Beautiful Bad

by Annie Ward

  After dropping Charlie off I race north through farmland on the highway that links Meadowlark to the most southern suburbs of Kansas City, the isolated affluence of Overland Park. As the minutes pass, the rotting plywood barns, sheds, sunflowers and junk piles are replaced by rolling manicured lawns bordered by freshly painted white fences.

  The houses in Cami J’s neighborhood are nicer than the ones in ours. Ian had wanted to buy a house here, but I convinced him that Meadowlark was a safer investment. I didn’t want so much of our money tied up. I wanted there to be plenty for vacations and restaurants and fun nights out in the city. Five minutes later, I was pregnant. So much for frivolous intentions. But Charlie...sweet, sticky, apple-cheeked Charlie, his buttery little embraces and spitty kisses, is worth any sacrifice.

  I am only two minutes late when I stumble up the steps leading to Cami J’s front porch. She swings open the door, looking like a cross between David Lee Roth and a butterfly with her tousled hair, flared pants and diaphanous colorful scarves. She has been waiting for me. “Your appointment was at noon,” she says, and I just put my palms over my eyes. I am a mess.

  “I’ve been making a lot of mistakes,” I say. “It’s embarrassing. I put the bacon in the pantry. I put the electric teakettle on the stove and the house smells like burnt rubber and—”

  “Shhhh,” she says, and slips one arm around my shoulders. “You’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury after all. Give yourself a break. I do some of that stuff just because I’m absentminded. You’re fine, Maddie, and you’re getting better. You’re looking after a three-year-old on your own. That’s not easy. Come in and let me make you some tea.”

  I don’t cry often, but if I do, it’s usually because someone is nice to me. I cry while Cami J makes my tea, and then I feel a lot better. I decide without reservation that I love my Zumba camel-toe hippie psychologist with the rhinestones on her cap. I feel waves of affection for her, and I am pretty sure I can tell that when she looks at me, it is me she sees. Me, Maddie, and not my train wreck of a face.

  “So you forgot the photos,” she says, once we are seated in her office with our tea.

  “I picked them out. I left them on the kitchen table. But then Charlie lost his shoes and we were late and, yeah, I forgot.”

  “Okay,” she says. “No worries. The writing I wanted to start off with today was journaling with photographs, but I have another one that we can try. And, you don’t need a thing except your notebook and pen.”

  She is eyeing me expectantly and I cringe. “You forgot you were supposed to start bringing a notebook and pen?”

  “I did.”

  “Will you be able to find your way home?” she asks archly.

  “I hope so. I hope I remember to pick up Charlie.”

  There is a beat, and then we both say, at the same time, “Not funny.”

  I laugh really hard, and it does still hurt but also feels great. She stands up and inspects her bookcase, where she has a pile of spiral-ring notebooks. She rifles through them and then turns to me with a playful smile. On the cover of the notebook she has chosen for me is a photo of a happy cat with two different-colored front legs. It says, “Life is too short to worry about matching socks.”

  “There,” she says merrily. “Put your name on it. From now on you’ll just use this notebook here in the office. It will be yours and I’ll keep it so it’s always here, and I’ll make you photocopies of your journal entries to take home and look at any time you want. Okay?”

  “Thank you, Cami J.” I take the notebook.

  “So what you do is, you write a letter to someone. Now, it can be someone alive or dead. It could be your grandmother. Or it could be Charlie. It could be Ian. Basically it could be anyone you feel comfortable confiding in. Someone who will understand. Who you write to is not as important to me as the subject of the letter. Okay? The subject I want you to write about is the problem you have been dealing with, particularly the problem that made you think you needed my help. You tell them what’s been going on, okay? This letter is never going to be delivered unless you want it to be. No one is going to see it but me, so you can be absolutely as brutally honest as you allow yourself.”

  “This sounds a lot harder than the last one.”

  “It’s a little harder. Not much.”

  I close my eyes and think. Mom. Dad. Julia. Sara. No. Ian? No. Someone who will understand, she said.

  I pull the notebook close and hunch over it.

  Dear Jo,

  Well, leave it to you to be above joining Facebook. I literally have no idea what you’ve been doing for the past four years. Four years ago. That was the last time we spoke.

  That really hurt. I called to tell you I was pregnant. I wanted you to come visit. I wanted to put everything behind us and be friends again.

  And you hung up on me.

  I know how you feel about Ian, and “the terrible things” that you think he did. He tells another story but honestly, I no longer care. The past is the past. You should have come for me. I would have done it for you. I would have. Because you’re the best friend I ever had and I know that I will never have another friend like you.

  So that brings me to the reason I’m writing you, the one who really understood me. All right. My problems started after I had an accident. I fell. I know that will not surprise you as I have a long history of falling over with you, lol. This time I fell and bashed my head in while Ian and I were camping in Colorado. I was walking to the bathroom and I didn’t take my headlamp and I couldn’t see where I was going. I had been drinking, as you might have already guessed. Everything from that point on is a little fuzzy. Ian has helped me piece back together what happened.

  When I came back to the campsite I was covered in blood and Ian got out the emergency kit and started wiping it away. He was going to use some Steri-Strips to hold me together but then he saw the cut and it was too serious for that. I’m lucky I didn’t lose my eye. Ian decided that it was not something he could handle and that he was going to have to call for an ambulance.

  I won’t bore you with all the details of the rest of the night but Ian couldn’t come with me in the ambulance because Charlie was asleep in the tent and we didn’t want to scare him with my face. There were lots of nurses and a doctor who stitched me up. He told me I would need a plastic surgeon as soon as I got home. He also said there were two policemen who wanted to speak with me.

  The police wanted to know about Ian’s background in the military and private security. They wanted to know if we fought. Does he drink and how much? They told me that my injury was inconsistent with a fall and that someone had bludgeoned me with a rock or a branch. I told them they were wrong. Eventually they asked me if “that was my story and I was sticking to it,” and I said yes.

  I said no to the CT SCAN at the time because our insurance is so bad and I knew we were probably already going to owe thousands of dollars. They gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and hydrocodone and called me a cab. I took a photo of myself with my phone while driving home. I am surprised that they let me walk out of that rural emergency room at three in the morning with half my face mangled and swollen and twenty-two stitches running from my forehead across my eyelid and down my cheek. I am surprised not one person said a word when the front-desk guy sent me back to a campground in the middle of nowhere in a piece-of-shit unlicensed cab with an angry driver.

  Since that night, I’ve been having panic attacks and living with an almost unbearable level of anxiety. I can’t watch the news. Every horrible thing that happens—and suddenly it seems like something horrible happens every other day—makes me feel like I need to get Charlie and lie down in bed and take a long nap and not let go of him and make him stay with me in the bed in the dark with the covers and the safety. I know that’s not normal. You know I wasn’t like that back when we were together. I did have a hard time once before in New York,
after you and I went our separate ways. There were a few bad years, but not like this. This is making it hard to function. I need to be a good mom. Something is very, very wrong. My psychologist is trying to help me sort out what is really going on. This letter is part of all that.

  The other night, I said to Charlie, “Come sit down to dinner, I’m stuffed. I mean, I’m starved.” This has been happening a lot. The words I pick are wrong. Something in my head is off. I keep marking things down on the calendar on the wrong day. It’s not enough to make me feel crazy, but I do feel a cloud around me. I can’t quite see through it.

  About us. Look. I know I did the wrong thing. I know your job had gotten scary and out of hand and also that you’d been sick. You needed me to be a good, reliable friend and what did I do? I took things personally and I left.

  Jo, this hurts. I hope you still don’t think I chose him over you. I didn’t. I swear to God that’s not what it was. It was just a mistake is all. I made a mistake and I’m sorry. I would love to see you again.

  I MISS YOU.

  Maddie

  * * *

  I slide the notebook back to Cami J who makes a photocopy for me. As she reads the letter quietly I think about Jo’s house in Skopje, with the stairs leading down to the bad part of the basement which was concrete, frightening and mostly empty. Just the crappy elliptical, the tiny washer and broken dryer, and an old plaid couch. It’s where Jo went when she was afraid she might cry.

  She said her neighbors hated her. That was the summer of 2001. Things had been about to get so much worse. The second I think about 9/11 my mind goes to the bad things. Every bad thing. All at the same time. Inside my chest a fist clenches around my fluttering heart like it’s trying to crush a baby bird, and it feels again almost like when I was held underwater and couldn’t breathe.

  “This is amazing, Maddie.” Cami J and I are on very different pages. Mine is black and sucking me in, and hers has got sparkles and balloons. She is elated and glowing. “You’ve just told me more about your panic attacks and your accident than you have in any of our previous conversations. I’m so pleased. This is good work. But—”

  “Okay,” I manage, and fumble for my purse.

  Cami J leans toward me, concern causing only the slightest furrow in her smooth, botoxed brow. “I’m worried. This part about your accident? Two policemen thought that you’d been assaulted?”

  “Yes,” I answer breathlessly, and look at the clock. Our session is only half over, but I suddenly feel the need to leave. I need to pick up Charlie. I need to pick up Charlie. Last week in Gardner a little boy ran out of his day care and into the street and an old man in a truck hit him and killed him. The old man never saw the child. I need to pick up Charlie. A ten-year-old boy was going down a great big waterslide out by the airport, and something went wrong and he lost his head. I mean, they say he literally lost his head, he was decapitated, and the two women who were riding with him were strangers and they ended up covered in his blood, and his family, his mom and dad and brother were standing at the bottom waiting for him to come down after his fun waterslide, and nothing was ever going to be the same again forever and ever and if there is one thing I know it’s that life can change in an instant and I don’t want to be here I want to be with Charlie. I need to pick up Charlie.

  I stand and say, “I need to pick up Charlie,” and suddenly I’m wondering how many times I have said this out loud because Cami J is making a weird calm-down gesture with her hands, and her mouth is moving slowly, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

  But it’s not okay. I am not okay. I need to be at home with Charlie by my side, curtains closed, Skopie and Sophie chewing store-bought plastic bacon-flavored bones at my feet, watching something for Charlie, like Jack’s Big Music Show. I really want to be watching Jack’s Big Music Show or Yo Gabba Gabba and to hear Charlie’s laughter. The shag multicolored rug in Cami J’s office starts to undulate like water weeds.

  “Maddie?” I can hear Cami J speaking to me, but I’m looking at the rug. “I’m going to run you to the ER, okay, hon? Maddie?”

  I look up at her and say, “I’m fine now.”

  “You’ve had a little fit, sweetie. I’m going to run you to the ER.”

  “No, no,” I say. “Not the ER. I’m fine.”

  “I’m afraid we have to go, Maddie. Let me just grab my purse.” She turns her back on me to reach behind her desk.

  I take off.

  Fall.

  Get up.

  Start the car. Reverse and hit her recycling bin. Cami J is coming down the front porch steps. I roll down my window and shout, “I’m fine. Really. I’m just late!” I’m not at all late and she knows it.

  She is red-cheeked, her wavy hair and layered tunics are all messed up, and her smooth face is knotted up in anger as she dashes toward me. She is fast for her age. “Maddie, please don’t drive off when—”

  I hit the gas. Book ass to the highway and almost get on going the wrong direction. Fuck!

  My eyes are all over the place, back and forth, back and forth. I am going to crash. Then Charlie will be left with Ian. I pull over to the side of the road and tell myself to breathe. My heart is pounding. I rest my head against the steering wheel and ask God if he can help. I turn on the radio and sing along to some Rihanna song about finding love in a hopeless place. After a few minutes I’m better. I breathe. Normal. Charlie isn’t expecting me for another hour. It’s okay.

  I’m even calmed down enough to realize I should probably take this early exit from my session as an opportunity to drive by Premium Stock on the way to the YMCA, hop out and grab one of the largest-sized Stolichnaya vodka. I prefer not to take Charlie to the liquor store with me, even though they do hand out Dum Dum’s to kids at the checkout.

  Later, I’m finally home in my happy place on the comfy couch. Charlie is snuggled in next to me, and the dogs are asleep at my feet. House Hunters International is just starting, and my frozen pizza with “wild” mushrooms is unexpectedly good.

  My massive carry-all purse, stuffed with Charlie’s snacks, wet wipes, Band-Aids and various crumpled receipts from Walmart, lies partially open on the coffee table. I see my phone, with eight missed calls, four text messages and one voice mail, all from Cami J. The photocopied letter to Jo is in there as well, folded and shoved down the side. I take it out and start reading it again.

  “What you reading, Mommy?” Charlie asks, looking up at me with his melty chocolate eyes. God, those lashes. If heaven were real it would be a place where I could always be with Charlie.

  “This is a letter I wrote to an old friend.”

  “Old like Gramma?”

  “Not that kind of old, baby. Old as in someone I knew in the past.”

  He nods as if what I’ve said is fascinating, and goes back to his puzzle.

  Reading the letter gives me a lonely pit in my stomach that eats away at my nice calm safe place. Skopie is twitching and growling as she dreams, probably of unearthing and mauling all the little blind moles with their tiny human fingers. This episode of House Hunters International is set in Croatia. I lean against Charlie. His hair smells comfortingly of Johnson’s No More Tears. It helps.

  I look at my hand. I have a tremor. The letter shakes, insistent. I wonder if I have the courage or the desire to type it up as an email and send it to her. Maybe. Jo and I have unfinished business.

  I take Charlie’s little fist and raise it to my lips for a quick kiss. “Thank God for you,” I say and he looks surprised but pleased, maybe even a little bit smug.

  I can’t help but wonder. Does Joanna have someone who makes her happy, too?

  Probably.

  I’m not sure how I feel about that.

  MADDIE

  2001

  Stoyan dropped me and Joanna off at her bungalow-style house on the outskirts of Skopje. I slept and she left before daybreak
to head to the Greek border, where she then spent the entire day tracking down her stalled shipment. When she finally got home, I was waiting for her with a big pot of pasta for dinner. She opened a bottle of wine, poured us each a glass and said, “Worst. Fucking. Day. Ever.”

  “You got everything handled?”

  “The babies have diapers tonight, so, yes.”

  I raised my glass to her. “You’re amazing.”

  She looked around at her living room then. My tea bags and dirty tissues were still on the coffee table. Next to my laptop were three empty beer bottles. “And what did you do today?” she asked.

  “Nothing really,” I admitted.

  “Must be nice,” she said, and for a second I thought she was mocking me.

  I hesitated and gestured toward the pot of pasta. “Are you hungry?”

  She took a huge sip of wine and smiled suddenly. “Famished! Let’s eat.”

  * * *

  A few nights later I found out Joanna had become “best friends” with Ian, Peter and the four other men who had swooped into Macedonia to protect the British ambassador as the country grew increasingly violent. She affectionately called them “the British bodyguards” and swore up and down that, despite appearances, they were witty, funny, gentle giants. I assumed this patently delusional conclusion must have been the result of the fact that she so rarely spent time with anyone who could even speak our language.

  The ambassador had been called back to London, and the off-duty bodyguards had invited me and Joanna out for drinks in grimy central Skopje, at an ex-patriot hangout called the Irish Pub.

  Ian was dressed in a rather whimsical boy-band style outfit with stylishly windswept gelled hair, but he was scowling out the window. He was the first man I had ever met who really owned his own resting bitch face. I revised my initial conclusion that his pop fashion sense would have gotten him beaten up in Kansas. You would have to be extremely confident, extremely stupid or maybe on steroids to take on this moody rake.