Shattered (19 page)

“Oh.” I snatch the box from her. “Thanks.”

She just stands there looking at me, as if she expects me to say something more. My eyes are on the contents of the box, and I want to check to see if the pills are still there. But she holds up her other hand, and in it is the Ziploc bag and what’s left of my recently purchased pill supply. “Can we talk now?” she asks gently.

I sink onto the edge of my bed, my arms and legs drooping like a puppet whose strings have been snipped. I am so tired. Too tired to fight this anymore.

“I was right. You have been using drugs.”

Without looking up, I just nod.

“Can I ask when you started doing this, Cleo? Will you give me an honest answer?”

“After Mom died.”

She doesn’t say anything. And when I look up, she has tears in her eyes.

“I needed them, Aunt Kellie. I couldn’t function. I was in so much pain... and I found some old pain pills that Mom hadn’t used. I tried one, and I felt better.”

“So you continued to use them?” she asks. I nod. “And then you ran out?”

“I wasn’t sleeping at night. And then I could barely stay awake at school. A guy there told me about someone who could get them for me.”

She holds up the baggie. “Do you even know what these are, Cleo?”

“Not exactly. Not by name anyway. But I know which ones to take when I need them. And really, isn’t that what people do? What about the doctor in the ER today? Even he prescribed pills to help me.”

She sighs. “That was unfortunate, or maybe a blessing in disguise because it’s helped to bring the truth to light.”

“The truth...” I shake my head.

“There’s more to the truth, isn’t there, Cleo?”

I give her my best innocent look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean something is eating away at you. It has since the day your mother died. I suspect you feel guilty about something. And feeling guilty after a loved one dies is perfectly normal. Take it from me, I know.” Then she tells me about how she felt guilty when Kenny died in Vietnam, how she knew if she’d written him more letters, encouraged him more, he would’ve tried harder to come home. “And then there was Kevin.” She’s crying now. “If I’d been more involved with him... if I’d tried to get him away from his bad friends... or maybe even if I told someone when I knew he was doing drugs, maybe he’d still be alive.”

“But he made his own choices, Aunt Kellie. Both your brothers did.”

“And so did your mother.”

I’m trying to wrap my head around this.

“For some reason your mother chose to go to the city that night. You didn’t choose for her, did you?”

“No... but—”

“Don’t get me wrong; I have a strong suspicion her reason for going to the city that night was related to you. But did you make the choice for her to go there?”

I’m just staring at my aunt now, no longer seeing her as an old-fashioned dim-witted frump but as a person with far more sense than I imagined possible.

“Did you?”

“No,” I say quietly.

“So... why don’t you tell me what really happened that night?”

The lump in my throat is getting big again; the tears are stinging behind my eyelids. “I—uh—I don’t think I can,” I gasp.

Now she sits beside me on my bed, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me close. “Cleo, your mother loved you more than anything in this world. More than she loved Hugh or herself. More than anyone. Do you believe that?”

I just nod, but the tears are streaking down both cheeks.

“Your mother would’ve done anything for you. And there is absolutely nothing you can do, nothing you could’ve done, that your mother wouldn’t forgive you for. It’s like your pastor said today. God is like a very good mother who loves you no matter what and forgives you for anything. Now, I wasn’t blessed to have a mother like that myself. Neither was Karen. But she did everything she knew how to become a mother like that. And sure, maybe she took it too far at times. But it was only because she loved you so much.”

“I—I know,” I sob.

Aunt Kellie hands me a tissue. “Now, tell me what happened, Cleo. And know that you can trust me—just as much as you could trust your mother. Okay?”

“Okay...” And after I stop crying, after I’m able to breathe without choking, I spill out the whole horrible, sordid story. And Aunt Kellie just listens. She doesn’t act shocked. Doesn’t show disapproval. She simply listens. And when I’m done, she hugs me tight, stroking my hair, and promises me that it’s going to be okay.

“Things are going to get better, Cleo.”

“I
want
to believe that.”

“They will. I promise you, they will. But first we need to tell your dad.”

I take in a shaky breath. “I’m not sure that I can.”

“You can do this, Cleo.” She takes my hand. “I’ll help you.”

I feel like some of the load has been lifted from me, and that’s reassuring. But the idea of telling my dad what I just told Aunt Kellie feels like jumping off a cliff. On one hand, it might end this thing. On the other hand, it might hurt an awful lot when I land.

B
y the time I finish telling my dad the truth, he looks like I just aimed a gun at him and shot him in the chest. But instead of crying out in pain, collapsing on the kitchen floor, and bleeding to death, he turns from me, walks out of the house, gets in his car, and drives away.

I look at Aunt Kellie, and she simply shakes her head. “Give him some time, Cleo.”

“But you were so understanding. Why didn’t Dad—?”

“I should’ve considered the shock factor for him. Remember, I already had my suspicions regarding all this. But your father probably felt completely blindsided by it. The perfect image of his perfect little princess was just shattered for him.”

“But you told me to confess—”

“You did the right thing, Cleo. And your dad will come around in time.”

“But what if he doesn’t?”

“If he’s the man your mother believed him to be, he will. He just needs some time to sort these things out. He’s been through a lot this past month. We all have.”

I go over and hug her. “Thanks for standing by me.” Fresh tears are coming now. “And I’m sorry for all I put you through. I can’t believe what a spoiled brat I’ve been to you the past few weeks. And you were just trying to help me. You must’ve thought I was horrible.”

“Like I told you, there’s not much you could do or say that would shock or disappoint me. I’ve pretty much seen it all. I knew you were going through something beyond your mother’s death. I’m just glad you finally got it out in the open.”

“I don’t know if Dad is ever going to feel that way.” I take a paper napkin from the basket and wipe my tears with it. “What if he never forgives me?”

“You can’t control his response, Cleo. It’s his choice whether or not to forgive. Just like it was your mom’s choice whether or not to go into the city that night. You can’t take responsibility for either of those choices.”

“No, but I can suffer the consequences.”

“That’s true. You can also prolong the suffering if you refuse to forgive yourself.”

“It’d be a whole lot easier to forgive myself if I knew that my dad was going to forgive me, too.”

“Time will tell.”

I’m pacing in the kitchen now, feeling—more than ever—the need for another pill, some kind of relief. Aunt Kellie is calmly putting on the teakettle, like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I say suddenly.

She turns, looks at me. “Do what?”

“Make it—without pills.”

“Oh...” She opens the cupboard and gets out a box of chamomile tea.

“What if I just have one of the prescription pills—you know, the ones the ER doctor prescribed?”

“When did you last take a pill, Cleo?” “I don’t know.”

“Think hard. When did you last have one?” She looks evenly at me, and I can tell she already knows the answer.

“Right before Dad checked the answering machine,” I confess.

“And what kind of pill did you have?”

I think hard. “A pain pill.”

“And before that pill? What did you take?”

“That was this morning. I took one of the amphetamines. Just one.”

“And before that?”

I’m pacing again, trying to remember, trying to be honest. “Last night, really late, I took a sleeping pill. I’d already taken one, but I needed two last night.”

“I’m not saying this is going to be easy, Cleo, but I think now that you’ve told the truth, you won’t need the pills like you did before.”

“But I need one now!”

“Yes. Your body is telling you it needs one. But what does your mind say? What does your heart tell you?”

I sit down, trying to think about this. What does my mind say? And my heart? I remember how many times I’ve hated myself for needing chemicals like this. Now I have the chance to stop this madness. “Do you think I’m an addict? I mean, a serious addict?”

She smiles. “I think you were on the way to becoming one. And your body has become dependent on drugs. But with some help, you can beat this.”

The teakettle whistles, and she pours the hot water into one of my mother’s favorite teapots, and the smell of chamomile tea wafts through the kitchen. “I know this isn’t as strong as what you’ve been using”—she slides a cup toward me—”but it might help.”

As we sip our tea, I tell her a bit more about how hard it’s been these past few weeks, tell her what a relief it is to have the truth out in the open. “Except for that look on my dad’s face. That was awful.”

She nods. “Yes. I know.”

“And really, I’m not sure I can forgive myself, even if Dad forgives me. I mean, I will always know that Mom went there that night because of me. Because I went to the city even though she told me not to. I’ll always know that if not for me, she would still be alive. That feels like it’s my fault.”

Aunt Kellie sits across from me. Her eyes are sad, and she’s looking over her cup of tea and out the window, as if she’s seeing something else besides the cherry tree in our backyard and the grass that needs mowing. “We can blame ourselves for things that were beyond our control for a lifetime, Cleo. We can torture ourselves for years and years. But someday, we have to accept that we don’t control anyone but ourselves. And then we have to account for all the time we lost fretting over those things we couldn’t control.”

“Like blaming yourself for the deaths of your brothers?”

She nods. “And other things.”

“Like what?”

“There’s something I never told anyone, Cleo. Well, besides God, and it took me far too long to do that.”

“What is it? Will you tell me?”

“I think I will. But only because of what you confessed to me today.” Her eyes are misty now. “It happened one morning when I was ten and fed up with the way my family lived. I was late for school—and I knew I’d get detention for it—but the dress I wanted to wear was still in the washing machine, along with the other clothes I had put in there to wash the day before. Really, it was my own fault that it never made it to the dryer. I mean, we’d been doing our own laundry for years by then. But my mother was in the kitchen, and I yelled at her and told her it was her fault that I was going to have detention. I told her she was the worst mother in the world and that we would all be better off without her.” Aunt Kellie lets out a little sob. “And really, it was kind of true. But it was cruel and selfish. And that was the day...”

“The day she left?”

Aunt Kellie just nods. “I never told any of my siblings. Not even Karen, and I told her almost everything.”

“Oh...”

“So you see, I really did feel as if I were to blame for all that my siblings suffered in the following years.”

“But like you said, you didn’t control your mom’s decision to leave, right?”

“That’s right. But in my heart, I felt that I did. It took me years to figure it out. And as you can see, it still hurts now.”

“But lots of kids tell their moms things like that. I’ve heard Lola telling her mom off lots of times.”

“But Lola’s mother didn’t leave and never come back.”

“No. Well, she left, but she took Lola with her.”

“The only reason I told you is because I thought you would understand, Cleo.”

“I do understand.” I reach out and place my hand over hers.

“I carried that guilt far into adulthood and into my marriage, too. And it’s why I never had children. In fact, long ago your mother and I made a pact never to have children.”

“A pact?”

“It’s sad, but true. I think we were partly worried we’d have children as messed up as our parents... or even like some of our brothers. But that wasn’t all. We were equally worried that we would repeat history and fail as mothers.”

“My mother was a fantastic mom,” I assure her. “And you would be too.”

She smiles sadly. “Thanks. And I know your mother was proud of you. How many times did she whisper to me, at one of your recitals or some other event, that you’d come out all right?”