All Fall Down: A Novel (5 page)

Dr. McCarthy tucked Ellie’s folder under his arm and looked down at the magazine in my hand. “Are you reading one of those
‘How to Be Better in Bed’ things?” he asked. I gave a weak smile and closed the magazine so he couldn’t see what I was really reading. This was craziness. I didn’t have a problem. I couldn’t.

He glanced over my head, at the clock on the wall. From behind the exam-room door, I could hear Ellie and the medical student singing “Castle on a Cloud.” “Nobody shouts or talks too loud . . . Not in my castle on a cloud.”

I gave him another smile. He gave my arm a final squeeze. “Take care of yourself,” he said, and then he was gone.

I pushed the magazine into the depths of my purse. I got Ellie into her clothes, smoothing out the seam of her socks, buttoning her dress, re-braiding her hair. I held her hand when we crossed the street, paid for parking, and then, before I drove southwest to Federal Donuts for the hot chocolate I’d promised my daughter, I reached for the Altoids tin in my purse.

No,
I thought, and remembered the quiz.
Have you ever planned not to use that day but done it anyway?
What excuse did I have for taking pills?

Maybe my mother had been cold and inattentive . . . but it had been the 1970s, before “parent” became a verb, when mothers routinely stuck their toddlers in playpens while they mixed themselves a martini or lit a Virginia Slim. So I had a big house in the burbs. Wasn’t that what every woman was supposed to want? I had a job I was good at, a job I liked, even if it felt sometimes like the stress was unbearable; I had a lovely daughter, and, really, was being a little sensitive such a big deal? I was fine, I thought. Everything was fine. But even as I was thinking it, my fingers were opening the little box, locating the chalky white oval, and delivering it, like Communion, to the waiting space beneath my tongue. I heard the pill cracking between my teeth as I chewed, winced as the familiar bitterness flooded my mouth, and imagined as I started the car that I could feel the chemical
sweetness untying my knotted muscles, slowing my heartbeat, silencing the endless monkey-chatter of my mind, letting my lungs expand enough for a deep breath.

At the corner of Sixth and Chestnut, I saw a woman on the sidewalk. Her face was red. Her feet bulged out of laceless sneakers, and there was a paper cup in her hands. Puckered lips worked against toothless gums. Her hands were dirty and swollen, her body wrapped in layers of sweaters and topped with a stained down coat. Behind her stood a shopping cart filled with trash bags. A little dog was perched on the topmost bag, curled up in a threadbare blue sweater.

Ellie slowly read each word of her sign out loud. “ ‘Homeless. Need help. God bless.’ Mommy, what is ‘homeless’?”

“It means she doesn’t have a place to live.” I was glad Dave wasn’t in the car. I could imagine his response:
It means she doesn’t want to work to take care of herself, and thinks it’s someone else’s job to pay for what she needs.
I’d known my husband was more conservative than I was when I married him, but, in the ten years since, it seemed like he’d decided that anything that went wrong in his life or anyone else’s was the liberals’ fault.

Ellie considered this. “Maybe she could live in our guest room.”

I bit back my immediate reply, which was,
No, honey, your daddy lives there.
That had been true for at least the past six weeks. Maybe longer. I didn’t want to think about it. Instead I said, “She probably needs a special kind of help, not just a place to stay.”

“What kind of help?”

Blessedly, the light turned green. I pulled into traffic and drove to the doughnut shop, feeling the glow of the narcotic envelop me and hold me tight. Leaving the shop, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window, and compared what I saw—a white
woman of medium height, in a tan camel-hair trench coat, new-this-season walnut leather riding boots, straightened hair lying smoothly over her shoulders—with the woman on the corner.
A little makeup,
I thought, in the expansive, embracing manner I tended to think in when I had a pill or two in me,
and I could even be pretty.
And even if I wasn’t, I thought, as I drove us back home, as Ellie sang along to Carly Rae Jepsen and the city where I’d been so happy slipped away in my rearview mirror, I was a world away from the woman we’d seen. That woman—she was what addiction looked like. Not me. Not me.

M
y alarm cheeped at six-fifteen. Without opening my eyes, I crab-walked my hand across the bedside table, located my throbbing phone, and swiped it into silence. Then I held still, flat on my back, listening to Ellie snore beside me as I fought the same mental battle I fought every morning: Exercise or sleep?

I should exercise, I told myself. The day after Ellie’s doctor’s appointment the fact-checker had called me and said the story about Ladiesroom would show up today on the
Wall Street Journal
’s website, and would be in the printed paper tomorrow. I’d told Dave it was coming, but we’d barely discussed it. I didn’t want him to think I was bragging, or that I was drawing a distinction between us—Dave, who wrote stories, and me, who had somehow become one of the written-about. Dave hadn’t noticed my nerves, how I’d picked at my dinner and been awake most of the night, worrying that the picture would be terrible and that the world, and everyone I knew in it, would wake up and bear witness to precisely how many chins I actually had.

Lying underneath the down comforter, I touched my hips, feeling the spread, then moved my hands up to the jiggly flesh of my belly. My waistline had been the only thing that kept me from resembling a teapot in profile, but, unfortunately, it had
never really reappeared in the months, then years, after Ellie’s birth. I’d always told myself that I’d get around to losing the baby weight when things calmed down, but that had never happened, and the baby was now almost six.

I could see Ellie’s eyes moving underneath her lavender eyelids, and then Dave, with his pillow in his hands, dressed in pajamas that he wore buttoned to his chin, creeping into the room. Quickly, I shut my eyes so he’d think I was still asleep and we wouldn’t have to talk. It had been like this for longer than I liked to think about—every night he’d sleep in the guest room, and every morning he’d come tiptoeing back to the marital bed, the reverse of a teenage boy sneaking out through his beloved’s window. The idea was that when Ellie woke up and came to greet us, she’d see a happy couple, not two people who communicated mostly through texts about picking up milk and putting out the recycling. The good news was, Ellie generally showed up in the middle of the night, half-asleep and not in a position to notice anything.

Dave settled himself on the far side of the bed, arranging his pillows just so. I turned on my side, remembering how it had been when we’d first moved in together, how his first act after waking would be to spoon me, his chest tight against my back, his legs cupping mine, how he’d scratch his deliciously stubbled cheeks against the back of my neck and whisper that it couldn’t be morning, it was still early, we didn’t have to move, not yet. These days, he was more likely to open his eyes and fling himself, facedown, to the carpet for a quick set of planks and pushups before his run.

I opened my eyes and considered the clothes I’d left folded on the dresser: Lululemon yoga pants and an Athleta tank top in a pretty shade of pink, with my sneakers and a running bra and a pristine pair of white ankle socks beside them. All good, except
I’d laid out the shoes and the clothes on Sunday night, and it was now Thursday morning, and all I’d done with the cute outfit was admire it from the safe remove of my bed.

Five more minutes,
I decided, then reached for my cell phone, scanning my e-mail. As usual, Sarah had been up for hours. “pos col?” she’d asked—Sarah-ese for “possible column”—in a message sent an hour earlier that linked to the Twitter feed of a prominent comic-book creator. When asked how to write strong female characters, he’d answered, “Be sure not to give them weenies.” “So transwomen are out?” one of his followers had shot back, touching off a lengthy debate about biology and genitals and who qualified as female. Among her “pos col” contenders, Sarah had also included an update on the trial of the celebrity chef being sued by her (male) assistant for sexual harassment, and a profile of the showrunner of an Emmy Award–winning soap opera.

I considered clicking over to the
Journal,
but decided to wait. The story probably wasn’t up yet. I’d get in a workout—maybe thirty minutes on the treadmill, instead of the forty-five I’d been shooting for, but still, better than nothing—and then, with endorphins pumping through my body, giving me a lovely post-exercise high, I’d read the story. And look at the picture. If it was terrible, I’d use it as motivation. I’d print it out, tape it to the refrigerator and to the treadmill. It would be my “Before” shot. All the moms in the carpool lane would tell me how fantastic I looked, how together I had it, after three months, or six months, or however long it took me to lose twenty pounds and maybe get some Botox.

Eloise muttered in her sleep, then rolled over and opened her eyes.

“Good morning, beautiful,” I said.

She yawned, eyelashes fluttering, arms stretching over her head. “Mommy, there’s somefing I need to tell you.”

“What’s that?” Maybe I wasn’t objective, but Ellie was a gorgeous child. She had light-brown hair that curled in glossy ringlets, big brown eyes that tipped up at the corners and gave her a playful, secretive look, and the kind of porcelain skin that is the exclusive property of infants and children. A perfectly symmetrical spray of freckles ornamented her nose, her lips were naturally pink and curved into a Cupid’s bow, and she already showed signs of inheriting my husband’s lanky, long-limbed frame.

My daughter was delicious in the morning, I thought, as she nuzzled up next to me, and I kissed her cheek.

“What is it, sweetie?” I whispered.

“I peed in the bed,” Ellie whispered back.

“Oh, Christ.” Dave rolled himself onto the floor and leapt to his feet, with his hair sticking up in tufts on his head and the head of his penis wagging through the slit of his pajama bottoms as he examined himself for dampness.

“Dave!” I hissed, and jerked my chin toward the offending area. He tucked himself into his pajamas and stalked off toward the bathroom, while I pushed myself out of bed (twenty minutes on the treadmill? I’d still have time for that, right?) and yanked back the duvet. Ellie lay in a slowly widening stain. Her nightgown was soaked. So were the sheets underneath it, and probably the bed underneath that. I’d been meaning to find a waterproof mattress cover, but, like most of my well-intentioned domestic chores, it had been postponed and postponed again and eventually forgotten.

“Oh, God,” I breathed.

“I’m SORRY!” Ellie wailed, and began to cry.

“It’s okay, baby. Don’t worry. These things happen.”
About once a week,
I thought. “Ugh,” I groaned before I could stop myself. I knew you weren’t supposed to embarrass kids for having accidents. I’d read a million child-care books when I was pregnant, which was a good thing, because I barely had a spare ten seconds to read my horoscope now that I had a child, and I knew that shaming them over bodily functions was a bad idea, but seriously?

I scooped her into my arms, ignoring the clammy wetness and the smell. I wished that I’d kept her in overnight diapers, but Ellie would lift her nose and say, “Those are for BABIES,” every time I’d offered. “Honey, can you strip the bed?” I called, just as I heard the sound of the shower turning on.
Of course,
I thought. Because letting me wash her off in our bathroom would make it too easy, and helping with the mess would have been too kind. I carried her down the hall.

“NO! NO SHOWER! DON’T WANNA!”

“Ellie,” I said, looking her in the eye, “we have to get you clean.”

“USE WIPIES!”

Wipies were not going to cut it, I thought as I unstuck her nightgown from her belly and tugged it off over her head, then peeled off her underwear and left them in a crumpled heap on the bathroom floor. Ellie looked at them and started to cry harder. “Princess Jasmine is ALL WET!”

“It’s okay, sweetie. We’ll put her in the washing machine, and she’ll be good as new.”

Ellie was unconsoled. “I PEED ON PRINCESS JASMINE!” she sobbed. Never mind that she’d also probably soaked our mattress. Our expensive, less-than-a-year-old, pillowtop mattress.

I cannot take this.
The thought rose in my head. It was instantly
chased by a second thought.
I know what would make it better.

“Stay right here, honey,” I said, and trotted back to the bedroom. I yanked back the top sheet, the fitted sheet, and the mattress pad. Sure enough, the mattress was soaked . . . and, before I knew it, the bottle was in my hands.
Take one pill every four to six hours as needed for pain.
I popped the lid, shook one pill into my hand, debated for a moment, then added a second, noticing as I did that the bottle was getting light. I’d taken one at five o’clock the night before, after Ellie had thrown a fit because the TiVo had deleted her favorite episode of
Team Umizoomi,
and then another one at midnight, when I couldn’t fall asleep.

In the bathroom, I scooped a mouthful of water from the sink and swallowed. Immediately, even before the pills were down my throat, I felt a sense of calm come over me, a certainty that I could handle this crisis and whatever others emerged before seven a.m.
All will be well,
the pills sang as they descended.
All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

“Here we go,” I said to Ellie. I pulled off my own evening finery—an XXL T-shirt from Franklin & Marshall College and a pair of cotton Hanes Her Way boy shorts, which I’d bought because they covered more real estate than briefs or bikinis. Maybe I could count this as a workout, I thought as I lifted my shrieking daughter and stepped under the spray.