Memoirs Aren't Fairytales (21 page)

Mom pulled the blanket up to my chin. Her touch had always been so soft and tender, and it still was.

I didn't have to pretend to be asleep for long. I was so tired. Whatever the nurses had put in my IV was some good shit.

When I woke up, my parents were sitting by my bed, and Michael was leaning against the wall. Sun was pouring in through the blinds, and I smelled coffee.

Had they slept in my room last night? Mom was wearing a shirt with faces painted on it. Had she been wearing that yesterday? I couldn't remember.

Michael moved to my other side and my parents stood, all of them surrounding me. They looked like they were staring at an open casket, saying their last respects.

Who was going to speak first? It wasn't going to be me.

Mom sat on the mattress by my waist and ran her fingers along my arm. She looked so clean and smelled like fabric softener and vanilla. Her eye shadow was sparkly and medium brown. I bet she didn't use markers like I did.

There was nothing about me that was clean anymore. I didn't deserve to be clean, not for everything I'd done. The nurses should have left me in my dirty clothes instead of dressing me in a clean gown.

“We don't want our baby to die,” Mom said.

I felt the same way, but mine had.

“And that's going to happen, Cole, if you keep this up,” Dad said.

Dad looked clean too. I could smell his aftershave, citrus with a hint of musk.

“Will you go to rehab and get sober?” Michael asked.

Michael's hair was gelled, each strand placed just so perfectly. His shoes were the same color as the brown stripes in his shirt. But Michael had a secret, and I doubted if my parents knew what it was. He wasn't the cleanest, but he was cleaner than me.

Would I go to rehab—sit in meetings, listen to other addicts tell their stories, work the Twelve Steps, talk to counselors, and promise to never do junk again? And stay clean?

What would life be like, looking through clean eyes?

I wanted the needle.

But I was tired too.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

For two days, I lay in my hospital bed and listened to my parents and Michael talk about rehab. They said the same things they'd probably said in all their voicemails—they loved me and missed me, they didn't want me to die like Eric—and so I agreed to go. The rehab center was in a ‘burb outside Boston, but they didn't have a bed for me and wouldn't for a couple days. In the meantime, we'd all stay at Michael's.

My decision was more for them and the baby than for me. My parents looked tired and older since the last time I'd seen them. For them and for the child I'd killed, the least I could do was get clean. I also didn't want to hurt Claire anymore. She had told me that before she died, she wanted to see me sober. And like she said, she was seventy-nine.

I left the hospital wearing the clothes I'd come in with, with my purse and cell phone. Those were the only things I owned, everything at Sunshine's was hers. In the car to Michael's, I looked in my purse and it was empty except for my cigarettes, lighter, wallet, and the picture of Michael and Jesse kissing. The bags, spoons, and rigs were gone. Claire must have cleaned out my purse before she brought it to the hospital.

“I have a surprise for you,” Mom said as we walked into Michael's apartment. She took my hand and pulled me into the guest room.

Her suitcase was on the floor under the window, and her cosmetics were on the dresser.

“Look in the closet,” she said.

I opened the closet door and there was a rack full of clothes. Did she want me to see her wardrobe or her new Nikes still in the box?

“I didn't know your size,” she said from the doorway. “But hopefully everything will fit.”

“This is all for me?”

“Honey, you don't have any clothes to wear in rehab, so of course it's all yours.”

She said rehab like it was my first day of school.

The shirts were all a size small and the jeans a size two. I couldn't remember the last time mom had bought me clothes, and pants that were a single-digit size. I hadn't looked at the tags on Sunshine's clothes. I just put them on and they fit.

“Thanks, Mom.”

She walked over and gave me a hug. “We're just happy you're in our lives again.”

I was too, but that didn't mean I'd stopped thinking about heroin. Actually, it was the only thing on my mind.

Before I'd left the hospital, the doctor had given me a prescription for six pills of Xanax. I had asked for Klonopin or methadone. He said Klonopin shouldn't be taken in short-term doses and methadone had worse withdrawal symptoms than heroin.

“Take two pills a day,” the doctor had said. “They should help take the edge off a little.”

The Xanax was about as strong as rubbing coke on my gums. If there was an edge, I was way fucking past it. My stomach was jittery and my hands were shaky. My brain was swimming laps, and heroin was at one end and rehab was at the other. If my parents weren't shadowing me around the apartment, I'd be looking for alcohol or glue, or computer duster, anything that would get me high.

I wanted a minute alone, so I got off the living room couch and locked myself in the bathroom. I ran the faucet and the shower and sat on the toilet taking deep breaths.

“Unlock the door,” Mom said from the hallway.

“I'll be out in a sec,” I said.

My chest was tight, but the steam was clearing my lungs.

I heard a drill, and the screws on the door handle fell to the ground. Then the whole handle crashed to the floor, and the door swung open.

“You're not going to shut us out,” Dad said.

He handed the drill to Michael. Michael took off all the handles from every door in the apartment.

Dad wasn't kidding. There was literally no way to shut them out.

“We're going to get through this together,” he said.

I went to bed after dinner. Mom changed into her pajamas too and got into bed beside me. She opened a book and read. She dragged her nail over the corner of the page and flicked it a few times before turning it. Sometimes, she'd lick her finger, flip, and hold the corner of the page between her pointer and middle finger.

Heroin. Heroin. Heroin.

“Do you want to talk?” she asked.

I was on my back, counting the popcorn bumps on the ceiling. There were eighty-nine in the spot above my head, but I could have miscounted.

“About what?” I asked.

“The last four and a half years you've spent in Boston, rehab, Claire, anything?”

Except for rehab, everything on her list was personal. If I told her all the things I'd done, it would only upset her more.

“How about rehab,” I said.

She put her book on the nightstand and rolled on her side, facing me. “We believe in you, Cole, and we know it'll work if you just give it a chance.”

If the rehab counselor ever asked me why I did heroin, what was I going to say? I didn't wake up one morning and decide to be a junkie. Dope helped me forget about the rape, but that wasn't the reason I used. I came from a good family and my parents loved me. I wasn't picked on in school and dated lots of boys.

“How do you know it'll work?” I asked.

“You're a fighter, baby and you always have been. And when you want something bad enough, you don't stop until it's yours.”

I couldn't think of a single thing I'd fought for. I gave the cops my statement, and when there weren't any leads, I didn't fight to find the guys who raped me. I dropped out of college because I couldn't take the looks and stares from the other students. I didn't fight for my relationship with Cody. I pushed him away because I couldn't stand to be touched anymore. I couldn't fight off the urge to use and caused the miscarriage. The one time I fought for what I wanted was when I pushed Claire away from the door. And Claire didn't deserve that.

My mom didn't know me at all anymore.

I told her I was tired, and she switched off the light. I listened to her breathe. And eventually, dad shut off the TV in the living room, and I heard Michael go into his bedroom.

I watched the minutes change on the clock. I counted the seconds in my head. It was two-thirty and mom was still awake. I felt her eyes on me, her hand rubbing my head, her fingers tickling my arm every time I moved. Heroin. Heroin. Heroin was on my brain and it wouldn't go away.

I got up from the bed and went into the bathroom, turning on the faucet just enough so the water trickled. Hopefully mom would think I was peeing. I had to hurry.

I moved into the hallway and stood in front of the closet where Michael kept his jackets and skis. If I opened the closet door, she'd hear me. I'd just have to go to Richard's in my shorts and bare feet.

I tiptoed into the family room, and dad wasn't on the couch. He was asleep on an air mattress by the front door. There was no way out of this apartment.

Michael should have something that would get me high. I searched through the kitchen cupboards and hidden behind a box of cereal was a half bottle of vodka.

“What are you doing?” Mom asked from behind me.

I held the vodka to my chest and turned around. My hands were shaking so bad the vodka looked like waves.

“You're trembling,” she said.

“Please,” I said. “Please don't take this away from me.” I was hugging the bottle like it was Blinkie, the glow worm I lugged around as a child.

Her eyes had been staring at the bottle, but they weren't hard like they had been seconds ago. They were soft and watery.

She reached her hand towards me, and I took a step back.

“I'm not going to take it away from you,” she said. She reached forward again, and her arm went around my shoulder. I held the bottle against my heart.

She walked with me to the living room, and when she turned to go to the guest room, I led her to Michael's office. As soon as we got inside, I wiggled out from her arm and crawled under the desk. I crouched into a ball and drank until my throat burned.

She climbed in and sat next to me. I couldn't look at her. I looked at the wall and swallowed.

She pulled a piece of hair off my sticky lip.

I took another swig.

Her hand touched my back, and she gently pushed forward, so she could squeeze in behind me. “Relax, baby, it's going to be okay,” she said. Her legs went straight, sticking out from under the desk and they pressed against mine.

She rested her chin on my head. Her fingers circled around my shoulders and down my arms. “Summertime, and the livin' is easy,” she sang softly.

When Michael and I were growing up, mom had always sung that song whenever one of us was hurt. And by the time she'd dabbed our cut with peroxide and wrapped it with a Band-Aid, the song would be over.

I didn't taste the next gulp or the one after, the same way I hadn't tasted the beer I drank in college, or the blood that had dripped down my throat when I blew coke, or the bitterness that had covered my tongue when I shot heroin.

“Your daddy's rich, and your mamma's good lookin', so hush little baby,” she sang.

The bottle was empty. And even though I was buzzed, vodka wasn't heroin. Booze didn't give me that warm feeling throughout my body and it didn't let me nod into a beautiful dream.

“One of these mornings you're going to rise up singing, then you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky,” she sang.

I leaned back with my head on her chest.

Her arms crossed over mine. “But till that morning there's a'nothing can harm you with daddy and mamma standing by.”

My shoulders relaxed, my chest loosened, and my eyes closed.

Mom's heart was beating so loud it woke me up. Or maybe it was the cramp in my neck or the awful odor I smelled. Still, I was comfortable with my head on her chest, and I wasn't ready to get up.

“What the hell—”

“Shh,” Mom said. “She's sleeping.”

But I wasn't anymore. Dad and Michael were kneeling in front of the desk and their hands were covering their noses.

“Can you grab me a bucket and rag?” Mom asked.

The smell was coming from the pile of puke next to mom and me. I didn't remember getting sick.

“You slept in her vomit all night?” Dad asked.

“I didn't want to wake her, it's been a rough night for her.”

Dad looked into my eyes. “You drank the whole bottle?” he asked, holding the empty fifth in his hand.

I shook my head. “Only half.”

Michael lifted me out from under the desk and carried me to his bathroom. He set me down on the toilet and ran the bath water.

I leaned forward, holding my stomach, and he bent down so we were eye level.

“It's that bad, huh?” he asked.

I nodded.

“The rehab center called. They can get you in tomorrow morning,” he said.

They'd give me drugs to take away all this fluttering and the cravings, and meds to help me sleep. One more day. I could do this, for him, my parents, and the baby.

He stood, and I grabbed his arm. “I was pregnant, you know.”

He looked down at me with a crease between his brows.

“The second time, not the first,” I said. “I was eleven weeks and decided to keep the baby, but I lost it…”

“I didn't know, I couldn't believe—”

“I know. And I'm sorry for what I said.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed before he left me in the bathroom.

The bubble bath turned cold, but I didn't get out. Mom brought me a plate of toast and some coffee. She turned on Michael's radio, and some weird music started playing. Birds chirping and waterfalls with this opera-like voice that sang in the background. The last time I'd taken a bath was in my parents' tub, a few weeks after the rape. Mom had played the same kind of music and tried to make me eat. That was before—heroin, heroin, heroin. I needed to shut my brain off.

I'd have to change my whole life if I wanted to stay sober after rehab. I wouldn't be able to talk to Sunshine anymore or visit Claire, knowing Sunshine lived next door. I'd have to move out of Boston because I'd be too tempted to go to Richard's or Roxbury. I'd have to retrain my brain to think bags were to hold sandwiches, spoons were to eat cereal, rigs were tractor-trailers, and John was just a guy's name.