This Broken Road

by A. M. Henry

  Derek grins. “I told you she likes hideous lamps.” He turns to Ryan. “They have tons more, you should get one.”

  “I’d rather not have that in my house,” Ryan replies.

  Twenty minutes later we leave the shop, me carrying a little faux-Tiffany desk lamp in violent shades of blue, green, and magenta—Mrs. Reagan’s Christmas present from me because Ryan refused to buy it.

  “Gimme a call over break,” Derek says as we prepare to part ways. “We should do something.” Then he turns to Ryan. “Listen, man. For what happened… I’m sorry.”

  Ryan frowns, looks at the ground, looks back up. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry, too.”

  “Should I get you guys some tissues?” I ask.

  Derek laughs, fake-punches me in the shoulder. “See you around.”

  “Are you really okay?” I ask Ryan after Derek is out of earshot, heading for his lime-yellow Nissan. “Like with him, I mean.”

  “It was Fate,” Ryan answers.

  “Fate?” I raise an eyebrow.

  He starts walking back down Railroad Avenue, towards where we parked the car. The snow begins to fall in bigger flakes. He holds out his elbow and I take his arm, like couples do in old movies.

  “If he hadn’t screwed up that game,” Ryan says, “we probably would have won. Might have made it to the regionals. I might have gotten some big scholarship to some fancy college, and I would have been stuck playing football for another four years at a college I probably wouldn’t even have chosen to go to in the first place.” He pauses, looks down at me. “And me and you would probably still hate each other, you’d be stuck in high school for an extra year as a miserable hermit.”

  I say nothing, because I think maybe he’s right.

  40.

  Three days before Christmas, and all the snow has melted. I can’t remember the last time I actually cared.

  As per usual, our house is a mess of half-completed holiday decorating projects. The fake tree (Mom doesn’t do real trees because of the needles) stands assembled in the middle of the living room, but with only half the lights strung around it and I think the ornaments are all still in the basement. Fake pine garlands with red and gold ribbon hang on some windows, but not others. Outside, one lonely shrub gets lit up at night because Rachel got fed up fighting with the tangled strings of lights and gave up.

  Ryan drops me at the end of the driveway that night and I notice my bedroom light is on. Inside, the house feels eerily quiet.

  “Angela,” Dad calls from the kitchen, “come in here, please.”

  His tone sounds cold. Guarded. My heart races as I try to remember if I did something that merits punishment.

  Mom and Dad both sit at the table, Dad pale and grim, Mom tense and tight-lipped.

  “Sit down.” Dad motions to the chair across from them.

  Something’s wrong. Did someone die? Did Dad blab to Mom about the GED? I sit, bracing myself for the worst.

  Dad takes something out of his pocket and places it on the table: a plastic orange prescription bottle, no label, with maybe five or six pills inside—the little segmented white Xanax bricks.

  “We found these in your room,” Dad says.

  It feels like someone sat on my chest. My lungs won’t work. My nerves buzz on my skin. I can feel my pulse throbbing in my temples.

  After several protracted seconds, I manage a, “…what?”

  “They were in your room.” I can tell Dad really struggles not to shout. He looks like he might cry. “Hidden in your desk. I want an explanation.”

  I know it must sound totally bogus given the circumstances, but I can’t help it. “They’re not mine,” I say.

  “Come on, Angela!” Dad pounds the table with his fist and the bottle of pills falls over.

  “You were doing so well,” Mom says, giving me that disappointed slow shake of the head. “We really thought we could trust you.”

  My mind starts moving again. My heart races even faster. Those pills aren’t mine. The injustice of this makes me want to scream. I can hear by blood rushing in my ears.

  “Those. Aren’t. Mine,” I repeat, enunciating each syllable through gritted teeth.

  “Well I don’t think they belong to Casey or Rachel.” Mom’s voice has that shrill ring to it that precedes a full-blown tantrum. “And they’re obviously not mine or your father’s.”

  “Enough with the lies, Angela,” Dad says. He rubs his eyes and ages ten years.

  My temper heats up. Explodes. “Are you guys fucking kidding me?! I said they’re not mine. That’s Xanax. If I wanted to get high, I wouldn’t waste my time popping benzos. Drug test me; I’ll prove it!”

  “Don’t you talk to us like that!” Mom shouts, standing up from her chair. “You’re back on house arrest. No going out, no phone calls. No more Ryan. Give me your phone.”

  I think this might be the closest I have ever come to slapping my mother across the face.

  “No.”

  Mom’s wide eyes look maniacal. Dad stands up, too.

  “Hand it over,” Dad says. “Now.” He holds out his hand. “I’m not kidding, Angela.”

  I want to cry. Scream. Run out the front door and never look back. But I have no car and nowhere to go. And I know I’m innocent.

  Fighting back tears of rage, I take my cell phone out of my coat pocket. I almost hand it to Dad, but then I hurl it at the kitchen wall with every ounce of strength I have and the phone shatters on the floor. Mom and Dad stare at me like they’ve never seen me before.

  “Both of you can go to hell,” I growl, and storm out of the kitchen.

  *

  I don’t understand. Those pills aren’t mine. Were never mine. Where the hell did they come from? And why were my parents searching my room? They haven’t done that in months, and I haven’t done anything to warrant a random search. I thought they had actually started to trust me.

  Lauren Hart or one of her friends planted those pills by my locker—would she do the same thing in my own house? I doubt it—I don’t think she would waste that kind of time and effort on me. I don’t have any other enemies. Casey or Rachel would never do this.

  I lock my door and blast Slayer on the CD player loud enough to rattle the furniture. Twenty seconds into “Raining Blood,” and Dad pounds on the door.

  Those pills aren’t mine.

  “Angela, you turn that crap off!”

  Those pills aren’t mine. I am past caring.

  “Go fuck yourself!”

  My parents searched my room after the accident. Turned it upside down and found the razor blades, maimed dollar bills, cut up drinking straws, empty pill bottles, empty plastic baggies, and a half-empty box of condoms. I haven’t hidden anything since, not so much as a diary.

  “Angela, I mean it! Open this door!”

  I turn up the volume. Dad kicks the door once. Twice. Third time, the door crashes open, splintered wood falling in its wake from the broken hinges. Dad storms in and yanks the power cord out of the wall, leaving a deafening silence behind.

  Those pills aren’t mine.

  “We caught you, Angela. You have to deal with the consequences. You brought this on yourself.” Dad takes the CD player with him downstairs.

  This feels like a nightmare. I sit and stare at the bare white walls for over an hour, too confused and too blindsided to do anything else. The front door opens and closes twice—my sisters coming home from friends’ houses. I hear them come upstairs and shut themselves in their rooms.

  Voices downstairs. Raised voices—my parents arguing.

  I creep to the top of the stairs and catch snatches of conversation.

  “Maybe they were left over from before.” Dad actually defending me?

  “Don’t be ridiculous, John,” Mom snaps. “We should have expected this. Relapses are common. Remember what the doctors said.”

  “We should have her drug tested. Find out if she’s doing anything else.”

  “No. We’ll deal with this. Tal
k to her shrink. See if we can get past it.”

  “Maybe we should put her in a program. We should have done that the first time.”

  “We can handle this,” my mother insists.

  Can they? Because I don’t know if I can.

  41.

  I can’t sleep. No phone. No internet. Nothing on TV that doesn’t make me want to throw it out the window.

  They sell drug tests at the pharmacy. I’ll prove I haven’t touched anything. Do those tests work for everything, or just pot? I need them to know I didn’t do this. I’m surprised they haven’t demanded a piss sample. They had me tested twice a month for the first four months after the accident, even though I never left the house for anything other than physical therapy.

  Their conversation keeps repeating in my head.

  We should have her drug tested. Find out if she’s doing anything else.

  No. We’ll deal with this.

  Dad wants me drug tested. Mom doesn’t. Why?

  I don’t want to have these thoughts, but they won’t go away. What I’m thinking is crazy. Ridiculous. Borderline paranoid.

  Mom wants to deal with this at home. No drug testing. No rehab. Why? Because she knows I’ll come up clean.

  It seems too unbelievable. She’s crazy sometimes, but not that crazy. Right? And where would she even get Xanax?

  They’re hers.

  But that’s crazy. I’m overtired and jumping to conclusions.

  They’re hers. And somehow Dad found them, or saw them.

  Would she really do that?

  I stay up all night, the TV on with the volume muted. At 5:00 in the morning, I creep out of my bedroom, sneak downstairs, and out the back door. Outside it remains dark, no hint yet of the coming dawn. I take my time walking because I’m pretty sure the CVS in Chester doesn’t open for a few hours at least.

  I watch the world come to life as I walk—the sun rising on fields and farms and woods glittering with frost. Birds chattering and geese flying overhead. My breath hovers before me in little white puffs. By the time I reach the CVS, my knee hurts and I have a raging headache. The sign on the door tells me the pharmacy doesn’t open until 8:00. Almost two hours to kill. I trudge across the street to wait in McDonald’s.

  *

  One sausage mcgriddle and three hash browns later, I head back to CVS and arrive at the pharmacy counter at exactly 8:01 AM.

  “Can I help you?” The pharmacist looks younger than Casey.

  “Picking up,” I tell her, well aware that there’s probably a 99% chance they’ve got nothing and I am just a paranoid lunatic. “Last name Lillegard.”

  I spell it for her and she checks the computer. I wonder if she can hear my heart thudding in my chest.

  “Month and date of birth?” she asks.

  I hesitate for half a second, almost giving her my birthday instead of my mother’s. “May twenty-fifth,” I tell her.

  “We’ve got one for you,” she says, and retrieves it from one of the many boxes behind her. She doesn’t even ask for ID, just hands me the paper bag, pills rattling inside it.

  I sign for it, hand over the seven dollars Mom’s insurance won’t cover, and leave. On the way out the automatic doors, I read the name on the bag’s label: “Lillegard, Tamara.”

  Beneath the name, “Alprazolam 2.0 mg.”

  Xanax.

  I tear the bag open and then open the bottle to see thirty of the exact same white segmented bricks my parents said they found in my room.

  The sun has disappeared behind a wall of white clouds, and it starts to snow as I make the long trek back home. I try to imagine the scenario that played out yesterday before I got home. Dad caught Mom with pills. But Mom doesn’t take pills. Mom doesn’t need pills. Medication is for crazy people. Weak people.

  Dad caught Mom with pills and somehow Mom convinced him that she found them in my room. Mom went along with punishing me for doing drugs, knowing full well that I’ve gone almost a whole year without consuming anything stronger than caffeine and ibuprofen.

  Home. Back in through the glass sliding door and this time I don’t care about making noise, but downstairs is empty. I hear the shower running upstairs in my parent’s bathroom. I sit down at the kitchen table and wait. The clock on the microwave reads 9:22.

  Dad comes downstairs first and switches on the TV in the living room. He can’t stand silence. Then he makes his way into the kitchen just as I hear Mom coming down the stairs. He flicks the kitchen light on and then does sort of a double take when he sees me seated at the table. He takes in my outfit—the winter coat and the slightly muddy boots.

  “Have you been out?” he says as Mom walks into the kitchen.

  Mom sees me and looks like she’s about to start yelling. I say nothing as I stand up and cross the room, practically throwing the CVS bag into my father’s hands before leaving the kitchen and heading for the stairs.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?!” Mom shouts after me.

  I ignore her. I hear the crinkle of the bag, the rattle of the pills in the plastic bottle. I don’t want to hear their conversation, so I hurry up to my room and shut the door as best as I can, considering it’s hanging off of one hinge since Dad kicked it down.

  Less than two minutes later, my mother storms into my room. She looks manic. I jump up off my bed and instinctively back up against the far wall.

  “How dare you treat me this way?!” Mom says, her voice low but still deafening.

  I feel seven years old again. A scared little girl locked in the dark cellar. But then I remember that my own mother just tried to blame me for doing drugs because she didn’t want anyone knowing that she’s doing drugs. And now she’s mad because I dared to defy her. Dared to question her.

  Screw that. I’m not doing this anymore.

  “Treat you this way?” I shriek. “Are you kidding?! You’re a fucking crazy person!” I want to stop, but I can’t. “You actually just tried to blame me for your pills. What the hell kind of mother does that? Are you gonna lock me in the wine cellar, too?”

  Her eyes look like they might pop out of her head. She lunges at me, nearly tripping over the school books on the floor, her hands reaching for me with their green and red gel-manicured nails. One hand grasps the front of my sweater, and with the other she gets a firm hold of my hair. Her nails dig into my scalp and my shoulder, I stumble to one side and my bad knee sends a jolt of pain up and down my leg and I fall.

  I hear Dad running up the stairs. I think I hear Casey’s voice, or maybe Rachel’s. Mom is crazed, shrieking like she forgot how to form words, like all the years of trying to maintain absolute control over everything has finally fried her brain. I think back to when she had me pinned down on the kitchen floor, face pressed into my own vomit.

  “Tam, stop it! Oh my God!” Dad running into the room. Mom lets go of my hair to shove him away. I try to use that moment to roll away from her, to try and get up and run as far and as fast as I can. Mom swings back around to stop me. She throws too much strength into the arm swinging towards my head. Her wrist catches my throat, cutting off my air. I fall and my head slams into the wood floor and everything disappears.

  Part IV

  Take heed all ye motherless children so lost,

  dwell not in the caves of your mind.

  - Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers

  42.

  I think I woke up and heard sirens. Lots of noise and none of it made sense and it was all too loud. I remember rolling over and vomiting onto my bedroom floor and then everything went black again.

  Then an EMT asks me my name and what day it is and I feel sick again.

  “I almost went a whole year without riding in an ambulance,” I tell her.

  She laughs. I presume I’m not going to die.

  At the hospital, they send me for x-rays or MRI’s or something before tucking me into a bed in my own room, dosed with just enough sedatives not to freak out about the fact that my mother almost killed me again.
<
br />   A few hours later, I get jolted out of a deep sleep by Ryan exploding into my hospital room. He looks pale and terrified and collapses into the chair beside my bed and falls face-first across my lap.

  “Dude, I was sleeping.”

  His laugh sounds like it’s on the verge of hysteria.

  “Are you okay?” I ask him.

  He sits up, looking sort of dazed. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  “I have a concussion,” I say. “I’m pretty sure I’ll live.”

  “Your sister called me. She was hysterical. All I could make out was ‘mom,’ ‘Angela,’ and ‘ambulance.’ I kind of panicked.”

  “Casey was never good at stressful situations.”

  “Actually, I think it was Rachel.”

  That surprises me. Rachel always has a more level head than the rest of us in a crisis.

  “They’re all outside,” Ryan tells me. “Your dad is kind of a mess. They were talking to some doctor when I got here. Want me to go get them?”

  “Not yet.” I take his hand. “Is my mother here?”

  He stares at me for a moment before he answers, “I don’t know.”

  I turn away, gazing out the window. I see the bare branches of trees and the red shingles of the roof of a house across the street. I don’t know what to think. How to feel. My mother attacked me. My mother knocked me to floor and I hit my head so hard I blacked out, and now I have a big, ugly bandage wrapped around my head. My mother needs help. Has needed help for a long time and no one said or did anything about it.

  “Mom’s at Orange Regional,” Dad tells me a while later.

  That makes sense. No psych ward at the local hospital.

  “She might be there for… a while,” he continues. “But the doctor says you can come home tomorrow.” His face is grey and his eyes look lost and I’ve never seen him look so old.

  *

  I feel relief, like a hundred-pound weight has fallen off my shoulders. I also feel guilty for feeling relieved, so the hundred-pound weight hasn’t fallen off so much as it has just shifted down to the pit of my stomach.