by Will Boast
He told God that he, Alden, had done wrong, too. He’d rushed into the marriage when he’d known deep down it wasn’t over with her and her old boss. Kneeling there before the bones of St. Peter, he prayed that she be watched over, that she might eventually find lasting love, because, God knew, there hadn’t been much between them the last two years, not since he found Ray Lantz’s BlackBerry on the bedside table.
Then he cried. Yes, he wept like a baby right there in the basilica. “It all came out,” Alden said. “I don’t know why I thought to make that trip in the first place. I could’ve gone anywhere. But it saved my life. Jesus, it did. Ah, Roma!” He made a flourish with his fork, and finally, perfectly, the carrot dropped off the fork and onto his plate, spattering gravy all over his monogrammed denim shirt.
I hacked out a dry, violent laugh.
“Honey,” my mother said.
“I’m sorry, but . . .” Another laugh was shoving its way out. My head drooped toward the table. “This is all so”—I waved my hand around my head—so obvious it didn’t require words. Alden was dabbing at himself with a napkin. Seeing the befuddled expression on his face, I gave myself over to the laughter, just let go completely. Every time I looked at him in that jacket and shirt with his embroidered name peeping out, the force of the hilarity took me over. I started to slide out of my chair.
My mother reached over, tried to hold me up. Alden had gone very dark in the face. “Excuse her,” she said. “You’re seeing her unique way of dealing with a breakup.”
“Listen to me going on like that.” Alden went an even deeper shade. “Your mom did tell me about your loss. I guess I just wanted to say . . . Ah, shoot, I don’t know what I was trying to say.”
I slipped out of my mother’s grasp, got up from the table, stumbled to the bathroom. The patrons of Grazie! turned to look, though here was a situation—home, the holidays—where I might easily be excused for being stumbling drunk. Swooping Italian ballads echoed off the tiles. I sat on the toilet, propped against the stall, and let the laughter tremble out of me. If not for the last bit of deadness from the pills, I would’ve been on the floor. When I went back out into the dining room, my mother was squeezing a napkin hard between her fingers, her lips pressed into a pale, thin pink.
WE DROVE BACK in near-silence. Alden dropped my mother and me at home. She went to her room. I lay on my bed, stared at the ceiling, the little fluorescent stars still stuck to the plaster, the ones I used to imagine dotting the skies above Wessex. God, two and a half more days at home . . . I gave up. I texted Brook.
A terse reply came back. Yeah, okay, going crazy here too.
Half an hour later, she picked me up in her parents’ old Ford Explorer. She wore a puffy coat, jeans, and an old pink pair of Converse. We drove to What Ales You, Arcadia’s attempt at a brewpub. As we came in, a couple of guys at the bar turned to check us out. “Ignore the locals,” Brook muttered. The bartender, after touting the virtues of their Hoppy Ending IPA, served me a glass of white and Brook a Manhattan. In the corner, we stared out of the tall windows at lonely downtown and the few swaddled souls hunching by. “What now?” Brook finally said.
“I was planning on drinking enough to sleep through Christmas.”
“Ollie’s not here. I’m guessing you would’ve brought him if you could.”
“Yeah, that’s over. It was coming. No way it wasn’t coming.”
“I should have called. You should have called me.” She rubbed at her eyes. I didn’t know which of us looked more ragged. “It was nice, seeing you out with him.”
“Back to reality.”
“I’d say tell me what happened, but I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Brook, listen, I . . .” It wasn’t Ollie I needed to tell her about. “Look, something else happened. I nearly, in the bath, I almost . . .”
“Evening, ladies!”
I turned to see one of the guys at the bar sauntering toward us. Then I realized who it was: Kyle Magolski. Once of the camouflage pants and helmet hair, now with his locks shorn and gelled at sharp angles and the prongs of a tribal tattoo curling down his bicep. He was bringing us a second round. “Daphne Irvine,” he said, addressing me but darting his eyes at Brook. “Health Ed. Second period. My partner in pissing off old man Jukes.” He set down the drinks like a lord bestowing his patronage. “You two back at it, huh?”
“Kyle . . .” I looked over at Brook. She was swiping at her eyes again, and for the first time I saw that she’d been crying. “This isn’t the best time.”
“What up?” Kyle said, jutting his chin at Brook and giving her a once-over. “Golden State girl’s in town once again. Should’ve said you’d be out. I would’ve brought something you’d like.”
Brook gave me a desperate, drowning look. Kyle gestured toward his friend at the bar, who wore wire-frame glasses and a blue and white leather Colts jacket. “My boy Daniel works down at Eli Lilly. And maybe he makes some of those pill shipments just a little lighter. Plenty of drinks back at the crib if you want to sample, resupply some of those parties of yours.”
“Just tell me what you have, already,” Brook said.
Before Kyle could answer, I cut in. “Any downers? Oxy, Percocet, anything?”
Brook looked at me, surprised.
“Maybe, maybe.” Kyle sucked his tooth and said to Brook, “Your friend don’t mess around. I thought she was, like, an all-star.”
“Forget the drinks,” I said. “Let’s go already.”
We put on our coats and went out to the parking lot. Kyle’s friend followed, mumbled, “What up?” and looked disappointed that Kyle was getting Brook. Kyle drove a low-slung Honda with powdered black rims and, on the back bumper, a decal the same design as his arm tattoo. Brook pulled out behind him. We threaded through the quiet streets and onto a lane of run-down bungalows. He pulled up to a house with a snow-covered weight bench on the porch. Brook started to turn in to the driveway.
And then she was speeding off down the road.
“What?” I said. “No, what are you doing?”
She had it up around sixty on the snow-narrowed roads, her right hand clamped to the top of the wheel, her left pushing through her hair. “You didn’t really want that Oxy, did you?”
“We can go back,” I said. “Let’s go back.”
“If I turn back, grab the wheel and steer us into the next telephone pole.”
The streets were all named for trees—Maple, Oak, Sumac, Laurel—and felt spookily quaint and orderly: two cars in every driveway, mailboxes shaped like barns and windmills and footballs, the icy sheen of every lawn shuddering and cascading with the reflections of the lights hung from every gutter, in every picture window tired or laughing or contented faces frozen in the blue flash of TVs. My hometown. Being here hurt in a way I couldn’t specify or locate—an ache, an echo across a chasm.
“B, that thing I need to tell you . . .” I told her—about the bath, about nearly drowning. I kept losing my tongue and having to start up again.
“Did you mean to do it?” Brook said.
“I don’t know. I’ve been taking baths for years.”
“Yeah, but, lady . . .” She had trouble speaking herself.
“It just happened.” I tried to soft-pedal it. “Things slipped out of my control. I was probably only in danger for a minute.”
Brook made a guttural sound in her throat. She put both hands on the wheel and swung the car around. We shot off with a skitter of gravel and road salt against the undercarriage. When we hit the outskirts of Arcadia, Brook finally slowed down. We passed the mini-mall, the laser tag place, the Piggly Wiggly. Then Brook pulled into an empty lot. “Get out,” she said.
“No way, it’s freezing. Where are we, anyway?”
“You know where.”
Brook turned off the car, hopped down to the asphalt, and went around to the back of the Explorer. I looked out at the darkened building before us. The marquee spelled out, with letters missing, t
he titles of movies from two or three summers ago. The big frames for posters were empty. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Brook knocked at my window, holding a snow shovel. She opened my door. “Come on.”
“Jesus, B-rook, you b-rought me here?”
Dragging the metal shovel blade against the asphalt, she marched toward the theater. “Let’s go!” she called back.
I slid out of the car. “What, we’re going to clear their sidewalk for them?”
Brook pointed at one of the doors. “You get first shot.”
As we approached, so did my own reflection in the dark glass. I could just see past it into the guts of the theater, the dim swoop of the curved concession stand, the people-size cardboard cutouts. I shivered, but it wasn’t from the winter night.
“No way,” I said.
“You worried someone’s going to come by? It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Private prop-erty . . .” I mumbled.
“They’re going to tear it down anyway. Go on. Do it.”
I swung the shovel back limply, and only tapped the blade against the glass.
“Pathetic. Again.”
I swung harder. The blade clanged against the metal part of the door, rattled through my teeth. I fixed on my reflection, swung the shovel over my head, let out a shout that slurred into a moan. That day, my arms crossed over my chest, a tag on my toe . . . The shovel, instead of slamming into the glass, clattered feebly to the pavement.
“You missed. Again.”
This time the blade struck the glass full-on, the blow ringing up through my whole body. Something came loose. Since that day, I’d twisted and twined and bound myself up inside to avoid death, the knot there for years, so dense it’d taken me this long to find a loop to pick at. I swung and swung at my dark reflection, wild, clumsy, missed the door completely, struck the sidewalk. Finally, I went down on my knees, clattering the shovel to the ground. Brook picked it up. I heard the glass crunch and splinter, felt it fracture with each of her swings, the glass shivering down on the asphalt. I knelt there, eyes fluttering, listening to the crystalline sound.
WE PULLED INTO my mom’s driveway. “If the cops show up,” Brook said. “I’m sending them here. Merry Christmas.”
“You never told me,” I said, “how did Halloween go?”
She braced her hands on the wheel. “His whole company went under three weeks after the party. Lucky I’m only out six grand. I wasn’t breaking those windows just for you.”
I was about to remind her she shouldn’t have gotten involved with him in the first place. Instead, I reached out, touched the crown of her head. “Wait, you’ve got glass in your . . .” I picked the sliver out, remembered those middle school sleepovers, laughing as dye streaked the sink, when we went around like twins, our hair the same obnoxious colors.
“What are you doing for New Year’s?” Brook said. “If I know you, you’re getting back to the city as soon as possible.”
“B, I’m not sure I can handle one of your parties.”
“Nope. Just me and you.”
“Aren’t you working?”
“My love to your mom. Get home safe.”
“What, to the front door?”
“Lady, if you got any funnier, I don’t think I could take it.”
Standing in the driveway, I watched Brook pull away. Then I stood in the cold night and examined my breath rising. I couldn’t go in. All of those nights lying awake, listening to my mother weep, the house still hummed with them. I paced and stamped to keep warm. Finally, I went through the garage and into the kitchen. Without turning on the light, I fumbled for the keys to her Focus, slipped them off their hook.
Six months—that’s all the driving I’d gotten in before my diagnosis, those lonely drives out in the country, when already I didn’t trust myself in town. Now I couldn’t even figure out how to adjust the seat. And when I took my foot off the brake to roll quietly out of the garage, the car didn’t go anywhere. I pressed the gas. The motor revved noisily up. The parking brake. Only my mother, in a table-flat town, would leave the parking brake on. The roads were slushy. I went slowly, thought I was on another of those old, aimless drives. By the time I got on I-37, I knew where I was going. I put my foot down.
EVEN WITH ALL of the one-way streets in Bloomington, I didn’t have to look at my phone to find the place. I didn’t want to look at it. It would be filled with messages from my mother, asking where the hell I was.
The little cinder-block house was even smaller than I remembered, dwarfed by the other campus buildings. I parked, got out, thought maybe I’d just peer in the window or something. Then I saw a light shining from one of the inner rooms. I hesitated, wrapped my fist in the sleeve of my coat, hammered on the door. Too quiet. I bared my knuckles, knocked so hard they stung. A moment later, another light came on. The door opened.
His hair was gray at the sides and frazzled. No salsa on his glasses, but his strained eyes stared at me through smudges and thumbprints.
“Dr. Bell,” I began. “I . . .”
He looked left and right, as if suspicious of an ambush. “What is it? What do you want?” Then his eyes flashed recognition. “Ah, it’s Daphne Irvine.”
“Right, yes. I was just driving by. And I . . .”
“It’s cold. Come in. You want tea?” It was two-thirty on what was now Christmas morning. Neither of us commented on this. I followed him inside, sucked right back into his orbit. “Or is it coffee?”
“No, tea is great, thank you,” I said. “Herbal if you have it.”
“Of course. You should avoid caffeine anyway.”
“Oh?” Was this some new research I hadn’t heard about? The old, brittle hope leapt up. “Would that help with the—?”
“We should all avoid caffeine. Were it up to me, it’d be Schedule IV.”
The familiar waiting room had changed. The tottering stacks of journals now lined handsomely veneered bookshelves. The institutional furniture was gone, replaced with Knoll catalog stuff. On the walls were framed portrait photos of three doctors, one of which showed Dr. Bell looking stiff and truculent. And there was a plaque, done in oak and bronze or some convincing facsimile: “Indiana University Center for Addiction Research.” Dr. Bell gestured for me to sit. He came back a minute later with two steaming white and red mugs. The tea bags were an upscale brand.
“They’ve provided us,” he said, “with some very efficient beverage-making devices. You spend the money how you can.” His expression soured for a moment, then cleared. “So, what is it, then? What have you come to talk about?”
On the drive down, I’d fantasized about screaming at him, without expecting to actually get the chance to do so. Now, seeing him here alone, his graying hair and sad little potbelly . . . “I’ve been working with one of your colleagues,” I lied. “Dr. Francis. On a study at Stanford.”
“Francis? Haven’t spoken to him in years. I’m not in the field anymore.” He sipped his scalding tea, used it to disguise another pained look. “Well, you’re not dense. You can see that.”
“So, it really is hopeless. Completely hopeless.”
“It’s not implausible that Jacob Francis has made some progress. He’s a competent enough scientist, I suppose.”
“You gave up. I never thought, you of all people . . .”
“Addiction carries a quantifiable social cost. And if I’m able to help a few troubled souls, then I should think it’s worth the . . . Oh, Jesus, you try writing NIH grants for twenty years, see where you get.”
“No, I understand.” I was too tired to explain what I did for a living, that I knew a thing or two about for-profit research. “It helps to have a partner in the private sector.”
“Yes,” he said miserably, “a real boon.” He reached out, parted my bangs, examined the nearly faded bruise on my forehead. “And how is our old friend?”
“She’s stuck around way past her welcome.”
He mentioned the brand name of the pills. “Have you con
sidered them?”
“I thought you were against that sort of treatment.”
“Perhaps one grows accustomed to the side effects.”
Do you have some? I wanted to say. Jesus, do you have anything I can take? “So what kind of defectives do you have coming here now? Crackheads, tweakers?”
“Grandmothers, housewives, middle-aged middle managers. They go into the hospital with a broken whatever—six months later hooked on an opioid. Lovely business. Get them on the magic pain pill, then sell them the stuff to get them off.”
“Must be nice to have your work in demand.”
He took another sip of tea, stared forlornly into the mug. He might have had the same manner, but the Dr. Bell I’d known had crumpled and wizened. I watched the steam from his tea curl around his face, fogging his glasses.
“When you look into the brain,” he began, “you understand. We like to think we’re lugging around the most perfect, miraculous thing in the universe. But try looking at the thing. Addicts? We’re all made to be addicts. Look at the limbic making the same connections again and again. Automatic behavior probably kept Homo ergaster alive. There’s reason for it. But if you’ve seen the neural activity of a schizophrenic, the incessant mental replay . . . Repetition, repetition, repetition. Then there’s everything we have no clue about. The same neuron fires when I see you sip the tea as when I sip the tea. So how do I even know who’s doing what? How do I know anything? It’s chaos. And not divine chaos but the chaos of the bog, the crawling jungle.” He balled up his fist and struck it, hard, against his temple. “When you look, when you really look, you see only murk, one evolutionary accident after another. Twenty years of people coming to me with the same question: Am I broken? Am I broken? And I want to say, What do you want from me? We’re all broken.”
The steam was dissipating. He put down the mug, took off his glasses, wiped away the fog. “Tell me, how is your mother?” If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve said he was blushing. “A beautiful woman, I always thought.”