The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  But he took it and hid it in the trunk of the Mercedes. He didn’t pour it out because, he said, “It’s a sin to pour out perfectly good liquor.”

  Tuesday. Lily didn’t recognize any of the morning smells in Maui. George wanted to go to the beach, seemingly not remembering any of the anguish he felt the night he begged Lily to come to Maui or his wife, the amputee.

  “Papi, we have to take care of the police thing before we start gallivanting around beaches, and we need to go and see Mom.”

  He sighed. “Your mother does not get the pleasures that other people might get from getting old. You’ll never find a bumper sticker on her car that says, ‘Happiness is being a grandparent’.”

  “What about you, Papi? Will I find that bumper sticker on your car?”

  George did not reply.

  He moved on Maui time—he was six hours behind the rest of the world. It took him a long while to get ready and get out.

  Lily was thinking of calling Spencer. What time was it in New York? Earlier? Still the middle of the night?

  In the supermarket the torture began. “Why are you buying that?” George said when Lily took some cooked shrimp. “I already bought her smoked salmon.”

  Lily replied that she knew that, but her mother sometimes liked cooked shrimp.

  “Why are you buying iced tea? She doesn’t drink iced tea.”

  “No, but I do, and maybe she would like some.”

  “We don’t need soap. We have plenty of soap.”

  “If we have plenty, then why did I find only a tiny little piece this morning?”

  “You should have asked. We have plenty.”

  “It’s only two bars of soap. I tell you what, I’ll take one with me, and the other you can throw out.”

  “That’s the problem,” George said angrily. “We buy a lot of crap we don’t need and then end up throwing it all out.”

  Traffic crawled along the coast. Driving north through the mountains to the hospital, Lily saw a beautiful tree with glorious bright red rhododendron-like flowers. She thought, I have to find out what it is before we go. I could paint that. She saw Maui in its grand drama, its youthfulness, its grand majestic beauty fresh from the fiery earth, and the tree stood like a symbol of its very creation.

  Unlike the valor of the tree, there was no dignity in Allison’s ordeal. Her speech was garbled and spoken through gritted teeth, as if she were still drunk. Lily hoped it was the anesthetic drugs.

  Dr. Aillard, he of the splendid bedside manner, came into the room and out of nowhere without so much as a hello, said to Allison, “You have to stop drinking, missy. And you have to start now. It’s time to face the music.”

  Brilliant, thought Lily. Yes. Why didn’t my mother think of that?

  Allison was looking at her bandaged and raised stump with disbelief. Lily too felt disbelief, like Grandma, last night, who had kept repeating, it can’t be, it can’t be, how could that happen, why amputation, wasn’t there something else they could do?

  “It’s too late now, Grandma, to think of alternatives. She had poison gas inside her.”

  “I know all about poison gas,” said Claudia. “Your mother avoided it narrowly when she was very young. Why did it have to be inevitable that it would catch up with her later in life, in America? It doesn’t seem fair.”

  With the jaded doctor they couldn’t talk about the foot. Allison was staring numbly at where it was not. So they started to talk about the drinking. It wasn’t much easier.

  She didn’t touch the food they brought her.

  Another doctor, Dr. Matthews, came to say he would be taking care of Allison from now on, but George kept trying to tell him his whole life story, long, detailed explanations of Washington and The Post, and how there was an arm-breaking incident with Allison when he had been sleeping…Papi was tired, and didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t keep to the matter at hand, because the matter at hand was so large, and footless, he just didn’t know where to begin.

  Matthews said Allison was going to go through DTs. He would keep an eye on them. He said morphine would help and that made Allison happy. Morphine! she exclaimed.

  Matthews said she would be in the hospital for ten days, until “the stump” healed. He made them all cringe and didn’t even notice. He said he would corroborate that Allison’s injuries were inconsistent with physical abuse and try to get the DA to drop their charges. Lily nearly missed the meaning of his words because of the cringing. Then with relief she escaped from “the stump” to the telephone. Now all her mother had to do was retract her statement and her father would be off the hook.

  Eventually, a police officer came in response to Lily’s persistent calls to the prosecutor’s office, and Allison said, “It was all my fault. I’m very sorry.”

  Lily couldn’t believe those words. It had taken many calls to get the policeman to come and take a statement from Allison, and it was amazing to Lily that her efforts were not in vain. She had to argue with the police officer—Spencer would have been proud of her. Making Spencer proud of her was her goal in life. Everything from her real life, him—her sickness—suddenly seemed so remote when she was on the other side of the world. All she could think about were police statements and mandatory arrests. And gas gangrene. Perhaps if she stayed here, bought a house here, painted here—mangoes and sushi and palm trees—she would forget Spencer, forget she was ever sick. She had money now, she could live anywhere she wanted, even by the ocean near the palm trees, away from him and from Amy and Andrew in their bed.

  After the patrolman left, Lily told her mother, that was a very brave thing you did Mom, you used brave words.

  Allison turned away from Lily. “Brave words are forgotten instantly. But I lost my foot,” she said. “I lost my foot forever.”

  Wednesday. Despite Allison’s brave words to the patrolman, despite Matthews’s offer to clear George of charges of abuse, in the evening her father acted like a big tired pessimist. “No, Lily, we will never cure her. She will never get better. I see that now.”

  “So why are we trying so hard then?”

  He said, because the most important thing is not the goal, it’s the movement, it’s the struggle.

  Where did Lily hear that before?

  On the road to the beach the bushes were red, creating a striking contrast against the sea and the sky. It was all breathtaking. Lily wondered why she was noticing it more this trip than last year.

  And the palm trees, the palm trees. How they bend like violin bows, bending to the volcanic ash and to the setting sun.

  The sun was not red, it was yellow all the way to the bottom of the ocean, and how relentlessly it squeezed itself into the horizon, between the island of Lanai and the Maui volcano on this side of Lahaina.

  Lily found a rock and sat and watched the sunset, and then went into the water. The healing water. It burned her eyes that were like sandpaper, and burned her lips that had raw spots on them from the stress, and made her face all sandy. It was lovely. She wasn’t numb, she felt.

  The water was warm, and the air was warm. Lily swam, and for some reason got a haunted sense that she was seeing Maui’s colors so vividly and feeling the water so calmingly because she was seeing them for the last time. A premonition passed through her that she would never see Maui again after she left here.

  Lily didn’t like that premonition. She tried not to look at the indigo mulberry sky as she walked back in twilight.

  George had made shrimp with mushrooms and onions and delicious sauce, and rice, and Lily had two helpings and then some ice cream and called her mother at the hospital. The orthopedic surgeon had not come yet and Allison said her stump was all pus. The dressings needed to be changed. Lily said it was healing—the body, broken as it was, was trying to heal it. Allison didn’t want to hear it.

  The Maui prosecutor’s office called George.

  “They said they got the police report and a Kim Fallone, who is the assistant DA, can see us next Monday,” George told h
er. “They want to know—can your mother come?”

  “Can my mother come? I don’t know if my mother can come. Will she be able to use a wheelchair by then? Will she be discharged from the hospital, be dried out by then? I know nothing,” said Lily. “Besides I’m supposed to be leaving on Saturday, remember?”

  George asked her to stay until Monday. Extremely reluctantly Lily agreed.

  Maui at night has stars that pepper the sky; it almost looks fake, there are so many stars and they are so bright. But the most amazing thing, right below the orange crescent moon hanging above the ocean is the bright, lucid, large and round Jupiter. Lily has never seen anything like it in all her life and wonders if Spencer would like to see it someday, because he has probably never seen anything like it in his life either.

  Thursday. How much more of this could Lily take? Her father continued to be a downer. She will never stop drinking. This is all going to fail and we’re going to have to stay in Maui forever, and we’re going to have to go to court, and I’ll be prosecuted and you’ll be prosecuted, and I don’t know what to do. It’s all hopeless.

  Five feet away from entering Allison’s room, he said, Liliput, let’s make a deal, we will feed her, stay for about an hour, but then we’ll go, okay? He wanted to go to North Beach. He wanted a little therapy himself.

  They sit there and listen to Allison rail and rant and rave and tell lies upon lies to the doctor, and even to Papi, as if he doesn’t know the truth, but from the dull-eyed look of him, who knows if he does? In front of her mother, he is just a different person, Lily thinks. He walks around, he doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know what to do, and then he wants to leave.

  Her mother is telling Dr. Matthews how the drinking has only really been a problem for the last four months or so because her husband is so bad because he wants to leave this beautiful place, and because when she is stressed and frustrated she drinks to help her relax. “A glass of wine does relax me a little bit,” she says to the doctor with a little smile. The doctor nods, and says this and that.

  “Doctor, can I see you outside, please?” That’s Lily.

  In the corridor Lily tells him that her mother’s drinking has been out of control for many years, a decade, and it’s gotten worse in Maui, but it did not begin in Maui and it didn’t get out of control in Maui.

  “Have you seen my mother’s bruises, have you seen her amputated foot? She lost a foot, for God’s sake, you think she could escalate to that level of drinking in four months?”

  Back inside, the doctor says, “Mrs. Quinn, your daughter tells me that you haven’t been telling me the truth. She says you are drinking much more heavily than you say.”

  The look her mother shoots her makes Lily recall those moments of her life when she felt like a non-human: like when her mother told her last year that Andrew was not talking to her because she had taken up with Spencer; like when Spencer left her.

  To the doctor, Allison says, “Well, my daughter’s never seen me drink. He tells her that,” and she points to George. “She is not telling the truth, and he is not telling the truth.”

  “Mrs. Quinn, why would they be lying to me?”

  “Ask them,” Allison says defiantly.

  “Mr. Quinn, you’ve been by your wife’s side all along. Is the drinking as bad as your daughter says?”

  Papi hems and haws and then says, “I love my wife very much. I want to stay and take care of her. No matter how sick she is. I won’t go. Leaving her is tantamount to leaving a paralyzed person in the middle of the woods in the dark. I cannot do it. But it’s not as bad as my daughter says. It’s much worse than that. It’s an unimaginable nightmare.” He starts to cry and walks out of the room.

  Allison is crying, too, and her expression reads, if only you didn’t butt in, Lily, none of this would be happening. A look that tells Lily that her mother is not exactly wishing for sobriety despite the lack of right-footedness.

  She is now crying for morphine, saying she’s in incredible pain.

  She says to Lily, leave here, leave and don’t come back.

  Dr. Matthews says, “What do you want, Mrs. Quinn?”

  Allison says, “I just want to be left alone. That’s all.”

  “You want to be left alone so you can drink?”

  “Well, no.”

  “You want your husband to leave you? You want him to pack his bags and leave you? What do you mean?”

  Allison doesn’t answer. She cannot look at him because she is so angry with Lily.

  Dr. Matthews says, “And by the way, Mrs. Quinn, I don’t agree with your husband’s analogy. The difference between you and a paralyzed person in the woods is that you can help yourself. A paralyzed man cannot get up.”

  “Look at me, I can’t get up either.”

  “You can, you can choose to get help and get sober. But I understand you cannot do it on your own. There are treatment centers here in Maui. There is a very good place, Aloha House.”

  Allison shakes her head. “No, I can’t go to Aloha House.”

  “Why?”

  “I love my home, I want to go there.”

  “So you can drink?” Dr. Matthews asks.

  “No.”

  The doctor says before he leaves, “I’m going to recommend that you be placed in Aloha House when you’re discharged from here.”

  “Why, why, do you have to open your big mouth?” Allison says to Lily after he is gone.

  Papi and Lily sit around her and try to talk to her. Papi says his silly things. Papi likes to talk, loves to talk, but Lily sees it all now—when it comes to Allison’s drinking, he prefers to just go to the beach. The drinking is the one thing he doesn’t want to talk about.

  Lily knows they have done nothing to quell the beast inside Allison, who will say anything to get herself back home.

  Papi, who is half-happy that Allison is sober, a state he has not seen her in for some time, says, Mom is right. She doesn’t have to go to Aloha House. He says, there is no liquor in our house anymore, and your mother is going to promise she won’t drink. Allison says bravely, coolly, no, no, I won’t drink. I’ve learned my lesson good and proper now. I have no foot.

  George says, “I believe her.”

  “Are you even kidding me? Are you kidding me?” Lily exclaims.

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. “Lily, I know about these things. I’m older, wiser than you. I understand.”

  This is what they mean when they say alcoholism is a family disease.

  The same man, who not four days ago told the police he could not handle her, who begged Lily to come because she was a danger to herself and to him, who could not control her, could not help her, that same man suddenly thinks it’s a good idea for his wife to come home!

  Lily tells him, “This is the same woman who two days after a foot amputation asked us to wheel her to a garden on the second floor so she could have four cigarettes in a row. When she returns to her bed, she’ll have some morphine. The woman who was not able to control herself at any time in the past is suddenly going to stop herself from drinking?”

  And then a light goes on in Lily’s head. Her mother is right! George is the reason Allison continues to drink! Of course the addiction is hers and hers alone, but every time she gets sober for a day, for a minute, like now, she is not the only one who gets cocky—he gets cocky, too. And he says, I think this time it’s going to be okay. He says, Mommy is never going to admit she needs help, but this is a big step. I can help her get sober, I can do it.

  George says in a determined voice, “We will make her sign a statement that she will not touch liquor, otherwise I will take her to the hospital myself.”

  Lily stops herself from saying Oh, sign a statement, that’s good, that’ll do it, but barely.

  How she wishes she could talk to Spencer about this, ask his advice. She can just imagine what he will say. He has no patience for this kind of nonsense.

  Dr. Matthews tells Lily that her mother will not be l
eaving the hospital unless she is discharged into Aloha House and that he will keep her in the hospital until there is room for her there.

  Happily Lily informs her parents that Allison won’t be able to leave the hospital.

  Allison says, “That’s why, that’s why I didn’t want to come to the damn hospital. I knew this would happen. That’s why I didn’t want you to open your big mouth and say so much. You say too much, Lily. Your father, now he says little but just right, you say way too much and that’s why we’re in this mess right now.”

  “Mom, are we in this mess because I have an amputated foot? Are we in this mess because I slipped and fell and hit my head on the bathtub and told the police my husband beats me? Are we in this mess because I have bruises all over my body because I am drunk all the time?”

  “That’s what I mean,” Allison said, beginning to cry. “No one needs me. I just want to die.”

  I needed you, Mom, Lily thinks, turning away. I need you. Where are you?

  Now Lily knows.

  On the way home from the hospital, George is upset with Lily. He says she just doesn’t understand anything.

  No sooner do they get home than Allison calls and says that Dr. Matthews has explained to her about not releasing her from the hospital until there is a place for her in Aloha House…but then she can leave Aloha House any time she wants!

  Lily is listening.

  Allison says, “So as soon as there’s a place for me at Aloha House I go there and immediately get discharged so I can be home the same day.”

  “Wait, so you mean to say you’ll go to Aloha House to fool the doctors?”

  “Just find me the number of Aloha House.”

  Silence from Lily.

  “Find my Yellow Pages on the floor. You found my gin bottle in the closet, find my Yellow Pages on the floor.”

  “Mom, we cannot have you leave Aloha House, the whole point is that you’re supposed to want to get better.”

  Allison says, “Then why should I leave the hospital? Here they are giving me morphine, they are giving me sleeping pills.”