The Never Never Sisters (14 page)

I WAS BARELY
paying attention later that afternoon as I turned my key in the lock and set down
my bag in the hall. When my foot slipped on a piece of paper, I noticed an arrow drawn
on it. It led me to another arrow, which led me to another. I followed them through
the kitchen and out the swinging door to our little round table.

Our cheese of the month had arrived. Dave had picked up the box downstairs, unwrapped
all two pounds of it and set it rather nicely on a cheese plate I didn’t even know
he’d been aware we had. He’d lit the tall candles on the table and was pouring something
sparkling in our long flutes.

“What is this?” I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I felt like I’d walked into
someone else’s life.

“We have a d’Affinois.” Dave pointed in his best impression of a fancy waiter. “Prized
for its top-to-bottom buttery creaminess. To its left, a cream-filled burrata, fresh
from, drumroll please, the bucolic pastures of New Jersey, and finally, ma’am, to
round out your palate, right over here, a sweet, tangy English Tickler cheddar from
Devon. And do you have a library card?” He slid across the wood floor on his socks
right up next to me. “Because, baby, I would love to check you out.”

“Um, no.”

He patted my head. “Yeah. I could do better. Let me think—”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Are we celebrating something?”

“How unbelievably great and understanding you’ve been for the past few weeks.”

“Like when I dragged you to the fireworks?” If he was trying to make me feel guilty,
it was working.

He made a face. “Come on. You were trying to help.” I thought of his earlier accusation,
that I was tone-deaf, selfish. I hadn’t disagreed. I still didn’t. “I made us reservations
for next Saturday.”

“Where?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Oh.” It struck me that I should hire an investigator more often; it was catnip for
our marriage.

“But it’s somewhere really good. I had to, you know”—he made a mock-sinister face
and rubbed his thumbs against his fingers, humming “Money, Money, Money”—“to secure
it all. So—save the date.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll have to meet you there, though, because . . . I’ll be coming from work.”

“Whoa, for real?”

He slow-nodded. “That’s right. Just got off the phone with Herb. Monday.”

“All cleared?”

Slow nod again. “All cleared.”

“That’s great!”

“Yep.”

“Back to your office just like before?”

“Like nothing happened.” He smiled and wiggled his fingers sideways from his head
down to his chest:
Magic!

“So what did happen?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“They still didn’t tell you?”

“Nope. I’m moving on.”

“You don’t want to know more?”

“Nope.”

“I can’t understand that.”

“I don’t want to look back, Paige. Let’s just—what would your mom say—cleanse ourselves
of it.”

“Would she say that?”

“Um, yeah. You’ve never heard her say that? Most important, though—”

“Yeah?”

“Cheese of the month has arrived!” He handed me one of the glasses and clinked his
against mine.

“Cheese of the month!”

“Let’s taste it.”

“Okay.”

“And then go out and get crraaaazy.”

“Okay.” I put the glass on the table. “Or. How about renting a movie?”

“Naw, let’s go out.” He shook my shoulders with his hands. “Didn’t you hear me? I
said crraaaazy.”

“A movie! We can sit on the couch, getting lost in the burrata.”

“Getting lost in it?”

I smiled in what I hoped was an inviting way. “The movie can be one of those awful
violent ones about people’s limbs being hacked off.
Saw Ten
.”

“We can do better than that.” He shook his head, but I was already starring in the
performance of
This Is the Best Idea Ever!
, moving the cheese tray to the coffee table and microwaving popcorn and exalting
about how great it felt to get into pajamas after a long day.
(These are so comfortable—oh, how I
love
an elastic waistband
.
)
I was nearly hysterical with phony glee, but Dave seemed unperturbed, like this was
expected behavior from me.

We settled into the couch, nestling together like batteries. I was self-conscious
of every move—reaching to the coffee table for the cheese, shifting my weight, gasping
at the violence. On the screen, an eighteen-year-old blonde was handcuffed to the
ceiling, a chain saw dancing at her feet as she shrieked. I wanted to look away but
couldn’t.

The bottom button on my shirt was loose and with the jittery fingers of my free hand,
I worked it, twisting the threads out until it slid off the frayed string, tiny and
pearlized. Pulling it off was tremendously satisfying, so I tested the others. They
were all secure, so I fiddled with the one that had detached, turning it over and
over in my fingers and pressing its four tiny holes into the flesh of my thumb, as
if by rubbing it enough a genie would emerge and help me escape.

It worked. Dave’s work phone rang. He first craned away from me and next got off the
couch. Then, after I pressed
PAUSE
, he finally embraced a full-on Joe Businessman’s pace around the room, so focused
on the call that he had no clue he was almost shouting.

After five minutes, I put my bag over my shoulder, went into our bathroom, locked
the door and ran the water. I pulled off my clothes, took out the notebook and opened
it to the page I’d dog-eared earlier. When the tub was full, I dipped a toe in and,
holding the notebook carefully so as not to drop it, slipped down into the warm water
and started reading.

I can’t.

It’s been two months.

G. and Pressman were both telling me the same thing—independently, not in a joint
session or anything: Journal it, journal it, journal it.

I didn’t want to; it wouldn’t help.

Pressman thought it would. He thought it might help me get dominion over my Guilty
Feelings, which he perceives have multiplied like the Mickey Mouse brooms in
Fantasia
. He said just that—used the poetic image—and now all I see are splintering, marching
Guilty Feelings. Gold star, Pressman.

But then G. said, no. Not to help. To remember just how difficult the path is.

How difficult the path? I said, “What kind of gobbledygook is that? Trust me, I remember.”

“You do now. But you didn’t. You were feeling like it was smooth sailing, like the
struggle was over. That’s not realistic,” said G. “That lowers your guard. If you
ever feel like that again—the false sense of security—you can go back and read it.
To remember: There’s no beating anything. There’s just struggle.”

So.

In the weeks prior, we had argued about whether she had to keep going to Dr. Cassat.
I was so strong, sticking to my position. This is a lifelong battle. You’ve got to
have safety nets. “I know, Mom,” Sloane had said, jingling the car keys in her hand,
nodding importantly. “You’re right.” She gave up so easily.

We expected her home right after therapy. Twenty minutes late—I was not worried. She
probably went to watch Jeremy practice. She’d been doing that a lot, which was great—exposure
to all that healthy exercise, all that treating young bodies like temples.

At five thirty, I called Dr. Cassat and left a message. She called right back. “But
you canceled today.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did.” I heard the wind waft of pages turning. “Here it is. You left a message
earlier today with my receptionist that Sloane had a meeting with the school counselor.”

I hadn’t, but I knew who had.

I called the school. Sloane signed out right after her free period at around noon.
I called Jeremy’s house. His little brother answered. No, he wasn’t there, and when
his mother called back, she didn’t sound worried. (See? It’s different with a boy.
You can be stupid like that.)

Frankie, the police, our neighbors, a few of those hooded greasy boys whose names
I’d pretended to vaguely remember (but really knew cold). I called them all. I called
Cherie to pick up Paige.

When Frankie got home, he stayed by the phone, and I grabbed my keys and wallet (empty)
and drove around and around until finally, I found myself in Newark, stopping periodically
at pay phones to check in and ask if Frankie had heard anything useful. He hadn’t,
but the third time I called him, he reported the following items missing: our VCR,
my diamond earrings, his camera, several china figurines from Frankie’s mother and
a glass bowl. (The camera was at a pawnshop. The figurines are still missing, most
likely smashed to bits when Sloane realized they were worth crap.)

You would think I wouldn’t have slept that night, but I must have. I had that dream,
the same one from when she was little.

The two of us, me and Sloane at the station, staring at the display board, waiting
for our track to be announced. I don’t know where we’re going, but I watch intently,
and when the number comes up, spinning like lotto balls, we stampede to catch our
train. The doors open for a split second, long enough for her to drop my hand. Only
for a second—one minute I had her, then I didn’t—I lost that tiny hand, and then the
doors closed, and I watched helplessly through the platform as we sped away and she
stood small, alone and confused.

Always in the dream there is not just the sense of loss but the confusing powerless
aftermath: the moment where I think, what now? Do I run through the long cars of the
train, screaming for the conductor? Do I get off at the next stop and retrace my steps?
In the dream, there’s no point. It will be too late. By the time I do anything, she
will be gone—taken, toddled onto the tracks, slipped through the cracks.

There is no recourse.

It wasn’t a stress dream, I understood that night. It was a premonition.

I knew she was dead. I just didn’t know how—alone or with someone? Overdosed? Stabbed?
Raped? Car crash (my preference)? She had realized in the last moments that she didn’t
want to die. She had cried out for me. She hadn’t.

So that I remember how difficult the path is, I will report the gist of my conversation
with Officer Stanley, who called at the start of his early shift patrolling Eastern
Ohio’s portion of I-65:

Someone had “found” Sloane outside the Plainville truck stop, not quite by the trash
cans, down the hill a little, where the woods started. She was alive, passed out,
under the influence of something. (“Heroin, ma’am, would be my guess, based on her
behavior.”) Would we like to come and get her?

I told him to arrest her and we flew out, Frankie gripping the wheel of the car on
the drive from Toledo, the frequent stops at pay phones. There’s an amazing number
of logistics involved; as if the situation didn’t suck out your soul, you have to
somehow conjure the fight to
work
: mobilize the contacts, parse through options, get the best experts, plead for a
bed.

Had these superparents journaled? I wonder. They, the ones with the answers? Because
they didn’t seem to have forgotten the struggle. How many of them were still doing
it? I didn’t ask; they did not volunteer.

Major Victory: we got her a bed at Gentle Breezes, an ongoing rehab program in the
desert of New Mexico. I think Frankie and I might have high-fived, enjoyed a brief
moment of achievement before we remembered that we were celebrating getting a bed
at an ongoing rehab center for our child. It indicated some seriously deflated expectations.

We found Sloane, bruised hands, egg lump on forehead, long ribbons of scratch marks
on her arms. This is what she said to us when we found her: nothing. Not one word
during the motel stay and the flights and drives, although she did try to tell the
flight attendant that she wanted a Coke, and her voice came out a thick rasp.

I have two other memories to not forget:

1) Gentle Breezes told us she needed to start her stay in detox.

2) She turned her back when I tried to kiss her good-bye.

Fuck you, Jeremy. For claiming to have blacked out and not remembering anything. For
returning to school a week later like you’d just been on a road trip. For your inevitable
swimming scholarship to Stanford.

When we get her back, I’ll never let her out of my sight.

I leaned over the side of the tub and placed the journal, open, on the floor so that
it could dry. I’d inadvertently dabbed drops of water on it, magnifying the twenty-year-old
ink in some spots and making it look as though tears had plopped onto the page. It
made sense if you already knew the sad ending: Sloane had not returned; she’d slipped
away until this July.