Aftershock

by Alison Taylor

  You’re alright, then? I sent your records to . . . He gestured, like he couldn’t bear to name Declan or his clinic.

  Yep. Thanks.

  So how did it . . . how was it?

  She shook her head slightly, narrowed her eyes.

  What do you really want, Rod? Third time now, but who was counting.

  So you liked it?

  It was very relaxing. Turns out I need to relax more.

  He made a sound like Huh, or Hmm, nodded his head and looked at her in what she imagined he imagined was sympathy.

  Anyway, I’m kind of busy.

  He pulled his head back, birdlike. Busy? With what?

  Fuck you, she thought. But she told him.

  I don’t know where Chloe is. As she formed the words, their immensity racked her, adding a slight tremor to her voice.

  That’s . . . distressing, he said, sounding not worried at all.

  She shrugged, not trusting herself to speak evenly, and equally not wanting to put into the air words—any words—that would stop him from saying what she knew he would say next. What she was waiting for him to say.

  How’s your neck, Jules? And your back? Do you need anything for them?

  Because truthfully, everything hurt like hell.

  I brought you a peace offering. Hat in his left hand, he reached his right into the pocket of his trench coat. Might help.

  He held it out like a gift, the sample-size offering of little green pills with precise 60s carved out of each of them. When she didn’t take them, he shrugged, stepped around her and placed them on the writing table under the stairs. She didn’t stop him, didn’t move, tracked the pills with her eyes.

  I’ll just leave them here.

  Isn’t that the exact drug you had me arrested for trying to get?

  Uh, well, those are actually the OxyNEO. Free samples.

  That’s not the point.

  Rod looked at his shoes, head bowed, as humble as she’d ever seen him. He seemed suddenly much younger.

  I’m sorry, Jules, about the arrest. I am. I was lashing out. He looked up at her. I felt like you were just using me for drugs.

  She conceded mentally that this was the truth but said nothing, still unsure of what he was doing there.

  And then that Declan guy really got under my skin. Anyway, I’m told these aren’t habit-forming. Just thought you might want to try them.

  She’d done enough research in the past few weeks to doubt the claim, but at this point possible addiction was a moot concern. She managed to say I don’t, but the want them wouldn’t come out. The pills pulled at her with their own gravitational force. Stringing together words of refusal was like building a bridge out of Popsicle sticks in a hurricane. She kept her eyes on the prize, the solution in a bubble pack. It was so close. Too close.

  I’m supposed to stay off the opiates.

  She was numb and reeling, felt the struts of her very new resolve tremble and sway, the whole thing might collapse with a breath.

  You need what you need, though, right? Guess I realized you can make your own decisions.

  She couldn’t argue with that. I need what I need, she repeated. He walked over to her, rubbed his hands over her arms, squeezing them gently.

  I’ve missed you so much.

  He pulled her into his arms, rested his chin on her head, rubbing her back, wholly oblivious to the clenching of her shoulders, the tension in her jaw.

  Nothing is the same without you. He leaned back to look at her, his pale forehead flexed in a demonstration of concern, and then he winked at her, he actually winked, and said, Don’t I always look after you?

  It was the wink that did it, this new flirtatiousness of his reminding her of how understated he’d been when they met, highlighting everything about him that had changed. The roaring wind in her brain fell abruptly away and she could see the precipice on which she stood, the edge of the vortex that had swallowed so much time, so much of her life already, and she suddenly knew: it would take everything if she let it.

  Whatever utter insecurity had led Rod to this point, she didn’t need to be a part of it.

  Okay, no. You gotta go.

  She disentangled from him, his arms clinging like stretched taffy, and moved towards the front door, left him standing in the middle of the foyer, his stupid hat askew on a head cocked in confusion.

  She opened the door.

  But, he said.

  She shook her head. She had nothing left to say.

  She shut the door behind him, possibly a little faster and louder than she’d meant to. But not much.

  And, of course, it took mere seconds after his Porsche drove off for her to remember—not that she’d forgotten—the sample pack of Oxy on the table by the stairs. As she crossed the room, Farzan appeared on the landing above. She froze, caught. But he didn’t look accusatory, he looked struck.

  They’ve had another earthquake in Christchurch. A big one. It’s on the news.

  Quake.

  The news shattered her, the destruction, not just the destruction, but the commentary, a 6.4 earthquake hit the city of Christchurch just hours ago, so far eleven people are confirmed dead and hundreds injured, two weeks of escalating aftershocks, hardest hit was the suburb of— And that was it, the female voice went on to talk about flooding in the Philippines. Farzan rolled it back so she could hear it again, that ten-second clip that told her nothing.

  That’s David’s suburb, she told him, and then she said nothing, took the remote out of his hand and watched it several times, but there was nothing, nothing new.

  Is that where your daughter is?

  Jules nodded, slowly. She was. At her dad’s.

  Chloe, Farzan added, as if knowing her name could somehow make her safe. Can you call? Make sure they’re okay?

  She felt herself sinking below the surface of things, this couldn’t be happening, couldn’t be happening.

  I don’t know where she is now.

  It came out in a tight whisper. She’d said the same words just minutes before, but the earth had literally opened up since then, and she felt strangely far more comforted by Farzan’s presence, his quiet watchfulness, than she ever had by Rod. She told him everything in an incoherent rush, felt the sobs locked up tight in her chest trying to punch their way out.

  I told her to call her father.

  She sat on the couch, Farzan with an arm around her shoulders. From where? he asked, and she recalled the buzzing that had woken her up.

  My phone, she said, and went upstairs to get it. On the way up, she cringed as the shoulder that had been aching since Chloe’s call sent fresh bladed fractals into her neck and arm. At the landing on the way back down, she veered left instead of right. Moments later she was halfway to the kitchen for some water. Oxy in her hand.

  Whoa-whoa-whoa.

  Farzan appeared out of nowhere, made her jump. Took hold of her arm, followed it down to her hand, uncurled her fingers to pry the bubble pack from her fist. He was surprisingly quick and strong and she was so tired.

  I need that.

  Okay, okay. He tucked it into his front pocket. Let’s just talk for a sec first. He sat on the kitchen bench. Gingerly, Jules slid in across from him. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe through the Revenge of the Pain.

  I just need one.

  I know. But listen. She heard him rap his knuckles on the table.

  I’m listening.

  Where did Chloe call from?

  Scowling, she checked: a long and unfamiliar number. Jules showed Farzan. He shrugged. She hit Dial.

  Picton Backpackers, drawled a woman’s recorded voice, followed by check-in hours and location, and a beep. Jules left a message, hung up and swore.

  Okay, so. Farzan handed her his own phone, showed her a map of New Zealand. Way up there, he pointed, the north end of the South Island.

  Way up there. She peered into the tiny screen, zoomed in, zoomed out, looked at the map in satellite photos. It seemed very remote. Desolat
e, even.

  So at least you know where she is.

  I know she’s in the middle of fucking nowhere.

  The earthquake was down there. That’s, like, hundreds of miles away. He pulled and poked at the phone in her hand, trying to show her. She put it down in frustration, massaged the back of her neck.

  She knew of only one way to deal with how she was feeling. She knew what he would say, but she had to ask:

  Just one?

  When he didn’t speak, she looked up, found him glaring at her.

  Whatever, Farzan. I don’t need a lecture.

  Drew stuck his neck out for you. And your daughter—

  You just said she’s fine. She has a credit card if she really needs it.

  Really. That’s your response. Why are we even trying to help you?

  She doesn’t need me, Farzan. And I never asked—

  You’re unbelievable.

  You know nothing about me.

  Right back atcha, sister. You need to get your shit together, Jules, or watch your life go down in flames. He stood abruptly. I don’t have time for this shit, he said, sounding equal parts exhausted and furious as he went back upstairs.

  You don’t know what this feels like, she called after him, weakly and to no response. You don’t know anything.

  SHE SWORE. SHE wanted to leave, but she couldn’t. The clamp on her ankle made sure of that. And where would she even go.

  She tried to call David again, but whatever lucky connection she had found earlier was broken now. What would she say to him anyway.

  She climbed the stairs to her room, feeling ancient and wrecked. She could hear, coming through a shut door on the second floor, Farzan’s voice over a dampened football game. She outlined, and filed for later consideration, the strategic problem of how to recover her pills from his pants pocket.

  The guest room felt more restrictive than ever. Her bed was a twist of sheets, her crap all over the couch and floor, clothes dropped anywhere she’d changed.

  Since she’d left the apartment she’d shared with her mother, Jules had always kept her places of residence immaculate. (Although, judging by what she’d seen at her house, her account with her cleaning service was in serious arrears.) But generally, she made a point of being a very tidy person. The past few weeks, here in this room, habits had unravelled, and objects had ceased to find homes. Disorder had colonized her space.

  She wandered around the room, picking things up and finding places for them. She hung up some clothes, put others in a laundry hamper. Maybe she’d wash them later. She made the bed, gathered up the newspapers she’d pillaged for crossword puzzles. Collected unwashed coffee cups to take downstairs.

  As she restored the room to its clean lines of furniture and walls without the intrusive scribbling of her scattered belongings, she glimpsed a memory of what normal felt like. These were folded shirts and a smooth, calm bed. Books could be neatly lined up on a shelf. She could cope, she thought. She knew how to do this.

  Straightening the sofa cushions, she found the little book she’d taken from Chloe’s room, its cover bent back.

  Oh.

  Oh.

  Dr. Morrow was right about one thing. She’d lost a daughter before.

  It took her a paper clip and twenty seconds to pick the lock on Chloe’s diary.

  Diary.

  Despite the backlash from the earlier incident, Jules had tried to track Chloe by accessing her Socialink account for a second time a few days ago, before she even knew she was “missing.” But all that remained of Chloe’s account was her public profile: a rather alarming screen cycling through several graphic cartoons of people offing themselves in various ways, bleeding text declaring that Chloe_In_Net Is Dead! And along the bottom of the screen, the flashing question Do You Want to Kill Yourself Too? Click here. So, instead, she had cyberstalked other people Chloe knew, starting with her girlfriend Jill. She was prepared to use some backdoor code to get into her private messages, but she didn’t need to. Jill’s privacy settings were non-existent, and her profile picture said it all: a typical Couple Status picture (smiling seriously in a close embrace in front of a tree—seventy-five percent of high school students posted at least six a year) with someone Jules did not know, dated two days after Chloe had left on her trip.

  Jules had said her daughter’s name aloud, feeling her heartache and a sad relief: Chloe’s radio silence was about Jill, not about her.

  READING HER DAUGHTER’S diary now, which started the previous April, midway through Chloe’s last semester of high school, Jules found much of the adolescent drivel she considered typical. The perpetual overblown drama with Jill. Rage at her oh-so-villainous mother for not sharing her eighty-thousand-dollar car with her then eighteen-year-old daughter. Anxiety that the world might not hold a place for her; naive excitement at the prospect of creating one.

  Then her eye popped to the word: Oxy. She sucked in and held her breath, let it out slowly like she was underwater and had to make it last.

  Not a secret, then. Chloe had regularly gone through Jules’s dresser drawers and bathroom cupboard, and had known for a long time about the pills. Certainly, she never seemed surprised by their discovery. Quite the opposite. At one point she was waiting, worriedly, to see if Jules would notice that she was missing some. (She hadn’t.) And Chloe and Jill had taken Oxy together one afternoon, lounging by Jill’s pool.

  Mortified, Jules flipped several pages ahead, thinking: Okay, Guilty. She was, once again, violating Chloe’s privacy, albeit, again, out of parental concern. But also, Not Guilty: because Chloe had apparently violated Jules’s privacy, multiple times, out of nothing but self-interest, and surely that made it worse? Surely that put Jules ahead enough on the scale to outweigh the fact that Chloe had done what all the Public Service Announcements warned against: gotten high by stealing her parent’s prescription medication.

  But no, she knew she really was terrible at being a mother.

  Maybe she could make up for it now.

  In an entry dated a couple weeks after Chloe had started university, Jules read:

  Dreams, under the surface. At night they try to drown me. My childhood bullies gathering round, haunting and taunting. Can’t. Fucking. Sleep. Missed my morning classes all week. So not good.

  Jules remembered Chloe’s terrible nightmares. The worst part of which, for Jules, had been the waiting. The dreams happened with such regularity that she found herself lying awake, anticipating the horrible choked cries from Chloe’s room.

  Back then, Jules, who already had a tendency to self-medicate, did what she needed to remain unconscious for the minimal six hours a night. An extra Scotch or two. A variety of pills.

  But Chloe’s dreams would wake David, and David would wake Jules. And he was right to—she wasn’t so terrible a person, or mother, that she didn’t even want to know that Chloe was suffering. At least not at that point. Not yet.

  When the dreams continued, became chronic over months and months, they finally took Chloe to grief counselling. Within a few months, they seemed to stop. Chloe never talked to Jules about her dreams, not once, but the grief counsellor had said she might not, so Jules hadn’t worried. She had enough trouble looking after her own grief, and her daughter had seemed fine. So she’d thought.

  But here it was, thirteen years later, and Chloe was still, or again, going through fallout.

  That kind of grief never goes away.

  October 1:

  I can’t sleep but I dream

  I can’t sleep I can only dream

  wake up suffocating, 4 am.

  Drugstore pills no help. Hafta go to Student Health.

  bits of memory that waited years to get me alone

  have got something to say

  And the following day:

  student health won’t give me anything.

  asshole fucker idiot doctor tried to call me “normal”

  “overwhelming anxiety” kind of missing the point

  every tim
e I blink my eyes try to sleep

  every time I sleep I think I’m dying

  Then, just days before Chloe withdrew from school:

  Dream last night

  Mo-mo took Eloise and said it was all my fault

  but no one needed to know

  she’d look after her for me

  I didn’t believe her but I let her.

  Jules wasn’t really seeing words anymore, she’d slammed headlong into a wall of memory, a wall around her memory, years of truths appearing, climbing through the cracks. Mo-mo, Maureen waiting for her on the porch, trying to light a cigarette. Chloe playing with Eloise, her beloved stuffed elephant, up in her room. Before Nan and Elliot took her away. The bedroom, with the crib, that she could never use as an office again. The version of her life she could never live: everything that happened behind her, when she wasn’t looking.

  JULES.

  Drew, breathing heavily, stood in the doorway to her third-floor room. A few stapled pages, envelope-creased, hung from his hand.

  How ya doin’? The tone was casual, the frown scrutinizing.

  She shrugged. Didn’t know where to begin.

  Farzan says Rod came by.

  Oh. Yeah. He did. It felt like weeks ago, continents away.

  Drew lumbered towards her. And brought you more Oxy. Fuckin’ guy.

  I didn’t— Farzan took it. Jules closed Chloe’s diary—a mistake, because it said Diary on the front of it, and Drew was now close enough to read it.

  Jules. You can’t read that.

  I don’t know where she is, Drew.

  Well, she’s not in there. He reached for the book. It’s not right.

  But she pulled it away.

  I need to read it. She tucked the diary under her arms, out of sight. Drew sagged, disappointed. She’d hurt his feelings and felt a beat of remorse. She was no closer to knowing where Chloe was, and felt further than ever from knowing who she was, but it was the only clue she had, and she wouldn’t give it up.

  Alright. Well, here’s something that is my business. He held up the papers in his hand. A certain B-class sedan? On your company account? The rental company is claiming you never brought it back.