You Made Your Bed: A Novel

by Cornelia Goddin

  Which I should consider, though I keep delaying thinking about it. I could just have an abortion and be done with it. It’s not as though I’m a person spilling over with maternal instinct or anything; maybe the sensible thing to do is have it taken care of, not go through with it. That would take the pressure off Wilson for a little longer, maybe even a lot longer. Give me time to talk him out of whatever crazy fantasies he’s dreaming up and blabbing all over the place. Not to mention simplify my future rather dramatically.

  There. The tension constricting my throat has eased and I can breathe a little more easily. I’ll put off deciding for a little while longer. See if Wilson’s relenting is anywhere on the horizon.

  I follow the same routine as my last trip to Oakland: Kayley’s dark wig, glasses, oversized sweater, sneakers, jeans, minimal makeup. Cab to La Guardia, American Airlines to Oakland, cab to Berkeley. The entire flight I can think of nothing but the little bean in my belly. How dare Sandie Shearer threaten us like this! Would she really call the cops? If she were in New York, I wouldn’t worry so much. Gordon has, as I’ve no doubt mentioned, contacts all over the place. I’m sure he has people who could make a few calls and that would be the end of it. But you can’t expect the man to be able to quash any investigation in any location anywhere. He may be Gordon Crowe but nobody’s got that kind of magic.

  Oh, you think if no one’s done anything wrong, why fear law enforcement? Really? You wouldn’t mind if a fleet of FBI agents, police detectives, and God knows who else barged into your life and combed through your computer, phone, house, your files; interviewed your friends, family, and domestic help, if you have it; talked to people at the schools you attended, the places you’ve worked. Every moment of your life upended, shaken out, and held up to the light, inspected by a number of people who do not, even for one second, have your best interests at heart.

  No one does, actually. No one.

  You think none of those people are above planting evidence, making you look like some sick motherfucker just so they can have the delight of clapping on the handcuffs and hauling you off to prison for whatever trumped-up charge they’ve invented? Yeah, that happens. Don’t be naive. Ask Amory, I bet he’d tell you. You think none of them would be on the phone to the tabloids, taking money for whatever bits of gossip they manage to scrape up?

  Okay, some people, maybe including you, can afford to be naive. You don’t have any particular enemies; maybe all you’ve got is your neighbor who is irritated because you borrow his tools and don’t return them. That’s not what I’m up against here.

  Finally in Berkeley. The cab drops me off halfway up a steep hill on Marin, and I keep climbing to Grizzly Peak Boulevard and over to my brother’s house on Sunset Lane.

  I’m pretty sure Rebecca is out of town; I sent her an email pretending to be one of her friends who lives in LA, inviting her down for the weekend. There was a quick back and forth about logistics which I can only pray I pulled off, just telling her to show up “at my place” sometime after work Friday, apologizing about not leaving a phone number and telling a little funny story about how I dropped my phone in a swimming pool and it’s sitting in a bowl of rice where I pray it’s drying out because I don’t want to shell out for a new phone.

  Would you have bought that? What I’ve found, speaking generally and not of the more criminally minded among us, is that people are gullible. That old saying about good liars being minimalists is nothing but crap—details, like the phone in the swimming pool, are what make the whole thing work. You can spin the most ridiculous tale, but if you make it a little interesting and wrap it in sincerity, people will gobble that shit up.

  I’m no computer wizard, I mean beyond the basics everyone my age can do. So it’s something of a point of pride that I managed to figure out how to send an email from someone else’s account. I just have to hope that Rebecca was glad for an excuse to get out of town, and that I sounded enough like her friend not to raise suspicion.

  Jesus, I’m huffing and blowing, getting up this hill. Is the baby already slowing me down like this? I want to be able to walk places without this painful stabbing under my ribs, thank you very much. My clothes still fit but I feel like I’ve packed on weight early, ever the overachiever.

  Wilson’s neighborhood has a placid feel to it, like they’re all upstanding citizens, the kind of people who don’t forget to have their lawns mowed and keep the oil changed in their cars on schedule. Who don’t have dark thoughts and darker urges. We’re talking happy families, here on Sunset Lane. It makes me angry to walk past their well-tended houses.

  I’m looking around for a place with enough privacy to change out of my Kayley gear. It’s a small moment that must go well. If you saw someone take off a wig in public, you would notice, right? So even though I want to just charge up to Wilson’s and get it over with, I force myself to be patient and find the right spot. I pass a mother pushing a stroller with a toddler asleep in it, and smile at the child and then at her, nodding as I go by. I look into the windows of houses and see people moving around their living rooms and kitchens, unaware of the world outside.

  Finally I see a van pulled into a driveway. The garage door is closed and the yard is surrounded by a high fence, so if I get in front of the van, no one from the house or the street can see me. I look around, making sure no UPS trucks are coming down the street, no more mothers and strollers, and when the coast is clear, I slip around the side of the van and out of sight, and within a minute and a half, I walk back to the sidewalk dressed in skinnies and a Prada top, shaking out my hair, all of Kayley Ann Barker in my bag.

  I want, with a desperation that’s hard to describe, a hit or six of blow. I want it badly. But of course—I can’t forget the little bean. I can’t do all the terrible things at once, even I’m not that awful. But refusing the blow does nothing to stem the craving. In fact, it makes it worse.

  Three blocks over to his house. My legs are wobbly. I keep hearing Wilson’s voice when he told me he had started to remember some things.

  What things, is the obvious question.

  The words law enforcement bounce around inside my skull without respite.

  I ring the bell, noticing that, unlike his neighbors, Wilson is not doing a very good job with the yard-work.

  He answers so quickly it’s like he was waiting just inside the door.

  “Hi Caro,” he says. He doesn’t look like himself. All the bravado has peeled off and his face looks raw.

  “Hey, Wee Willie,” I say.

  “Maybe don’t call me that, given the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances would those be?” I ask lightly, reminding myself that I don’t absolutely know what he thinks he’s remembered. I can’t be a hundred percent sure, not until he tells me.

  “Come in,” he says, and then closes the door behind me.

  “Rebecca around?” I say, nonchalant, as I walk inside.

  “Nah, she’s in LA. Visiting a friend.”

  “So how was Jamaica?” I ask him.

  He doesn’t answer. We sit on the cheap couch and look at each other. He’s doing that annoying yoga breathing.

  “So, you wanted to talk to me? Here I am. All ears.” I try—I really do try—to look encouraging.

  “I…there’s a lot of context to this whole thing,” he starts off.

  “Isn’t there always.”

  “Yes. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter much. The shorter story is that my therapist—”

  “Sandie.”

  “Yes. Are you—was that a sneer? You have a problem with her name?”

  “Oh no,” I say, but I can’t help smirking. I see Wilson struggle to control himself. It’s like I can’t help tweaking him like he’s still a kid, even when it does not advance my interests in the moment.

  “I had this memory,” he starts again.

  “With EMDR?”

  “Sort of. It…facilitates, I guess you might say.”

  “Okay.”

  “L
ook, we don’t have to rush into this conversation. Tell me how you’ve been, what you’ve been up to.”

  I shrug. I’m not in the business of accounting for my movements to anyone. “When’s the baby coming?” I blurt out, since obviously I have babies on the brain just now.

  I think I see his eyes dart to my abdomen.

  “Soon. Three weeks, give or take.”

  I get a quick flash of Rebecca lying in bed holding a baby wrapped in flannel, and just like that, I know there’s no way I’m going to have an abortion. Maybe I’m the last person who should be vulnerable to sentiment, but despite everything, the little bean is in there doing its best to hang on, and I’ve got to give it a chance. I’ve got to.

  “Anyhow, I appreciate your making the flight.”

  “I didn’t feel like I had a choice. Just get on with it, Wilson. What are these memories you’re all worked up about?”

  “I wanted to see you in person so we could talk straight to each other for once,” he says. “So we could maybe piece together…it’s still really blurry. Like I have these clear snippets but the projector’s sort of broken.”

  I think I know what he means.

  “Keep talking,” I say, my tone softening. “Offer me a drink?”

  Poor Wilson. It’s terrible of me to say it, but the thing is, when all is said and done, he’s just not canny enough. In a family like ours, you have to be able to keep up. If you stumble, you’re done for.

  Wilson moves with a lurch. “Want a beer?”

  “You know I don’t drink beer. Come on, Willie, make me a real drink!”

  Wilson heaves a sigh. “Always so high maintenance. Okay. Gin and tonic do it for you?”

  “It’s January, you heathen. But all right, yes, if you’ll join me.”

  I move to the kitchen counter, on a stool, while Wilson goes into the pantry looking for tonic, and then pulls a half-gallon of cheap vodka out of a low cabinet. “Sorry, no gin. Have to be V&Ts instead.”

  “Mummy would die to hear you utter such blasphemy.”

  Wilson grins. That grin—it’s almost enough to make me pack up and leave. Goddammit. I wish there were another way.

  “So let’s have it, then, Wilson. What’s got you and Sandie in such an uproar?”

  “Okay.” He clears his throat. “What I remembered…it’s you, in Jamaica. Naked. Or topless, to be precise.”

  I stare at him. His eyes are red-rimmed like he’s been crying his eyes out, which does not inspire pity in me.

  “So fucking what?” I say finally, when he appears unable to continue. “We were kids, we went skinny-dipping. This is your big breakthrough? This is what you think law enforcement’s going to be interested in? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “It wasn’t skinny-dipping. You came in my room. You…you did things…”

  “Did things?”

  “You were always forcing me to…to do whatever you wanted.”

  I fling my arms up in the air. “Yeah, guilty. I was your big sister and I acted like one. Go ahead, call the cops.”

  “It’s not nothing,” he says, and his voice is sort of strangled. “You did…other things. Sexual things…”

  “No, Wilson, I did not. I did not go into your room ever, because you would pelt me with spitballs and shoot rubber bands at me, long past the age when other boys had given those up. And as for ‘did things’—are you implying that I tried to seduce you? You’re kidding, right?”

  “You rushed out here because you’re afraid Sandie’s going to go to the cops. Which, if there was abuse? She has an actual duty to do that. To make things right, even after all this time.”

  “No. No, Wilson, you’ve got this totally wrong.” I start to—oh, never mind. “I’m not afraid of Sandie. You can tell the cops anything you like. I’ll drive you to the station right now. Shall we go?”

  His head drops and he looks at the floor. Bravado is my superpower. He’s as easy to manipulate as if he were still eight years old.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me. What else did you remember, Wilson? You’ve got to have offered up more than big sister’s boobs to get your therapist so excited.”

  “That’s why I want to talk. Because it feels…it feels like…”

  I want to box his ears. “Focus, Wilson!”

  “I’m trying! It’s like I can feel the shape of something, and it’s big and dark and suffocating. But I can’t quite grab hold of it. I want so badly to remember, but another part of me is going, nope, nothing to see here, keep walking.”

  “Listen to me. You’ve got things confused. I want you to know—it’s important for you to understand—that I did not mess with you like that. I would never—”

  “Are you trying to tell me my memory is a lie? Something I made up? I don’t think you understand why I’m…why I’m going through all this. My life…I can see myself, like I’m—this is gonna sound really narcissistic but it’s not like that—it’s like I’m watching the movie of me. And what’s going on in the movie is I’m right on the verge of fucking things up so badly there’s no bouncing back from it. Like I’m on the verge of being unredeemable. I love Rebecca, and I want to love our baby. Not be a total shit to both of them.”

  “Wilson—”

  “I’m not in control,” he says, and the sound in his voice makes me lean away from him. “It’s like I’m hurting myself just to feel something. And these memories…I think they are the way out.”

  “Isn’t that a little facile? You’re making it sound as though x causes y and if you can subtract z then you’re all fine and dandy. It’s too easy. I don’t think any of what’s screwing us up works neatly like that—it’s not math.”

  “That’s just what Sandie says.”

  I shrug. “Good. Well, do you agree? Maybe you can let this slide, at least for now? Put the EMDR off for a bit, try some other kinds of self-improvement if that’s what you’re after. You don’t really want anything to do with cops, do you?”

  We were making eye contact but he looks away, shaking his head slightly. “It’s a thread I’ve started to pull, and I’m going to keep pulling it. If that means cops, if that means our whole fucking lives unravel, then so be it. I’m gonna get to the bottom of what’s been going on. No matter what the fallout is.”

  You see what I’m dealing with here. A topless sister isn’t going to get anyone in trouble. But what might be around the next bend?

  Because I love my brother, I give it one last try. “Wilson. If I ask you, beg you even, to stop the therapy—is there anything I can say or do that would make you consider quitting it? Even just temporarily, while you tried out other ways to feel better?”

  “What other ways?”

  “Well, give me a little time to come up with some ideas. How about anti-depressants? Some good weed? A parenting class? A trip to Bali?”

  Wilson looks at me skeptically. “You don’t get it.” A long pause. “I’m going to continue. I’m sorry you don’t approve, and sorry that you’re worried you’ll come out of it looking bad. The idea, Caro, is to search for truth. What really went on instead of all the fictions we tell ourselves.”

  I roll my eyes. “‘All the fictions’? Is that Sandie-Shearer talk? You’re getting into areas of philosophy here, and I don’t feel equipped to discuss it. Truth with a capital T, Reality with a capital R…what if our childhoods were just our own experience, Wilson? Totally subjective. And what if when we remember things, we put a little narrative spin on them to jazz them up a little? We wouldn’t want to get bored by our own reminiscences, would we?”

  I thought that last bit was pretty good. It’s the sort of thing he used to go for, back before Sandie Shearer was the one calling the shots.

  “I’m going to keep going,” he says quietly.

  Well, that’s it, then. There is nothing that is going to change his mind.

  I’m sorry, I think but do not say. You are making a terrible mistake, I add, and it is not clear who I am talking to.
/>   I wish there were another way.

  He’s filled two glasses with ice, and pouring the vodka without measuring. I dig my fingers into my handbag, unwrapping a small white envelope that contains a healthy dose of midazolam, also known as Versed. It’s a popular drug because it allows a person to go about his or her business but later on have absolutely no memory of what that business was. Popular, that is, with dentists, surgeons, and date rapists.

  Wilson pours the tonic. “Cheers!” he says, lifting his glass.

  “Wilson, for the love of God, do you not have limes?”

  His shoulders sag. I start to feel sorry for him but shut that right down. He turns and opens the refrigerator, squats down to open the produce drawer, and nimbly I pour the midazolam into his drink. A dirty spoon is on the counter and I pick it up and give his drink a quick stir before he is back with the lime.

  Law enforcement showing up at 744, looking for me—a phalanx of cops and detectives, drooling at the prospect of bringing down a family like the Crowes? Ruining my life and the little bean’s too?

  No. I will not allow that to happen.

  I take a single sip of my vodka tonic, relieved that Wilson has stopped talking. I’m waiting for the first sign of the midazolam’s kicking in before taking the next step.

  The drug is harmless enough; the point of it is that he will not remember my being here. He might remember yesterday’s call, but why would he bring it up? If he does, I’ll simply say my plans changed—there is no way to prove I ever left Manhattan. No one will have any reason to think I was in California at all, much less here on Sunset Lane. He will not remember eating any mushrooms, making vodka tonics, nothing. In Wilson’s mind, it will be as though none of this ever happened.

  And right on cue, his face starts to melt. That sounds ghastly but there is no other way to say it: his face droops as though all the muscles decided at the same moment to let go. The sides of his mouth curve down, his cheeks wilt, his eyelids slump. You have to wonder about guys using this stuff as a date rape drug, but I guess if you’re a rapist asshole you aren’t picky about what your drugged-up victim looks like?