by Holly Brown
“You should come back,” Gail says. “It works if you work it.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere.” I don’t mean it to be snotty, but I think that’s how it comes out. I’m rusty in talking to people. My mother would be mortified, if she could still feel. She raised me to have social graces above all else. No, protect your family above all else, by any means necessary.
“The community is what’s kept my head above water,” Gail says. “I don’t know what I would have done without them.”
Involuntarily, I glance at her naked ring finger. “I appreciate what you’re saying. I think I’m okay, for now.”
“We’re there if you need us.” She smiles. “What helps me the most is that I have so much still to learn, and so much to teach.”
This could be my fate. A dead child, a dead marriage, and desperate delusions. What is there to learn once your child is gone? What wisdom can you glean, or impart, once the worst has come to pass? The idea that Gail has anything to teach when she couldn’t prevent her own child’s death . . .
What she unwittingly teaches is that we are all powerless. While that is, in fact, the AA message, and the NA message, and the Nar-Anon message, it’s one that I’m still not ready to embrace.
I have to cave. I have to sell the Santa Monica house. Because no matter what I do, even if I convince Thad to try rehab again, I may very well lose him, but I don’t have to lose Larry, too. I can’t find myself permanently alone, like Gail.
“I’ll see you at a meeting soon,” I say. It’s the path of least resistance. Let Gail think she’s converted me.
“See you soon.” I can’t tell if she believes me or not. But the conversation is over, and I abandon my basket by the sliding glass doors. I’ve lost my appetite.
Once in my car, I start to hyperventilate. What if Thad’s dead? I didn’t even check his Twitter feed yesterday, and the day before that, there was nothing. He hasn’t texted me for two days, and I was relieved. After that tweet about Mother’s Day, I didn’t want to have anything to do with him.
I’m the monster. No matter what he’s done, a mother should never feel that way about her own child. He has a disease, but I’m the one who’s really sick.
I’m sweating as I scroll through my phone. Nothing so far today.
Just thinking of you. It’s been a while. Do you need any money?
It’s the question that always gets a response.
As I wait, I turn the key in the ignition and put the AC on the highest setting. I take deep breaths and try to think of nothing but the artificial breeze on my face.
I’m not angry anymore, Thad. Just text back.
His synapses have been hijacked, his higher brain functioning corrupted. He’s as much a victim as my mother is. Morality requires the highest brain function, which means that Thad’s amoral right now, like a very small child. But just one year sober, and his brain can begin to reset. One year of one day at a time.
Larry and I can compromise. We sell the Santa Monica house, and I support Thad openly, with Larry’s full knowledge. I could write this latest check to Thad out of the joint account. That would kill two birds with one stone. It would let Thad know he can’t blackmail me, and let Larry know that I’m standing firm on the subject of Thad. It would say that I’m not under either of their thumbs.
I have a four-million-dollar bargaining chip. I’d even be willing to go with Kimberly Zhou. Maybe.
Yet every part of me is screaming in protest. I want to keep my ancestral home. That terminology might seem like a bit of a stretch to some people, but that’s how it feels to me. It’s been in my family for two generations—my parents’ and mine—and I want it for Thad (if he’s clean) and for his kids (if he has them). Before that, I want to live there with my husband. That doesn’t seem like so much to ask.
Oh, please, God. Please, Thad. Can anyone hear me out there, up there? Or have I been forsaken?
45
Dawn
• Career Objective: To add my abilities, creativity, and passion for communication to a company that is actively making a difference in the world.
I’m remarkably relaxed. Sean Hayworth is a super-nice guy, and so easy to talk to. Somehow, I didn’t expect that from a VP at Big Pharma. Maybe he’s not that high up—there could be a million VPs—but he has a pretty big office on a high floor in downtown San Francisco. He doesn’t look that much older than me and he was a communications major, too, from my university. “Professor Myerson was my favorite, too,” he told me early on in the interview, which doesn’t even feel like an interview. It just feels like a conversation, and a good one at that.
I didn’t sleep last night, running over the most likely interview questions in my head as well as trying to commit all the relevant details about the company to memory. At the start of the interview, I’m sure my nerves showed. I wanted so much to pass. I need to be good enough, and classy enough, for this building, this company, this office, Sean.
But Sean really wants to know who I am and what I want out of life. He’s telling me those kinds of things about himself, which again, I didn’t see coming, but it’s disarming.
“I’m from up north, too,” he says. “Fort Bragg.”
“I always meant to go to the botanical garden there.”
“That’s pretty much all we’ve got. Well, that and coast.”
“You can’t knock the coast.”
He grins. “Maybe not,” he concedes. “What brought you to the Bay Area?”
“It was a long-standing obsession. I thought I’d go to San Francisco, but I could barely afford Oakland, let alone SF.”
“What were you leaving behind? You have family up there?”
“Not much. Just my parents.” He raises an eyebrow, like he thinks there’s more to the story. “It wasn’t the easiest childhood, that’s all.”
“The mean streets of Eureka?” He grins again.
“You’d be surprised.” I’m surprised by what comes out of my mouth next. “After you’ve been hungry, you stay hungry.”
He nods slowly, like he’s taking it in. Reassessing me, maybe. For a second, I think that I revealed too much and, in doing so, undermined my whole goal, which was to pass. Be middle class, be normal, be employable.
“I like that,” he says. “You can’t teach hunger.”
He’s wrong; it’s practically the only thing my parents did teach me.
“Believe me,” he says, “I didn’t think I would end up in Big Pharma either.”
“Really?” I appreciate the change of subject.
He shakes his handsome head, and a medium-brown forelock flops forward boyishly. “It doesn’t have the best reputation, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I was exploring a lot of different industries, and I didn’t know which way to go. I had a chemistry minor, and someone knew someone, and I talked to this incredibly genuine guy who understood my reservations. He actually liked that I had reservations. He knew that I was like you, and that once I’m in, I’m in all the way, so I have to choose carefully. He liked that I think before I just drink the Kool-Aid. And what he said to me was, ‘We make medicines that improve people’s lives. Sometimes we even save them. Are we a charity? No. But we make a difference.’”
“That’s just what I want! To make a difference.”
“That’s who we need around here.” He leans in. “I don’t actually do the hiring. That’s for the district managers, and you’ll still have to get the seal of approval from Artie, go out for dinner or a drink or something with him, but I know he’s going to love you. Professor Myerson told me I ought to meet you, that you’re special. I see what he means.”
I find myself blushing, though there’s no seduction in Sean’s gaze. But it is direct. He’s looking right at me, and still, I did it. I passed! He wants me!
So why is there this feeling in the pit of my stomach, like it’s too good to be true?
Because I distrust happiness, I always have. For g
ood reason.
“There’s a lot of competition for these jobs,” he says. “Mostly, it’s because they pay well. Pretty girls want to memorize some drug data and bat their eyelashes at doctors. They think that’s all there is to it.” I don’t love that he said “pretty girls” rather than women. It seems a touch sexist. “There’s a lot more to it than that. You have to be a person of conviction. You have to believe in our products and what they can do, that they’re going to help people, and that you’re the one to get the doctor to see that. It’s a mission.”
“Get the doctor to see what?” I’m a little confused. Professor Myerson said that I would be educating the public on vaccines. I thought that was my mission.
“You’re making sure the doctors are armed with the latest medical research so they can do the best for their patients.”
“Don’t doctors already know about vaccines?”
“Right, the vaccine project. That’ll be about ten percent of your time. The rest, you’d be out in the field, building relationships with the docs. We’ve got a new antidepressant coming to market. It’s going to be exciting. Transformative.”
I stare at his widening smile and I get it. Sean’s been selling me. On a sales job. But why? He already said pretty girls are lining up. “What would my job title be?”
He laughs. “You’d be a pharmaceutical sales representative. Is that title enough for you?”
“More than enough,” I say quietly.
“Let’s be real here. It helps that you look the way you do. Everyone likes to talk to attractive people. But you’re more than that. There’s a quality to you, an intangible, that’s what Professor Myerson called it, and what it means is that doctors will also want to listen to you. They’ll want to be persuaded. That’s why I like a communications major more than a biology major. You’re bright, you’ll learn the science. But you can’t teach hunger, right?”
I should be flattered. I’ve got a successful executive from one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world sweet-talking me. But going into doctors’ offices to “educate” them, when I don’t even have a science background myself . . . sounds like I’m going to be trying to persuade them with my intangible quality.
Sean thinks I’d make a great whore.
Is that what Professor Myerson sees, too? I know what my dad thought. So what about Rob? And Thad?
Maybe I haven’t been passing at all.
46
Miranda
The Joshua Stanwyck Foundation exists to fight medical malpractice. It focuses on education, advocacy, resources, and lobbying, because the medical profession needs to be held accountable for its actions.
The foundation was started by Kevin and Martha Stanwyck after the tragic death of their son Joshua. He was a bright, beautiful seventeen-year-old who went into surgery for appendicitis and never woke up, due to the actions of an anesthesiologist who had been awake for twenty straight hours. Joshua was robbed of his future, and Kevin and Martha want to be sure this never happens to any other children, or their parents.
I have to fight to return my attention to Lex. His name is stitched on his pocket, orange thread on a brown canvas shirt. I just keep thinking of young Joshua Stanwyck, and his poor parents. Larry destroyed their family, and then he destroyed the reputation of an anesthesiologist to save himself. There’s no other explanation, is there?
“The system is armed. Can you see the lights?” Lex is speaking slowly. He clearly thinks I’m a dotty old woman, still in my pajamas and robe at two P.M.
“It looks like it’s armed,” I say, “but someone’s gotten in before. I don’t have to remind you about the rat, do I?”
“Beverly Hills has a rat problem,” he begins, but I cut him off.
“And in Santa Monica the rats wear muddy men’s shoes?”
“I’ll run some more tests,” he says, resigned.
“I’d appreciate that.”
I step back and let him work. I don’t care if he’s humoring me. Being alone in the house while Larry’s away had the makings of a fun adventure, for about a half hour. Then I ran into Gail, and I was reminded that terrible things happen to good people all the time. During a long sleepless night, something possessed me to Google Joshua Stanwyck and I realized that sometimes people you thought were good have done terrible things, or maybe they’re not good people at all. If Larry could lie to me about something like that—could turn a seventeen-year-old boy into a seventy-year-old man—then he could lie about anything. I’m truly and utterly alone.
Yet all day, I’ve had this feeling like I’m being watched, like Dawn’s thugs are biding their time, waiting to pounce.
It sounds crazy, I know Lex thinks I am, but I can’t shake it.
At least I heard back from Thad. The money smoked him out. He told me he’s fine and I should stop “blowing up” his phone.
Meanwhile, I’ve been jumping at every noise and rechecking the alarm panel. But it’s not helping. I can’t relax.
I never did send Dawn that e-mail. Who am I kidding? I’m not about offense. Never have been. My entire life has been orchestrated around not giving offense, just as my mother taught me. What would she do in a situation like this, if she were pushed to her breaking point? Would even she have to push back, or would she just break?
I wish there were someone here with me, but it can’t be Larry, not after what I’ve found out. I need to decide if I ever want him to come home again. Maybe I can go live in the Santa Monica house by myself.
The thought terrifies me. I went straight from my parents’ house to a home with Larry. I’ve never been on my own, and I don’t see how I can start now, when someone’s after me, leaving their bathtub rings and muddy footprints.
I want to forgive Larry. I want him to explain it all away. But how can he? As much as I’d like to believe that Larry really didn’t screw up that surgery, that it was the sleep-deprived anesthesiologist, in my heart, I know the truth. Larry must have framed that other doctor. He had the autopsy falsified or convinced someone they saw something other than what really happened or paid someone off, something. Because Larry was guilty. He killed that man—no, that boy. I saw it in his eyes, through his tears. Larry was truly remorseful, truly in pain. Yet it wasn’t enough to make him take responsibility for his actions.
Larry’s capable of framing someone because he could rationalize it. He’d think that he had more potential than the anesthesiologist and would ultimately help more patients. He’s always looked down on his colleagues at least a little (sometimes more than a little, like The Ignoramus). He’s always judged them and exalted his own medical acumen.
He probably decided that the anesthesiologist would eventually kill someone with his incompetence, it was just a matter of time, while he, Larry, would go on to do great things, to save many lives. And he has, hasn’t he? Or so I’ve thought. Are there others who’ve died at Larry’s hands, other cover-ups?
No, that’s not possible. He must have learned his lesson. He stopped drinking before work, I’m sure of that.
If he was just going to lie to me, why did he even tell me at the time? He must have been seeking absolution. Or no, he needed me to tell him how amazing and brilliant he is, what a great doctor he’d be, that the world needs men, needs doctors, like him. I said all those things, and I believed them. Perhaps he thought he might need me to stand by him if it didn’t go his way, if the frame job didn’t work, if he needed someone to lie for him. It could have been all of those.
When the incident happened—no, I need to call it what it is, when Larry killed that boy—I closed my eyes and ignored any inkling that something else might be going on. Sure, there was no Google, but there were other ways to gather information. I just preferred to take his word. Some part of me knew it was better not to ask too many questions. Not only to protect Larry, but to protect Thad, and myself, and our seemingly perfect family.
“It’s working,” Lex says, turning to me. “If anyone tries to breach your perimete
r, our company will be here within five minutes. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
He can’t begin to know my worries, but I thank him, profusely. I’m sorry to see him go. I’d let someone condescend to me all day, so long as they stayed. Officer Llewellyn didn’t even return my last call.
I peer through the curtains out to the street. There are a few cars, unoccupied. I don’t see any pedestrians. Yet I have the sensation that I’m being watched, that someone knows I’m all alone here and they’re going to capitalize on it. I reset the alarm, just to be sure, staring at the pattern of lights, seeking reassurance.
Lex promised no one will breach my perimeter, but I no longer know if the greater danger is within or without.
47
Dawn
How’d the interview go?
Okay.
Do you think you got the job?
He pretty much offered it to me.
That’s great! I’m proud of you, baby!
Thanks.
We should do a getaway to celebrate.
Maybe.
See you tonight! I love you.
I’m supposed to take a job I don’t want, and have a baby I don’t want, and the inducement is to go on a getaway that could very well be disastrous given the current state of our relationship?
My husband doesn’t get me at all. I don’t think he even wants to anymore.
I’m still in my interview clothes, marching across campus. I need to find Professor Myerson before I lose my nerve. I want to tell him what I think of him. No, I want to tell him what he thinks of me, and how that feels. I want to tell him he’s wrong while I’m fired up enough to believe it.
I knock on his office door, and part of me is hoping he won’t answer. Part of me just wants to go home and cry. But I drove all the way here for a reason. Because I still have my pride, if nothing else.