Rise--How a House Built a Family

by Cara Brookins

  No laughter this time, and I knew why. He was making connections and closing circles. That little man, sun-damaged enough to be a skin-cancer poster child, was now part of them, part of the conspiracy to trick him out of an invention worth millions. He was no longer merely the grape man, but an idea thief, one in a long line of spies who stretched back to Adam’s childhood.

  “I’ve got to get some sleep,” I said. “The kids are doing fine. We’re fine. Let’s leave things like they are for now. Come home and get some sleep. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Not now.” I heard him drawing in a long breath, filling his lungs until they were near bursting, but I remembered to add, “And we’re not going anywhere tomorrow.”

  “You’re not going to shut me out. You are my family. If we don’t stick together, we won’t be safe. None of you are safe, Cara. Not you, and not the kids. You could die! Is that what you want? Do you want to die, Cara?”

  “We need some rest. It’s too late for either of us to think right now.” It was a lie. I was thinking, all right: crystal clear. I was thinking of what he could do to me, to the kids. How easy it would be for his mind to slip even further. I was thinking he had to get away from me for good. For better or worse—I’d promised, I knew I had, but not with my kids’ lives. I knew then that he had to go. Tomorrow, he had to go for good.

  He fake-snored and then laughed. Even morphed and turned tinny by the cell phone, the sound terrified me. I hung up. My shaky finger jabbed hard against the phone, turning the ringer off. Radio silence.

  His stories had always been tight and believable, with a long backstory and an enormous cast of characters too fantastically detailed to be made up. The first time I took him to see a psychiatrist it was to deal with the stress of his big deals, not because I didn’t believe they were real. Years later I would question whether dozens of situations, dozens of people, even entire families ever existed outside of Adam’s head.

  Maybe if I could have pulled him through the door more than twice the shrink would have spotted inconsistencies, but Adam violently refused to go back or take any medication. The shrink and the meds were both part of a devious scheme, he said. The psychiatrist was another idea thief, just like the guys at work, like the bank teller, like our neighbors. I was playing along to keep my name off the enemies list, but that tactic had run its course. It was only a matter of time for me. There was nothing I could do to help him, and little I could do to help myself. I felt very small coming to terms with how big the thing was that had gone wrong with him. The half-moon was perfectly framed in the den window, and that made me angry. How dare the moon hang there so beautiful, as though someone hadn’t just shouted, Do you want to die, Cara? Not just any old someone, but the man who had promised so many things and meant it, and might have kept all his promises if only his mind had stuck around. I wrapped the fleece blanket snug and went back to my room, snuggling up to a pile of pillows and holding tight.

  I thought about calling someone for help, but who could I call without making things worse? Calling the police, a psychiatrist, or even my mom would infuriate him. Besides, I’d learned that lesson. Being a tattletale makes the bullies hit harder, and no one, not even your family, can save you. Sleep felt close, but just out of reach, so I practiced breathing deep and relaxing every muscle from my toes up. By the time I reached my neck, I was in the quiet, peaceful place where meditation had been leading me.

  When Adam unlocked the front door, I woke and picked up the phone. It was four, and the caller ID said I had ninety-seven missed calls from an unknown number. He didn’t come into the bedroom, and I went back to sleep instead of checking on him when I heard the door to his office close. I didn’t have the strength for another round of paranoid ramblings.

  The next alarm was the real thing, and I didn’t have time for snooze. I woke Hope and Drew for school and got breakfast on the table. Jada could sleep a little longer before I took her to day care and went to my college classes. My stomach clenched when I tried to work out a time to tell Adam he had to leave.

  He didn’t answer when I knocked on his office door or when I pushed it open and called his name. An odd, sour smell hit me, promising that things were very wrong before I had the chance to see. I took a step back, pulling the door with me. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to know. I’d rather just close the door tight and never open it again. But of course that wasn’t the right thing to do, so I pushed in again, walking fast.

  He was on the small green sofa in only his underwear, sitting upright with his chin on his chest. He might have been only sleeping. But he wasn’t. A dozen pill bottles were on the sofa next to him. Handfuls of pills had spilled on the floor and the cushions, technicolor droplets of life or death. He had thrown up on his chest and a throw pillow that I’d once embroidered with a poem. A yellow legal pad balanced on his left thigh. No business plans, no equations, no patent ideas this time. It was a suicide note with ramblings so insane they read like a bad movie script.

  Part of me thought what a relief he must feel to be at peace.

  The pills hadn’t been his first choice of suicide, I knew that. A long sword was next to him and a shorter dive knife. On the floor was a book about Japanese honor deaths, suicides by a knife to the stomach. He had told me before that he thought it was a good way to die.

  I noticed his chest move up in a shallow breath. Back down again and up. I scanned the room, looking at everything but his chest, thinking about everything but the decision I had to make. Not long ago I would have said there was no question, I had to try to save him. But that was before I’d seen the torture every day had become for him and everyone around him. That was before I knew that I had to make him leave and that even then he might never stop torturing us.

  If I walked away and closed the door, waited just a little longer, he would have what he wanted. Was that the merciful thing to do? I didn’t ponder the idea for as long as it felt. I went to my bedroom and called 911, finding it impossible to speak in more than a squeak of a whisper.

  Then I went out to the kitchen, where the kids were still eating their cereal. “Adam’s sick and an ambulance is coming to get him,” I told them. “He’ll be fine though.”

  Hope and Drew nodded, reading the lies on my face and not bothering to ask questions that would never get straight answers. I called my mom then, and she pulled in beside the ambulance, dressed for work. She got the older kids off to school and played with Jada while they wheeled Adam out the door. He didn’t wake up or even move a muscle. I still didn’t know if I had been too much of a coward to do the right thing.

  A tall, lanky police officer asked me all the wrong questions, and I didn’t have the energy to spoon-feed him the right ones. I was going into shock, and no one seemed to notice until my mom wrapped a blanket around my back and hugged me. Then the falling-apart began in earnest.

  By the time the police left, Adam’s mom had arrived. I didn’t want her in the house, maybe because I felt more guilt there. I ran outside barefoot in my pajamas. It was cold enough that I regretted not grabbing a coat, but I didn’t turn back. Ivana, Adam’s mom, had parked with the front wheels on the slab outside the garage, one back wheel on the driveway and one in the grass. She was standing with her phone pressed to her right ear and her hand at her neck, clutching at a gold shawl that belonged with a cocktail dress. Her eyes were frantic, smeared with yesterday’s makeup, and her hair was frizzy. A pair of delicate blue house slippers with fuzz around the ankles completed a list of fashion faux pas Ivana Petrovic would never commit under normal circumstances.

  “No, Sophie. We are not going to sit back and wait,” she said, then snarled at the phone and disconnected the call with three more finger jabs than necessary.

  “What is—”

  “Do you know what’s going on? Why he did this? Tell me about his note.” Her eyes were huge and unblinking.

  My heart ached for her. This was how I would feel if something went wrong with my son. “I don’t know. He went som
ewhere last night and called but he wasn’t making sense. He was … ‘manic’ is the word, I guess. It was after midnight though, and I didn’t answer when he called back. He said—he said things that weren’t nice. It was crazy talk.”

  Her phone rang and she sucked in a breath through her teeth. “It’s Crevits. Officer Crevits.” She stared at the screen, pale enough to pass out and incapable of answering.

  “Sit down,” I ordered. “Give me the phone and sit down.”

  She held the phone out, straight-armed, and the second I took it she scurried around the car to sit in the driver’s seat. I didn’t linger over the idea that it was the first time she had ever listened to one of my suggestions.

  “Hello? This is Cara.”

  “He’s awake and speaking. Just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thank you.” I relaxed, more relieved than I would have thought I’d be. “What did he say?” I asked, hoping it was something to clear things up, to make them okay even though that wasn’t really possible.

  The officer sighed, probably regretting his good-deed phone call. “He said he didn’t mean to wake up.” He gave me a few seconds, then continued. “He couldn’t tell us how much he took or which kinds. He had a real variety. Mostly prescribed, most not to him.”

  “I’ll tell Ivana he’s awake,” I said, tipping sideways until I had to grab the hood of her car for support.

  “What? Speak up.”

  “Thank you.”

  “There’s more, but it’s, well, I’m not sure what the hell it is.”

  He hesitated for the space of at least three slow breaths, and I took the time to breathe deep until the dark edges cleared from my vision. “What did you find?” I whispered, imagining terrible things.

  “Guy down the street from you said he practically beat down his door last night. They had talked once about lawn mowers but didn’t really know each other. Adam said he needed some paper, a pen, and a phone. He filled two whole notepads with scribbles and made some phone calls. The guy just left him to it and went back to bed, but when he saw the ambulance and blue lights at your place this morning figured he should report it and give us these pads of notes and things.”

  I heard him suck in another breath and wondered how bad it had to be to upset a police officer. Then Hershey leaned against my leg and I remembered just how bad it could be.

  “The guy said his cat was in the room, friendly kind of cat who likes everyone. But now this morning it’s terrified and hiding and they can’t get near it. Bunch of fur is missing from its back half. Guy is freaked out and doesn’t know what to think.” His voice was flat, as if he was trying to wipe the possibilities from his mind.

  “I don’t know what any of this means,” I said. “He leaves messages for people, and he thinks they leave them back for him.”

  “Jesus. Like alien people or what?”

  “Regular people. Businesspeople. But I need to give Ivana an update. Did he—is there anything else?”

  “Nah. That’s enough, isn’t it? Jesus. Poor damn cat … Tell Ivana I’ll see her at the hospital. We’ll need a statement about—I’ll call you for it later.”

  I hung up and pulled the passenger-side door open. Ivana’s forehead was on the steering wheel. Her lips were moving.

  “He’s okay. He woke up and they talked to him a little.”

  “Come with me.” She wasn’t exactly pleading, but nearly so.

  I wanted to comfort this lost mommy. I wanted to be there for her even though she had never been for me. But I had my own kids to comfort. “The kids, Ivana. I can’t leave Jada. I don’t have anyone—”

  She waved her hand, dismissing me, and pressed her head back against the headrest. With a breath so deep it should have popped her lungs, she became fully herself. Shoulders back, chin up, steely. Yugoslavian royalty. She took her phone from my limp hand and waved it at me. I stood up as she started the car and barely had the door closed when she started rolling it back down the driveway.

  I felt like a failure for not going with her. A betrayer.

  Cold and emotionless though she might be, I felt sorry for Ivana. She could never escape his manic, creative genius or his depressive, crazed anger. And while I hoped she’d have better luck forcing him to get treatment, I knew she’d fold under his anger and taunting just like I did. He was no joy to live with. His sulky moods and short fuse made the average day tense and chaotic. Worse, his weeklong silent treatments were a hellacious torture. His narrow-eyed glare reminded you by the minute that you had displeased him in some way you would never be privy to.

  Something had to give, though, and it would have to be my connection to Adam. He was too dangerous. It might have been my life the voices told him to end, or the kids’, or even the whole house gone up in flames. He had tipped clean over the edge into a dark pit of madness, and I had no confidence that he could climb out.

  After Jada was settled with cartoons and the older kids were off to school, I discovered that my laptop had been split open and gutted. No more hard drive. My assignments, the book I’d started writing, and hundreds of photos were gone. He’d probably tossed them in a ditch or lit them on fire, whatever the voices demanded to keep the people in the trucks from getting them.

  Jada helped me bake cookies, chocolate chip because they were my favorite and I needed the calories to face down the stress.

  By late afternoon my mom called. As a mental-health therapist, she had been allowed to see Adam on her lunch hour.

  “You’ve got a decision to make,” she said. “He told me some things and there’s a lot more going on than you or I imagined. He needs to go to the state hospital. I called and got a bed for him, but he won’t go voluntarily. Either you sign to have him committed, or the hospital will have to release him.”

  “He’d be furious if I did that. There’s no telling—”

  “He’s already furious, Cara.”

  “Because I called for help.”

  She was silent. Waiting for my decision. She didn’t have to confirm it. I knew when I called 911 that I’d be in trouble. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

  “What will happen?” I asked, even though I already had a good idea of how these things worked.

  “Once he’s in, he can’t leave until they say he can. You can’t get him out. No one can. There is no easy way to take it back.”

  Relief flooded through me. He might get help, a magic pill to clear his mind … and it would take the responsibility away from me. But handing him off for the doctors to deal with felt like taking the easy way out. A cheat to keep the kids and me safe. “I think he’s bipolar. Really bad. He’ll be there a long time,” I said, scared and hopeful.

  “That’s the theory,” Mom continued. “But in reality he’s quit his job and has no insurance. They’ll keep him long enough to get him stable and then, because they have a dozen critical people waiting for the next open bed, they’ll send him home.”

  “Home?” Not my home. Not anymore. I couldn’t.

  I could guess how things would go down at the state hospital. They’d give him pills to level things out and quiet the paranoia. He would quit them no more than a day or two after his release. I could watch him at first, make sure he swallowed them morning and night. But then I’d start to settle into the belief that everything was fixed. All better. And one night at 3:25 A.M. a tiny wiggle of paranoia would slip past the drugs and whisper that he shouldn’t take them. The medicine was poison, or mind control, or a plot to dull his creative genius. He’d skip just a few, just to test the idea, and when his mania returned and set him on top of the world, he would know beyond any doubt that the pills were bad, and that would be that. More looney times. More days like this one.

  Time. I’d have to buy some so I could form a plan. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes to sign.”

  –9–

  Rise

  Shop Not Shopping

  On the first night of Christmas break, I couldn’t sleep even after finis
hing an old Stephen King novel and starting DeMille’s latest. My reading had turned a hundred percent to action settings far removed from my own, and a touch of the supernatural was a bonus. Roman had fallen asleep later than usual after a late nap, and he was on the other side of my bed, kicking off the covers faster than I could spread them back over his cold feet.

  Using my phone, I updated a building to-do list and added notes to a file for my mystery novel. Still, the sandman refused to visit. I wanted to blame it on my double serving of pie, even though I knew digestion-related insomnia was for people with more simple lives.

  Pouring the house’s footing had been a wake-up call. Not only was the project a million times more difficult than I had imagined, but it was a mere metaphor for what I really needed to do. I had fooled myself into believing that building a physical house was the same as rebuilding our family. While we might still use the physical build to accomplish the personal one, they were two distinctly different creatures and required individual diets. I felt enormously out of my league in both cases, like I’d adopted a Saint Bernard and an elephant.

  I needed to meditate, to find peace with myself and let go of the past, before I could build my future. But I was afraid of what I would find if that bright world reappeared when I relaxed my toes and let the essence of myself float away. More specifically, I was afraid of who I would find. I didn’t have any real-life friends anymore, and I’d grown afraid of the two imaginary people I had adopted as allies, as frightened of meeting them again as I was of my unlocking-door nightmare playing a rerun.

  Caroline had been my inspiration for the house, a strong woman who wasn’t afraid to express her opinion, to stand up for herself, to build a new life when the old one was blown to pieces. I’d imagined her encouraging me, lending a sisterly shoulder when I felt all alone. But somewhere along the way her voice had turned from empowering chants to vengeful whispers, and I was beginning to think she was little more than a dark side of my own mind. In order to banish Caroline, or at least rediscover the positive elements of her spirit, I would have to come face-to-face with another unnerving spirit, Benjamin.