All Fall Down: A Novel

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Oh, Dad,” I said. I put Ellie down and half sat, half collapsed on the couch next to his armchair. He didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge me, just kept staring into the middle of the room as my mother, bracketed by cops, cried into a fistful of tissue. “What happened?” I asked the room. My mother continued to cry. My dad continued to stare. Finally, one of the cops, who introduced himself as Officer Findlay, said that they’d found my father two blocks away from the house, walking toward the elementary school in his bare feet. “He appeared disoriented, but he didn’t give us a hard time.”

  “Climbed right in the backseat and let us take him home,” said the second officer. “Your mother was explaining your dad’s situation . . .”

  “We should call his doctor,” I said to my mom. I hoped, foolishly, that she’d say she’d already done so—that she’d done something. Of course she hadn’t. She just sat there, mutely, shaking with sobs.

  “I’m going to call,” I told the police officers.

  I got Ellie situated in front of the television set, handing her the remote and watching her eyes widen as if I’d given her a key to the city, and went upstairs to my dad’s study to try to reach his physician. Of course an answering service picked up. I left my name and number and a brief version of the story. Then I called Dave.

  “They have a bed available,” he reported. “But it’ll have to be paid out of pocket until you finish giving them your dad’s insurance information. They’ll need a copy of your parents’ tax returns, too. I’m going to e-mail you all that information,” Dave said, in his full-on brisk-and-businessy reporter mode. “There’s an Emily Gavin you’ll be talking to—she’s handling intake over the weekend. They e-mailed a packing list that I can forward along . . .” While Dave kept talking, I let my eyes slip shut.

  “Do you think . . .” I swallowed hard. Here was the part I hadn’t quite figured out, the puzzle piece I’d never managed to snap into place. “Honey, would it be okay if my mom stayed with us for a while?”

  I’d expected objection, at least a pained sigh. But Dave’s voice was gentle when he said, “Of course it’s fine.”

  I started to cry. “I love you,” I said as the call waiting beeped to let me know that someone from my dad’s doctor’s practice was calling.

  “Love you, too,” said Dave.

  I sniffled. How long had it been since I’d felt that certainty, that unshakable belief that Dave had my back? And did he know that I had his? Would he come to me in a crisis, or just try to get through it on his own . . . or, worse, would he turn to L. McIntyre, with her understated makeup and sleek ponytail, and ask her to help?

  My father’s doctor was calling from a movie-theater lobby. “Count yourself lucky that no one got hurt,” he said. “Now, clearly, Dad’s ready for a higher level of care.”

  I agreed that Dad was.

  “You picked out a place?” He’d given my mother and me a list of possibilities the same day he gave us my father’s diagnosis.

  “Eastwood has a bed for him.”

  “Good. They’re good people. Don’t forget to bring two forms of ID when you go. Pack all his medication—they’ll probably let him take his own meds for the first night, then they’ll have their doctors call in new scrips for everything, just so they know exactly what he’s taking, and when, and how much.” I half paid attention as he explained the process of getting my dad situated—what to pack, whom to call—as I tried to figure out how I would actually get my father to Eastwood. Could I leave Ellie with my mother while I drove my father there? What if he got confused, or even violent, or refused to get in my car, or refused to get out of it when he saw where we were? Maybe I’d wait for Dave to make the trip from Philadelphia and have him come along. That would work. I thanked the doctor, got off the phone, closed the study door quietly . . . but before I went downstairs, I detoured into the bathroom that had been mine when I was a girl. The seat was up, the hand towels were askew, and something white—toothpaste, I hoped—was crusted on the cold-water handle at the sink. I ignored it all, shoved my hand deep into my bag, retrieved my Altoids tin, and piled two, then four, then six pills into my mouth.

  TEN

  Maybe my dad had been belligerent in the morning, but by the time the cops departed, all the fight had gone out of him. He sat quietly in front of the television with a glass of juice and a plate of cheese and crackers while I went upstairs to start packing. “Mom, you want to help?” I asked, pulling a suitcase out of the guest-room closet. There was only silence from downstairs.

  No matter. I began emptying the drawers, consulting the packing list Dave had e-mailed. Undershirts and underwear, jeans and khakis, pullover tops (“We find our clients do best in familiar, comfortable clothing without clasps, zippers, buttons, or buckles,” the list read). I packed up his phone and its charger, wondering if he’d need it. I added a stack of books, biographies of Winston Churchill and FDR, a copy of Wolf Hall, which I knew he’d read and loved. Toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, soap . . . I put in everything I thought he’d need. When I heard Dave arrive, I went downstairs and found my mom next to my father on the couch. I knelt down and took one of her hands between both of mine.

  “Dave and I are going to take Daddy to Eastwood. You can wait here with Ellie, and we’ll be back as soon as he’s settled.” I put my arm around her, feeling like someone had just handed me a script, and I was reading the lines and playing the part of the Good Daughter. “Try not to worry. They’ll take good care of Daddy. He’s going to be safe.”

  She didn’t answer, but I felt her body shaking. After a minute, she bent forward, briefly resting her body against mine. Her lips were pressed together, her tiny hands clenched in fists. She rocked, and rocked, and I heard a faint whistling noise coming from between her pursed lips, a wretched, keening sound.

  The side of her face was already swelling—she’d bounced into the dresser when my dad had pushed her that morning. I found an ice pack in the freezer, wrapped it in a dish towel, then pressed it against her cheek, and murmured nonsense: Don’t worry and He’ll be fine and even He’s going to a better place. Dave was the one who got my father into the backseat and the suitcase into the trunk. He drove, and I cried, and my father sat, silently, with his seat belt on and his hands folded neatly in his lap.

  Three hours later, he was relatively settled in a double room, with a framed picture of my mom on his nightstand and his favorite afghan draped across the bed and a social worker, whose job was to help him transition through his first few days, introducing him to his temporary roommate. Today is SUNDAY, read a whiteboard on the door. The next meal is DINNER. We are having ROAST TURKEY, SWEET POTATOES, and SALAD. After dinner, you can watch “SISTER ACT” in the Media Room, or play HEARTS in the Recreation Room. Tomorrow morning is ART THERAPY at nine a.m.

  I looked at the board, then looked away, as Dave, maybe guessing at what I was feeling, took my hand. “It’s the right thing to do,” he told me, and I nodded, feeling hollow and sad.

  Back at my parents’ house, Ellie and my mother were where I’d left them, on the sofa, with the TV switched from CNBC to Nickelodeon and a cheese sandwich, missing two bites, in front of them.

  “I made SANDWIDGES,” Ellie announced.

  “I can tell.” The sandwich was decorated with no fewer than six frilly toothpicks, and there was a neat pile of gherkins, Ellie’s preferred pickle, beside it.

  “Come on, Mom,” I said, and took my mother’s cool, slack hands. Then I raised my voice, trying for cheer. “Hey, Ellie, guess what? Grandma’s going to be visiting with us for a while!”

  “Yay!” said Ellie. Wordlessly, soundlessly, my mother got to her feet and climbed the stairs, with Ellie and I trailing behind her. For a minute, she stood in front of the unmade bed, with one pillow still bearing the impression of my dad’s head. Then, as I watched, she took the pillow in her arms and hugged it.

  “I love him so much,” she said. She wasn’t crying, and that was scarier, even, than the kee
ning she’d been doing before. Her voice was quiet and matter-of-fact, and she shook off my hand when I tried to touch her shoulder. “You have no idea . . . How will I live without him?”

  “You’ll still see him,” I said, trying to sound encouraging and hold back my own tears. “He needs you.” I paused. “I need you,” I added, trying not to notice how strange those words sounded. Had I ever told my mother I needed her? Had it ever been true? “And Ellie needs her grandmother.”

  We packed a bag for her, with what I guessed was a week’s worth of clothes, and loaded another bag with her cosmetics, her blow-dryer and curling iron, the pots and bottles and canisters of sprays and gels and powders she used every day. While I zipped up the bags, I explained to her that Eastwood was convenient to both of us. I told her that I’d visited a number of places (true, if online visits counted) and had settled on this one as the best of the bunch. I described the attractive facilities, the comfortable room, the doctors on staff, and the trips Dad could take. On the drive back to Haverford, she sat in silence with her hands folded in her lap, watching the trees flash past, as if she were a corpse that no one had gotten around to burying yet.

  “Why isn’t Grandma TALKING?” Ellie demanded from her booster.

  Before I could answer, my mother said, “Grandma is sad,” in a rusty, tear-clogged voice. I waited for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, Ellie said, “Sometimes I am sad, too.”

  “Everyone gets sad sometimes,” I said, and left it at that. I was thinking, of course, of my pills. Instead of lifting me out of the misery of the moment, they had left me there, shaky and wired and miserable, thinking, If I just take one more or Maybe if I took two. Since I’d gotten the call at the Shake Shack, I had swallowed . . . how many? I didn’t want to think about it. I was afraid the number might have entered double digits . . . and even I knew that was way, way too many.

  I’ll cut back, I promised myself as I swung the car into my driveway. Now that my father was somewhere safe, now that things weren’t quite so crazy with work, I could start tapering off. But, as the days went by, as the media furor over the vibrator-in-every-purse remark died down and my dad settled in to the routines of Eastwood, the tapering never began. I would start each day with the best of intentions. Then Ellie would have a tantrum after she realized we’d run out of her preferred breakfast cereal, or I would find my mother slumped at the kitchen table, still in her bathrobe, waiting, along with my five-year-old, to be fed, and I’d have to coax her to eat a few bites, to put on her clothes, to please get in the car because if you don’t, we’re going to be late for Daddy’s appointment with the gerontologist, and I would think, Tomorrow. I’ll start cutting back tomorrow. I just need to get through today.

  • • •

  When she wasn’t at Eastwood visiting my dad, my mom spent her days in the guest room, with the door shut, doing what, I didn’t know. When Ellie came home she’d emerge—pale and quiet, but at least upright and clothed—and the two of them would spend the afternoon together. My mom was teaching Ellie to play Hearts, a game she and my father used to play together on the beach. She was also teaching Ellie how to apply makeup—which didn’t thrill me, but it wasn’t a battle I was going to fight. From my computer, behind the bedroom door, I’d brace myself for shrieks of “NO,” and “DON’T WANT TO,” and, inevitably, “YOU ARE MURDERING ME WITH THE COMB!” But Ellie rarely complained. After dinner, I’d find them cuddled together in the oversized armchair slipcovered in toile, a relic of my single-girl apartment, flipping through Vogue, discussing whether or not a dress’s neckline flattered the model who wore it.

  One morning, after shuttling yet another thousand dollars from my secret checking account to the account I’d set up at Penny Lane, I started adding up what all the pills had cost me. I stopped when I hit ten thousand dollars, feeling dizzy, feeling terrified. The truth was, I had probably spent much more than that, and I was equally sure that if I tried to stop, cold turkey, I’d get sick. Already I’d noticed that if I went more than four or five hours between doses, I would start sweating. My skin would break out in goose bumps; my stomach would twist with nausea. I’d feel dizzy and weak, panicked and desperate until I had my hands on whatever tin or bottle I was using, until the pills were in my mouth, under my tongue, being crunched into nothingness.

  Just for now, I told myself. Just until my parents’ house sells, just until I figure out what to do about my mom, just until my father settles in. Another six weeks—two months, tops. Then I’d do it. I’d figure out how many pills I was taking each day, and cut down by a few every day, slowly, gently, until I was back to zero. I’d have a long-postponed confrontation with Dave. I’d ask the questions that scared me the most: Are you in or are you out? Do you love me? Can we work on this? Is there anything left to save? Whatever he told me, whatever answers he gave, I would work with them. I would be the woman I knew I could be: good at my job, a good mother to my daughter, a good wife, if Dave still wanted me. Just not right now. For now, I needed the pills.

  ELEVEN

  “How’s your dad?”

  I sighed, taking a seat at Janet’s kitchen counter, next to a stack of catalogs and what appeared to be a half-assembled diorama of a Colonial kitchen. It was three-fifteen on a balmy, sweetly scented May afternoon, and I’d just arrived at her house, half a mile from my own, with perfectly pruned rosebushes lining the walkway from the street to the front door. We’d passed the living room and the den, both decorator-perfect, and ended up in the kitchen, where Janet was thawing a pot of beef stew on the stove and had the wineglasses out on the counter.

  “Half a glass,” I said, as she started to pour from a lovely bottle of Malbec. We’d already agreed that I would fetch the kids from Enrichment, the after-school program that Stonefield: A Learning Community offered between the hours of three and six for working parents. I would, therefore, drink responsibly. Of course, Janet had no idea that I’d helped myself to a handful of my dad’s Vicodin in the car, and that there were more pills in my purse and in my pocket.

  “And thanks for asking. My dad’s adjusting.” Sipping my wine, I told Janet about how, the day after his arrival, my father had switched from silent to belligerent, throwing things and shouting at the attendants to show him another room, that he’d reserved a suite, goddamnit, and if there wasn’t a suite he at least wanted a better view. As best I could figure, he thought he was in a hotel, on a business trip. He’d unpacked, hanging his shirts and pants in the closet, and if he’d noticed the lack of ties and jackets, or that the only shoes I’d sent with him were sneakers, he hadn’t said anything. Eastwood had assigned seating at mealtimes, and his case manager, a young woman named Nancy Yanoff, reported that my father was eating and seemed to be enjoying the company of the other residents at his table. Meanwhile, I was scrambling to get my parents’ house on the market, to finish filling out the thick sheaf of forms the long-term care required, and to figure out a long-term plan for my mom.

  God bless narcotics. The pills gave me the energy and confidence to get through the day. They lulled me to sleep at night. They made it possible for me to have an uncomfortable conversation with my husband about how long my mom could stay. Dave was still being generous, still speaking to me kindly, but I sensed that his patience had a limit, and that in a month or two I’d find myself approaching it.

  For now, though, he’d moved his belongings back to the master bedroom. I’d hastily ordered a dresser, two bedside tables, lamps, and an area rug for the guest room that had previously contained only a bed. Most nights I’d fall asleep before Dave did. Sometimes, if he woke me up with the bathroom light, I’d take my book and go to Ellie’s bedroom, lying beside my daughter in the queen-sized bed we’d been smart to purchase, telling her that Daddy was snoring again when she woke up and was surprised to see she had company. “But all things considered, it’s not too bad,” I told my friend.

  Janet looked at me sidewise, skepticism all over her face. “How is it going with Little Ronn
ie?”

  “Okay, here’s the shocker. She’s actually functioning. She helps take care of Ellie in the afternoons.” It was true that my mother still had the annoying habit of wandering down to the kitchen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the expectation that someone (not her) would put a hot, balanced meal on the table, and clean up afterward. She would leave her dirty clothes piled in the hamper with the unspoken assumption that they would be washed and put away, and she would announce that she had an appointment here or there instead of requesting a ride . . . but she was spending a few hours each day with Ellie. “And Ellie’s actually calmed down a little. I think, in a weird way, she feels responsible for her grandmother.”

  Janet nodded, sipped her wine, and said, “Maybe I could rent your mother. My three need to get the memo that they’re responsible for more than just wiping themselves.” She made a face, flashing her crooked teeth. “And one of the boys isn’t even doing that so well. I don’t know which one—I buy them identical undies, and it’s not really the kind of thing you want to, you know, investigate thoroughly . . .”

  I smiled, imagining my friend with a pair of lab tweezers and a fingerprinting kit, gingerly tugging a pair of skidmarked Transformers underpants out of an inside-out pair of little boy’s jeans.

  “And did I tell you that Maya is now a vegan? And the boys won’t eat vegan food—which I can’t really blame them for—so I’m now cooking two meals a night? What happened?” she asked. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes narrowed, ponytail askew. “I mean, really. I was Phi Beta Kappa. I was most likely to succeed. I billed more hours than any other associate my first three years out of law school. And now I spend my days driving my kids to hockey practice and swim club and choir rehearsal, and my afternoons making lasagna with tofu cheese, and my nights folding their underwear and checking their homework and spraying the insides of hockey skates with Lysol. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”