Party Girl: A Novel (15 page)

“But—” I start to try to tell Simon that he’d told me the line was a line of coke but then I can’t remember if he said that or if that’s just what I had assumed or hoped. Simon and his friends continue to talk, and I can’t believe how a part of the world they seem, and how far away.

“Outside for air,” I say and Simon nods. Part of me is offended that he doesn’t offer to come with me, but mostly I’m just relieved.
I just need to sit down outside, have the wind blow on me, and feel better
, I tell myself as I weave through the crowd and outside. An enormous trash bin sits under a street lamp near the middle of the parking lot and I decide that it looks like the perfect place to sit and relax.

Part of me knows that I must be pretty out of it to be in such a disgusting place and not really care. The trash doesn’t even seem to smell that terrible, which is weird because usually the stench from this back bin is noticeable from the street. I greedily suck in gulps of air, wondering why I don’t feel any better. Then I lie down and close my eyes.

At some point, a Mexican guy, one of the valet parkers, starts trying to shake me awake. My eyes flutter open and I realize that a dirty brown jacket rests over me like a blanket.

“Hospital?” he asks, and I shake my head. It seems like a pretty ridiculous question to me, but when he starts pushing me up to a sitting position, I notice that I’ve thrown up all around me. Humiliated, I try to sit up, but my legs feel paralyzed.

“Two thirty
A.M.
,” the guy says after muttering a whole bunch of other things I don’t understand, and when I look past him, I see there are a few other Mexican guys gazing at me like I’m some kind of a circus freak. And suddenly I feel very clear, recalling that I did Simon’s line at around ten, a lot of time has passed, and that’s not good. I’m also clear on the fact that I’d very much like to go home but I know that moving right now is out of the question.

“I’m fine,” I manage to say, as I lie back down again, this time in the direction away from my vomit. I decide to take a nap.

12

I’ve always heard about how people come to and have no idea where they are, but the minute I open my eyes—before I even look down at my depressing gown or glance at the sterile environment—I know that I’m in a hospital. Call it anti-amnesia: I had the misfortune of remembering with perfect clarity doing Simon’s line, feeling paralyzed, learning that it was Special K, and taking that impromptu nap beside the Barney’s Beanery parking lot Dumpster. I want to be surprised, and feel motivated to jump out of bed and demand that someone explain my whereabouts, but I just don’t feel like bothering. Something about this absolutely shocking turn of events feels thoroughly unsurprising.

My overwhelming feeling is one of disappointment. Why, oh why, hadn’t the mixture of coke and Ambien and alcohol and K conspired to kill me? Why hadn’t I been one of the lucky ones who got taken away accidentally, who never had to live on in people’s memories as a “suicide” but who was relieved of all her problems just as instantaneously as one? I know that these are incredibly depressing thoughts to be having and I want to cry over them, but I feel like that, too, probably wouldn’t be worth the effort.

And then, just as suddenly as I’d felt alert, I become incredibly exhausted. I feel the way I would if I were watching a movie late at night and really wanted to see what was going to happen next but had to surrender to fatigue, all the while knowing that I was never going to find out how the movie ended.

Later that day, Mom and Dad show up with a man who seems to be about Mom’s height (five feet) and introduces himself as Dr. Ronald Rand. By this time, not only am I fully conscious and moving around the room, but I’ve also been briefed on the recent turn of events, and they’re neither pretty nor surprising. Essentially, after I passed out for the final time by the Dumpsters, one of the valet parkers called the paramedics and they came and brought me here to Cedars, where I had a file, thanks to my Cedars gyno. When Mom got the your-daughter-O.D.’d call, she got in touch with Dad and this height-challenged shrink, and brought the two of them down from San Francisco to help save me.

“Mom, can I talk to you alone, please?” I ask as soon as the three of them turn up in my room. I feel overwhelmed by the triumvirate and a little like I’m being ganged up on as I fall back into bed and pull the covers around me. Mom looks more nervous than I’ve ever seen her and she seems to be looking at me quizzically, like she’s trying to reconcile the concept she has of “daughter” with the one she has for “girl who overdosed on drugs.” She glances at Dad and Dr. Rand, and says, “I think I’d like Ronald to stay.”

So Dad leaves the room and I sit up in bed. Dr. Rand clears his throat.

“Why don’t I explain why I’m here,” he says and I nod. “Well, my work typically involves helping parents whose kids have joined certain religious groups, or cults.”

“You’re a deprogrammer?” I ask. This guy I met at a party once told me that his parents sent him to one after he decided he didn’t want to be a Scientologist anymore.

“Technically, I’m a behavioral psychologist,” says Dr. Ronald Rand, “but I have been quite successful at reuniting children who have been lost with their parents.”

“But I didn’t join a cult,” I say. “I’d never join a cult. I just had a bad night because I took too many drugs.”

I can’t look at Mom when I say the word “drugs,” even though I know that she knows I do them. A few years ago, I met my mom and stepdad in Paris when they were doing a house trade with a Parisian family at Christmas for a month, and I managed to infiltrate the sleazy underbelly of Parisian party life rather easily. The coke in Paris was so pure that I regularly returned home from a night out just as my mom and stepdad were going out sightseeing for the day. But we sort of operated under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Dr. Rand looks thrilled that he’s been able to extract the word “drugs” from me. “Drugs!” he shrieks excitedly. “Yes, drugs!” He glances at my mom like he thinks she should be handing him a medal and then gazes at me. “I understand you like to do a toot now and then.”

“A toot?” I ask. Who the hell was this Dr. Ronald Rand, and why on earth had Mom thought he might be the right person to talk to me about drugs? “Is that, like, a line?”

“A toot, a line, powder,” he says, trying to appear casually hip.

“Look,” I say, glancing down. “I like doing coke; I like it a lot.” I hear Mom gasp, even though she’d told me years ago that our former handyman had given her coke once and she’d spent the entire night vacuuming every rug in the house. As soon as the confession is out of my mouth, though, I feel oddly relieved. “But still, what happened last night was a mistake. I thought I was doing coke, but it turned out to be something else.”

Dr. Rand nods compassionately and for the first time since I set eyes on him, I sort of like him. He sits down on my hospital bed and gazes at me kindly. “Do you want to stop doing coke?” he asks.

I know what he’s really asking me is if I want to get sober but he’s just too much of a wuss to phrase it like that. A couple of the guys at my high school got sober when they were busted smoking pot at one of their soccer games, and I’ve known a few sober people over the years, but the truth is, I haven’t ever understood how those folks worked. They probably go to, like, the theater all the time or sew group quilts or do something to replace going to parties and socializing, but I just can’t see myself as Suzy Sober Girl.

“I can’t imagine what I’d do for fun if I was sober,” I say.

“My guess is that you’d find all kinds of new ways to have fun,” Dr. Rand says. I look at Mom, who nods.

“But I don’t want new ways. I like the old ways just fine,” I say as I fall back into my pillows.

“Amelia,” Dr. Rand says, finally sounding firm, “with all due respect, I don’t think those ‘old ways’ are working for you anymore.”

At first, I want to lash out and attack him, but instead I just lie there and think about what he’s saying. I consider how horribly jittery I’ve been feeling since I started doing coke all the time, those suicidal feelings that plague me the day after I do it and the day after that—feelings that can only be dulled with more coke—and all the paranoia. I realize that I can’t imagine my life with coke and I can’t imagine it without. And I’m not going to kill myself, so what are my options?
Being sober would surely suck
, I decide,
but it might be better than dying.
Armed with that conclusion, I nod. Dr. Rand pats my mom, who now looks a little teary, on the back.

“We’ve picked out a local rehab for you,” he says. “Why don’t I bring your dad back in?”

“Whoa,” I say, more alarmed by the mention of Dad than I am by the thought of rehab. “My dad just doesn’t understand me,” I say. “He scares me and he makes me feel uncomfortable and guilty and he’s always criticizing and he makes me feel bad about money, and—”

“He also loves you very much,” says Dr. Rand. “Did you ever think that he only says what he says and does what he does out of love and wanting you to have and be the best you can?”

I don’t say anything.

“Do this,” Dr. Rand says. “Picture a movie theater—one of those multiplexes with ten different movies playing at the same time. Now picture you and your dad, walking in the front door together. But you go into one theater and your dad goes into another. You leave at the same time and maybe your movie was terrible but your dad just loved the one he saw and you can’t seem to understand how he felt that way because you thought he was in the same theater you were, watching the piece of doodoo you’d seen. Why don’t you look at what you and your dad have experienced that way—like you were two people going through the same thing but watching completely different movies?”

Maybe my drug-addled brain is exhausted or I’m just feeling too weak to fight much longer, but something about Dr. Rand’s ridiculous movie theater analogy works for me. It occurs to me that my dad isn’t always trying to be awful but just doesn’t know exactly how to handle me. I give Dr. Rand a half-smile.

“Your dad would like to pay for rehab,” continues Dr. Rand. “And, after considering several options, he thinks the best place for you would be Pledges.”

And that’s where he gets me. Everyone knows that Pledges is the Four Seasons of rehabs and anyone who’s even casually perused
Absolutely Fabulous
or any of the other weekly magazines is familiar with the fact that every celebrity with a well-publicized drug problem has gone there. I’ve seen pictures of its multiple pools, exercise rooms, and even horse stables.
It would probably be
, I think,
the ideal place to get a little pampering while they teach me how to stop wanting to do coke.

Dad steps in the room, smiling, and I suddenly feel incredibly grateful for both him and Mom—the fact that they flew down here and still love me, despite what a fuck-up I am.

Mom, who’s been silent for probably longer than she has in her entire life, asks, “Now, do you have anything you need taken care of? The cats—why don’t I take them until you’re back on your feet again?”

I think of my apartment and its piles of clothing and gray paint everywhere. I nod. “My place is a disaster.”

Mom nods and says, “After this is all over, maybe you’ll want to move back home?” This is always Mom’s angle. I think she’d be thrilled if I still lived in my old bedroom. But for once, this doesn’t bug me; I feel oddly grateful for the fact that she still wants me near her, even though I have no intention of moving back north.

Dad says, “I don’t want you worrying about money for the time being—just concentrate on getting well.”

And then Mom and Dad lean in to hug me. And, I kid you not, Dr. Ronald Rand throws one arm around Mom, one arm around Dad, and presses his face into our hug like we’re all one big, happy family.

13

When we pull up at Pledges, I marvel over what a fantastic job the rehab has done of making it look casual and rustic. This place, with its threadbare living room, smoking patio littered with overflowing ashtrays, sad-looking “therapy” room, and broken basketball net, looks more like the camp I went to in Yosemite—plus about twenty years of wear and tear—than a rehab to the stars. And I decide I like the fact that they make an effort to downplay all the luxury—I’d hate if it was ostentatious, like a cruise ship, and I might feel intimidated if there were a bunch of movie stars with perfect bodies lounging by a pool.

A smiling forty-something guy bounces into the entry room and introduces himself as Tommy, adding that he’s going to be my counselor. I wonder how such assignments are made. Does an efficient receptionist examine my facts and go, “Hmmm…magazine journalist, coke problem, serious smoker—this one’s for Tommy”? But something about Tommy makes me feel immediately safe, so I decide to like him even though I already resent his cheerfulness.

“Have you been in before?” he asks me as I pick at a cuticle that is already bloodied from the abuse I’ve been giving it since checking out of the hospital.

“In?” I ask. Looking around, I ask, “In this room, you mean?”

Tommy bursts into a huge laugh. “Ah, I love newcomers,” he says.

A few derelict types wander into the room: a Mexican guy wearing a T-shirt that reads, “Need your plumbing fixed?” and a nervous-seeming balding man who would look right at home sitting at a bus stop clutching a drink inside a brown paper bag.

“Joel, Stan, come meet Amelia,” Tommy bellows. He pronounces the name “Joel” with an “H” so it sounds like Hoel.

Stan shuffles over while staring at the ground and Joel fixes me with a lascivious leer. Even though I’m fairly horrified by my soon-to-be rehab-mates, I know I’m going to have to make friends around here, so I smile and reach my hand out to Joel to shake. Stan is staring at the ground with his arms by his side, so I leave him alone.

“Welcome,” Joel says, ignoring my hand and throwing his fleshy, sweaty arms around me, pulling me into him so that his B.O. is basically permanently embedded in my nostrils. I’m positive that Tommy is going to yank me away from this disgusting man and tell him to stop sexually harassing the women around here, but when I gaze out at Tommy’s face from under Joel’s armpit, he’s smiling as if Joel and I are the cutest couple he’s ever seen.