Love at 11 (31 page)

This
was Cindi with an “i”? For some reason all this time I’d assumed the woman who broke up my parents’ marriage to be a gorgeous blond bimbo. But Cindi looked average. So girl-next-door. For a moment that made me feel better. But then I remembered the monster growing inside her belly. It made me think of Jen. And how Cindi had done the same thing to Dad as Jen just did to Jamie.

I wished my mother were here.

My dad rose from his seat, his face ashen and worn. We embraced and then he gestured to Cindi.

“This is Cindi, Maddy,” he said, looking extremely nervous. “Cindi, this is my daughter, Maddy.”

“Hi,” she said shyly, holding out her hand. “I’m so glad to finally meet you, though I’m sorry it has to be under these circumstances.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” I said, shaking her hand briefly, distracted. There was no time to assess her, judge her, pick apart any faults. I turned back to my dad. “How is she?”

“They haven’t told us much. They think she had a stroke.” He brushed a tear from his cheek. I’d never seen my dad cry before. It made me very uncomfortable. “The doctors don’t know yet whether it’s caused permanent brain damage.” His voice broke and Cindi took his hand, squeezing it in her own.

I sank into a plastic waiting room chair, the world spinning out of control. My sister. Having a stroke. Sixteen-year-olds weren’t supposed to have strokes. Strokes were for old people. People who had already lived long, happy lives. Not people whose lives were just beginning.

What had happened to her? Where had things started going wrong? If I hadn’t let the first time slide—the time she said it was Ritalin—would she have gotten help before she’d gotten so bad? Was this somehow all my fault?

“But she was in rehab,” I said. “How did she get out?” My dad stared at the ground, not able to answer. “They think she bribed one of the orderlies,” Cindi told me. She paused, then added, “With sex.”

Oh, God. I didn’t want to hear any more. It didn’t even seem real to me. My sister sold herself to some random guy so he’d let her out and she could do more drugs? That didn’t sound possible. Then again, maybe it was. A vision of her, in my bed with that disgusting Drummer guy popped into my brain. I had to face facts. My sister was a drug addict. And drug addicts did any damn thing they had to in order to support their habit.

*

The hours passed slowly. The worst thing about hospitals was the waiting. No matter which hospital you found yourself in, there’s never much to distract you from your worry and grief.

Hospitals were much worse than airports, which at least had shopping and restaurants and booze. The hospital gift shop with its sappy get-well cards and brightly colored beanie babies couldn’t entertain even the most desperate shopaholic for more than ten minutes. And the bland Salisbury steak and lime green Jell-O specials at the cafeteria made for a minus two star rating from food critic Maddy Madison.

So you sat there. Waiting. Feeling bored and then feeling guilty that you were feeling bored. You should be thinking about the patient inside and you were, but you also wanted to think about other things even though you feel that’s completely disloyal to the person you were there for.

In other words, I desperately tried to keep all thoughts of Jamie out of my mind. But even had I been busy, I doubt the replays of our conversation would have ceased running through my brain. And since I was completely unoccupied, sitting in my chair, the visions became relentless. His sad eyes. His warm touch. His awful, heart-breaking news.

Oh, Maddy, what are you going to do?

My dad got some exercise at least, pacing back and forth across the waiting room floor until I wanted to reach out and trip him to physicalize my annoyance. I’d been in such a rush I hadn’t even brought a book, and the romance I’d picked up at the hotel gift store only made me angry.

In romance novels, the heroes, no matter how bad they start out, always redeemed themselves in the end, becoming loving husbands and fathers—to the heroine’s children, not the ex-fiancée’s. Then again, perhaps Jen was the heroine of my story and I was the villainess. It made sense, actually, since I’d stolen Jamie away from her. She was pure as the driven snow. Madonna incarnate who just wanted to marry the man who’d asked her. I was the whore who’d seduced him. And that meant she was the one entitled to the fairytale ending.

I threw the book against the wall and it landed with a thud on the floor. An elderly woman huffed at my blatant cruelty to literature and retrieved the novel. I watched her page through it and wondered if she still believed in that naive kind of love.

With nothing else to read, I sat in my squeaky plastic chair, waiting to see if my sister had destroyed her brain. I sat and thought. About life. About the universe. About everything. But mostly about life and how fucked up mine had become.

It was funny how things could turn on a dime. Yesterday the world had been my oyster as the saying went (though I never was quite sure what that was supposed to mean). My sister had been recovering in rehab. I’d just finished editing an Emmy-worthy news piece. And I was living a happily-ever-after with the man of my dreams.

And then in a few hours it all went to hell.

I glanced over at my father and Cindi. He’d stopped his pacing and sat with his head on her shoulder. She held his hand on her rounded lap and was stroking his palm. They looked very much in love, which kind of weirded me out.

I wanted to think of Cindi as some horrible home-wrecker who’d swept in and destroyed my family, but these days I was starting to realize that sometimes life just wasn’t that black and white. I only had to think about the Jamie situation to see that. Had Mom and Dad, like Jamie and Jen, grown apart over the years? Had they stayed together out of habit, each inadvertently making the other miserable and complacent? And when my dad did stumble on a second chance for happiness, did he have the right to go after it like he did? Or should he have honored the thirty-year-old commitment he’d made to my mom, no matter what the current state of their relationship? They’d tried counseling and even an open marriage and nothing had worked. Was it better in the long run to call it quits? Even if in the short run, several people—my sister, for example—got caught in the crossfire?

It was a tough call. I didn’t have the answer. Heck, I couldn’t even figure out my own sorry love-life. All I knew was that even though I was furious with him, I missed Jamie with a vengeance, and a big part of me wished I hadn’t pushed him away. Still, it was better in the long run, right? This way I didn’t have to deal with a baby and possible future rejection down the road.

I rose from my chair, too confused to sit still a moment longer.

“I’m going to get some air,” I told them, motioning to the door. Cindi smiled and nodded.

I stepped out into the crisp night, wishing I had taken a coat. People who didn’t live in Southern California never understood how cold nights could get here.

I stared at the sidewalk in front of the emergency room. This is where they had left Lulu. Her so-called friends had abandoned her on the pavement. Just in case they would be held responsible for her death.

Not that she was going to die, I reminded myself. “Maddy!”

I looked up from the sidewalk and my eyes widened as I saw my long-lost mother stepping out of a cab. She waved and then turned to pay the driver.

She had returned.

In reality, she hadn’t been gone all that long. Only about a month. But so much had happened within that month it felt like a lifetime.

“Hi, Mom,” I said as she approached me. The words sounded lame, coming from my mouth, concealing the anger that bubbled beneath the surface of my calm exterior.

“Honey!” She threw her arms around me and smothered me in a huge maternal hug. Behind her, the cab sped away. I didn’t know whether I should hug her back or pull away. I was happy to see her. But I was also quite pissed off.

“You’ve returned,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Yes. Your father phoned me and told me about

Lulu. I took the first plane home.”

“How self-sacrificing of you.”

She frowned at my sarcasm. “If you have something to say, young lady, why don’t you go ahead and say it?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to start in on her. Not under these circumstances. Not with Lulu a few rooms away.

“You blame me,” she said simply. “You blame me for what happened to Lulu.”

Okay, fine. She wanted to know what I thought? Fury rose inside me and I couldn’t hold back. “Yes, I fucking blame you. You took off on your daughters when we needed you the most. Was around the world in eighty days fun? Was it worth maybe losing your youngest child to drugs?”

I knew I was shouting and I knew some of the EMTs by the parked ambulances had started paying attention—intrigued by the nighttime drama—but I didn’t care. I was so mad I was shaking.

“No. It wasn’t worth it. I hadn’t thought out the consequences,” my mother replied, not raising her voice. “I only thought about me and my grief.”

Her grief. I snorted. “And what about the rest of us? We were grieving, too.”

“It’s not the same,” she said, looking at me with a fierce expression I’d never seen her use. “You didn’t lose your marriage. Your partner for thirty years. You didn’t have a man leave you to start a completely new family. You have a career. A life. Friends. You still have your dad even. I spent my whole life taking care of a man who one day decided the sacrifice I’d made wasn’t good enough. Do you have any idea how that feels?”

I shook my head no. Though actually, now that I thought about it, the whole thing had a weird parallel to my short relationship with Jamie. Maybe Jen and Cindi could set up play dates for their evil spawn.

“You’re goddamn right. You don’t know.” Now my mother’s voice had risen, to a screechy desperation. “So let me tell you. It feels like you’re dying. Like your world has burst apart. So I’m sorry you think I was selfish by going a little crazy. But you’re twenty-seven years old, Maddy. It’s time you stopped believing this fairy tale that your parents are perfect. That we don’t make mistakes or have feelings. That we just live to serve you children. This may seem astonishing to you, but before I was Mom I was a person named Diane.”

I stared at her. I’d never thought about it that way before. To me, she had always been Mom. Cookie-baking, stay-at-home, drive-me-to-gymnastics-practice Mom. But her words made sense. Women in her generation gave up all sense of individuality when they got married and had their husband’s children. In my short years on this planet I’d already accomplished more and experienced more than she had in her fifty-three. How she must have felt when all that came crashing down. Of course she’d gone a little nutso. She was trying to make up for thirty years all at once.

“Believe me, Maddy,” Mom continued. “I had no idea Lulu was so close to self-destruction. If I had I never would have left. At the time I guess I figured she’d be fine with your father—better, probably, because she wouldn’t have to deal with my mental collapse. I had no idea he’d shirk that responsibility and put it all on you. I guess I should have though.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said, starting to understand what had happened. How she felt.

“It’s not though,” she insisted. “If Lulu suffers permanent brain damage ... if she …” My mother gulped. “If she dies …”

I opened my arms and allowed my mother to collapse into my embrace. Sobs shook her thin shoulders as she released all of her upset.

Once again I was stuck in the responsible-one-who-took-care-of-everyone-else role. But I was happy to offer comfort to my mother—especially after all she had gone through.

Still, I wondered, when would someone be there for me? To comfort and give me strength when my world fell apart? Until yesterday, I’d thought that person might be Jamie. But I’d pushed him away. I was destined to face life alone.

My mother pulled away from the embrace. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “I didn’t mean to burden you with all that.”

“Mom, it’s okay. Really.”

“Let’s go inside.”

I paused. “Dad’s in there, you know. With …”

“Oh.” My mother was silent for a moment. “Wow. This is awkward.” She gave a shaky laugh. “Now you see why I thought it’d be better to take a trip.”

She looked so sad. I felt awful for her. She probably wanted nothing more than to seek comfort from the man she’d committed herself to for so long. But he was inside, being comforted by someone else.

“I could use a cup of coffee,” I lied to relieve the situation. “Want to hit the caf?”

My mother gave me a half smile. “Thanks, Maddy. You’re a good kid, you know that?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

We walked into the cafeteria and ordered two coffees, then sat across from each other at the table. I filled her in on Lulu’s activities, how we’d discovered her drug use, bailed her out of jail and sent her to rehab.

Mom shook her head. “I can’t believe my daughter got involved in something like this. Little Lulu. Though she always was a bit of a hellion.”

I giggled. “Yeah. Remember the time she set the living room on fire playing Barbie Holocaust?”

“Or the time she ran away from home and they found her trying to set up a tent at the San Diego Zoo near the panda exhibit?”

We laughed together, reliving the past and reducing the pain. It was so nice to have my mother back. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her until now, and I told her so.

“I missed you, too,” she said fondly. “You and Lulu.” She pulled her hand away and rubbed her forehead. “I just hope my little Lulu is okay,” she said with a long sigh.

“I know, Mom.”

She pounded her fist on the table. “It’s terrible how things have gotten,” she continued. “The government’s so strict with the drinking laws in this country. Heaven forbid a twenty-year-old sips a beer. But a preteen can purchase illegal substances on any street corner. War on drugs indeed.” She huffed in indignation. “If it’s a war, we’ve already lost, big time.”

I nodded wordlessly, thinking back to my own axed drug tunnel story. How Rocky Rodriguez wasn’t satisfied by the fortune to be made in the car-selling business and had funneled money into a much more successful illegal venture. How Senator Gorman had enabled his buddy to easily import drugs in exchange for a hefty campaign contribution. And how News 9, the supposed journalistic watchdog of such actions, had turned a blind eye—all to ensure they didn’t lose an important advertiser.