heavy brass door leading into the marble lobby. The elevator buttons glow as I ride up to the tenth floor, and I pray that I will get stuck in this metal box and be stranded here for hours, for days, for eternity.
Anytime that I have to go to Amy’s condo, I find myself full of resentment and jealousy. My sister has had everything handed to her and lives in a pricey two-bedroom on Lake Shore Drive. She contributes nothing to this world, except for fueling the economy by spending our mother’s money. I’m sure she drained the account my father left her years ago.
After I’ve pounded on Amy’s door for longer than a reasonable amount of time, I locate the key buried in my wallet. She gave it to me before heading out on a five-day ski trip in Aspen last year, so I could let in the interior decorator. I unlock the door and immediately cringe at the smell. Her place is in its usual state of filth. Only, this time, it’s worse.
“Amy?”
No answer. The kitchen is covered in empty liquor bottles, and I count thirteen discarded pizza boxes. The diet of champions.
“Amy?” I call again.
I walk through the living room, noticing that the couch cushions and throw pillows are all messed up. The giant oil painting above the armchair is crooked, and the wood floors look as though they haven’t been cleaned in months. Apparently, Amy is not taking advantage of the housecleaning service her building offers.
I sidestep a plastic cup that was filled with God-knows-what and then go check her bedroom. Based on what I’ve seen, she’s probably still asleep. I pop inside, but she’s not in bed. Her comforter is scrunched up, and it’s possible that she’s lying beneath it, inebriated, but I just can’t tell, so I double-check. A bottle of watermelon-flavored water and an empty zip baggie are on the bed.
“Amy, damn it! Where are you?” I say out loud to the empty room.
I’m beyond irritated when I don’t find her in either the bathroom or the guest room. Out of desperation, I check the closets. Perhaps Amy went totally bananas and hid in one of them. I don’t know. I’m anxious because my mother is going to flip if I return without the prodigal daughter.
While my sister is not buried among a pile of coats, the full-length mirror on the guest room door does reflect something that catches my eye. An empty prescription bottle is visible just under the bed. As I retrieve it, I notice another bottle in an open duffel bag, so I slide that out from where my sister has it stashed to see what her prescription drug of choice is these days. The label is unreadable, but it doesn’t matter because what else I find in the bag takes precedence—razor blades, bags of unmarked pills in plastic bags, and what I can only identify as some sort of hunting knife.
Then, my breathing gets ragged.
There is a handgun—with boxes of ammo.
This leaves only two possibilities. It’s either a suicide bag, or she’s going to kill someone.
And I cannot find my sister—the person who used to be my world, who was vivacious and funny and loved me so hard that she sometimes suffocated me. It was eons ago, but it used to be the truth.
I repeatedly call out my sister’s name as tears blind me. The feel of this gun in my hand is grotesque, yet I cannot stop looking at it, even as it shakes in my grip. I’ve never seen a gun in real life, much less touched one.
It screams violence, death, and tragedy.
If I’m honest, it also screams out the possibility of relief. I consider that for a moment. I could put an end to my life right now. It could be fast and painless.
Then, I hear a noise, like something is breaking. I shove the gun into the bag and push it back under the guest room bed. I have to catch my breath and reframe my thinking for just a second, but then I rally.
The distinct sound of my sister’s laughter rings throughout the house, but nothing is funny about it. Her giddy cackle is clearly coming from her room. I crawl halfway across the floor before I get myself to her. Amy is in her bed, flat on her back, wild-eyed, and emitting moans and noises I’ve never heard. When I reach her, she is a mess of knotted, stringy over-bleached hair, and her skin is nearly gray. Her arms flail, pushing me away, as I try to calm her down.
“Amy, please. It’s going to be okay. Please, please…” I beg. “Shh…let me help you.”
“I saw him!” She slaps me across the face. “He’s perfect!”
Great. She probably thinks she’s seen God. Or Elvis.
While she is as skin and bones as ever, she is also surprisingly strong, and she shoves me aside, hard, as she rolls to hang her head off the bed while she vomits over and over and coughs with a hack that pains me.
In the midst of my tears, I call 911 and report my sister’s overdose. On what, I don’t know. A number of times, Amy tries to bat the phone from my hand, but she’s still vomiting. And laughing.
“Don’t call…” she sputters. “I gotta get back. Get away from me.”
She hits me again, and I careen into the wall.
I slump against her dresser and watch what’s left of my sister. She is in ruins, and I have no idea how to help her.
Soon, the sound of sirens rings outside the building.
My head falls into my hands. While something is atrociously wrong with Amy, something is equally alarming about me. I looked in this room earlier, at this exact bed she’s in now, and I did not see Amy.
I am slowly losing my fucking mind.
THE LAST TIME THAT I WAS IN A HOSPITAL, I had Sam Bishop to get me through a horrible day.
Today, I have no one.
If I had friends or a boyfriend beyond the superficial, then maybe I would feel less alone. As it is, I am left to manage my mother and sister by myself. Again, I curse my father for running off without a word—well, maybe without a word. A memory plagues me, but because I can’t trust myself, I don’t know if it’s real or not.
Perhaps my father came to my room the night before he left and woke me with tears and regret.
Perhaps he kissed me and hugged me good-bye.
Perhaps he apologized for not being stronger, unable to live with what he’d done.
But I don’t know. None of it means anything to me.
What does mean something is that he left, and there is no excuse reasonable enough for that. Parents don’t abandon their children.
Today, Amy has been sedated. I look at her in the bed, and she appears pathetically childlike in the patterned blue hospital gown. Her color is better than it was, probably due to the fluids being pumped into her. Inexplicably, no drugs were found in her system, so she’s probably going to be moved to the psych unit later today.
No drugs in her system. None. I don’t get it. That’s impossible.
Amy might be a bitch and a drug user, but she doesn’t belong up in psych. I’m positive that when I first checked, she wasn’t in her bedroom at the condo. I know that. I am sane enough to recognize when something doesn’t make any sense.
Or so I thought.
Oh God, I don’t understand what’s happening—to her or to me.
Hours later, my mother flies into Amy’s room. Immediately, she shoots me a venomous look and angrily hurls her pu
rse at me. The zipper catches my cheek, and I wince.
“What did you do?” she asks with indisputable accusation. “What the hell happened?”
“I just found her.”
“Shut up,” she spits. “What did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do anything. She was at the condo, acting all crazy.”
“How could she do this to me? And today of all days?” My mother takes Amy’s state personally.
“She didn’t do anything to you, Mom. She tried to kill herself. She’s suicidal.”
My mother whips around and glares at me, utter confusion on her face. “Suicidal? Why would Amy kill herself? What a stupid thing to think. If anyone should be suicidal, it would be you.”
Before I can react, she starts compulsively smoothing the sheets and adjusting Amy’s hospital gown. “I had quite the juggling act to do at the luncheon. Imagine trying to explain your disappearance, Stella.”
She delivers soothing words—lies really—to Amy. “You poor thing. You’re probably dehydrated and worn-out. Look at you! Hospitalized for exhaustion, just like all those celebrities!”
I can’t be around her right now, not when she’s like this, so I set her purse down on the floor, next to my chair. It falls open, and the smell of sugar wafts out. For a moment, I just stare into her purse. Then, I push aside the tufts of paper napkin and see three éclairs unceremoniously stuffed into the main pocket.
My éclairs.
My head fills with fog, and I leave the room. Minutes or hours go by in the waiting area while I obsess about the éclairs. Sitting in the same waiting room I was in after the car accident is doing nothing to clear my thinking. The chairs are no longer orange, and now, a children’s play area is set up in one corner, but it’s the same damn room.
My chest is tight. I can barely breathe. Before I lose air entirely, I run from the room and instinctively find my way to the stairwell. Each flight sets me a bit freer, and by the time I reach the top, I am gasping, but at least my lungs are working again. And my shoes fit this time, so that’s an improvement from five years ago.