The Never Never Sisters

by L. Alison Heller

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll have to meet you there, though, because . . . I’ll be coming from work.”

  “Whoa, for real?”

  He slow-nodded. “That’s right. Just got off the phone with Herb. Monday.”

  “All cleared?”

  Slow nod again. “All cleared.”

  “That’s great!”

  “Yep.”

  “Back to your office just like before?”

  “Like nothing happened.” He smiled and wiggled his fingers sideways from his head down to his chest: Magic!

  “So what did happen?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “They still didn’t tell you?”

  “Nope. I’m moving on.”

  “You don’t want to know more?”

  “Nope.”

  “I can’t understand that.”

  “I don’t want to look back, Paige. Let’s just—what would your mom say—cleanse ourselves of it.”

  “Would she say that?”

  “Um, yeah. You’ve never heard her say that? Most important, though—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Cheese of the month has arrived!” He handed me one of the glasses and clinked his against mine.

  “Cheese of the month!”

  “Let’s taste it.”

  “Okay.”

  “And then go out and get crraaaazy.”

  “Okay.” I put the glass on the table. “Or. How about renting a movie?”

  “Naw, let’s go out.” He shook my shoulders with his hands. “Didn’t you hear me? I said crraaaazy.”

  “A movie! We can sit on the couch, getting lost in the burrata.”

  “Getting lost in it?”

  I smiled in what I hoped was an inviting way. “The movie can be one of those awful violent ones about people’s limbs being hacked off. Saw Ten.”

  “We can do better than that.” He shook his head, but I was already starring in the performance of This Is the Best Idea Ever!, moving the cheese tray to the coffee table and microwaving popcorn and exalting about how great it felt to get into pajamas after a long day. (These are so comfortable—oh, how I love an elastic waistband.) I was nearly hysterical with phony glee, but Dave seemed unperturbed, like this was expected behavior from me.

  We settled into the couch, nestling together like batteries. I was self-conscious of every move—reaching to the coffee table for the cheese, shifting my weight, gasping at the violence. On the screen, an eighteen-year-old blonde was handcuffed to the ceiling, a chain saw dancing at her feet as she shrieked. I wanted to look away but couldn’t.

  The bottom button on my shirt was loose and with the jittery fingers of my free hand, I worked it, twisting the threads out until it slid off the frayed string, tiny and pearlized. Pulling it off was tremendously satisfying, so I tested the others. They were all secure, so I fiddled with the one that had detached, turning it over and over in my fingers and pressing its four tiny holes into the flesh of my thumb, as if by rubbing it enough a genie would emerge and help me escape.

  It worked. Dave’s work phone rang. He first craned away from me and next got off the couch. Then, after I pressed PAUSE, he finally embraced a full-on Joe Businessman’s pace around the room, so focused on the call that he had no clue he was almost shouting.

  After five minutes, I put my bag over my shoulder, went into our bathroom, locked the door and ran the water. I pulled off my clothes, took out the notebook and opened it to the page I’d dog-eared earlier. When the tub was full, I dipped a toe in and, holding the notebook carefully so as not to drop it, slipped down into the warm water and started reading.

  I can’t.

  chapter twenty-three

  It’s been two months.

  G. and Pressman were both telling me the same thing—independently, not in a joint session or anything: Journal it, journal it, journal it.

  I didn’t want to; it wouldn’t help.

  Pressman thought it would. He thought it might help me get dominion over my Guilty Feelings, which he perceives have multiplied like the Mickey Mouse brooms in Fantasia. He said just that—used the poetic image—and now all I see are splintering, marching Guilty Feelings. Gold star, Pressman.

  But then G. said, no. Not to help. To remember just how difficult the path is.

  How difficult the path? I said, “What kind of gobbledygook is that? Trust me, I remember.”

  “You do now. But you didn’t. You were feeling like it was smooth sailing, like the struggle was over. That’s not realistic,” said G. “That lowers your guard. If you ever feel like that again—the false sense of security—you can go back and read it. To remember: There’s no beating anything. There’s just struggle.”

  So.

  In the weeks prior, we had argued about whether she had to keep going to Dr. Cassat. I was so strong, sticking to my position. This is a lifelong battle. You’ve got to have safety nets. “I know, Mom,” Sloane had said, jingling the car keys in her hand, nodding importantly. “You’re right.” She gave up so easily.

  We expected her home right after therapy. Twenty minutes late—I was not worried. She probably went to watch Jeremy practice. She’d been doing that a lot, which was great—exposure to all that healthy exercise, all that treating young bodies like temples.

  At five thirty, I called Dr. Cassat and left a message. She called right back. “But you canceled today.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You did.” I heard the wind waft of pages turning. “Here it is. You left a message earlier today with my receptionist that Sloane had a meeting with the school counselor.”

  I hadn’t, but I knew who had.

  I called the school. Sloane signed out right after her free period at around noon. I called Jeremy’s house. His little brother answered. No, he wasn’t there, and when his mother called back, she didn’t sound worried. (See? It’s different with a boy. You can be stupid like that.)

  Frankie, the police, our neighbors, a few of those hooded greasy boys whose names I’d pretended to vaguely remember (but really knew cold). I called them all. I called Cherie to pick up Paige.

  When Frankie got home, he stayed by the phone, and I grabbed my keys and wallet (empty) and drove around and around until finally, I found myself in Newark, stopping periodically at pay phones to check in and ask if Frankie had heard anything useful. He hadn’t, but the third time I called him, he reported the following items missing: our VCR, my diamond earrings, his camera, several china figurines from Frankie’s mother and a glass bowl. (The camera was at a pawnshop. The figurines are still missing, most likely smashed to bits when Sloane realized they were worth crap.)

  You would think I wouldn’t have slept that night, but I must have. I had that dream, the same one from when she was little.

  The two of us, me and Sloane at the station, staring at the display board, waiting for our track to be announced. I don’t know where we’re going, but I watch intently, and when the number comes up, spinning like lotto balls, we stampede to catch our train. The doors open for a split second, long enough for her to drop my hand. Only for a second—one minute I had her, then I didn’t—I lost that tiny hand, and then the doors closed, and I watched helplessly through the platform as we sped away and she stood small, alone and confused.

  Always in the dream there is not just the sense of loss but the confusing powerless aftermath: the moment where I think, what now? Do I run through the long cars of the train, screaming for the conductor? Do I get off at the next stop and retrace my steps? In the dream, there’s no point. It will be too late. By the time I do anything, she will be gone—taken, toddled onto the tracks, slipped through the cracks.

  There is no recourse.

  It wasn’t a stress dream, I understoo
d that night. It was a premonition.

  I knew she was dead. I just didn’t know how—alone or with someone? Overdosed? Stabbed? Raped? Car crash (my preference)? She had realized in the last moments that she didn’t want to die. She had cried out for me. She hadn’t.

  So that I remember how difficult the path is, I will report the gist of my conversation with Officer Stanley, who called at the start of his early shift patrolling Eastern Ohio’s portion of I-65:

  Someone had “found” Sloane outside the Plainville truck stop, not quite by the trash cans, down the hill a little, where the woods started. She was alive, passed out, under the influence of something. (“Heroin, ma’am, would be my guess, based on her behavior.”) Would we like to come and get her?

  I told him to arrest her and we flew out, Frankie gripping the wheel of the car on the drive from Toledo, the frequent stops at pay phones. There’s an amazing number of logistics involved; as if the situation didn’t suck out your soul, you have to somehow conjure the fight to work: mobilize the contacts, parse through options, get the best experts, plead for a bed.

  Had these superparents journaled? I wonder. They, the ones with the answers? Because they didn’t seem to have forgotten the struggle. How many of them were still doing it? I didn’t ask; they did not volunteer.

  Major Victory: we got her a bed at Gentle Breezes, an ongoing rehab program in the desert of New Mexico. I think Frankie and I might have high-fived, enjoyed a brief moment of achievement before we remembered that we were celebrating getting a bed at an ongoing rehab center for our child. It indicated some seriously deflated expectations.

  We found Sloane, bruised hands, egg lump on forehead, long ribbons of scratch marks on her arms. This is what she said to us when we found her: nothing. Not one word during the motel stay and the flights and drives, although she did try to tell the flight attendant that she wanted a Coke, and her voice came out a thick rasp.

  I have two other memories to not forget:

  1) Gentle Breezes told us she needed to start her stay in detox.

  2) She turned her back when I tried to kiss her good-bye.

  Fuck you, Jeremy. For claiming to have blacked out and not remembering anything. For returning to school a week later like you’d just been on a road trip. For your inevitable swimming scholarship to Stanford.

  When we get her back, I’ll never let her out of my sight.

  I leaned over the side of the tub and placed the journal, open, on the floor so that it could dry. I’d inadvertently dabbed drops of water on it, magnifying the twenty-year-old ink in some spots and making it look as though tears had plopped onto the page. It made sense if you already knew the sad ending: Sloane had not returned; she’d slipped away until this July.

  chapter twenty-four

  DAVE WAS WAKING up when I stepped out of the bathroom in the morning, towel wrapped around me and tucked under my arms. He sat up in bed. “No lazing around?”

  “Another family thing.” I slid on my watch. I had gone to bed feeling okay, but when I woke up, my first thought was Are we really just supposed to go back to normal now? I’d felt a stab of venom behind my rib cage, like a cramp. Or maybe it was guilt.

  He hummed. “We Are Family.” Honestly, I didn’t even feel like smiling. I felt like slamming my weight against a punching bag.

  “Can I come?”

  “You’re not playing catch-up with work today?”

  “I can do it after. Unless you don’t want me to come.” He laughed as though this would never be a real possibility.

  “No, of course I want you to come. I didn’t tell you about it because I assumed—”

  “I’m teasing.” He swung his legs out of bed and grabbed a pair of shorts from over the chair, pulling them on. “You’d want any buffer for the family stuff these days, right? I don’t take it personally. You’d probably love for Bert to tag along to shield you from all that tension.” Bert was our doorman. “And your mom? What’s the story there—why does her personality completely alter when she’s in Sloane’s presence?”

  “Hey there, Columbo.”

  “Why am I Columbo?”

  “Because your observations are a bit late in the game. It’s gotten much better between everyone.”

  “Really? Just in the past few days?”

  “Really.”

  “What was it about anyway?”

  “It was about her addiction.” I said this in a tone of voice like Duh.

  “I know that, but I mean why does your mom act so scared around her?”

  “How should I know?”

  “I dunno.” He found a T-shirt in the pile of clothes on the chair and shook it out. “Weren’t you there when it all went down?”

  “Dave!” My mom literally jumped up and down in one place with joy at the surprise of his presence. “I’ll set your plate.”

  I wanted to hug her after reading the last journal entry and reached out, but she was already halfway to the kitchen, where I heard the pull of drawers, the clanking of silverware. Dave’s work phone buzzed, and he paused to pick up while I followed her in.

  “Where’s Sloane?” I said, and she pointed out to the patio. “I’ll let her know we’re here.”

  Sloane was standing by the balcony, facing the East River, watching a boat drift toward New York Harbor.

  “Dave came with me.” The words rushed out.

  “Where?”

  “Here. This morning.”

  She turned her head to try to see into the apartment and then peered at me. “You look a little tweaked.”

  “I am. He’s going back to work. He’s been cleared by the firm. Whatever that means.”

  She looked at the pack of cigarettes on the table. “Want one?”

  I had to smile at the thought of my mom peeking out to see me smoking. At this point, she’d probably give me a double thumbs-up: Great work making Sloane feel comfortable, honey! “No, thanks.”

  “So tell me what happened.”

  “I came home yesterday, and he told me the whole thing is over. He’s going back on Monday. He still doesn’t know what happened, and he doesn’t want to.” Her expression—hooded eyes—called bullshit. “I know.”

  “If you want to call off the investigation, it’s no biggie. You can just move forward, forget about the questions.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Just tell me.”

  She patted my leg and tapped ash into a ceramic bowl.

  “Hey,” I said. “You have a real ashtray.”

  She took a drag. “Vanessa. She bought them yesterday.”

  “Them?”

  “Three. The presentation was this morning, right after I arrived. Gift wrapping, a small card. It reminded me of Hanukkah. Remember Hanukkah? Or has it gone in the memory void with everything else?”

  “We still do Hanukkah. You should come this year. You and Giovanni. We do the whole shebang, the dreidel and the latkes. It’s weird because there are no kids and for some reason, it’s still a lot of fun.”

  “Paige.”

  “I don’t know.” I imagined doing nothing. Then I imagined sneaking into Dave’s office and bugging his phone, which would involve a healthy amount of research to do properly. Neither seemed like a good option. “Can you cover for me if anyone comes out here?”

  “Of course.”

  I pulled Percy’s card from my wallet and dialed his cell phone. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Hi, it’s Paige.”

  “Are you in a bad spot?”

  “No.”

  “You’re just whispering a little. It’s hard to hear.”

  “Dave is going back to work.”

  “Okay.” Pause. “So we’ll cancel?”

 
Immediately I realized that if I canceled, I’d wake up angry every day, without knowing why. And then in the evenings, I’d sit on the couch and systematically pull the buttons off all of my clothes. It would be a twenty-first-century version of that chick-in-the-yellow-wallpaper story, slowly going mad while her husband went off to work with a whistle and a spring in his step. “No.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m not calling to cancel. But it seems to me there’s a bit of a lost opportunity with him back at work.”

  “Yeah. I see your point. It’ll be harder to access his conversations and stuff. Well, that’s okay. We can figure it out.”

  “What I’m thinking is—should we try to get in there before?” Sloane cocked her head in approval, bit her lip. Nifty idea.

  “Get in where, Paige?”

  “His office. The firm. Should we try to get in there before he starts on Monday?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “But if I could. If I—” My mom slid open the door to the outdoors, and Sloane stubbed out her cigarette as if mad at it and bounded over. She said something to my mom, and they both went indoors, my mom meeting my eye and pointing at her watch, then miming spooning food into her mouth—time to eat. “If I could get in there without a big production, what do you think of that?”

  I pictured Dave’s office, what it would take to get in and look around. Not much. I’d done it once before without Dave. He had been at home sick, cramped up with a stomach flu on a Saturday night and in urgent need of a document. The messenger service had quoted hour-long delays due to rain and no one else was around to help, so after much bellyaching (literal and figurative) and back-and-forth, I volunteered. I insisted I could manage it, shrugging off Dave’s explanations of how I had to press his key card against the turnstile just so. “Different from a MetroCard,” he kept saying, his voice weak and raspy.

  “I think . . .” Percy talked slowly in that way people do when they’ve slipped on the kid gloves. “That is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard. We’re supposed to meet tomorrow.”