How to Murder Your Life

by Cat Marnell

  The next evening—on November first—an orderly came into my room and told me I had a visitor. Really?

  I walked out into the common space, but then I stopped in my tracks. It was Marco.

  “What are you doing here?!” I said. “How did you know I was in here?”

  “I wanted to see you.” He smirked.

  The nurse at the door looked at me, and then at him. Marco and I were staring hard at each other.

  “Everything all right?” she said.

  “It’s fine.” I wasn’t happy to see him. “Can he come into the cafeteria with me? I haven’t eaten.”

  “Bring your tray out here,” the nurse said.

  I retrieved my meal. Then Marco and I sat down in the visiting area.

  He smiled at me.

  I smiled back.

  I was very glad to be safe in that hospital.

  “So,” I said. I poked a straw into my bucket of apple juice.

  “That was a pretty epic stunt you pulled,” Marco said. He was still smiling. “Stealing my stuff and throwing it away on the street like that.”

  “Well,” I said. Still smiling. “I learned from the very best.”

  “You know,” Marco said, with the same smile. “You still have . . . some of my things.”

  “Do I?” I pulled the foil back from my dinner: pot roast and potatoes. It was too hot to eat. I fanned the rising steam with my hand.

  “You do.” Marco smiled.

  I pretended to think about this.

  “I don’t think so, darling,” I said. “I think I donated them to the Salvation Army.”

  Marco could take no more.

  “Oh, come on, Cat!” he said. “This isn’t funny! I know you went to my dad’s house! Give back my stuff!”

  “After what you’ve sold out from under me?” I laughed. “Dream on.”

  Marco sulked for a minute. Then he eyed my meal.

  “Lemme get some of that,” he said, reaching for my fork.

  “Don’t even think about it!” I smacked his hand.

  “But I’m starving!” Marco whined.

  “Like I’m not?” I said. “God, you are greedy. Get something on the outside! They won’t give me another one.”

  Marco pulled out a cell phone and started taking psych-ward selfies.

  “You can’t do that in here!” I said.

  “No one’s watching,” Marco said. Click. Click. Click.

  “Marnell . . .” A nurse paged me over the intercom.

  “Gimme a sec,” I said, and went to take my meds. When I came back, Marco had eaten all of my dinner.

  * * *

  I kept refusing to go to rehab. Dr. M. was very annoyed with me. So on day ten . . . she brought in the big guns.

  “Your parents are coming today,” she said on her usual after-breakfast rounds. “I looked up your dad.”

  “WHAT?” I sat up.

  “I’m hoping they’ll talk some sense into you,” Dr. M. said.

  “Sense!” I sputtered. “Sense?!” I tried to think fast. “But . . . I don’t give you permission to involve them!” Was that a thing? “I’m an adult—”

  “Then start acting like one.” Touché. “They’ll be here at five.”

  She clicked away. Conversation over.

  “Noo,” I moaned. I fell back on my pillow. My roommate clucked sympathetically. She was organizing her sleeves of crackers.

  Seven hours later, there they were: Dr. Dad and my mother, standing at the entrance and looking extremely serious. They didn’t see me. So I slithered on over there across the hospital linoleum, in my inside-out hospital socks.

  “Hello,” I . . . simpered.

  They turned around. My dad’s expression got even darker when he took in my paper jumpsuit.

  “Cato,” he said stiffly.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  “Hi,” she whispered. Melodramatic. It wasn’t like I had leukemia! I mean, we’d all been on psych wards before.

  Dr. M. came over with my social worker, Giraffe Slacks (she loved an animal print).

  “Dr. Marnell,” my dad introduced himself.

  “Dr. M.,” my psychiatrist introduced herself.

  “I’m an LCSW as well,” my mom told Giraffe Slacks. I was about to throw up. It was like a convention!

  We went into the arts-and-crafts room to powwow.

  “I’ve been observing Caitlin,” the doctor said. “She was admitted for depression, insomnia. But she isn’t depressed. She’s a drug addict.”

  My dad sat there stony-faced. My mom’s eyes looked glassy.

  “I’m not going to rehab,” I said. “I have to go back to the magazine. I have a job!”

  “CAIT . . .” my dad growled.

  “What?” I played dumb.

  “Cait,” my dad repeated.

  “What?” I said. “What?!”

  “But . . . I really . . .” my mom said. “I think the problem is her ADHD . . . That’s why she’s always had all of these . . . behavioral problems.” She shook her head.

  “Behavioral problems?” I said.

  My mom looked nervous.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think . . . it’s fair to say . . . behavioral problems.”

  “I don’t have behavioral problems!” I said. “What behavioral problems?”

  “Let her speak,” Dr. M. said.

  “What does that even mean?” I whined.

  “Cait . . .” my dad warned. I sat back and folded my arms over my chest.

  “Go on, Mrs. Marnell,” the doctor said.

  My mom looked at the doctor and then back at me.

  “Caitlin,” my mom said slowly and quietly, like I was some sort of . . . well, like I was some sort of mental patient. “You had a second-trimester abortion when you were seventeen years old.”

  “Well.” I pushed my chair back and stood up. “THAT’S IT FOR ME.”

  “Sit down, Cait,” my dad commanded. I sat.

  “She was so horrible,” my mom was saying. “It was so—”

  “THAT WAS LITERALLY TEN YEARS AGO!” I screeched. “WHY ARE YOU STILL TALKING ABOUT THAT?”

  “Watch it, Cait,” my dad growled. But I wasn’t done berating my mother.

  “I am so sick of you bringing that up all of the time, Mom!” I wanted to get the hell out of there. “I’m not this . . . failure!” I stood up. “I’m not! There’s a whole side of me you don’t see!”

  “Okay, let’s—” my doctor said.

  “I’m an editor at Condé Nast!” I babbled on bitterly. “That might not mean anything to you, but I worked years and years to get where I am! I have people at work who tell me I’m talented and who promote me and tell me I’m a great writer and that I have”—my voice caught—“a—a big future!” Tears sprung to my eyes, but I didn’t want my parents or Dr. M. to see. I did have a big future, didn’t I?

  “Ms. Marnell—” Dr. M. said.

  “And you.” I whirled around to face her. “You bring them in here and it embarrasses me. I may be in the hospital but this is my business! I’m an adult! My parents have nothing to do with my life! I’m twenty-­seven years old!”

  “We’re just trying to get you the help you need,” Dr. M. said.

  “I just want to go back to work!” I groaned. “I’ve told you that—”

  “Ms. Marnell—”

  “You brought them here, so you talk to them,” I snapped at Dr. M. “I’m not talking about my mental health with my parents!” I stood up from the table.

  “CAIT,” my dad said sharply. “SIT!”

  I sat.

  Fuck these people! I thought.

  I stood up.

  “SIT!” my dad yelled again.

  “NO!” I screamed. “I’M NOT A DOG!” Now I real
ly was acting like a mental patient. I stormed out, stomped across the unit to my room, slammed my door shut, and flung myself on my bed.

  “How’d it go?” my roommate asked.

  “Ugh!” I said. “I hate psychiatrists!”

  Dr. M. came in half an hour later.

  “Your parents are leaving,” she said.

  “So?” I scowled.

  Dr. M. narrowed her eyes.

  I got up slowly. Dr. M. turned and went back out onto the ward. I lurched out to the main room and there they were.

  “Bye,” I said.

  “That’s a wonderful doctor you have,” my dad said. He seemed in better spirits. “What a pro! She’s really smart. What a pistol!” Of course those two would hit it off.

  I was back to my room when a crazy impulse just . . . gripped me. I did a one-eighty and returned to the common area. My dad was actually laughing about something with Dr. M.

  “Hey, Dad?” I interrupted.

  He turned around.

  “Yes?” he said pleasantly.

  “Go fuck yourself!” I squawked.

  His face fell.

  I ran back into my room with my heart pounding. Omigod omigod omigod. I’d never spoken to him like that in my entire life! I thought it would feel good, but it actually didn’t at all.

  * * *

  I don’t remember exactly how long I was in “the bin,” as JGJ called it. I do know, however, that by the time I agreed to go inpatient my eyebrows were so very far from on fleek that I practically broke down all over again every time I looked in the mirror. So let’s say . . . at least two weeks.

  Giraffe Slacks gave me a list of facilities covered by my insurance. Silver Hill wasn’t on it. In fact, nothing in Connecticut was—or New York.

  “New Jersey or Delaware,” Giraffe Slacks said. I mean, Rihanna or Beyoncé? How would I choose?

  In the end, I went with Dirty Jerz’, since it was closer. Dr. M. and I bickered to the end. I was still a flight risk, she said, and she wouldn’t discharge me unless I paid for a private ambulance to the rehab. Who did Dr. M. think I was—Jennifer Lopez? That shit is expensive! Finally I handed over my Chase Visa for a regular old car service. Dr. M. personally walked me downstairs and outside. I had my brown paper bag “luggage” and was wearing my tattered T-shirt and Minnetonka boots again. The look was very “Eskimo at the methadone clinic.”

  “She’s not to get out before you reach the destination,” Dr. M. reminded the driver as I got into the backseat. He nodded.

  And we were off. The sedan wound through midtown, through Times Square, and out the tunnel. Then we were in the part of Jersey that looks like the opening credits of The Sopranos. I rolled my windows down. Fresh air! Well, sort of.

  I was in a pretty chatty mood now that I was out of that hospital and all stable and sober, and it wasn’t too hard to sweet-talk my driver into stopping at a gas station. I hopped out and bought Juicy Fruit and Ultra Lights. Then I gave my driver a ciggie and we both lit up in the car.

  “And then,” I said, ashing out the window. “I realized that Marco was slicing pages one at a time out of my special Damien Hirst book with a razor blade every time I was in the bathroom—”

  “We’re here,” the driver said.

  We were in front of a squat brown building in Westfield, New Jersey: Spirit House. Oh dear.

  * * *

  It is very bad form for a privileged addict like me to talk smack (pun intended!) about an affordable treatment center—at a hundred dollars a day, that’s what Spirit House was—but I’m going to do it anyway. That’s how much this place sucked. So what if it was inexpensive? They couldn’t keep people there! At least one person got up and bailed or went “AMA”—against medical advice—every day. The rest of us fantasized about it.

  “I have to get out of this fucking room!” a kid would stand up in the middle of the NA meeting and cry. Then he’d leave. Forever!

  Let me tell you about my first few hours at this place. I had an admissions appointment, but no one seemed to care, especially me. There was a flat-screen television in reception. I sat watching the E! network and reapplying hot-pink Tarte tinted lip balm for approximately ninety minutes.

  “Is Jon Gosselin spending Thanksgiving with Kate and the kids?” Giuliana teased. “Or will he dine with new love Hailey Glassman?” Needless to say, I was mesmerized (and Team Hailey all the way).

  Finally, I went through intake, then was sent upstairs for a medical exam. The entire rehab—living quarters, detox unit, admissions, treatment rooms, therapists’ offices, and so on—was in the same building. There was one small elevator for everyone in the place. I took it to the fourth floor and sat by the nurse’s station, waiting for my physical. There weren’t any other clients—rehab-speak for “patients”—around.

  Or were there?

  “AUUUUGHHHHH,” a man screamed from one of the rooms. Jesus! I practically fell off the bench. Crash. “NO! NO!” It sounded like the movie Hostel in there—like someone was hacksawing this dude’s arm off. But none of the nurses batted an eye. It went on and on. “AUUGH!” Crash! Clang! “NO! PLEASE!”

  “Ms. Marnell?” A nurse led me right past the Hostel room and into a small office.

  “What’s . . . going on in there?” I said as she did that squeezy thing to my upper arm—the blood pressure test.

  “Hmm?”

  “AUUUUGHHHH!”

  “Him!” I said.

  “Oh, that’s Mister Reggie,” she said. “He’s having a rough detox.”

  “Heroin?”

  “Xanax,” she said.

  “KILL ME. TAKE ME GODDDDDD. OH, FUCK. OHHH!”

  “That’s it?” The nurse nodded. Wow.

  “Now, Mister Reggie!” a woman was yelling. “Stop banging around!”

  “NOOOO!” Crash! “AUUUUGH. OHHHH.”

  “Let’s get you downstairs with the other kids,” the nurse said. On the way out we passed Mister Reggie’s room again. The door was open now. He looked like Christian Bale! Well, Christian Bale with ebola. Mister Reggie was mewling and quivering, bare-assed in a hospital gown, bent over the windowsill. A cleaning guy wearing a surgical mask was on his knees wiping up something that I’m not sure how to spell and refuse to Google.

  All I can say is: damn, son. Coming off benzos was no joke. The detox unit at Silver Hill had been completely separate—far away from the tennis court and the Mariah Carey dorm, and up the hill and hidden in the trees. Now I knew why.

  * * *

  I heard the mayhem in the basement before I saw it. Then the nurse opened the door. Bedlam! The boys were roughhousing: shouting, and throwing fistfuls of Monopoly money in the air. They were shrimpy with gelled hair and hoodies. The girls were the tannest drug addicts I’d ever seen, with long hair, Victoria’s Secret PINK sweatpants, and smoky eyes. Everyone looked nineteen years old. That Jay Z/Alicia Keys “NEWWWW YORRRRRK” song was blaring from a shitty boom box just like at Payne Whitney, but since we were underground (and in Westfield, New Jersey), the reception was awful; it was half static. A staffer sat on a folding chair amid the mayhem, messing with her phone.

  This was the Spirit House basement. It smelled like Jean Paul Gaul­tier cologne, Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue perfume, and stale cigarette smoke. There were fluorescent lights, linoleum floors, a wall of board games, twelve-step posters, and two tiny windows near the ceiling, so you could see people’s feet when they walked by on the sidewalk outside.

  The nurse left me there.

  “Dinner!” a lunch-lady type hollered. There was a mad scramble as a wall opened to reveal a cafeteria-style kitchen.

  Some hyper boys jumped to the front of the line.

  “GIRLS FIRST!” the Juicy Couture clan screamed. The boys pouted but retreated. I queued up with the chicks. By the time I emerged with my French bread pizza, the furniture in
the once riotous group room had been totally rearranged. Now the place was set up like a dining hall. (The basement served as meeting room, rec room, cafeteria—­everything!)

  The girls in velour waved me over, so I sat with them. I told them I was twenty-seven years old, a beauty editor at Lucky, and lived in downtown New—

  “Twenty-seven?” they all gasped.

  “You don’t look twenty-seven,” one of them assured me.

  “Not at all.”

  “Uh,” I said. “Thanks.”

  The blond ringleader told me she was a former Miss New Jersey. (I’ve since investigated—and indeed, she was.)

  “But then I got into oxy,” she said. “Gabby’s into oxy, too.”

  “Everyone here is,” Gabby said. She was a sexy brunette with dead eyes. The other girls at the table nodded.

  “I also love weed,” Miss New Jersey said. “But only vaporizing it, you know?” She shivered. “Smoking it is just so bad for the skin! I—” Just then a fight broke out between two boys at the table next to us. We all jumped up.

  “Jesus Christ!” Gabby squealed.

  “STOP IT, BOYS!” Miss New Jersey screamed. One of the little guys threw his tray. Salad splattered everywhere. “YOU ARE SO IMMATURE!”

  A staffer interceded. We returned to our dinners.

  “So annoying.” Gabby shook her head.

  “Are they always like that?” I said. The girls nodded.

  “Everyone’s stir-crazy because we’re in this room”—Miss New Jersey waved her manicured hand—“twelve hours a day.”

  “Twelve hours?” I said.

  “It sucks here,” Gabby said.

  “You’ll see,” Miss New Jersey confirmed.

  After dinner everyone crammed into the elevator for a ten-minute trip to Bergen Avenue, where I stood in the dark drizzle and took deep breaths of secondhand menthol. Then it was back to the basement for Alcoholics Anonymous and more “rec” time. At nine o’clock, we squished into the elevator again—this time up to residential. The floor was coed. All the rooms had connecting bathrooms and two twin beds each.

  “I guess you’re my roommate,” sexy Gabby said. She had a monster tattoo of a thorny rosebush with a knife stuck through it—or something—spread across her lower back. She went in the bathroom. I was unpacking—reluctantly—when someone knocked on the door. A boy from group popped his head in.