“Where are the boys?” she asked.
“Watching TV. They were smart and went next door. Mrs. Kaiser gave them oatmeal cookies and gave me a lecture. I gave Sophia a bottle and changed her diaper. She’s napping now.” He pursed his lips together and stood there stiffly, even his body different than its normal loping, languid, confident self. From the background, Erica heard the singsong of Fraggle Rock and Jesse’s and Jake’s giggles.
“I have to get to the hospital,” Erica said.
“What did the police say?” Ethan asked.
“Nothing much. They want to talk to you. I have to go and see how Debbie is.”
“Want to tell me what’s going on first?” Ethan asked, hands on hips.
“No, I will, I promise. I don’t trust Ron.”
She started Vince’s engine before Ethan had time to object.
: : :
Back at the emergency room for the second time in a week, she found Debbie hustled away and Ron and Jared ensconced in plastic chairs. Ron was pressing a bunch of bloody tissues around his nose and staring blankly at an ad for home insurance. Jared was still sobbing softly, his bony shoulders trembling. Erica put her arms around him. He leaned into her. She wanted to ask him what he’d told the police.
“Get your hands off my kid!” Ron hissed. “By all rights, I should kick you out of here!”
Erica stayed put, leafing aimlessly through a six-month-old copy of Golfing World. She shivered in the frigid air-conditioning and sucked through a roll of lifesavers.
After about an hour, a doctor emerged, informing them that Debbie had, for all intents and purposes, suffered a stroke. A blood vessel had burst. There was massive bleeding in the brain. She was deeply unconscious, but she was young and relatively healthy, and if she was lucky, she could make a full recovery. They’d stabilized her vitals and were prepping her for emergency surgery. They were bringing all the powers of modern medicine in this world-class trauma hospital to bear.
Strokes like this in young women were unusual, the doctor noted. He suggested the possibility of an aneurysm. He questioned Ron about Debbie’s medical history and medications. Ron replied that Debbie had always been fragile, noting her propensity for bruising, her frequent stomach ailments and sinus infections, the metal plate in her knee from a car accident, the pins in her elbow from the playground incident, her nervous exhaustion, and their recent “adolescent troubles” with Jared. He said he didn’t know what medications Debbie had been taking and would check at home.
The doctor inquired about the bruise at Debbie’s left temple. Apparently that was where the blood vessel had burst, in her left temple. Ron repeated his story about her hitting the edge of the coffee table when she fell, already unconscious, again referencing the mysterious blood disease.
“I’ve called for her records to check for preexisting conditions,” said the doctor.
“And what happened to your nose, Mr. Lassler? There are some disturbing notes from the emergency response team.”
“You can check the police report,” said Ron.
“Ask at the main desk, and a doctor will take a look at it,” said the doctor. “Meanwhile, my job is to save Debbie’s life. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to work.” The doctor vanished behind the swinging wooden doors.
“You liar,” Erica muttered. “You murderer. You know you hit her.”
“You keep your mouth shut, you bitch,” Ron said.
: : :
West Meadow, Long Island, was a place where God was rational and orderly, and evil was an aberration. God didn’t come into the conversation much at all, actually. Parents in places like West Meadow placed their trust in the science of the body and of the mind, in medicine and in law. They directed their children into these professions. They believed in rational decisions and logical consequences. Erica had bought into this as much as the next person.
She knew Ethan, who grew up in Northern California with parents who did yoga and soaked in a wood-fired hot tub, believed even more strongly than she did in rational decisions and logical consequences. If circumstance A occurred, then that inevitably led to circumstance B. Circumstance B translated into a series of numbers and letters, which translated into electrical impulses, which then predicted the inevitability of circumstance C. His skill at applying these principles had earned him a fortune.
That night, lying on their water bed under the skylight, Erica told Ethan about her trip down to South Carolina, the horrors of the Pritima Center, and the way no one was going to save Jared if she didn’t. She told him about Ashley’s abortion. She related Jared’s confessions about Ron and how they confirmed her worst suspicions. Ethan listened calmly, his chin resting on his elbow, his eyes, Erica convinced herself, sympathetic.
“This is all so damn stupid and crazy,” was his only response.
She told him about getting high with Jared at Lauren’s bar mitzvah and at various Sunday family dinners. She didn’t tell him about the cocaine. Everybody deserved some secrets. Besides, she was going to quit anyway. She didn’t like Anders or the park off Utopia Boulevard. It wasn’t fun anymore. It wasn’t worth it. Next time they met, she would tell him she didn’t want any more T-shirts.
“This is the last thing I need right now,” Ethan said. “With everything that’s been going on.”
“It’s not all about you,” Erica said.
“Do you think Debbie will recover?”
“She has to.” Erica’s heart was beating out of control again. She clenched and unclenched her fists, as if she could force the air around her into right angles, as if she could remake circumstances at her will.
Ethan sighed. “I need some sleep,” he said.
: : :
The following morning, after Erica called the hospital and was assured that Debbie had come through surgery “as well as could be expected,” Erica, Ethan, Jesse, Jake, and Sophia drove as planned to Dylan’s Parents’ Day. They watched Dylan win a tennis game and swim a mighty fast breaststroke, and sat on the bleachers in the mosquito-infested Pocono night listening to him nervously utter his five lines on stage. Erica wore a sundress and strappy sandals, and some mother from Westchester complimented her on her “marvelous clavicle.” She retained her composure as she discussed with other parents the crises of camp: Were they serving artificially colored bug juice, as they appeared to be doing, or real fruit juice, as they’d advertised in the brochures? Should they install air-conditioning in the cabins? Was the tennis program too competitive? An isolated remnant of herself still held definitive opinions on all these issues.
Ethan and Erica took Dylan out for dinner, where they had planned to tell him his Aunt Debbie was very sick, but watching him chomp sloppily and happily into a bacon cheeseburger, a new field of freckles sprouting across his nose, they couldn’t find the right moment to break the mood. They drove home Sunday, so Ethan could return to the Florida office.
: : :
Erica called the hospital and was transferred to the ICU, where the nurse at the desk told her again that Debbie was doing “as well as expected”. They allowed her a fifteen-minute visit during which she watched Debbie sleep, her mouth slightly open, her body encumbered by a tangle of wires, monitors tracking her breath and heart rate.
“She’s improving,” Erica told Ethan, who was at his hotel in Florida.
At night, though, she slipped into a dream world where the rules of West Meadow did not apply.
There Debbie calls to Erica in a small voice, barely audible. Erica burrows deep under the starched white sheets of their shared hospital bed. “They can’t hear what I’m saying,” Debbie says. “They don’t know what I want.”
Even under the layers of the sheet, harsh light penetrates. Debbie is curled into a ball, the definition of her muscles melted away, her pale skin plumped up with water. Erica cannot find her face, cannot locate the mouth that whispers
to her.
“What do you want, Debbie?” she asks. “What can I tell them?”
She can’t interpret the sounds she hears. Debbie’s syllables are microscopic; they come from a distant place. Erica believes what she hears Debbie say is “Speak for me,” but she can’t be sure if that is what she really hears or merely her own voice echoing back.
“What should I say?” she asks again. The tubes puncture Debbie’s skin every which way: in her carotid artery with the nutrients; in her nose with the oxygen; out her bladder with a thin yellow line of urine. Her skin is mottled with bruises, a manifestation of all the collapsed blood vessels where the tubes can no longer go.
Erica wraps her arms around Debbie’s tube-studded body. The air is tight, stinking of disinfectant. The catheter line wraps around Erica like a snake, entangling her with Debbie. She can’t breathe and, in her asphyxiating panic, finally deciphers Debbie’s words.
“Stay with me,” Debbie is saying.
“No,” Erica says firmly. “That’s unfair. I won’t. I can’t.” She twists the catheter line off her, untangling it knot by knot, letting it fall limp on the sheets, and without a glance back, she slips out from the bed and onto the slick linoleum of the hospital floor. She shoves the IV stand and the bed table covered with flowers and unread magazines aside and, nearly tripping over the television cord, runs out of the room and down the hall, goes down in the elevator, and runs past the reception desk and into the open air, thick with summer.
Erica wakes to the sun flooding through the skylight and Sophia crying in her crib. She wakes to another unreal day in the real world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Over the next few days, Debbie slowly regained consciousness. She opened her eyes, she tracked objects, she took a few sips of liquid food, but she did not speak. Tests revealed facts borne out by her medical records and the medication bottles Ron brought in from home. It turned out that Debbie had been taking Coumadin, a blood thinner, because she was worried about blood clots arising from the pins in her shattered elbow. Apparently several months previously Debbie had complained to her doctor—one of her many doctors—of an ache in that elbow, and the doctor had mentioned the possibility of a blood clot. He never tested for a blood clot, but the mere mention of one was sufficient to inflame Debbie’s anxieties, and evidently sufficient rationale for the doctor to prescribe the Coumadin. Debbie took aspirin for headaches, Tagamet for heartburn, and Valium to stay married to Ron. All these medications combined thinned her blood to the breaking point. All of these chemicals were ingested by a woman who, in her early twenties, warned Erica that smoking marijuana would lead to heroin addiction and who would have been horrified, had she known, that her predictions had come true, in a way, with a different drug.
Despite her myriad bad habits, Erica was sure that if Ron had succeeded in punching her, the most harm he would have inflicted was a black eye. Maybe a broken rib. Nothing she couldn’t handle. But she’d dodged his fist, so he’d connected with his wife, who did not jump or dodge or fight back, who stood in his path like a ceramic bunny.
At least Erica had smashed Ron’s nose in, given him the mildest percentage of the payback he’d deserved for years. But it was such a small and laughable triumph, one that did not meet her expectations for logical consequences or fairness. She hoped the blood on their white carpet left a permanent stain.
Debbie took most of her nutrition from a tube. Other tubes drained away the waste. The doctors suggested playing music to stimulate her brain. Ron, a stiff bandage covering the bridge of his nose, brought in his Englebert Humperdinck crap from WBEZ, where he no longer needed it because of their new adult contemporary format. Erica played Sting and Phil Collins, where her taste and Debbie’s coincided. Jared played Michael Jackson, recalling one time he discovered Debbie dancing to “Thriller” in the kitchen. Debbie opened her eyes to all the music and occasionally contorted her lips into a shape that could be conceivably be characterized as a smile. The doctors tried experimental medications. Therapists exercised her limbs. Yet another tube drained out excess fluid from her brain.
Ron called the cruise company, who notified David and Suzanne as soon as they reached Bucharest. They flew home on the next available plane and drove immediately to the hospital. They blamed not Erica nor Ron nor Debbie’s doctors for this horrible turn of events. From their perspective, what had happened to Debbie was a stroke, a random tragedy. It flew in the face of their belief in fairness. They complained bitterly of this new revelation of the unfairness of the universe.
The police called Ethan in Florida.
“What’d you tell them?” Erica asked, when he told her.
“That we had a family argument,” Ethan said wearily. “That Ron has a bad temper. That I thought I saw him throw a punch, but that I wasn’t sure exactly what happened, that all of a sudden Debbie was unconscious and bleeding on the floor.”
“Did they ask you about Jared—about South Carolina?”
“Yeah, I told them you were in the Hamptons with friends. I’m getting kind of used to lying, you know.”
Every time Erica allowed herself to stop and think another worry popped into her head. The police had already spoken to Miss Peroxide, surely. How closely had Miss Peroxide looked at her, at Sophia? Would she suddenly remember some undeniable detail: the mole on Erica’s left shoulder, say, or her emerald wedding ring? Might the police uncover the guard at the penitentiary, or the troll in the motel, or the overly friendly lady at the barbeque restaurant, or even the pheasant-hunting man in his pickup? Perhaps they would request the name and address of her imaginary hosts in the Hamptons. Justine had mentioned a time-share in Amagansett. She figured Justine wouldn’t mind a little white lie, if it came to that, and she was right.
“Sure, you can use me as an alibi if you have to,” Justine said. “I like the intrigue. “But what were you really doing? Wasn’t that right before your sister’s accident?”
“I don’t really feel like talking about it,” Erica said.
“No worries,” replied Justine. “But between you and me, you shouldn’t cheat on Ethan. You’ve got a good thing going with him. If my husband was as rich and cute as your guy I would never look elsewhere, believe me.”
“I’m not—” Erica protested.
“It’s okay.” Justine cut her off. “We all need some fun.”
: : :
One day, two policemen showed up at her door. The more officious looking of the cops said that there had been accusations of drug use on their property. In a mild yet firm manner, he asked if they could look around.
“Do you have a search warrant?” Erica asked.
“No, ma’am,” replied the cop in the same steady tone. “You’re not required by law to let me in. But I would suggest that you do so.”
Sophia pulled at Erica’s leg. Sesame Street chirped on the TV. The microwave beeped. “What the hell,” Erica thought. “Let whoever was behind this, Ron, or perhaps Nick, do their best.” Let them find her diaper bag, or her plastic crayon holder. Let them look behind the toilet paper in the utility closet. If they found her coke where she’d hidden it, in an empty baking powder container behind the brownie mix, well, then, she supposed they deserved to arrest her.
They dumped toys and clothes on the floor, not bothering to clean up after themselves, but they didn’t find a damn thing and even apologized gruffly as they left.
: : :
Summer camp, both day and sleepaway, came to an end. Jesse and Jake proudly showed off their Red Cross beginner swim cards. Dylan returned from the Poconos four inches taller and with a trunk of filthy, outgrown clothes.
She took the boys to visit Debbie. There was no use prolonging the inevitable. They’d ask questions, they’d look for her at Sunday dinner. Erica intended to visit while Ron was still deejaying his morning show, but the laundry dragged on, and the kids dawdled getting out of the hous
e. When they walked in, Ron was already there, slumped in the one armchair, watching baseball. Debbie sat propped up against her bed pillows, wearing a Mets cap. Her eyes slithered from side to side. She smiled vacantly at them.
“She smiles like Kyle,” Dylan whispered in Erica’s ear. Kyle was a boy down the street with cerebral palsy. Erica herded the boys gently toward Debbie’s bed. “Hello, Aunt Debbie,” they all recited, dutifully polite. They fidgeted, clearly shocked and frightened by Debbie’s puffed-up, medicated body, the spasmodic outbursts of her limbs, and her slurred mumblings.
“I won a tennis trophy at camp,” Dylan said.
“Mmglh,” muttered Debbie, like the sound was caught in her throat, more of a gag than a syllable.
Darryl Strawberry hit a home run with two runners on base, putting the Mets ahead, 5–3. “Whadya think, Deb?” Ron said, softly squeezing Debbie’s arm. “Way to go, Darryl!”
“Mmglh.” Debbie rolled her lips in on each other like the cement spreader on the twins’ toy truck.
“Debbie never liked baseball,” Erica said quietly. “I don’t think she cares.”
Ron sneered, his first acknowledgement of her presence. “Like you would know, Miss Rikki.”
“I’m starting fifth grade,” Dylan attempted bravely. “Next year I’m going to middle school.” Tentatively he reached out, touching Debbie’s wrist. Her fingers flapped, her thumb rising as if she wished to take Dylan’s hand. Dylan smoothed her thumb over his, but simultaneously, Sophia overturned a vase of flowers, spilling water and dahlias onto the floor, and the twins discovered the rising and lowering mechanism at the foot of Debbie’s bed. Debbie’s legs jerked downward.
“Mmheeaee,” she squealed.
“No!” Erica sharply pulled Jesse and Jake to her side. She reached in her diaper bag for a cloth to wipe up the water spill, but before she could do so Ron rose to his feet, gripping her tightly on the shoulder.
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