Julia's Daughters (10 page)

Chapter 15

Julia

 

I stand there for a second, holding Haley by the wrist, staring at her forearm that's scarred with bright red horizontal welts. I feel like I'm slogging through mud, trying to get my brain to register what it is I'm seeing. I
think
I know what I'm seeing. My mothering instinct, born the moment that Haley took her first breath, tells me what I'm seeing. But I don't want to believe it. I want to believe that it's a mistake. A misunderstanding.

My bright, obstinate, stronger-than-I'll-ever-be daughter could not be self-mutilating.

I fight my tears. Choke them back. Haley is trying to get away from me, but I won't let her go. I won't
ever
let her go again. “Did you do this to yourself?” I ask. Why am I even saying this? I already know the answer. “Haley, why have you done this?”

Her eyes are full of tears. There's black eye makeup running down her cheeks. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mom,” she keeps repeating, almost like a mantra.

I touch my finger very lightly to a smear of dried blood on her arm. I have no idea why. To be sure it's real?

It's real.

A part of me wants to tear off the wad of white gauze—taped down with what looks like the packing tape.
Packing tape?
—but I'm afraid to do it. “Haley,” I whisper again.

“Let me go.” She fights me, trying to break free. The way she did when she was a toddler. Haley was always a disobedient little girl.
Spirited,
I used to say. I remember, as a young mother, laughing about her defiance. I used to make jokes about how it would come in handy someday, a rebellious woman in what is still a man's world.

What I would give now for a little submission.

I grasp her wrist with one hand and her arm at the elbow with the other. “Stop, Haley. You're going to hurt yourself or me. Stop!” I say it so loudly that my voice echoes inside my head.

But she stops.

“You're
cutting
yourself?” I search her black-tear-stained face. I can barely breathe. But I have to breathe, for Haley. For the beloved, insolent child of my body, of my heart. Because at this moment, I realize that no matter what she's done, she's still my child of my body and my heart. Worth no less than my Caitlin. Loved no less than my Caitlin, who I'll never hold in my arms again, the way I'm holding Haley now.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I press. “Why didn't you
come
to me?”

She turns her face away as if she can't stand to look at mine. “And say what?” She presses her lips together, lips devoid of any color.

She's so thin. So pale. When did this happen. How?

“You wouldn't have heard me anyway. No one hears me anymore.” She whispers the last words.

I let go of her arm just long enough to throw my arms around her shoulders. “I'm sorry,” I tell her, hugging her skinny body to my own. Bare bones to bare bones. “I'm
so
sorry.”

“Let go of me!”

She pushes against me, thrashing to get away again. She fights me so hard that I lose my balance. I go down sideways on one knee to keep from falling, but I pull her down with me. I won't let her go.

I guess the sensation of hitting the tile floor startles her badly because she stops fighting me. Sitting down hard on my butt, I shift so I can lean my back against the island, my daughter still in my arms. “It's okay,” I murmur, smoothing her hair with my free hand, still holding on to her with the other. “How long has this been going on? How long have you been doing this, Haley?” My voice is shaky, but I'm not falling apart. I
won't
fall apart.

I won't fall apart because I know deep inside that to fall apart would mean losing my child. A second child. And I'm not going to do it. I'm not,
damn it
. I'm going to pick up the pieces. I'm going to gather the broken shards of who I was and . . . and put them back together. I know I won't be the same person I was before Caitlin died; I can't possibly be.
That
Julia is gone and turned to ashes with my daughter's body. But something deep inside me tells me I can be
someone
again. I don't know who . . . but definitely a mother. Haley's mother. Izzy's mother.

I rock side to side and Haley lowers her head to my shoulder. “It's going to be okay,” I murmur.

A sob escapes from her quivering mouth. “It's not. It never will be. She's dead, Mom. Caitlin's dead.”

I keep rocking her, the way I did when she was a little girl. Haley was always falling, bumping herself. I must have bought a box of Band-Aids a week for her when she was a toddler. She was the one who broke her arm when she was six, trying to fly off the bunk beds she and Caitlin shared in our old house. She was the one who had to get three stitches under her chin when she fell off the slide at the park.

I look down at her and I can see the faint line of the scar from that tumble when she was eight. I kiss her dark head. I rock her. I make the little sounds a mother makes that only a child can understand.

I don't know how long we sit there on the kitchen floor, me rocking my seventeen-year-old daughter in my arms as if she's a baby. Long enough to begin to feel stiff. Long enough for Izzy to come home from her run.

My youngest walks into the house, slamming the door behind her. She slams it so hard that I want to holler, “Don't slam the damned door!” How many times have I asked Izzy not to slam the door?

But I know it couldn't possibly be as loud as it sounds. I've heard that door slam thousands of times, millions of times, in the eleven years we've lived in this house. For some reason, my senses seem more acute. Sounds seem louder: my breath, Haley's, the trickle of water filling the icemaker in the refrigerator. My sense of touch is heightened; I'm more aware of the weight of Haley's thin frame in my arms and the sensation of her hair against my cheek. I can smell the scent of her shampoo, the Downy freshness of her clothes, and even the lemon fragrance of the polish I've always used on the kitchen cabinets.

“Mom? What's going on?”

I look up to see Izzy standing over us. Her face is flushed and beaded with perspiration. She's breathing hard. She's wearing a pair of shiny green running shorts hiked up way too high. “Mom?” Her pre-puberty-pitched voice is one beat shy of panic. “What's wrong with her?”

Instinctively, I push Haley's sleeve down. “Go to your room. Please, Izzy.”

She stares down at us. I still have Haley wrapped in my arms. Haley's eyes are shut.

“Izzy,” I repeat, sharper this time. “I need you to go to your room.”

“What's wrong with her?” Izzy sounds angry. “What did she do now?”

“Isobel Mae. Go to your room and stay in there until I come for you.” I don't give her a chance to talk back. “Now.”

Izzy gives a huff, but thankfully, stomps off.

I take a moment to catch my breath. Haley's loose in my arms. So relaxed that I wonder if she's asleep. Or dead and broken. A sob rises in my throat and I choke it back. I brush a wisp of blue-black hair off her cheek and kiss the top of her head. I can hear her breathing. She's not dead.
Not dead
. I kiss her temple. It's damp from the effort of fighting me.

I wonder where such a thought could have come from.

I have images in my head from somewhere. The Internet, most likely. Photos I stumbled on accidentally while googling
self-motivation
or something like that. Photos of cuts very similar in appearance to the ones on Haley's arm, across a teenage girl's forehead. On another girl's cheek. Permanent scars. Scars they'll carry for a lifetime, even if the girls manage to heal inside.

“Haley,” I breathe. “You need to tell me why you're doing this, so I can help you.” “Haley,” I repeat when she doesn't answer.

“No one can help me,” she says, her eyes still closed.

“We can call Dr. Pullman. We can—”

“No doctor! No doctor!” She shudders in my arms. “They make me think of that night in the ER. About lying there in that bed, knowing Caitlin was still lying in the road.”

Tears well in my eyes. I want to tell her that no one left Caitlin's body in the street. That by the time she reached the hospital, Caitlin was there, too. Her body, at least. But my instinct warns me that telling her that won't help. Not right now, at least.

“Haley, we have to find someone to help you. This . . . what you're doing to yourself... You could get an infection. You could—”
Kill yourself,
I want to say, only I can't say it because what if that's what she's trying to do?

“I'll be all right.” She stiffens and then pulls away from me.

I let go of her. I hate to do it. But I do. Because the moment, whatever it was, has passed. And when I look into my daughter's eyes again, I see the sulky teenager I know, not the broken child that was in my arms a minute ago.

She gets to her feet, tugging down both her sleeves, but not before I see that her right arm is, thank goodness, unmarked.

“Where are you going?” I ask, getting up off the floor. One knee hurts, as does my butt. From where I went down so hard on the tile, I suppose.

“My room.” Haley wipes at her eyes with her sleeve, smearing the black eye makeup even further. “I'm just going to my room,” she flings.

I don't know why she's so angry with me. Because I saw that vulnerable part of her that she's kept so well hidden? Or is she not angry with me at all? Just with herself?

I don't stop her. I watch her walk out of the kitchen and I reach for my cup of coffee. I take a sip. It's cooled. I leave it on the counter and go to my room. I stand in the doorway of the bedroom, looking down the hall as I dial Ben's cell. Izzy's door is closed. Haley's door is closed. Caitlin's, too. I need to go into Caitlin's room and start cleaning it out, I think absently.

Ben's cell rings four times and is about to go to voice mail when he finally picks up.

“I need you to come home,” I say without preamble.

“Why? I'm right in the middle of something. What's wrong, Jules?”

“We'll talk about it when you get here.” I'm surprised by the strength in my voice. I don't feel strong. “I need you to come home. Now. I don't care what you're doing. It has to be now.”

He's quiet on the other end of the phone. Quiet just long enough for me to wonder if he doesn't come, what will I do? Will I go get him? Or will I just say screw it and tackle this on my own?

For a moment, I'm not sure if I want him to come home now or not.

“I'll see you in a few minutes.”

I exhale with relief and hang up.

Now what? I wonder. What do I do now? Do I go to Haley? Do I leave her alone for a little while? And what am I going to do long-term? How am I going to fix this?

I walk down the hall and listen at Haley's closed door. I hear her talking. On her cell. That's good. She's talking to a friend. I put my hand on the doorknob, then let go. If I were Haley, I wouldn't want me in my room right now. Too much.

I walk to Izzy's room, tap on the door, and walk in.

Chapter 16

Julia

 

“And you're sure she's doing it on purpose?” Ben's standing in the front of the door I made him close so the girls can't hear us. I wouldn't put it past Izzy to try to listen in. When I went into her room, I didn't tell her what Haley had done, only that her sister was having a particularly hard time dealing with Caitlin's death. Izzy hadn't seemed all that sympathetic.

I resist the temptation to say something inappropriate to my husband like,
Are you an idiot? Of course she's doing it on purpose. That's the definition of
self
-mutilation.
Saying something like that isn't going to help . . . and it's just plain mean. I don't want to be mean to Ben. Well . . . maybe a tiny part of me, a part I'm ashamed of, wants to be mean, but that's not something I can deal with right now. I just say, “She's doing it on purpose.”

“Why?” He gestures with one hand.

It's clear he doesn't want to be here, in this house, in the middle of this mess that has become our lives, but like Izzy, I'm not feeling all that sympathetic right now.

“How is she doing it?”

“We didn't talk about that.” I sit down on the edge of my unmade bed. “When I saw it, she was . . . it was pretty overwhelming.”

“Well, I guess so.” He's louder than he needs to be. But then he meets my gaze and takes it down a notch. “Do you think she tried to kill herself?”

I shake my head no. “If she wanted to do that, Ben, she's a bright girl.” I glance away, trying to come to terms with even the
possibility
that she would attempt suicide. But I know my girl. I'm beginning to realize I may even know some of her demons because they were once mine. “If she'd wanted to kill herself, she'd have succeeded.”

“I don't understand, then.” He begins to pace. “Why would she be . . . hurting herself? It had to hurt like hell.” He's thinking out loud. “To scar like that. It had to hurt when she was doing it, didn't it?”

I wrap my arms around myself. “I did a little research on the Internet while I was waiting for you. Cutting is a coping mechanism. More common than you would think, particularly with teenagers.”

“Coping mechanism?” he repeats.

“The signs have all been there for weeks, Ben. We just didn't see it because . . .” I don't finish my sentence. I don't want him to think I think this is his fault because, honestly, it's more my fault than his. I'm her
mother.
I'm her mother and I should have seen past my own pain. I should have seen hers. “The problems at school—”

“The drugs,” he injects.

“The other self-destructive behavior. We should have seen it for what it was—symptoms of her . . . attempt to deal with Caitlin's death.”

He's still pacing. He reaches the bathroom door, turns, and walks back toward me. “I guess we need to find a psychologist, psychiatrist, something for her? I know the bereavement counselor was a disaster, but maybe . . . I don't know. Someone else? There's got to be other people who deal with this sort of thing. Professionals.”

I exhale, trying to organize my thoughts that are flying in so many directions at the same time. I know the logical answer is to get her professional help immediately, but . . . but I'm not sure that's the right answer here.

I understand Haley's resistance to a doctor . . . or counseling. Her association with the accident makes sense. It's not enough reason in itself, but I have my own personal experience with counseling when I was a teen. I saw a psychologist, at my stepfather's insistence, when I was Haley's age. My stepfather thought there was something wrong with me: I was moody, I resisted his authority, I resented my mother for listening to him, for marrying him. The counseling hadn't been helpful, in fact it had made me angrier and driven a wedge deeper between my mother and me.

My instincts, at this moment, tell me that dragging Haley to a counselor she doesn't know tomorrow morning isn't going to help her. I'm not opposed to having her see someone, my instincts just tell me that's not the right thing to do right this minute.

But what do I do? I have to do something.

Those couple of minutes I sat on the kitchen floor holding Haley, I felt connected to her. At least to her pain. I need to figure out how to do that again, on a level where we can talk. Where I can help her work through the emotions I know must be overwhelming her. Hell, I'm forty-two and they're obviously overwhelming me. I've been lying in bed for two months staring at a ceiling fan.

I look up at Ben, who's come to stand in front of me. He's obviously upset, but I feel like he's angry, too. Angry with me for calling him home from work. Or maybe angry with Haley for causing all of this commotion on a Sunday afternoon. I don't know which. I don't know if I care right now.

“She needs to get away from here,” I hear myself say. As I speak the words, my conviction becomes stronger. I stand and look up at him, forcing him to make eye contact with me. We rarely make eye contact anymore. “I'm going to take her to Maine to see Laney. We're going to drive to Maine.”

“Is this about you thinking I'm having an affair, Jules? Because if it is—”

“It's not about that. I believe you.” And I really do. “This is about Haley. And I think the trip would do her good.”

He turns away from me, shaking his head. “It's a bad idea.”

“Why? Why is it a bad idea? You've been worried about the influence her friends are having on her. Obviously we don't want her near that dope dealer. This would be a good way to get her away from them. And maybe she needs a break from this house, from . . . I don't know . . . Caitlin.”

Ben scowls. “So you're just going to get in the car and drive to Maine? And leave Izzy here?”

“I can't take Izzy with me. She has school. And . . .” Now
I'm
pacing and he's watching me. “Maybe if we're alone, Haley and I can use the time in the car to talk.”

“Talk?” He practically scoffs at me. “When has Haley ever listened to anything we've had to say?”

“I don't care.” I shake my head. “It doesn't matter. I have to try.”

“So you're going to drive across the country?”

I don't answer. I just said that.

He gazes off into space for a minute and then he looks at me again. “And how are you going to convince
her
this is a good idea if you can't convince me?”

“I'm not giving her a choice.” I go to my closet because I feel like I need to do something with my hands. I pull a duffel bag out of the back, unzip it, and toss it on the bed. I go to my dresser.

He's watching me, looking at me like I've lost my mind. And maybe I have a little bit. I'm not exactly a spontaneous person. I plan family vacations for six months. I always make a grocery list. I plan my errand trips so I don't have to backtrack. But I used to be spontaneous, a long time ago, before I became a parent and thought there was no place for impulsiveness as a wife and mother.

“I think we should call Dr. Pullman,” Ben says. “I don't think you should go anywhere until you talk to him. He can have a look at her, you know, her arm.”

“Her pediatrician? The cuts aren't infected. It's not the cuts I'm worried about, Ben. They'll heal. I'm worried about her—” My voice catches in my throat. I'm worried about what? Her heart? Her soul?

“Yeah, but Dr. Pullman can tell us who she should see. Who we can take her to.”

I don't know how to explain this to Ben, maybe because I don't understand it myself, but I know, on some fundamental level, that I need to take this trip with Haley. I know I need to get her in my car, far from her home and her friends. Then she'll have to talk to me, won't she?

I grab a handful of underwear and two bras from the top drawer and walk across the bedroom to throw them in the bag. I go back to the dresser and open the next drawer. A couple of T-shirts, long-sleeve and short. All neatly folded. I don't even look to see which ones they are. I wear the same thing most days: a cotton V-neck shirt in green or blue, jeans, loafers this time of year. By May, I'll be in shorts and flip-flops. Same T-shirts. My
uniform,
Caitlin used to call it.

“I can't believe you're doing this, Jules. This is . . . it's—”

“It's what?” I drop the shirts in the bag and go to the third drawer. Jeans this time of year for the East. It will still be cold in Maine. Especially at night. I pull out a pair. In the bottom drawer, I grab a green sweater that was once Ben's favorite. I've had it for years. He liked it because it was the same color as my eyes.

“It's
insane,
Jules, that's what it is. And . . .” He brushes at the hair that's fallen across his forehead. “And foolish. Dangerous.”

I hold the sweater to my chest. “Dangerous? How so?”

“A woman and a teenage girl alone in a car? What if . . . if you break down?”

Now he's just being ridiculous. Does he really think I'm incapable of driving twenty-eight hundred miles? “I'll call triple A,” I say.

“And where are you going to stay?”

I struggle not to be a smart-ass. I can't make this about stuff between the two of us. It has to be about Haley. About our daughter. “At hotels, of course.” I walk around him to add the sweater to the growing pile in the duffel bag.

He's just standing there shaking his head.

“I've made up my mind, Ben. I think it would be good for Haley. And it can't make things worse, can it?”

He's frowning. “What if she tries to take off? Because I can tell you, she's really,
really
not going to like the idea of this.”

“I don't care what she wants. She's going. We're going to Maine.”

“And then what?”

I sit on the bed and throw up my hands. “I don't know. We'll hang out with Laney for a couple of days. We'll . . . go to that pizza place Haley likes in Portland. Go canoeing. Take walks. Whatever she wants to do. She likes Maine.”

“And after your
vacation
you'll just come home and we'll go back to our life?”

I fall back on the bed, my feet still on the floor, and stare at the ceiling fan for a minute. “I don't know. I guess.” My throat and eyes get scratchy, but I don't cry. Have my tears finally dried up?

He surprises me by sitting down next to me on the bed. I close my eyes for a second and then I sit up. “When Haley and Caitlin were toddlers, we used to talk about moving to Maine and opening a sandwich shop. Remember?” I rest my cheek on his shoulder.

Ben makes this amazing gooey sandwich that's a combination grilled cheese and cheeseburger. The girls call it the Ben Burger. It's morphed over the years as Ben refined his recipe and Caitlin became interested in healthy eating and insisted on using grass-fed beef and organic bread and cheese, but it's still our favorite family meal.

“You could sell your share of the lawn business and we could move to Maine,” I say wistfully.

He doesn't even hesitate. “That was talk. Dreaming. It's not the real world, Jules.”

I sigh. “I know,” I say. I press my hands to the tops of my skinny thighs. “So we'll leave in the morning.”

“You're really going to do this?” He gets to his feet, leaving me on the bed.

I think for a second, and then nod. “I'm really going to do it. I'm going to pack a few things, I'm going to call Laney, I'm going to write a letter of resignation.”

“You're resigning from your job? You're not going back?”

“The only reason Robert hasn't fired me is because that would be in bad taste, firing a woman who took too much time to grieve for her dead daughter. I didn't really like it anyway. I guess I'll find a new job when I get back. It's not like we really need the money.”

“I thought you loved your job. You've been there almost three years.”

Does anyone love doing accounting for a florist? “I never said I
loved
my job,” I tell him. He's at the door now. On his way out. My guess is that he won't stay here and help me break the news to Haley. I give him five minutes to be out the door. “I liked getting out of the house, Ben. I liked not spending my day cleaning the humidifier, organizing the hall closet, and waiting to pick up someone after school to take them to the orthodontist.”

He rests his hand on the doorknob. “I never knew you didn't like it.”

“Not your fault. Mine.”

He just stands there looking at me.

“You going?” I finally ask, getting up and walking back to my dresser.

“Um, yeah. I'll be home after dinner at Mom's.”

“You . . . don't think maybe you should come home?”

“I already told Mom I'd be there. Izzy said she wasn't going. Too much Nana for one weekend.”

I don't know which one of us turns away first.