All Fall Down: A Novel (21 page)

Before I could answer, my mother said, “Grandma is sad,” in a rusty, tear-clogged voice. I waited for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, Ellie said, “Sometimes I am sad, too.”

“Everyone gets sad sometimes,” I said, and left it at that. I was thinking, of course, of my pills. Instead of lifting me out of the misery of the moment, they had left me there, shaky and wired and miserable, thinking,
If I just take one more
or
Maybe if I took two.
Since I’d gotten the call at the Shake Shack, I had swallowed . . . how many? I didn’t want to think about it. I was afraid the number might have entered double digits . . . and even I knew that was way, way too many.

I’ll cut back,
I promised myself as I swung the car into my driveway. Now that my father was somewhere safe, now that things weren’t quite so crazy with work, I could start tapering off. But, as the days went by, as the media furor over the vibrator-in-every-purse remark died down and my dad settled in to the routines of Eastwood, the tapering never began. I would start each day with the best of intentions. Then Ellie would have a tantrum after she realized we’d run out of her preferred breakfast cereal, or I would find my mother slumped at the kitchen table, still in her bathrobe, waiting, along with my five-year-old, to be fed, and I’d have to coax her to eat a few bites, to put on her clothes, to please get in the car because if you don’t, we’re going to be late for Daddy’s appointment with the gerontologist, and I would think,
Tomorrow. I’ll start cutting back tomorrow. I just need to get through today.

• • •

When she wasn’t at Eastwood visiting my dad, my mom spent her days in the guest room, with the door shut, doing what, I didn’t know. When Ellie came home she’d emerge—pale and quiet, but at least upright and clothed—and the two of them would spend the afternoon together. My mom was teaching Ellie to play Hearts, a game she and my father used to play together on the beach. She was also teaching Ellie how to apply makeup—which didn’t thrill me, but it wasn’t a battle I was going to fight. From my computer, behind the bedroom door, I’d brace myself for shrieks of “NO,” and “DON’T WANT TO,” and, inevitably, “YOU ARE MURDERING ME WITH THE COMB!” But Ellie rarely complained. After dinner, I’d find them cuddled together in the oversized armchair slipcovered in toile, a relic of my single-girl apartment, flipping through
Vogue,
discussing whether or not a dress’s neckline flattered the model who wore it.

One morning, after shuttling yet another thousand dollars from my secret checking account to the account I’d set up at Penny Lane, I started adding up what all the pills had cost me. I stopped when I hit ten thousand dollars, feeling dizzy, feeling terrified. The truth was, I had probably spent much more than that, and I was equally sure that if I tried to stop, cold turkey, I’d get sick. Already I’d noticed that if I went more than four or five hours between doses, I would start sweating. My skin would break out in goose bumps; my stomach would twist with nausea. I’d feel dizzy and weak, panicked and desperate until I had my hands on whatever tin or bottle I was using, until the pills were in my mouth, under my tongue, being crunched into nothingness.

Just for now,
I told myself. Just until my parents’ house sells, just until I figure out what to do about my mom, just until my father settles in. Another six weeks—two months, tops. Then I’d do it.
I’d figure out how many pills I was taking each day, and cut down by a few every day, slowly, gently, until I was back to zero. I’d have a long-postponed confrontation with Dave. I’d ask the questions that scared me the most:
Are you in or are you out? Do you love me? Can we work on this? Is there anything left to save?
Whatever he told me, whatever answers he gave, I would work with them. I would be the woman I knew I could be: good at my job, a good mother to my daughter, a good wife, if Dave still wanted me. Just not right now. For now, I needed the pills.

“H
ow’s your dad?”

I sighed, taking a seat at Janet’s kitchen counter, next to a stack of catalogs and what appeared to be a half-assembled diorama of a Colonial kitchen. It was three-fifteen on a balmy, sweetly scented May afternoon, and I’d just arrived at her house, half a mile from my own, with perfectly pruned rosebushes lining the walkway from the street to the front door. We’d passed the living room and the den, both decorator-perfect, and ended up in the kitchen, where Janet was thawing a pot of beef stew on the stove and had the wineglasses out on the counter.

“Half a glass,” I said, as she started to pour from a lovely bottle of Malbec. We’d already agreed that I would fetch the kids from Enrichment, the after-school program that Stonefield: A Learning Community offered between the hours of three and six for working parents. I would, therefore, drink responsibly. Of course, Janet had no idea that I’d helped myself to a handful of my dad’s Vicodin in the car, and that there were more pills in my purse and in my pocket.

“And thanks for asking. My dad’s adjusting.” Sipping my wine, I told Janet about how, the day after his arrival, my father
had switched from silent to belligerent, throwing things and shouting at the attendants to show him another room, that he’d reserved a suite, goddamnit, and if there wasn’t a suite he at least wanted a better view. As best I could figure, he thought he was in a hotel, on a business trip. He’d unpacked, hanging his shirts and pants in the closet, and if he’d noticed the lack of ties and jackets, or that the only shoes I’d sent with him were sneakers, he hadn’t said anything. Eastwood had assigned seating at mealtimes, and his case manager, a young woman named Nancy Yanoff, reported that my father was eating and seemed to be enjoying the company of the other residents at his table. Meanwhile, I was scrambling to get my parents’ house on the market, to finish filling out the thick sheaf of forms the long-term care required, and to figure out a long-term plan for my mom.

God bless narcotics. The pills gave me the energy and confidence to get through the day. They lulled me to sleep at night. They made it possible for me to have an uncomfortable conversation with my husband about how long my mom could stay. Dave was still being generous, still speaking to me kindly, but I sensed that his patience had a limit, and that in a month or two I’d find myself approaching it.

For now, though, he’d moved his belongings back to the master bedroom. I’d hastily ordered a dresser, two bedside tables, lamps, and an area rug for the guest room that had previously contained only a bed. Most nights I’d fall asleep before Dave did. Sometimes, if he woke me up with the bathroom light, I’d take my book and go to Ellie’s bedroom, lying beside my daughter in the queen-sized bed we’d been smart to purchase, telling her that Daddy was snoring again when she woke up and was surprised to see she had company. “But all things considered, it’s not too bad,” I told my friend.

Janet looked at me sidewise, skepticism all over her face. “How is it going with Little Ronnie?”

“Okay, here’s the shocker. She’s actually functioning. She helps take care of Ellie in the afternoons.” It was true that my mother still had the annoying habit of wandering down to the kitchen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the expectation that someone (not her) would put a hot, balanced meal on the table, and clean up afterward. She would leave her dirty clothes piled in the hamper with the unspoken assumption that they would be washed and put away, and she would announce that she had an appointment here or there instead of requesting a ride . . . but she was spending a few hours each day with Ellie. “And Ellie’s actually calmed down a little. I think, in a weird way, she feels responsible for her grandmother.”

Janet nodded, sipped her wine, and said, “Maybe I could rent your mother. My three need to get the memo that they’re responsible for more than just wiping themselves.” She made a face, flashing her crooked teeth. “And one of the boys isn’t even doing that so well. I don’t know which one—I buy them identical undies, and it’s not really the kind of thing you want to, you know, investigate thoroughly . . .”

I smiled, imagining my friend with a pair of lab tweezers and a fingerprinting kit, gingerly tugging a pair of skidmarked Transformers underpants out of an inside-out pair of little boy’s jeans.

“And did I tell you that Maya is now a vegan? And the boys won’t eat vegan food—which I can’t really blame them for—so I’m now cooking two meals a night? What happened?” she asked. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes narrowed, ponytail askew. “I mean, really. I was Phi Beta Kappa. I was most likely to succeed. I billed more hours than any other associate my first three years out of law school. And now I spend my days driving my
kids to hockey practice and swim club and choir rehearsal, and my afternoons making lasagna with tofu cheese, and my nights folding their underwear and checking their homework and spraying the insides of hockey skates with Lysol. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

She poured wine almost to the top of her glass and took a healthy swallow. “Do you know what I think when I wake up in the morning?” Without waiting for an answer, she said, “I count how many hours there are until I can have a glass of wine. There’s something wrong with me, if that’s all I’m looking forward to. If I have this . . .”—she gestured, hands spread to indicate the room, the house, the neighborhood—“this life, these kids, this house, this husband, and I love him, I swear I do, but most days the only thing that’s giving me any pleasure, the only thing I’m looking forward to at all is my goddamn glass of wine. That’s a problem, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and started reflexively straightening the stack of catalogs on the counter. Pottery Barn. J.Crew. L.L.Bean. Lands’ End. Ballard Designs. Garnet Hill. Saks. Nordstrom. Restoration Hardware. Sundance. All the same ones I got and kept in a basket in the powder room, to leaf through late at night. If Janet was counting the hours until her five o’clock drink, I was in way worse shape than she was. I wasn’t waiting until five anymore. Or even noon. My days began with pills—I would wake up sad and shaky and overwhelmed and I’d need a little pop of something just to get out of bed—and I kept a steady dose of opiates in my bloodstream all day long. More and more, my mind returned to that quiz in the doctor’s office, and I found myself wondering: What would happen if I tried to cut back and I couldn’t?

You can stop,
my mind said soothingly.
But you don’t have to. Not right now.
Which sounded good . . . except what if I couldn’t?
What if I was really and truly addicted, just like the actresses in the tabloids, or the homeless people I avoided while they begged at the intersections and on the sidewalks of Center City? What if that was me? Late at night, with Dave snoring away and Ellie and my mother asleep down the hall, I’d lie awake, the bitterness of the pills still on my tongue and my laptop making the tops of my thighs sweat, Googling rehabs, reading articles about drugs and alcohol, taking quizzes and reading blogs and newspaper stories about mommies who drank and celebrities who’d ended up addicted to painkillers or Xanax. With my Oxy or Percocet still pulsing in my head, I would point and click my way down the tunnel as midnight slipped into the small hours of the morning.

“I think you’re a great mother,” I told Janet. “You’re doing an amazing job. And you know this isn’t going to last. You’ll blink and they’ll be in college.”

“College,” she repeated. She lifted her glass and seemed surprised to find it almost empty. “I was going to have this big life. Barry and I were supposed to have adventures. I was going to be a prosecutor, then a judge, and then maybe I’d teach law. I used to dream about that. And now . . .” Her lips curled, her face twisting into an expression of deep disgust. “Allison, I’m a
housewife.
When I go online, I’m researching cereal coupons, or trying to figure out if my kid’s ADHD medicine is going to interact with his asthma stuff. The last thing I read for pleasure was
Wonder,
which was great but was written for ten-year-olds, and the only reason I even read that was because it was lying around the living room because Maya had to read it for school. I have all these clothes . . .”

As discreetly as I could, I snuck a look at the clock on my phone, wondering if my mail had been delivered yet and if the
pills I’d ordered from Penny Lane had arrived. They came in regular Express Mail envelopes, but I couldn’t risk Dave’s intercepting one of them. I didn’t want the first real conversation we had in forever to be about why I was illegally purchasing prescription medication on the Internet.

I slipped my hand into my pocket, touching my tin. At this point, I could guess just by its weight how many pills it contained. Ten, I estimated. Surely ten pills would last me until tomorrow, if they had to? Maybe I could excuse myself, tell Janet I had to make a call, and see if one of my doctors would phone in another prescription, just to tide me over.

“All these clothes,” she repeated. “Skirts and suits and jackets. High heels. All that stuff, just hanging there.”

“You’ll wear them again,” I told her. I knew Janet’s plan had been to start working part-time the previous fall, when the boys started kindergarten. But then Conor had gotten his ADHD diagnosis, and Janet had spent what felt like an entire year at some doctor’s or therapist’s office every day after school. As soon as Conor had been stabilized with the right combination of medicine and tutoring and a psychologist to teach him cognitive behavioral strategies for managing his disorder (translation: how to keep from screaming and throwing things when he got frustrated), Dylan had started acting out, getting in fights at school, yelling at his teachers, hiding in the bathroom when recess was over. This, of course, meant therapy for him, too. Somewhere in there, Maya had stopped speaking to her mother. When Janet had described her attempts to give Maya the “your changing body” talk, and how Maya had literally thrown the helpful
Care & Keeping of You
book into the hallway so hard it had left a dent in the paint, Barry and I had laughed, Barry so hard there were tears glistening in his beard,
but I could tell that Janet was heartbroken at her daughter’s silent treatment.