Where We Fall: A Novel

by Rochelle B. Weinstein

  Ryan never noticed I wasn’t keeping my appointments. As long as things were calm in his house when he walked in the door after practice—meaning I was dressed, a meal was prepared for dinner, and I wasn’t hanging from the rafters—he could exhale. Ryan isn’t one for therapy and self-reflection. He has a depth about him, but traversing his wife’s psyche makes him queasy.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  I am. Sort of. What she is saying does not need to be said. I know by the wistful look in her eyes what she wants from me. If only I wouldn’t have amnesia when I’d start to feel better. If only the ugly times hugged me a little deeper and harder as a reminder that I’d be suctioned through the cloud again if I didn’t stay on my meds. Besides, I am thinking of other things. Like how Ryan and I used to talk to each other and not at each other.

  Then Juliana begins to cry. “What’s going to happen to you?”

  Her question with its string of innuendo jerks me upright.

  “Jules, I wasn’t going to hurt myself. I would never do that to you.”

  I have never attempted suicide. What I am exacting on myself through my mind’s fury is a continuous, wobbly threat. The fear leaves me in a constant state of alert, my body fighting a force that it has not seen or touched. By way of inner battle and allowing my thoughts to control me, I am slowly, painfully killing myself. I never told the quartet of therapists about my thoughts. I never told anyone.

  Juliana’s gaze forces me to answer. I can’t tell her I was protecting myself, that I had the razor blades and the pills in my hands to throw them in the garbage. Self-preservation involves exposure to the things I fear most. It’s a twisted test, a chance to show these objects that I am stronger.

  “Do you want to die? Do you want to leave us?”

  “No! No!” I repeat again. Though how can I explain to her, to anyone, these awful thoughts without sounding like I have a severe psychological imbalance?

  The noise of the door breaks the silence. Juliana does not know what to say to me. This wasn’t like the time when she was five and found me curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor with one of her dolls in my arms. She thought it was cute that I wanted to comfort the Powerpuff Girl with the stomachache.

  Ryan pokes his head through the doorway, and thanks to his appearance, Juliana releases my fingers and meets his embrace. Ryan has always been Juliana’s beacon. Their bond is unusual and strong, utterly enviable. In my absences, Ryan has become a single parent, a doting father, with nothing but pure and simple love for his daughter. My eyes follow her as she glides toward his voice. He has that way about him. Ryan can pluck the greatness from those closest to him: his teammates, his students, his daughter. Only not his wife.

  CHAPTER THREE

  JULIANA

  Before I got the call about my mama, I was actually beginning to enjoy myself on the class trip. We were days into our trek through the Pisgah National Forest, where we were expected to commune with nature and live a no-Wi-Fi existence while searching for a surge of cell service. It wasn’t easy trading in my favorite sneakers for hiking boots, but I had enjoyed the quiet more than I would admit to the others. Lately, my head had been jumbled with noise, and the peacefulness of the mountains had drained thoughts of E.J. and my mom from my muddled mind.

  Dr. Tait, our chaperone for the week, had filmed our experience, shoving portable microphones in our faces with prompts that recorded what we had learned on the trip. When it was my turn, he asked me to share something about myself, something beyond my being almost seventeen and in the eleventh grade at Poplar Grove High School.

  He was the only one who didn’t laugh when I said I had a new appreciation for my bed, so he pushed me harder. “Tell us something personal, something you shared with the group this week.”

  I thought about the trust I had found in my classmates, and theirs in me, while tackling steep climbs and moving through our fear. “We’re different people than when we arrived. We’ve had to rely on one another for support in dangerous situations. It didn’t matter if the person holding out her hand was the girl I sat next to in history and ignored repeatedly day after day.”

  The kids around me were nodding their heads.

  “That’s what I got out of this trip. We’re all different. We all came here carrying our things. Only I didn’t feel any of those differences when I was plunging down the side of a mountain with Brook, over there, as my safety net. Or when I needed Wendy to help me start the fire so we could eat a proper meal.

  “My daddy always says about his team, ‘You don’t need to be best friends, but you have to respect each other.’” The kids gathered around me, and I broke away from the camera to add the last part. “I don’t imagine all of us will become best friends at school, but I can tell you this: you all have my respect.”

  Everyone had applauded and cheered for me. Even Dr. Tait. My best friends, Sophie, Nicole, and Marlee, all rallied around me while Dr. Tait snapped a picture of us on Mount Mitchell. It is the photograph on my phone I’m sharing with Daddy now. The parting gift for having to leave the trip early. Marlee with her blonde hair, aqua eyes, and a haughty smile. Nicole and Sophie, the fraternal twins who have identical chestnut hair and playful indigo eyes. I am a mixture of my counterparts—dirty blonde and green-eyed. “Marlee got so tall,” he says. “She towers over you girls.”

  Daddy and I are thrust into our private world while Mama sits quietly by, half-awake and dreamlike. “The mountains were so beautiful, Daddy. You were right. The leaves are already changing up there. That smell you always talked about . . .”

  “Fraser fir and pine,” he says, with a trace of something sad in his voice I don’t recognize.

  “I don’t like to admit when you’re right.”

  “I know”—he laughs, coming back to life and putting his arm around me—“and I’m used to it, but honey, being up there was good for you. My best days were on mountains and by lakes, inhaling the clean air. It clears your head and grounds you. Anything seems possible.” He hesitates before adding, “I’m sorry you had to leave the trip early.”

  Even his arm around me can’t fix what’s wrong. I glance at the photo of myself—me with the tentative smile, me staring out at the mountain range behind Dr. Tait’s burly body, holding everything in. E.J. would call it my resting bitch face, a not-so-charming phrase he thinks is funny. Who are you? I ask the photo.

  I’m wearing E.J.’s football sweatshirt. It’s gray and roomy with bold navy letters across the front that spell out “Giants Football.” I reach for the hood resting between my shoulders and pull it over my head as a shield. I smell E.J. in the folds of the cushy cotton, and I bury my hands in the deep pockets.

  “You okay, honey?” he whispers. “I know this is hard for you.”

  “Daddy,” I say, looking up at him, “you have no idea,” and I know he thinks I’m talking about Mama, and that’s what I want him to think, but it’s so much more than that.

  This is where it gets difficult for me. This is where the pain becomes less emotional and far more physical. The lingering ache in my backside shoots down my legs when I sit. It creates a kaleidoscope of feelings and sensations I simply must endure.

  I know he didn’t mean to hurt me.

  I know E.J. never, in a million years, thought that his actions would result in my falling down a flight of stairs in the back stairwell of his school.

  Accidents don’t happen to girls like me.

  Daddy takes the empty seat beside me. I close my eyes and rest my head against him. I see E.J., and I trace his face in my mind’s eye. His scent brings him close to me; the pain pushes him away.

  “Your mama’s going to get the help she needs,” he says, the two of us looking on as she fights to stay awake. “I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I nod, and he asks if I’ve heard from E.J.

  “Of course,” I lie.

  “I bet you can’t wait to see him.”

  I’m a mixture of feelings
when it comes to E.J. “You’re leaving Mama to go to the game?” I ask, though I don’t know where the question comes from, the need to protect her from anything. Daddy is the one who needs saving.

  “It’s the other way around,” he tells me, reminding me of the fact that Mama, despite all her craziness, never once missed one of Daddy’s games. Oddly enough, she’s his good-luck charm. I wish I could say she were the same for me. Mama and I clash like two animals on a hunt, circling around each other. Fighting with her, disagreeing with her, mocking her—these are the ways I block out how bad it feels to have a mama who’s “limited.” That’s what Daddy calls it.

  When I was a kid, and we’d be curled up in my bed reading a bedtime story, I’d ask, “Is Mama coming?” At first, the answer was “She’s sleeping,” or “She’s resting,” but as I got older and the absences were noticeably inexcusable, we talked about limitations. He’d come into my room with his “lights out” face, always with a kiss on the top of my head. By then I had stopped asking. “People have limits, Juliana. It doesn’t make them bad or wrong.” I knew he was talking about Mama, even if he mingled the things he’d say with other subjects, like boys or the kids at school.

  I could accept that Mama was different. What I couldn’t accept was the way it made me feel inside.

  His voice plucks me from memory. “I’m going to be taking off soon,” he says. “Can you stay here a little longer?”

  I shrug. “Do I have to? I hate hospitals.”

  If we were a different kind of family, he would have pushed me harder. But Daddy knows Mama’s moods are fickle. Backing off is a means to safeguard my own sanity.

  “Can’t I go with you to the field? I don’t want to go alone,” I say, reminding him that my friends are all on the class trip. “I won’t bother you or E.J. I promise.”

  Mama’s voice whispers from the bed, “You two go on.” Her voice is gravelly but insistent. “No sense babysitting me in here. I’ll be all right. Me and my monitors will be just fine.”

  Daddy gets up first. I know I must follow. He takes Mama’s hands into his and we stare down at her in the bed. The tubes and lights make her look scary. She could use a comb through her hair. “Go on,” she says. “It’ll make me nuts knowing you’re here and I’m helpless to do anything.”

  “You’re wrong,” Daddy insists. “You’re not helpless, Abby. You’ve gotta fight this, whatever it is. No more pretending it’s going to just go away on its own.”

  My frustration has reached its boiling point. My eyes bore into hers when I say, “I agree with Daddy. Mama, it’s time. Don’t you think?”

  “I’m okay,” she says, stealing her eyes away from mine and turning them toward the ceiling. “I can do this on my own.”

  “That hasn’t worked for you in a long time,” says Daddy. He sighs, and a frown creeps across his face. His eyes look tired; his body is hunched over and beaten. “We love you, Abs, but something’s gotta give. We’ll be here for you. You won’t go through this alone.”

  A sadness clouds Mama’s features and she presses her lips together. She knows we’re right, and instead of giving in, she pulls herself together and tells Daddy he’d better hurry up or he’ll be late.

  Her refusal deflates him. I can see it all over his face. He thinks that if he holds her gaze long enough she’ll reconsider. I wish she didn’t fight it so hard. He leans over and kisses her on the cheek and insists I do the same. One happy family.

  Then he takes my hand and leads me out of the room.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RYAN

  “Coach, what’s your strategy for tonight’s game? How do you plan on using your young quarterback?”

  This is my least favorite part of the job—the interviews. Having the number-one football team in the state has its perks, but as someone who thrives on the field and away from prying eyes, I am testy and short.

  We are joined in a corner of the field by sports reporters from all over the area. These are the gentlemen who will ensure that my boys get in front of top college scouts. Everyone is here to see the state champs. Small towns breed large football hearts.

  “Our quarterback’s been training hard all summer. Hopefully we can get him some time in the pocket, and he can make some good decisions.”

  “What about Evan James? The word on the street is he’s been distracted at practice. Any chance you sit him out tonight?”

  “No. Next question.”

  “Coach, the team’s coming off a close game last week. Anything you can say about the current state of your players’ minds? Your state of mind?”

  My assistant coach, Wayne Harrow, jumps in, seeing how the line of questioning will only provoke me. The older man grabs hold of the mic and dispels the interrogation with a loyalty that has characterized our years together. “We’re here to play football. Pine Ridge is prepped and ready. We’ll play as we always have . . . to win. Now, thank you. This interview is over.”

  The reporters drift off, and Wayne and I are left alone on the field.

  He comes right out and asks me how I’m holding up. I consider pretending that he’s concerned about my controversial running back and our team’s mental prowess. Instead, I eye the man I know well and say, “Not so good, my friend. Not so good.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  If only I could have a nickel for every time Wayne has asked me that question. He is the assistant coach, but his wisdom and experience make him more of a father figure. The foibles of my wife have been subject to scrutiny and disdain. But empathy and sympathy wore off when the despair Abby wreaked on our home crept on to our crisp, green field.

  Selfish. Wayne could pry my eyes open with that single word, but I had a difficult time labeling someone I loved who was so deeply troubled. It seemed unfair and cruel.

  We take our seats in the bleachers alongside the field, where I am always overcome with pride. Wayne towers over me with his thick body and spray of gray hair. The man has the largest hands I’ve ever seen.

  “When are they releasing her from the hospital?”

  “Tomorrow. They want to watch her overnight.”

  “You all right with that?”

  I shrug. Coaches and players have built dynasties around superstition and crazy rituals to ensure victory. Despite Abby’s fickle mind, she has never once missed a game. As doomed as she seems at times, her presence on the sidelines always feels right.

  “How long are you going to let this go on, son?”

  The innuendo isn’t an innuendo anymore when it’s been asked a dozen times.

  “I can’t leave her, Wayne. I can’t leave her like this. We promised to take care of each other. She’s sick. I won’t abandon her.”

  “What about you?” he asks. “What about the promises she made to you?”

  It doesn’t feel right to think about me at a time like this.

  The players begin to arrive at the field for our pregame meeting, and Wayne excuses himself, telling me to take my time while he gets them started. With forty-two boys, there are numerous game-day superstitions, which are stupid only if they don’t work. Eating green gummy bears and praying on the thirteenth row in the bleachers are among them. I’m watching Evan James warm up. I know precisely what he has eaten today. I know the color of his undershirt, and I know that he will not say so much as a word to the other players on the field until the kickoff. This is how he conditions himself before a game.

  This is where I belong—this field, this house. In a world that has handed me some tough losses, this is where I learned of victory. Here is where it all makes sense. I love my wife. And though things haven’t come easy, nothing worth having ever does. She bore me Juliana, my greatest blessing, and I will always be grateful for that.

  Abby is a woman of shifting temperaments. When she is lying motionless in bed, I am reminded of our beginning, when she needed me and I could take care of her. When she is depressed, her emptiness makes her nicer. Her tangled and tortured mind bargains with her: if
she is kind to others, maybe she will slip out of the dark.

  Those nights when we lay in bed, I rubbed her shoulders and ran my fingers through her long, dark hair, and she would speak of how God was punishing her. Her bronzed face would burrow into my arms, like a needy child. “What did I do to deserve this, Ryan?” she would ask. “Why is this happening to me?”

  I never had the right answers for Abby. I am a man who thinks in statistics and strategy. Like a coach, I tried to draw Abby out. But Abby didn’t want to come out. Not when there was so much wrong inside of her. And when she emerged from the dark episodes, she was someone entirely unrecognizable. We were unrecognizable to each other.

  It’s impossible to think of Abby lying in that hospital bed without that photo staring up at me. I block out her name and other parts. I don’t want to remember how it felt to roll the word off my tongue, to whisper it into her ear. But I can still see her smile. Her fiery red hair. The girl who brought Abby into my life.

  I push the thoughts of her away until the sheer will of my resistance flings them back. Like the picture I had held on to. It was the only one of us I didn’t throw out. We are laughing at the camera, at a future we thought was ours. I stopped looking at it years ago, but I always knew it was there. Seeing her smile there on the nightstand in Abby’s hospital room had shoved me into the past. Her name was staying with me longer than I could stand.

  “Coach!”

  The kids are stepping onto the field. I watch the tangle of limbs and legs cross the grass. Some of them are wearing their superstitions—bandanas, a certain color undershirt—and there’s Jerry Goihman eating from his bag of Haribo gummy bears. We are a cluster of men who believe that engaging in senseless gestures can predict our performance and our future.

  I watch my boys warming up and think about the words of wisdom I will share with them. I could talk about loss, but I won’t. Not today. Today I will remind them how important it is to stay focused.