“Want to work.” Use pronouns, Maddy heard Zelda chiding.
Olivia placed her elbows on her desk and rested her chin in her hand. “Now?”
“I need it.”
“Are you bored?” she asked.
“No, not bored.” Bored had become a foreign concept. Entire days slipped away while she tried to understand the world: like who first thought of eating garlic?
“I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of?”
She shrugged. “Money. Not enough. Ben and I over.” She ran her fingers over a Red Sox pencil cup that she didn’t remember. “Maybe he won’t want. To come back. If I let him.”
Maddy would understand if Ben didn’t come back—carrying other people’s burdens wears a person out. Clients’ pain had worn her out before. Sometimes she’d felt crippled by the anguish she swallowed. Like turkey drippings that were too rich to eat on a regular diet.
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Come on. He’s begging to come home. You told me. Kath told me. Your mother told me. It’ll probably be tomorrow’s headlines in the Globe.”
“It could happen. Shit. We work in a hospital. Happens all the time. Remember Cigarette-Face?”
Cigarette-Face was Joe, a client whose wife had been dying of liver cancer. He resembled a stubbed-out cigarette, but inside was a hero who sat with his wife, reading to her eight hours a day. Joe slept in a chair by her bed and fed her as though it were his honor. Once a week he came to Maddy’s office to weep because he didn’t want to cry in front of his wife. That was all he needed—someone to hear his suffering.
“What are you talking about, Maddy?” Olivia asked. “First of all, you asked Ben to leave. He’s dying to come back. And Joe stayed with his wife. He was our saint.”
“Right. Exactly. I don’t think. Ben’s like that.”
• • •
If Olivia didn’t want her at the office, she didn’t let on. She gave Maddy a pile of folders and told her to catch up on cases. Ha! Another joke. She shuffled papers while Olivia saw clients down the hall, jumping up from her desk like an excited puppy each time Olivia returned.
And then she told Maddy it was group day. The Wednesday Blues Club.
“Please. Let me come,” she begged.
Olivia shocked her by saying, “Okay. Might as well. They never stop asking about you. Do you remember the last time you were with them?”
Maddy squeezed her eyes shut, trying to picture it. After a few moments, she sighed. “No.”
They pulled on their coats and headed toward Olivia’s battered car. “Right before your accident.”
• • •
As they drove the roads leading to Dorchester, Olivia filled the silence, passing on hospital gossip and commenting on the landscape.
“Look at that!” She pointed to an empty lot heaped with rubbish. Twisted shopping carts strewn among bare mattresses held garbage. A naked one-legged doll, her white skin potent against a torn black Hefty bag, lay on her back. “You gonna see that in Beacon Hill? No way! But here, big effing deal. Why shouldn’t these people have to look at shit all day, right?”
“Emma. She’s the one.” She’d tried to keep this a secret from Olivia—knowing how angry her friend would get at Ben for putting Emma in that position. “Told me. About the accident. About the charge. About Ben.” Maddy’s words slid out in a TBI truth serum torrent.
“Jesus, what the hell. I didn’t know she was the one who told you. She must be a wreck. How is she handling it?”
“Forget it. Don’t want to talk. About it.” How was Emma handling it? Another way Maddy failed each day.
“Emma will need a lot of guidance,” Olivia said. “No one’s paying enough attention to her. Certainly not Ben. And you can’t. Let me help you.” Olivia hit her horn as the driver in front of her braked for a yellow light. “Emma needs it.”
“Don’t. Tell me. What we need. Just be my friend. The group. Everyone still there?”
“Listen, up, Maddy. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. So much has happened, and now Emma.”
Maddy grabbed a tissue from Olivia’s ambitiously organized dash drawer. “Going to work. Not going to cry. Stop.”
Olivia pressed her lips together and then pretended to smile. “Fine. I’ll stop. For now.”
After they parked and walked three blocks, Maddy became calmer. Zelda had said going back to work would be like putting on a suit that you remembered as comfortable but now didn’t quite fit anymore. Therefore, you had to tailor it. She reflexively reached for her pocketbook, ready to pop an Ativan—the Ativan Dr. Paulo prescribed—but stopped. She’d be fine. Just fine.
• • •
The room where the Wednesday Blues met hadn’t changed; it still had dingy beige linoleum, a circle of dented metal chairs, and the smell of a basement too often flooded.
After ten minutes of hugging her, the Wednesday women got past the excitement of Maddy’s appearance and went back to talking about themselves. Almost nothing seemed different except Maddy. She met the one new woman, Jasmine, a well-curved girl with a loud mouth who reminded her a little of her sister at that age—if at seventeen Vanessa had been pregnant and worn a swirl of purple and yellow faded punches as eye shadow.
“My baby came this weekend. It’s the second time in a row they gave me unsupervised visits,” Kendra said. Her braids shook with excitement as she spoke, wiggling and tapping her foot. “And she cried like they were tearing off her arms when that bitch social worker took her back. No offense, Olivia, Maddy.”
“None taken,” Olivia said. “How did it feel when she cried?”
“It felt good.” Kendra crossed her arms. “Because she knows I’m her mama, and she should be with me. She knows that.”
“So what does that make you feel?” Olivia asked.
“I just told you.” Kendra looked so young that Maddy thought the girl might stick her tongue out.
“No,” Olivia said. “I mean how did it feel knowing that your situation made your baby upset?”
“It’s not like I wanted her sad, if that’s what you’re trying to say. Can’t I be glad that she knows who I am? She remembers me. I was happy. Is that so wrong?” Kendra tightened her eyes into stubborn slits.
“Yeah. It’s wrong.” Sabine curled her hands into fists. Still so thin that she seemed raw, Sabine hadn’t changed. “It was you being so fucked-up that put her there.”
“Don’t start on me, Sabine.”
“I’m not starting on you.” Sabine remained unruffled. “I’m telling you what is. You put the tears in your child’s eyes, not the social workers and not the crackhead who beat you up. ’Cause you stayed with him just like he was, didn’t you? Did you even think about what he might do to your baby?”
“Fuck you,” Kendra said. “You know what Olivia and Maddy say—we stay because we love them, not because they’re mean.”
“Fuck me, but you know it’s true. Just like it’s true I gave my baby away.” Sabine wrapped her arms around her thin chest and hugged herself tight.
Maddy struggled to remember Sabine’s story. A child of rape. Mother who hated her for that rape. Then drugs. As Sabine’s final punishment for her life, the state took away her baby.
“Go easy, Sabine. Self-responsibility doesn’t mean we control the world. Leaving is difficult,” Olivia said.
“I have an announcement,” Moira broke in.
Moira. Our mother of cookies.
“What?” Maddy asked. The group turned to her as though the table had spoken. “I can speak. You know.”
Nervous laughter swept the room.
“I left Ed,” Moira said in her soft brogue. “Yesterday. That’s why I didn’t bring anything today.” She spread her arms as though indicating the lack of cookies.
“Wow, Mama. Why’dja let me go on and on when you have that news?” Kendra, who always sat next to Moira, grabbed the older woman’s hand.
Maddy leaned in, eager to hear. “Why? Did. You leave him?”
“You,” Moira said. “You helped me decide.”
“Maddy hasn’t even been here in a hundred years.” Amber whined as though Maddy had been on a shopping spree. Her stringy blond hair looked oilier than ever.
“Moira has the floor, ladies,” Olivia said.
The women shuffled their feet and sat up straighter. Only Sabine didn’t seem affected by Olivia’s mild rebuke.
“Did you know I went to see you in the hospital, Maddy?” Moira asked.
“I don’t remember.” Maddy hated that Moira had watched her while she lay unconscious.
“I didn’t stay but a moment.” Moira twisted her hands. “But it made me think how you worked so hard, to help us and all, and yet that’s how you were rewarded? With a coma? What would my reward be? What medal would I get for letting Ed beat the crap out of me and for convincing myself God must have a plan? For telling myself I was protecting my children?”
No one answered. Olivia opened her mouth to speak, but Moira held out a hand. “Please. Let me finish.”
She picked up her cup of tea and took a long swallow, the group watching as though Moira were the brand-new movie.
“It’s ended up being too simple.” She held her chapped hands to her lips as though praying. “He scared me, sure, but even more, Mother of God, I was terrified of opening my goddamn mouth. Excuse me.”
“Just say it,” Sabine said. “Spit out that crap you been eating.”
Moira’s smile lit up the face that must have been lovely before old bruises and lines set in so deep. “I said to myself, stop worrying about him killing you. You’re murdering yourself. All he has to do is finish the job. I’d been praying to God, not realizing that all that time God was helping, I just didn’t recognize his hand. He’d sent me you all—I just hadn’t been listening. All these years, it was like the Bible says, I’ve been a prisoner of hope.”
• • •
Ben waited at a table by the huge glass windows, already seated when Maddy arrived at the Top of the Hub restaurant. She’d been ferried by the cab service. Ben had picked this touristy special-occasion place as though they were celebrating something.
“I have something important to tell you,” he’d said when asking her to join him for dinner.
As she walked toward the table, she placed a hand over her racing heart. They were fifty-two stories up, perched at the top of the Prudential building. Beyond the glass-walled restaurant, filled with what seemed like acres of white linen, Boston flashed like a carpet of fireflies.
Ben stood and pulled her chair out, beating the maître d’ to the job. For a moment, Maddy believed she could start new. She wanted to twirl in the flashes of lights and feel sparks ignite right inside her heart. Ben and Maddy sat, sending freshly minted stares across the gap of not seeing each other every day.
Ben’s grin was huge. “I have good news. My father called today. It’s all going to be okay. The other driver? He was legally drunk. They can’t charge me. And I would think he’ll be—”
Maddy stared at him, her twinkly twirling feelings gone.
“I know this all means very little to you. You are still . . . hurt. And it was my fault.”
She remained silent.
“I want to come home, Maddy.” Ben reached for her hands as though their reunion were preordained. She pulled away.
“What has changed?” she asked.
“I’m not . . . There’s no criminal charges. No charges at all. It wasn’t my fault. That other guy? The one driving the Ford. It was him.”
“Really?”
“The lawyer just called.”
“Oh. That’s why you look. So happy?” She grabbed a slice of bread from the basket the waiter had placed on the table. And two pats of butter. “What did you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing? You did nothing?” She buttered the bread thickly. Tried not to scream. He didn’t answer. “Well? What, Ben? All him?”
He put a hand on the edge of the table, the white cloth wrinkling under his hand. “I probably drove too fast.”
“Probably. Yeah. Probably.” She dropped the bread on her plate. “Guess. What I found. In our room?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “A bag of pills.”
“Pills? Emma’s? Emma has pills?”
“My pills!” She spoke too fiercely, using too much air, forced to then stop and take a breath, unable to speak for a moment. “Ones I took. To live. With you.”
Ben deflated as if she’d popped him. He opened his mouth to speak, and nothing came out. Had he known about the bottles?
“Collecting pills. My old hobby. I remembered. That. Knowing. They were there. Made me feel. Safe.”
She wished she could speak better, faster. Hurl out words to tell him all her memories were flowing back—how each bottle of Ambien or Vicodin offered the promise that she could handle anything. Knowing that even on nights the cruelest Ben came home, she’d be okay. Pills offered sweet promises and dreams of forgetting.
“Did you know?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.” His words were slow. Maybe he couldn’t process now. His own personal traumatic injury of the soul.
Maddy worked to look as intent as she could, not knowing if she any longer had the ability to intimidate.
“Maybe I did—a little,” he admitted. “I guess I thought your job caused you stress. Your clients. The kids.”
“They numbed me. From you.”
“That was before. We can start over.” He captured her hands. “I’ve been thinking. About you. The kids. Me. We can change everything. It won’t be like before. I know I have . . . culpability. But I will make it up to you.”
“This isn’t a triumph. Movie. Ben.” She frowned at him as she freed her hands. “Not Lifetime channel. Before? Before was humiliation. Not tragedy. It was just you. Your temper. Being mean. Impatient.”
Silence fell as the busboy filled their heavy amber glasses with ice water.
“First a string. Of small failures. And big. Damaged us,” she continued. “You always late. Yelling. Throwing things. Sometimes worse. All just a moment. I thought.
“And now this.” Maddy held out her hands and swept them in front of her, indicating to him what he’d done.
“Maddy. Please. Forgive me. At least consider it.”
She remembered forgiving him. So many times.
The time he’d shattered her grandmother’s crystal bird—grabbing it off the shelf in the middle of his rage.
When they’d had to replace the kitchen counter because he’d pounded it so hard it cracked.
Emma running into the living room. Eight years old. Crying hard enough to make Maddy’s throat hurt just to hear her. Ben on her heels. Screaming so loud his neck veins jumped like worms. Because Emma broke his pen. Not his heirloom watch. Not his computer. His pen.
Barking at her, blaming her, shaking the stupid pen.
She remembered this as they sat in the starry restaurant up so high.
“I gave you years,” she said. “Years of chance. Nothing changes. Just. Gets worse. Look at me.”
“Everything is different. I’ve changed.”
“Zelda’s door has sayings. I told you. I copied this one. Thought it was about me. But now I know the truth. I wrote it to remind me. About you. Subconscious. Maybe.” She slid a piece of paper across the white tablecloth. Ben’s face fell as he read it.
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help and what they cannot.
—PLATO
“I think you have at least. Twenty-two things. You shouldn’t be angry about. Every day.”
CHAPTER 34
Emma
Emma dreaded breakfast. Going out to restaurants for ordinary meals seemed like just one more punishment for having your parents living apart. Weren’t dinners with Dad hideous enough without expanding these horrors to the morning? Both her parents had become mental.
That her father blamed her for everything was so
obvious. Why shouldn’t he? Who else was to blame? And now, the case had been dropped. Dad was right. Her mother had never needed to know.
So good work, Emma. You broke up your parents’ marriage. And now your mother is somewhere between Frankenstein and a member of the walking dead.
She looked out the window, watching for her father’s car. The moment he appeared, she planned to drag Caleb and Gracie out. Emma couldn’t take seeing her father stare at her mother, all big-eyed pathetic-looking, while her mother practically spat at him.
Her father treated Emma as though she had explosives strapped to her chest. He’d probably never be normal with her again.
It had been another zombie-Mom morning at the Illicas. Grandma Anne arrived before anyone woke. She made supper at seven a.m., and then sandwiches for school, then vacuumed, packed lunch boxes, and ironed a blouse for Gracie. At some point Mom wandered into the living room with a handful of cookies, lay on the couch, and turned on the TV—breaking two of her previously adamant rules from before.
No television with breakfast!
No sweets before lunch!
There he was, pulling into the driveway.
“Gracie. Caleb. Come on, Daddy’s here,” she yelled.
Grandma Anne came to the door, wiping her hands on a towel tucked in her waistband. “For goodness’ sake, let your father come in, sweetheart, so I can give him a cup of coffee and a muffin.”
Gracie and Caleb skidded into the hall in their socks. “Put on your shoes,” Emma said before answering her grandmother. “We have to hurry, Grandma. Dad has to get to work.”
Grandma sent a stern glance her way—stern for Grandma anyway. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye to Mommy?”
“I did,” Gracie said.
“Me too.” Caleb grabbed his lunch box. “I want to see Daddy.”
“Bye, Mom,” Emma yelled toward the living room as she opened the front door. The little kids sped out toward their father, leaning against the car with his arms folded.
“Can we have Dunkin’ Donuts chocolate donuts?” Caleb asked their father as he ran to the car. “Can I have chocolate milk?”
Accidents of Marriage Page 28