“Jules.” Ben’s voice penetrates my thoughts. He and Laney are the only people who ever call me Jules. The only people who know me intimately enough to call me Jules.
He turns on the light on my side of the bed and I squint. I have to make myself look at him. I fight tears on the verge. I know he’s got to be sick of listening to me cry. I’m sick of listening to me cry.
“Drugs?” he says. “She’s doing drugs now?”
“Marijuana,” I say, meeting his gaze for just an instant. I sit up. His eyes are brown. Nice eyes. His eyes were the first things I noticed the night I met him at Cal State, Bakersfield, where we were both students. “It’s practically legal.” I consider reminding him that he’s been known to take a hit from a joint with his brothers on Sunday afternoons in their mom’s backyard, but I don’t. It’s never really been an issue between us. I don’t smoke it; I don’t have anything morally against it for adults, but a glass of wine or beer is my limit to mind-altering substances.
“What about the pills?” he asks. “Where did she get them? One of her friends, I bet. Cassie or . . . or that asshole Todd.” He strokes his receding hairline. “I told you we should have forbidden her to see him after that run-in with the police at Christmas. Mom said we’d regret it if we didn’t.”
I exhale. “It wasn’t a run-in with the police. They were in a fender bender. He wasn’t even at fault.” Ben’s right, though. Todd is an asshole. Just not the responsible asshole, in this case. “Haley says she stole the Percocet from your mom’s medicine cabinet.”
He doesn’t react. He rarely does when the conversation has anything to do with his mommy doing something or saying something she shouldn’t. It’s like he’s totally blind to her flaws.
“Was Haley taking the pills?” he asks. “You said it was a whole bagful. Was she taking them or selling them?”
I close my eyes for a moment. “Probably both.”
He pinches his temples between his thumb and forefinger as if he can squeeze the truth out of his head, or just the knowledge of it.
I note he’s not interested in discussing the fact that his mother is making drugs available to our daughter. There had to have been forty in the sandwich bag. I wonder how Linda didn’t notice that she was missing forty Percocet.
“I can’t believe she’s been expelled.” He throws up his hand. “How the hell is she going to graduate now? She can’t even go to community college without a high school degree. I guess we could send her away for a semester or two.” His gaze darts to mine for just an instant and then he looks at his shoes.
I frown. “Send her away?”
“Mom thinks we should consider a boarding prep school. St. Andrews won’t take her, of course, but maybe even outside the US . . . France, maybe.” He’s talking too fast for these to be his own words. He and his brothers all attended St. Andrews boarding school from the sixth grade through the twelfth. Linda couldn’t be bothered to parent through the difficult years. “Haley wanted to go on that trip last Easter to France. Kids do it all the time. She could finish her high school degree and then maybe take some college classes. It might be the best thing for her. A little tough love.”
“Send her away?” I say it again, unable to believe he would even suggest such a thing. I lose one daughter and my husband wants to send another away? The idea is so absurd that I don’t know if I want to laugh or hit him with something. If I were the kind of person who hit people, I definitely would have. I wonder if I’m becoming a person with violent tendencies. Earlier in the day I had the impulse to throw a ball at Haley. “We don’t have money for that sort of thing. Do you know what it costs for boarding school in France?”
He hesitates and I know what he’s thinking before he says it. “You have your money. The money your mom left you.”
I exhale. I can’t meet his gaze. The money’s been sitting for years in an investment account. Dirty money. Money my mother left me when she died of cirrhosis of the liver. My stepfather left it to her when he died. Money he won in a lawsuit I never thought he should have won. If I were ever going to spend the money, I’d certainly spend it on my children, but not like this. “We’re not sending Haley away,” I say quietly.
“Well, we’ve got to do something. She’s out of control. The crazy black makeup, the lying, the constantly late on curfew. And now we can add drugs to the list. I’ve got enough problems at work, Jules. I don’t need this. I told you she looked zonked on something the other day.”
He gets up and goes to the laundry hamper near the bathroom door. He begins to pull dirty clothes out and drop them on the floor, dividing them between lights and darks the way I taught him when we were first married. His mother had always done his laundry for him, even when he was in college, before I introduced him to the washing machine. If I’d let her, she’d still be doing his laundry.
“Maybe getting out of here, out of this house, out of the state would be good for her. New friends. A fresh start.”
“Out of sight, out of mind?” I ask.
He doesn’t refute the accusation. We both know that’s one of his best coping mechanisms. Sweeping things out the door or at least under the rug. Always has been. His whole family deals with problems that way.
We’re both quiet for a minute. I feel so alone. So isolated. So sad and lost. I know at least part of this is of my own making. I’ve allowed our marriage to fall apart, but that doesn’t make it any less painful. I think about the fact that if Caitlin were here, she’d have an opinion on what we should do about Haley. She was always better at handling her sister than we were. If Caitlin were here. If Haley hadn’t—
I feel myself teetering on the edge of the precipice I’ve become too familiar with in the last forty-seven days. I know I shouldn’t be angry with Haley. It was an accident. Just an accident. A terrible mistake. She had not been drinking alcohol that night, not taking Percocet or even smoking a joint. Her tox screen had come back negative for any illegal substances. She really just made a mistake and didn’t see the stop sign. Didn’t see the big pickup truck coming from her right.
Ben picks up an armful of dark clothes and heads for the door.
I guess our talk is over.
Chapter 4
Izzy
3 years, 8 months
I close my eyes. Open them. Close them. Open them again. Fast. It’s so dark under my bed that it doesn’t make a difference.
The box springs feel closer to my nose tonight. I wonder if I’m having another growth spurt. No boobs yet. I slide my hand across my chest to make sure they haven’t popped out since I checked this morning. I don’t feel anything. Flat as a board, that’s what She Who Shall Not Be Named says. She says I’ll never grow boobs. She says I’ll be a freak and she can sell me to a freak show.
Amanda Durum, in my class, is getting boobs even though she’s the same age as the rest of us in the fifth grade. Her mom bought her some real bras at Target, like the kind you hook in the back. Not the stretchy sports bras my friends and I wear.
My mom has medium boobs, but my sister Caitlin, hers were big. Like Nana’s. If I grow big ones like Caitlin’s, and I really do think they will grow because She Who Shall Not Be Named is a liar, I wonder if I’ll be able to fit under my bed still. If Caitlin were here, would she be able to fit under here? It’s an interesting thought. One I should contemplate. (One of my vocabulary words this week at school.)
I’m getting sleepy. I should probably crawl out from under my bed and get in it. Mom will worry about me if she finds me under here. She’ll ask if I’m okay, even though she knows what the answer is. Of course I’m not okay. Caitlin kicked the bucket.
I close my eyes and think about the white coffin we put Caitlin in. Is this what it feels like to be in a coffin? The lid has to come pretty close to your nose. Did she need a tall one to fit her boobs? Did we pay extra for it?
I hear someone in the hall and I wonder if it’s my mom coming to check on me. Sometimes she checks on me. She used to come all the ti
me before; now not as often. Mostly she just lies on her bed in the dark and cries. A lot. If it’s Dad and not Mom who comes into my room, he’ll pretend I’m not under here. He’ll stand in the doorway and say “sweet dreams” or something dumb like that. Who says that to their eleven-year-old daughter? (Well, I will be eleven soon. In a few months. Six.) I mean, aren’t there books out there that teach parents what you’re supposed to say to your kids after their favorite daughter, the best sister in the whole world, dies? Or at least what the H not to say? Because “sweet dreams” has got to be one of the dumbest things he could say. I don’t have “sweet dreams.” I dream about a big, black truck slamming into our Kia Soul. I dream about Caitlin splattered all over the road. Sometimes I dream about me splattered all over the road.
I hear Mr. Cat meow and I stick my hand out from under my bed and wiggle my fingers. “Kitty, kitty, kitty,” I call. I have to say it kind of loud because the vet says he’s losing his hearing.
I hear him purring. Then I feel him bat at my fingers with his paw. I tease him with my finger. I don’t hear anyone out in the hall now. Maybe it was just my imagination. I have a pretty good imagination. Once I thought I really heard Santa’s reindeer on the roof. I mean, I really thought I heard the prancing and pawing of each tiny hoof. That was when I believed Santa was real and that life was good and bad things happened to bad people and stupid stuff like that. And right after Caitlin bought it, I woke up in my bed thinking I could smell her in my room. She always smelled good even when she didn’t use spray stuff from Victoria’s Secret. She had a special smell. Her smell.
I pet Mr. Cat on the head and he meows. He’s been hiding tonight. Like me. She Who Shall Not Be Named got in some kind of big trouble today. She was already home when I got home from school. In her room.
I wanted to ask Dad what happened, but I didn’t. Nobody tells me anything around here anymore. Then my friend Ann texted me and asked what she did to get expelled. Her sister goes to Smythe, too. Instead of texting her name, which is not permitted in my presence, she made a line of asterisks and pound signs and stuff so it looked like a curse word. Which was funny. If I ever have to write her name, which I never intend to do, I’ll have to remember that. I just told Ann I didn’t know what she did. So now I know why she was home early and I’ll know why when she doesn’t go to school tomorrow, and I didn’t have to ask anyone. I don’t know why she got expelled, but I’m sure I’ll know in a day or two. Ann’s sister will tell her and Ann will tell me.
Mr. Cat jumps up on my bed. It springs down a little bit and I can feel his weight over me. He meows again. He wants me to come up and lie down with him. “All right, all right,” I tell him, and I slide out from under the bed. “I just have to pee.” I pet his head. “I’ll be right back.”
He meows like he understands me, which is interesting because how can he understand me if he can’t hear me? I wonder if the vet lied. People lie to me all the time. Adults, mostly. What I can’t figure out is why would she lie to me about something dumb like a cat’s hearing?
I slip out of my bedroom into the dark hall. I can see shadows dancing from the living room and hear the muffled sound of gunfire. My dad’s asleep out there. The TV is on; he was probably watching something about World War II. He likes Nazis. Well, he doesn’t like them. Who likes Nazis? He just likes to watch stuff about Nazis and Hitler. A few days ago he and I watched a show about German concentration camps and I got to see pictures of the ovens they put people in. I think I’d like to go see those ovens someday.
I walk down the hall in the dark to the bathroom. The door’s open. I don’t turn on the light. I’m not afraid of the dark. I think people are afraid of the dark because they’re afraid of what bad things might happen in the dark. I don’t worry about it. Bad things happen with the lights on, too.
I pee, but I don’t wash my hands. I only do that when I’m with my friends because everyone washes their hands after they use the bathroom when they’re with other people. I don’t really know why people expect you to wash your hands. I don’t pee on my hand.
Instead of going back to my room I hang a left and head for the kitchen to get a drink. On my way back to my room, I’ll shut the TV off. But I won’t wake my dad and tell him to go to bed like I used to before Caitlin checked out. I don’t think my dad sleeps with my mom anymore. I don’t think she cares where he sleeps.
It’s not until I grab the orange juice container from the fridge that I realize someone is in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast table under the window. I turn around as I unscrew the cap. She Who Shall Not Be Named is sitting in the dark, eating cereal dry out of a box. Apple Jacks. I don’t say anything. I can feel her watching me.
I don’t talk to her anymore. She killed Caitlin and I loved Caitlin. She’s been trying to be nice to me since she ran through that stop sign and let Caitlin splatter all over the road. I don’t want her to be nice to me. I don’t want her to talk to me or look at me. I wish she’d bought the farm instead of Caitlin. I know I’m not supposed to feel that way, but I do. And if Caitlin did have to croak because of some crazy thing in the cosmos, I wish She Who Shall Not Be Named were pushing up daisies, too.
“Hey, pipsqueak.”
I act like I don’t see her. Don’t hear her. I tip the juice bottle and chug. It’s the wrong kind of juice. I like the kind without pulp. But Dad’s been doing the grocery shopping since Caitlin died so I’m lucky he remembered juice at all.
“You can’t ignore me forever,” she says, crunching the cereal. The kitchen smells like pizza, Apple Jacks, and cigarette smoke. She smokes sometimes, which I think is disgusting. Last year, in fourth grade, I wrote a report about the dangers of smoking, about all the kinds of gross cancers you can get like lip cancer and throat cancer where you have to talk out of a box. (With color photos and everything.) I got an A. I gave it to She Who Shall Not Be Named. That was when I still called her Haley and still talked to her, or at least tried. I don’t know if she ever read it. Probably not.
I take a breath and then one more drink of OJ. She munches on her cereal.
I screw the cap on slowly and take my time putting the bottle back in the almost empty refrigerator, even though I want to run back into my room and get under my bed with Mr. Cat.
I close the refrigerator and I can’t see her anymore without the light. It’s like she just disappears, which is what I want to happen. I want her to just vanish.
Chapter 5
Julia
48 days
I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling, watching the fan spin. My favorite pastime. My only pastime. Light spills from the bathroom into the bedroom. It’s gotten dark out. Ben texted me to say he was going out for a beer with his brothers so it’s just the girls and me. Earlier, I had Izzy order pizza delivery. She brought me two breadsticks and marinara sauce, which I ate, not because I was hungry, but because I could tell she really wanted me to eat it.
I can hear the TV out in the living room. Izzy. She loves the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. Parents aren’t supposed to rank their children and I try not to, but Izzy is probably the smartest of my three girls. Caitlin and Haley are bright, but Izzy, she’s scary smart.
Caitlin was bright . . . I can’t get the hang of speaking of her . . . thinking of her in the past tense. It’s just too much to wrap my head around.
I wonder what Haley’s doing. I haven’t seen her since I picked her up from school yesterday. I know she’s in the house. I heard the toilet in the girls’ bathroom down the hall flush today while Izzy was at school. I saw an empty Coke can in the trash, which I moved to the recycling; Izzy doesn’t drink Coke. She watched something on TV about corn syrup and is boycotting any food or drink that contains corn syrup. She and Caitlin were doing it together. It took forever at the market with the two of them because they insisted on reading every label.
I hear the sounds of an explosion coming from the TV in the living room. I wonder what Izzy’s watching. I should go see. Se
e how she is. I can’t remember when we last talked about anything other than takeout or lunch money for school. She hasn’t even asked me to sign anything for school; I guess Ben signs her homework now.
I roll onto my side. It takes a lot of energy to get out of bed. But I know I should. I know I need to. Ben is right. Laney’s right. Even my mother-in-law is right. It’s just that my heart is so broken that I—
I stop that thought right there because I know that if I don’t . . . I know that if I let that thought unravel, I’ll just lie here and cry some more.
I exhale and sit up. I perch on the edge of the bed until the dizziness passes. I probably need to eat something more than two breadsticks. Drink something. Maybe some peppermint tea. Caitlin was my tea drinker. Sometimes, on Saturday mornings, before anyone else got up, she and I would sit at the breakfast table in our PJs and drink tea and have rye toast.
I close my eyes as tears trickle down my cheeks. I’ll never have tea with Caitlin again. We’ll never fight over the heel from the loaf of rye bread from the German bakery we both like. Not ever again.
There are more explosions coming from the living room, followed by the sound of Izzy’s voice. I wonder whom she’s talking to. I didn’t hear Ben come in. Maybe she’s decided to speak to Haley again. To my knowledge, she hasn’t spoken to her in . . . well, forty-eight days.
I make myself stand up. I wipe my face with the sleeve of my T-shirt, slip my feet into my flip-flops, and shuffle out into the hall. The house is mostly dark, though I see light coming out from under Haley’s door at the end of the hall. Caitlin’s door is closed and the light is out. Forever extinguished. I turn the other direction and follow the sounds coming from the TV.
Julia's Daughters Page 3