Just Another Kid (23 page)

Ladbrooke was already asleep by the time I had tidied away the mugs, turned out the lights and brushed my teeth. She had taken the quilt in with her and put it over the top of the heavy down comforter already on the bed. Curled up in a tight ball beneath all these covers, she slept, her breathing deep and noisy. The bedside lamp was still on. The door was left wide open.

I paused a moment and watched her sleeping. Bewilderment overcame me. Initially, I had been irritated with her for all this trouble. Now I felt only confusion.

As I stood, watching her, it occurred to me that I loved her. In the same gut-wrenching way I loved the kids, I loved Ladbrooke. And for the same brutal, aching humanness. Why, I wondered, did I love troubled things so?

Then wearily, I turned away and went into the living room. Rearranging the pillows and blankets, I lay down on the couch in an effort to rescue what little bit was left of the night.

But I couldn’t sleep. My mind was in hyperdrive. Every time I would settle down, the events of the previous hour or so reappeared, which, in turn, led me to question my own part in all of this. Suddenly, I had come face to face with the fact that I was involved, whether I’d ever intended to be or not. I hadn’t gone looking for involvement, but, like so much else in my life, it had just sort of happened along, and I hadn’t particularly discouraged it. I had grown to like Ladbrooke; I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on her company in the classroom. But I knew there had been a therapeutic quality to our relationship. We spent our days in a warm, supportive environment, and it had been easy to extend to her the same kind of gentle caring I provided for the children. I had taken each day as it came and never thought much more about it.

But how had we gotten here? I had vivid memories of sitting on the side of the pool at the spa, telling Carolyn that whatever Ladbrooke did with herself on her own time was her business, that I couldn’t care less. How had I gotten from that point to this point? All along I had meant for her to get legitimate help from someone who knew more about the kinds of problems she was coping with than I did. But I’d known she still wouldn’t go into treatment of the alcoholism, and because she was never drunk in my presence anymore, I had never pressed the issue. Now, suddenly, I became concerned that I’d done something incredibly wrong. My classroom was, at best, a bizarre form of therapy. Was I hurting more than helping? Should I have forced the matter of traditional therapy? Was I being naïve? Was I being irresponsible? Was I being stupid?

Previously, I hadn’t thought so. I had great faith in the healing powers of my kind of milieu. Moreover, I felt any supportive environment would be preferable to empty days full of arguments with her husband and drinking bouts. And my setting was well suited to cope with Ladbrooke’s low self-esteem and lack of control. Indeed, she had done very well in there. Neither had I been especially daunted by my lack of expertise in the treatment of addiction. I was comfortable dealing with her other problems, and that had seemed sufficient to me at the time. I was experienced and qualified, both in my own methods and in more traditional therapeutic techniques, so I’d never felt I was overstepping my abilities. As nonconforming as the circumstances were, I’d felt satisfied. Now, suddenly, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

Lying on the couch, I stared into the darkness. Three and a half months now, and Ladbrooke gave no indication of letting go of the booze. Was this my failing? Was I, like Tom and everyone else, more a part of the problem than a part of the solution?

F
eeling like something chewed over by a sheep, I dragged myself off the couch when my alarm rang at 6:30. I had to go into the bedroom and rummage through the drawers and the closet to get my clothes for school because I hadn’t been thinking clearly enough the night before to get them out then. Sprawled comfortably across the bed, the tension finally gone from her face, Ladbrooke never stirred.

When I returned at 4:30, it was obvious Ladbrooke had only been up a short time. Her eyes were puffy from so much sleep. Her hair was uncombed. Still dressed only in her underwear and my Minnie Mouse T-shirt, she was sitting at the kitchen table with orange juice and an English muffin. She had her feet up on the chair across from her and was paging through a copy of
Time
magazine that had arrived in the mail.

“Hi,” she said pleasantly, when I came in.

“Hi. How’re you feeling?”

“Okay. A lot better. I was tired.”

“So I gathered.”

I left the room to take my things in to the desk in the bedroom. I stayed in the bedroom for some time, slowly changing my clothes and steeling myself for what lay ahead.

Back in the kitchen, I wrestled a package of ground beef out of the cluttered refrigerator with the intention of making spaghetti. I didn’t know if Ladbrooke was staying for supper or, for that matter, if having just downed breakfast, she was going to be interested in supper immediately afterward. But making spaghetti sauce was fiddly enough to give me the appearance of doing something else when what I really needed to do was drag some sense out of Ladbrooke.

Taking down the chopping board, I began mincing an onion. I had my back to Ladbrooke and I could hear her still turning the pages of the magazine. “We’ve got to do some serious talking, Lad.”

“I’m sorry about last night. I just didn’t know who else to turn to. But I’m sorry for causing you such a lot of trouble.”

“It’s not that so much. I’m glad you did call me in those circumstances. But … it’s … I’m …” Words were failing me. I rotated the chopping block and attacked the slices of onion from another direction. “What was going on last night? What had you been doing before I picked you up?”

Silence.

I used the excuse of getting some garlic to turn around and look at her. She was slouched down in her chair like an adolescent.

I turned back to the chopping board and began to pick the papery skin off the garlic cloves. “I’m not just being nosy. I think we’ve both got to face the fact that I’m involved. If I’m going to start bailing you out of places, if I’m going to be the one picking up the pieces, then I think we’ve got to acknowledge that I’m involved. And if I’m involved, then I have to know what’s going on.”

More silence.

I glanced over my shoulder at her. “I don’t mind. Being involved, I mean. I don’t mind helping you out, but one thing needs to be clear from the onset. It’s got to mean change. I don’t want to end up just one more prop on the stage.”

Continued silence.

I went back to the garlic. Giving one clove a hefty thunk with the back of the knife, I loosened the skin. Making this sauce wasn’t a cover for ulterior motives. It was therapy. For me. I thunked the clove again.

“Lad?”

“I was just out.”

“Had you been drinking?”

“Yes.”

“Last night?”

“No. I had been earlier. In the morning, I think. I don’t really remember.”

Silence came again. Ladbrooke went back to paging idly through
Time
.

I had hoped she would do some of the talking in this conversation. Tired as I was, I didn’t feel like carrying both sides. But she offered nothing. She seemed relaxed and comfortable, sitting there at the table, wearing my clothes, eating my food and reading my magazine. She wasn’t refusing to talk; she just wasn’t helping things along.

“Has it been a binge, these last few days?” I asked, bringing the onion and garlic to the stove and scraping them into the frying pan.

She nodded.

“What caused it?”

She toyed with the edge of one page of the magazine, flipping it back and forth with the tip of her finger. Slowly, she shrugged. “I don’t know. I just needed a drink, that’s all.”

“I’m sure the last thing in the world your poor stomach needed after that virus was a drink.”

“My stomach’s been all right.”

I got the herbs out of the cupboard and took them over to the stove. Bringing a hand up, Ladbrooke braced her cheek with it and leaned forward, appearing intent on an article about world banking. I finished the last additions to the sauce, stirred it and watched it bubble up. Finally, I turned down the gas and put a lid on the pot, before coming over to the table. Ladbrooke took her feet off the other chair to let me sit down. I turned the chair so that I could lean it back against the wall. I didn’t want to be sitting face to face with her.

“We need to puzzle a few things out,” I said.

“There’s not much to puzzle out. That was a horrible day, plain and simple. I got drunk, plain and simple. It’s over, plain and simple.”

“Which day was horrible?”

“Thursday. Well, Thursday and Friday both. That bug was awful. I think I was throwing up about every ten minutes for a while. I hadn’t been sick like that since I was a kid.” She twiddled a piece of hair beside her face. “Tom doesn’t have much patience with things like that, with people being ill. He’s not exactly Florence Nightingale. He kept saying ‘
JEEsus
, Ladbrooke, I can hear you all over the house.’ As if I were being sick just to annoy him.

“And then he wouldn’t take Leslie. He wouldn’t come in from the studio. He slept out there because he didn’t want to take a chance of catching the bug too. So, there I was, commuting between Leslie and the toilet all night long. Then on Friday, his kids came over. They, unfortunately, weren’t the least bit deterred by the bug. I just couldn’t cope, Torey. I really couldn’t. I needed to get out.”

“Why didn’t you call me? I could have done something. If nothing else, you could have come over here. Why didn’t you let me know it was going like that?”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

“It would have been a whole lot less bother than it’s been this way, Ladbrooke. And I wouldn’t have minded. It would have been better than going out and getting drunk.”

She braced her chin on one hand. “I wasn’t thinking that clearly.”

“So where did you go?”

She shrugged. “Just out.”

“By yourself?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

I rose to stir the sauce. Lad said nothing more. Hunched forward, she inspected her fingernails before settling on one to chew.

“Who are the men you go out with?” I asked.

Ladbrooke’s eyes widened. She looked over. “What men?”

I looked directly at her.

Averting her eyes abruptly, she lowered her head. A small, sharp silence followed. Then she frowned. “Who’s been telling you that kind of shit?”

“No one in particular.”

“Who told you? Tom? Have you been listening to Tom?”

I watched her.

“It’s just lies.”

“Look, it’s not something that’s going to bother me unduly, if that’s what concerns you. But it’s something I think I need to know about.”

“It’s
shit
.”

“Shit it may be, kiddo, but let’s not pretend it’s not there.”

Bleak, angry silence followed, and it was shockingly complete. Only the soft burbling of the sauce intruded.

Still at the stove, I turned, wiped my hands on the kitchen towel and hung it over the handle of the oven door. Then I leaned back against the edge of the drainboard. “Look, we’ve got to make a decision right now. Right this minute. I’m suddenly finding myself in this with you, neckdeep, Ladbrooke. God knows if that’s what either one of us ever intended, but here I am. Now the thing is, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either I’m involved and you’re honest with me and we make a real effort to see things change, or else I’m not involved and you don’t go calling me out of bed at two in the morning. You’ve got to decide which you want, because you can’t have it both ways.”

Head down, tawny hair obscuring most of her features from me, she began to cry.

“So?”

“Of course I want you involved. You know that.”

“So?”

“So what? What do you want me to say, for Christ’s sake?”

“So who are the men, Ladbrooke? Where do they figure in this? Are they drinking buddies? One night stands? Or something else?”

No response.

“Is something like prostitution involved?”

Ladbrooke looked up, absolutely horrified. “
No. God
, Torey. How can you ask me that?”

“Because I don’t
know
.”

The horrified expression intensified, and she glanced around the room quickly. I think if we’d been anywhere else, if she’d been dressed in more than underpants and a Minnie Mouse T-shirt, she would have bolted at that point. I could hear her breathing, quick and shallow.

“Look, I’m sorry for being blunt like that,” I said.

“I’m
not
a whore.”

“No.”

“Of all the people in the world to ask me that.”

“I’m sorry, Ladbrooke. But I needed to know. I picked you up in the wee hours of the morning in some phone booth on the other side of town, and there you were, no money, no proper clothing and no intention of telling me what was going on. I had to draw some conclusion, didn’t I?”

“Is that what you really think of me?”

“I asked it as a question, not an evaluation of your character.”

“I thought you were my friend.”

“I am.”

“Shit, with friends like you, who needs enemies.”

“
Ladbrooke
.”

“They’re my friends. Regardless of what Tom has told you.”

I remained silent.

“Just
friends
, Torey,” she said, a little louder than necessary.

“Okay,” I replied.

“I just need somebody sometimes. I like sex, okay? Is that what you want me to say? I mean, Tom’s old. I’m young, Torey. I need a man sometimes. Is that so strange?”

“No.”

Silence came. Ladbrooke covered her eyes a moment with one hand and leaned forward. She exhaled heavily. Anger seemed to dissipate into something wearier. Several minutes passed, and she didn’t say anything.

“I was with someone Friday night,” she said at last. “Usually when I go out, I just take the car and drive. Once last summer, I drove all the way to Denver, 461 miles, just to be alone for a while. To think. To relax. But on Friday I was still feeling too rotten from that bug. So I drove around town and then I got a motel room.”

She paused. I returned to the table and sat down.

“I hate motel rooms. They make me feel lonely. So after I was there a while, I got to drinking down in the bar. I was just too lonely.”

A sigh. “I ended up getting hold of Bill. I don’t know what time it was. I was pretty well potted by then, I’m afraid, because I don’t remember much about it. He was just someone to be with. To sleep with. I don’t like sleeping alone …”

She became progressively quieter and more introspective as she talked. A small pause followed, and she frowned slightly, remaining pensive.

“I don’t know. Maybe it is whoring. Because, if I’m honest, I’ve got to say, I’ll make love to anyone if it’ll keep him in my bed afterward so that I don’t have to go through the night alone.”

I watched her.

“That doesn’t sound very good, does it?”

“It sounds honest.”

She nodded. “Yes, it is honest.”

The earlier emotion was gone entirely. Ladbrooke remained in the same position, head braced in one hand, but she just sat, staring at the table. She looked pale and worn. “Anyway,” she said, “I got hold of Bill.”

“So that was Friday night, yes?”

“Pretty much. Not as exciting as you seemed to think. And Saturday and Sunday and Monday just got swallowed up. I don’t know where they went or what I did. That time just disappeared. By yesterday, I’d had enough. We were still at the motel, and it was getting boring. And I was sick a lot. I got to thinking about you and the kids and I wanted to come back to work.”

She lifted her shoulders in a slight half shrug. “Nothing special happened last night. We just got into an argument over Bill’s driving. He was driving like a lunatic, and I told him the police were going to get us if he didn’t settle down. I got really mad at him because he just didn’t listen. And I was scared to death something was going to happen. So I told him to stop the car and let me out
right there
. And he did. My coat and my purse were in the back seat, and I couldn’t get them. He slammed the door and drove off before I could. But nothing sinister happened. It was all pretty mundane.”

Silence.

I looked over at Ladbrooke. I really looked at her, studied her features, and it occurred to me that somewhere along the line, I had stopped seeing her physical beauty. This surprised me, and I wondered at what point it had happened. I now had to search her face to see what had seemed so overpoweringly obvious to me in the beginning.