News Blues (25 page)

His shoulders sagged. “I understand.”

But did he? Did he really get the fact that I needed him to stay away for good?

It didn’t matter. All that could be discussed on a later date. Right now, I had to get to the hospital. To Lulu. A vision
of her, strapped to life support, unable to breathe on her own, gripped me and wouldn’t let go.

Oh, Lulu, why? Was it worth it?

We jumped in my car and sped to the hospital. Jamie pulled up to the emergency entrance, promising to return my car to the
driveway and take his motorcycle home from there.

“I’ll call you, ” he said, grabbing my hand before I could exit the vehicle.

“Please don’t.” It killed me to say, but I had to. I removed his hand from mine. “It’s hard enough without you being so sweet.”

“Maddy, please. I don’t want to lose you.” His eyes were pleading. And they broke my heart.

“Don’t you get it, Jamie? You already have.”

I got out of the car and slammed the door too hard, bursting into tears. I ran into the hospital without looking back. It
was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

I scanned the waiting room, looking for my dad, and found him in the far corner. Next to him sat a mousy brunette in black-rimmed
glasses who, for a moment, I couldn’t place. Then her slightly bulging stomach clued me in.

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, heartbreaking 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 venegence, 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.