I hear Ma behind me, shuffling into the kitchen. “When did you get here, Eugenia?”
“A few hours ago, you want some soup?”
“Aspirin, where’s the aspirin?” She sits down at the kitchen table and lights a cigarette. I give her two aspirin and a cup of water.
“You want some coffee?” I ask. “I just made a pot. I found you by the door again, Ma, were you trying to go somewhere? Do you remember?”
“Yeah, coffee, is there Coffee mate? If there’s no Coffee mate I want the half-and-half, did he buy the fuckin’ half-and-half?” She ignores my question. Keeps smoking. Dad and I have found her all over the house like that, passed out, seemingly in the middle of doing something before giving up and lying down on the spot.
I open the fridge. “Your lucky day, Ma, Coffee mate and half-and-half. Take your pick.” I pour the coffee and put both containers on the table. I turn around to stir the soup.
“You don’t need to take care of me now, you can go,” she says. I don’t let her see that I notice her hand shaking when she pours the Coffee mate.
“I came to see you, Ma, I don’t have to be anywhere. I’ll just hang out for a while.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Have some soup, you’ll feel better.” As I bring it to her at the kitchen table she knocks the bowl out of my hands to the floor. The soup scalds the back of my hand as the bowl hits the ground.
“Get out! No more fucking soup!” she screams, but with her voice so hoarse from all the drinking and smoking it doesn’t make the impact she wants it to. On automatic pilot I bend down to start cleaning up the mess but then I catch myself. I stop.
“OK, Ma, OK. I’ll go.” I say it calmly. I say it this way every time she yells at me to get out. Once a week.
I pick up my coat, put my bag over my shoulder and say, “Bye, Ma.” I close the door behind me and sit down on the front steps. I’ll wait outside until Dad gets home. At least it’s springtime now and it’s warmer out. This routine was much worse in the winter, when I had to stand outside the house in the cold. I give it about fifteen minutes, then I walk around to the back and stand by the kitchen window. I left a small gap between the kitchen curtains while I was cooking so that I’d be able to see in from outside without her noticing. I look in and see her sobbing. The smoking and drinking make her crying sound like coughing—raw, wheezy, like she can’t get any air. Her cigarette has burned down to the filter. When she stops crying she stares at Frankie’s shrine, bites her nails, rubs her eyes, finishes her coffee.
Then my eyes well up with tears and I try to swallow the lump in my throat. I’m flooded with relief. I watch her pick up a roll of paper towels and start mopping up the floor. Once a week for six months—since we lost Frankie—I’ve come here, cleaned up, made soup and Ma has screamed at me to get out. Sometimes she leaves the soup on the table, untouched. I know because it’s still there when I come back, dried up and cracked like a model of a scorched-earth desert inside a bowl. Dad leaves it there too. He doesn’t clean the kitchen because I don’t think he can stand walking in there, face-to-face with Frankie, surrounded by the minutiae of his life. Ma stopped cleaning because just waking up and breathing were all she could manage.
So for the past few weeks, out of my own exhaustion and desperation for something to change, I’ve left the mess. Left the soup slowly dripping down the wall, left a puddle of it on the floor, plastic bowl overturned in the middle. I’ve left it to see what she would do. To see if she even saw it. We all lost Frankie, but for Ma, every day has just been a continuation of the minute that we knew he was gone. No sunrise, no nightfall. No living after that minute. Just alcohol and scraps of paper from the pockets of his old clothes.
But today I’m watching her kneel on the kitchen floor and clean. Something she always knew how to do. Something she was good at. She’s doing one small thing that isn’t drinking or yelling and passing out. One normal, small thing. Today she’s not leaving the soup on the floor.
13
sudocrem
A Wednesday in August 2016, 9:35 p.m. London, Grand Euro Star Lodge Hotel, Room 506
I fell asleep again but the phone vibrating woke me up. Disoriented, I get out of bed and reach for the baby but he’s not here. Because I’m not home. I take a minute to remember where I am. Another buzz. A text from Sharon:
Jeej, WTF. What is happening. Harry called me. Tell me where you are
Before I can process what she’s saying, buzz. A text from Danielle:
Are you OK? What are you doing? Harry called me. Give me the number where you are and stop acting crazy
Buzz. Sharon again:
I’m going to keep texting you every minute until you answer me
Buzz. Now it’s Stacy’s turn:
Sweetheart everybody’s worried. We can’t help if we don’t know where you are
Buzz. Sharon:
I’m not fucking around. I’m like a dog with a bone Bitch. Give me your number. You’re in some hotel right?
How could she know that? Oh my God, another one. Buzz. Danielle:
I just talked to Shar. Are you in a hotel? Are you having an affair? I don’t know what’s going on with you but you need to call us
Buzz. Stacy:
G I just talked to the girls listen if you’re having an affair it’s OK we’ve all been there we’ll help you thru. Just call us
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. They’re relentless. Suddenly there’s a shwoop sound from WhatsApp. I open it on my phone. They’ve created a group and called it WTF GIGI. Harry called in the big guns.
Sharon:
OK Harry said you’ve been gone all day he doesn’t know where you are. You need to tell us. We’re just going to call you. That’s all. We won’t tell Harry until you say it’s OK, we’ll just let him know that you’re safe? Alright? Just like that time we covered for Stacy and what’s his name, Jose, that Puerto Rican kid she liked back in the day when she was going out with Jimmy. OK? Listen hun everyone makes mistakes
Stacy’s bubble pops up:
Excuse me, Jimmy cheated on me first, remember?
Then Danielle:
Marriage isn’t easy. Is this new guy hot? Anyway if you’re struggling we’re here for you
Back to Stacy:
Gigi sweetheart it’s us. Let us in
Now Sharon, taking no prisoners:
Fucking tell us where you are already!
They keep going. It’s like the Housewives have jumped out of the TV and into my phone. Maybe it’s the wine. Or the sleep, hours of sleep today. Or the fury with which my friends are firing their love at me, or my husband, who I’ve obviously scared the shit out of and who’s finally found a way to get to me.
I put the phone down for a minute, unsure how to answer them. The show moved on to the next season while I slept. I watch Teresa get out of her lawyer’s car and walk into her house for the first time after her year-long stay in prison. She puts both hands up to her face in disbelief that she’s finally home. Her and Joe hug and cry in the kitchen. Of course, no woman has ever looked more amazing on release from prison than Teresa. She’s in skin-tight skinny jeans, knee-high boots and a black leather jacket with a peplum waist, hair straightened, full makeup done, because she is, and always will be, a Real Housewife.
And then there is the moment when they run to her, her four girls, throwing their whole selves at the mother who’s been gone for so long, piling on top of her, clinging to her knees and arms, grabbing any part of her they can get—they sob and cry. The real tears of little girls, their agony and love pulsing through the screen. By the time the Pampers commercial comes on, with the baby boy crawling to his mother, mother embracing child, inhaling the sweetness at the nape of his baby neck, the cup of blue water poured on the diaper, I’m crying so hard I can’t
breathe.
I sit up in bed too quickly and my scar pulls against itself in the bed of nails that lies between my hips, where they took him out of me. He survived. And so did I. Maybe I’m already old, like Barbara says, because I know that I survived.
I pour the last drop of wine into a plastic cup. The phone battery’s at two percent. I type:
Girls. Grand Euro Star Lodge Hotel Balham High Street Room 506 Google it. Tell Harry I’m fine. I’m not having an affair. You bitches are crazy
The phone by the bed rings. All three of them are on the line through some kind of conferencing Danielle set up. It’s like trying to have a conversation with a flock of chickens.
Sharon: “Gigi, what the hell, where are you? Are you OK? You got everybody frantic over here.”
Danielle: “Can you hear me, CAN YOU HEAR ME?” She screams down the line.
Stacy: “Shut up, first, Jeej, are you safe? Are you hurt?”
Me: “I’m fine, I’m in a hotel room and I’m fine.”
Stacy: “Have you taken pills? Are you trying to kill yourself?”
Me: “What? No, what are you talking about?”
Danielle: “DO I NEED TO CALL THE AUTHORITIES IN YOUR COUNTRY?” Danielle screams as though she’s called a war zone where no one speaks English.
Me: “It’s England, Dan, and no you don’t need to get the U.S. embassy involved.”
Stacy: “Danielle, I swear to God…Gigi, sweetie, what’s happening, why did you do this, did you walk out?”
Me: “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Sharon: “Well, you better start talking before I come over there and make you talk.”
Me: “OK, I’ll wait for you to get the next flight over, Shar.”
Sharon: “Did Harry hurt you, did he do something to you? If he did something to you I will fucking track him down.”
Me: “Jesus Christ, no, I’m fine, I just—I don’t want to talk about it.”
They all start talking over each other, relieved that I’m OK but furious that I won’t say anything. Then Danielle says, “Oh, you know what, this is just like a hostage situation and we’re the handlers, so we have to talk to her and, like, ask her her demands and shit and then relay that to Harry, you know?”
Sharon half-shouts, “Great plan, Danielle, thanks. Jesus Christ, this girl, ignore her. Tell us what’s happening, Jeej.”
I take a deep breath and say, “No, you tell me, tell me what’s happening at home.”
That’s what they do. For an hour they catch me up on their kids and their men. Sharon’s looking for a house, Stacy’s getting promoted, Danielle’s experimenting with new nail colors. They meet up every Thursday in that bar on Bay Street after work. Ladies’ night. The guys stay home with the kids. It sounds nice. I say I wish I could be there. I say I wish I could be there every Thursday.
I say other things too. How I thought I was dying when they were cutting Rocky out of me, how he got sick, how I couldn’t hold him. How Harry’s rich and I’m not and we love each other but there’s things that neither of us gets about the other one. And it’s always going to be that way. Sukie and Tracy. The scar. Apron. Fucking up at work before I’ve even gone back. Lorraine and sleep deprivation and how I’m so worried about Johnny. Also that it’s August. Almost September. My body still remembers the grief even when the pictures in my head are starting to fade. And all I have left is Frankie’s voice on the phone. And Ma is sitting alone in her room too.
Me: “It all went sideways after the baby. Nothing’s where I left it, you know? Nothing looks the same.”
Stacy: “That happens to everybody, Jeej. Everybody goes through that.”
Me: “But what do I do now? What do you do after you fuckin’ fall apart like this?”
Danielle: “It’s like a rubber band, Jeej. You can stretch it till it don’t go no more, but it goes back to the same size once you let go. It ends up across the room but it’s still the same rubber band.”
Sharon: “What? Dan, what the fuck are you talking about…”
Me: “No, no, I know what she means, I know what she means.”
We keep talking, or I keep talking and they listen. Even though I hear Stacy’s kids screaming in the background, the beeps of the supermarket checkout line where Danielle is standing, Sharon still at her desk at work, distant office phones ringing. They have work emails and families to get home to and lunches to pack for tomorrow and dinner to make—still they listen to me.
Danielle: “OK, honey, first things first. Did you eat today?”
Me: “No. Just wine, but I got the pizza, it’s cold.”
Stacy: “You can order wine with takeout? That’s awesome. Anyway, Danielle’s right, eat something, you drank too much on an empty stomach, that’s why you feel so crappy.”
I follow her instructions. It’s a relief to be told what to do. I pull over the pizza box and grab a slice.
Sharon: “OK, now, next thing, I’m gonna text Harry and tell him where you are. Is that OK? I’ll tell him not to go there but I can’t guarantee it.”
I think for a minute; it may not be OK, but it’s inevitable.
Me: “Yeah, OK.”
Sharon: “OK, good, you need to get out of there, sweetie, I just looked at that place online and, oh my God, no wonder you’re so depressed, what a shithole.”
She makes me laugh. I’m surprised at the sound.
Sharon: “You got a cigarette and some coffee? You need to sober up and make a plan. Step by step, write it down.”
Me: “You and your lists, always with the lists.”
Sharon: “That’s right, and I’m making one now that says number one, get Gigi the fuck out of the hotel.”
She keeps talking but that stops me. Out of the hotel. Retrace my steps, rewind, leave the hotel, walk back into my house, step over Harry’s shoes, pick up the baby. Go back.
Stacy: “G, are you there?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Am I here?
Sharon: “OK, so Harry wrote back on the group text, ‘Thank God, please ask her if I can come and see her.’ What should I say? G? Gigi? You still there?”
London, a Wednesday in August 2016; Baby, 8 months old
I walk into the bedroom and Harry says, “Good morning, darling.” It’s 7 a.m. but I’ve been up since 3, never falling back asleep before there was another cry, another bad dream, another feed, another bed to be stripped in the night. The baby was always up twice a night. But tonight it was Johnny too. When Johnny has a bad night, growing pains in his legs or nightmares, it’s like my heart being torn out of my body, because in his semiconsciousness he calls for Mama. He only ever calls for Mama at night. Never Jeej. I think it’s me he’s calling out for, but sometimes I know it’s her.
I’m fragile, brittle. Like the crack in the window downstairs we haven’t fixed that hasn’t shattered yet but could at any moment. In my peripheral vision there’s Harry in the doorway of the en suite wearing an Italian cycling cap, fluorescent base layer, one high-tech cycling sock and nothing else.
“Don’t talk to me until you’ve put that thing away.” I’m not joking, the way I used to about his midlife Lycra crisis. I’m blunt, unamused. Before Rocky I used to think Harry’s middle-aged cyclist costume was funny, with the weird bib shorts and the tight tops, but now I feel like if I had known that Harry puts his socks on before his underwear every d
ay I don’t think I would’ve married him. I scrounge around the bedroom floor for diaper rash cream.
“Gigi, you’ve caught me in the middle of getting ready, is that allowed? This is still my bedroom, isn’t it?” Harry says, half-smiling, trying to defuse the bomb.
“What’s that supposed to mean? What kind of comment is that?” I say, noticing that he put on the other sock. But still nothing on his piece.
“It means that this is where I sleep and change my clothes because it’s my bedroom.”
“Really, you sleep in here? That’s interesting.” I’m so raw. I feel like raw red meat being shredded on a cheese grater. And I can’t find the goddam…what’s it called, the fucking, what is it called, Desitin, no, that’s America, what is that shit called here…
To keep myself from screaming I start pulling apart piles of clothes on the floor. I know they’re not hiding it, but if I don’t keep moving, if I don’t find it, if I don’t stay focused on this one thing…
“Why are you having a go at me first thing in the morning? What’s happened?” Harry asks.
“Oh, sorry, you must have missed it because of all the sleeping you were doing.”
He sighs. “If it was a bad night that’s all you have to say, you don’t have to bludgeon me like this.”
Through gritted teeth, hardly above a whisper, I say, “I was up with the baby every hour and Johnny had that nightmare again.”
“Ah, yes, I heard him.”
“You heard him?”
“Yes, at about four, was it? He called for Mama.” Snap.
“You heard him at about four?”
“Yes. I heard you too.” Crackle.
“You heard me? And you thought, Well, she’s on it so I’ll just fucking go back to my forty winks?”
“What did you want me to do?” Pop.
“GET-THE-FUCK-OUT-OF-BED!”
I don’t know how I got here but I find myself with my hands clutching Harry’s fluorescent shoulders, his back against the wall, his dick, unbelievably, still roaming free.
When I Ran Away Page 26