Tell Me Something Real (19 page)

“You don't understand, Marie.” Adrienne sits next to us and runs her fingers through Marie's hair.

“Yes, I do. I understand all of this.” Marie points to Dad, who looks too hurt to speak. “And Dad really didn't mean to hurt us,” she says, with tears streaming down her face.

I can't sit on the couch any longer, so I ease Marie into Adrienne's lap and charge into the dining room. Like a dog, I circle the room before sitting at the piano. I pick up a framed photo, a snapshot, taken at the clinic. In the picture, Adrienne, Marie, and I lean against a wall, standing in birth order. Adrienne has bougainvillea in her hair. Her hair is almost white in the sun. I am wearing my favorite sundress. Marie looks tiny and hopeful.

Suddenly, I feel as though I'm there again. Sitting in the backseat of Mom's car, resting against the door. I remember the wind and the view of the ocean. I shake away the memory and flip over the frame to pull the photo free. I place it on
top of my sheet music and begin to play. The thump of the keys calms my nerves. I allow my body to absorb the sound, every cell filling with the music. The piano buries my heart deeper into my chest. It relaxes my muscles, but can't erase my pain and grief.

I try to focus on the music. The Chopin nocturne I hadn't mastered when I said good-bye to Caleb. Since then, I've played it dozens of times. The notes are delicate, climbing and descending the scales. Just when the melody sounds too sweet, the music takes a turn toward the dark and complex. Sometimes when I'm this close to the music, I feel as though I become the instrument. Skin and blood and muscle are exchanged for wood and metal. My bones become as fine as the keys, my teeth rattle with every note.

I have nothing left but the music, the cool keys. My fingertips grace the ivory, reminding me that my body was made for this. Not for illness and lies and betrayal. But for touch.

Tears flow as soon as my head hits the pillow. My fourth night in a row without solid sleep. I've taken to waking Dad in the middle of the night, asking questions that I can't bear to ask in daylight. I feel entitled to share my insomnia.

I sneak into their room. Dad sleeps in the center of the bed, alone, like he never shared it with Mom. He wakes in a snap. I sit on the edge of the mattress and swing my restless feet, forcing him to stay awake. The clock reads 3:57 a.m. “Tell me again,” I say, as insistent as a three-year-old demanding another bedtime story. “Tell me how you found out.”

He repeats the details, always the same. I hurl questions like an amateur darts player, some far-flung, some bull's-eye. At first, I can't shake the mechanics of the lies. I learned from the master, Agatha Christie, and make lists on inconsequential scraps of paper, the backs of receipts and junk mail envelopes:

Why didn't anyone notice that there weren't records from the clinic?

How could Dad go all that time without meeting her doctor?

Why did the pharmacy allow her to fill prescriptions of a dangerous combination of medications?

How could any of the clinic doctors let her take such high dosages of Laetrile?

His answers don't sound forced or scripted, and his helpless smile is just that—helpless. He looks like a man who barely survives the day, and yet I wake him night after night, not to be cruel, but to survive the darkness.

I want to look into Dad's face and believe him. I never doubt his love, but I doubt his words, the pauses in between. I hold my breath when he speaks, waiting for some terrible news, another brutal discovery.

“Did you suspect?” I ask. “How long did you know?”

He rolls over and lifts his head. “You know I didn't. If Barb hadn't found out, I think we'd still be living in that hell.”

We're still living in hell, just a different kind. Cancer attacks white blood cells. Lies attack everything. Wreckage all the same.

After a silent moment, he asks, “Did you? You spent more time at the clinic. I know that wasn't fair—I should have been there. Did you ever see something that didn't feel right?”

Right or wrong, I feel like it always comes back to me.
“A natural caretaker,” she used to say, implying that I'm the obvious choice, with Marie too young and Adrienne too volatile. My mind flashes back to her dosage list, that sheet of paper with lethal numbers scattered across the page, her suicide note. I gather the quilt in my hand and squeeze as hard as I can.

I shrug. “I don't know.”

“Think,” he says.

“I thought it was her moods. Sometimes I'd check on her in the infusion room and she would be with Lupe . . .” I still can't get over Lupe, whose deceit came with a price tag. I close my eyes for a second. “Sometimes they'd be laughing. Mom would have the IV, but she seemed almost happy. It was so weird to hear her laugh because she didn't laugh at home anymore. Not like she used to. But she did with Lupe. Do you think she was laughing at us?” I swallow hard.

“Oh God, no. Vanessa, it's not like that. What she did was horrible. It's the worst thing she could do to us, but she didn't do it to hurt you. I'm sure of that. Maybe she did it because of me. She wanted my attention. She wanted everyone's attention. You were the casualty—
not
the reason.”

“We weren't enough for her.” I want to scream like Adrienne, but all I do is whisper in the damn dark.

Dad tosses the quilt aside and climbs across the bed. With him right next to me, I can see the lines across his forehead, deepening by the day. I don't look away, even when furious tears fill my eyes.

He covers his face with his hands, quick, like he doesn't want me to see his expression. But I do. The same expression he wore when he first told me about Mom. He looks like someone pushed him from the top of a high rise, forty stories up, the last step before a deadly freefall. “Nothing was enough for her. She's mentally ill. There's something wrong with her. Not you. Not your sisters.” Dad drops his hands. His face is a portrait of uncensored pain.

My head fills with memories of her protruding cheekbones, her raspy voice. “When you see her, does she say why she did it?”

He shakes his head. “She's still sick from the Laetrile, and they have her on a few new drugs. She's not very coherent right now. I want answers too. I'm going to keep visiting until I get them.”

“But we could have done something, right?” I ask. “Couldn't
you
have done something to stop her?”

He looks surprised by my tone, sharp and blaming, yet not venomous like Adrienne's. Without hesitation, he nods. “I'm going to do everything in my power now. Absolutely everything. I won't let her do more damage.”

“Where are you going in the morning?” I ask.

“To see the lawyer. There might be some other legal avenues to take. Since we couldn't get a restraining order, we may have to be more aggressive.”

My back stiffens. “What do you mean by ‘aggressive'?”

“We're looking at other hospitals. This isn't something
you need to worry about. I'll let you know if anything changes.”

I try my best to meet his eyes in the dark. “We don't know what you do all day. You're just gone. I want to come with you.”

He lets out an exasperated sigh, and when he speaks, he sounds exhausted. “You can't come. I've told you what I do. I talk to her doctors. I talk to the lawyer. I see your mother. That's all. I'm not keeping anything from you, Vanessa. The reality is that nothing about our situation is simple. Your mom did a hell of a job turning our lives upside down. There's a lot to manage.”

“There was a lot to manage before, but we were the ones stuck doing it.”

When he drapes his arm across my shoulder, I shake it off. I don't know what I want. I need him, but everything hurts so much, and no matter how hard I try, I can't find comfort in anything. Maybe I never will.

“I know your mother isn't here and you're angry. You have every right to be. I screwed up, but I am not the one who did this. I'm not your mom. I'm on your side, and I'm doing the best I can.”

The plea in his voice sounds like minor keys, the piano notes that catch in my chest, the ones that bring emotion to a piece. Quiet and powerful.

“I know,” I say.

The curtains gape open, just enough for the moonlight
to illuminate his profile. It's strange how I always searched for a resemblance to Mom, a trace of her beauty, but never to him. I inherited a feminine version of his nose. How come I never noticed before?

He says my name when I slide off the bed. “I love you girls more than anything.”

“I know. Go back to sleep,” I say before closing the door.

He's gone when I wake up.

Grief fills every corner of the house. The dining room holds too many memories. When I sit at the bench, fingers poised on the keys, all I think of is Mom in her usual seat at the table, pushing her plate away, complaining of a lack of appetite. Throwing our labor, cooking and grocery shopping, into the trash. My chest tightens with anger. I abandon Handel, the last piece in Mrs. Albright's folder.

I never thought I'd wish for Mom's death, but it would be so much more straightforward. Clearly defined. True/false rather than multiple choice.

Dad mentioned an appointment with the lawyer, and then visiting Mom, something I can't imagine. It is one thing to pace the house, as I do now, but another to picture her somewhere else, alive, going about her day. Rising from bed, drinking coffee, maybe reading the newspaper or watching television.
Existing
while we carry on, pretending she doesn't breathe the same air.

I walk from room to room, wondering when Dad will
come home, aimlessly waiting. Her face is everywhere, in almost every room, smiling from photos. We are a family obsessed with documentation. I haven't noticed before, the volume of framed photos hanging from the walls and gracing tabletops and bookshelves. School pictures and family portraits and an abundance of vacation snapshots. Dad has a good eye for composition, and he arranges the photos with the same skill as designing a building. Balanced and beautiful, deceptively so.

Adrienne's room functions as our new base camp—free of family photos—where we unearth memory after memory, marveling at the betrayal. It is too much to understand, or accept, so we ground ourselves in the practical details of buying school supplies, distracted by backpacks, notebooks, and calculators. School starts on Monday, just three days away. I can't bear to make another list, anticipating if we'll need wide-ruled or college-lined binder paper.

Caleb's absence leaves a gaping hole. I spend more and more time on the porch, waiting, sitting in the exact spot where we traded secrets and fears. Just like Mom, he feels like a ghost. I'm haunted by the living. I open the front door, only to close it. Restless and unsure of what to do with myself, I have that strung-out feeling I get whenever Adrienne convinces me to drink too much coffee when we cram for finals. Back when grades mattered. Back when anything mattered.

Caleb's skateboard peeks from under my bed. The picture
must have been there all along, the Polaroid trapped between the bed frame and the wall. I slither under the bed, reaching for the photo. Caleb, around ten, decked out in snow gear, his giant green eyes barely visible beneath his hat. I trace the curve of his lips. I used to wonder if I'd ever see him smile in such a pure way, liberated from cancer and uncertainty. Now I wonder if I'll see his face again.

I hop on the board and fly across the room, crashing into my desk. My ankle, still tender, throbs when my leg rams into the wood. Adrienne storms in just as I step back on.

“What the fuck are you doing?” She's taken to wearing her hair in a bun on the top of her head like a Hare Krishna. Ever since Dad told us the truth, Adrienne seems electric, like her simple touch will emit a deadly bolt of energy. She narrows her bloodshot eyes. “Didn't you hear the phone? It's him.”