When It All Falls Apart (Book One) (11 page)

My mom received a letter addressed from Madrid, Spain two weeks after he disappeared. It was from my dad and it was the most formal Dear John letter you’d ever read. In a few short lines, he explained to my mom he’d felt trapped in his life for years. He’d never been outside of the Midwest and felt as if his entire life had been mapped out since he was a child and he’d never been free to be who he wanted to be. He’d met a woman and had left the country to be with her. He told my mom he didn’t love her anymore and couldn’t remember the last time he had. He told her to kiss us for him and to take care of us. We never saw our father again. Occasionally throughout the years, he would send us postcards from remote places throughout the world simply signed: Love, Dad.

My mom was devastated. I watched her collapse with shock and horror. It was the most scandalous affair to hit the town in the last decade. Everyone knew about it. Her humiliation was very public. She curled into a ball in her room and cried for days. I listened to her wails wishing there was something I could do to ease them and vowing I would never be the one to make her cry.

The next year was awful. I only remembered bits and pieces because I was so young but my mom lost our house because she couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage. My grandparents were as shocked as she was by his abrupt departure and when she lost the house, we moved in with them temporarily. Being surrounded by them only added to her misery because they were a constant reminder of the life she thought she was supposed to have. Her life had been organized and predictable, but after he left, there was nothing but uncharted territory and an ominous future looming in front of her. Eventually, we moved into an apartment on the other side of town, but it was as if my mom carried a scarlet letter on her forehead. The first day of summer vacation after I had finished first grade and Rachel had completed fourth grade, she packed us into our mini-van and drove as far south as she could get. We ended up in the upper pan handle of Florida.

My mom was never the same. To this day, she’d never formed a relationship with another man. She’d gone on a few dates over the years, but rarely saw them more than one time. If you brought up the subject of my dad, she still talked about him as vehemently as if it had happened a few days ago rather than thirty years.

She put herself back together as best she could for us girls. She worked two jobs to put herself through nursing school but it took twice as long because she had to work two jobs and take care of both of us. By the time she got her nursing degree, Rachel was almost out of high school and I was on my way to starting. She became self-sufficient not out of a desire to be independent, but because she had no other choice and as much as she tried to pretend to like it, we knew it was an act.

Rachel had been a lot like me prior to our move to Florida—sweet, kind, well-behaved, popular, and a great student. Even in the year following my dad leaving, she still managed to stay stable, but once we moved to Florida her entire personality changed. It was as if she’d reached her tipping point and it was the thing that put her over the edge. She made my mother’s already hard life even harder. She was angry at everything and directed all of her anger at my mom. She went from being an A student to failing most of her classes and she was constantly in trouble for not following the rules or starting fights with other girls. By middle school, she was one of the girls who was consistently in detention after school and didn’t listen to what anyone told her to do. She started drinking and doing drugs in high school. She dropped out in tenth grade and despite three stints in rehab, she’d never been able to get sober. I hadn’t heard from her in over three years. The last time I had was a desperate call to bail her out of jail in Las Vegas which I’d refused. I’d bailed her out enough times to know it never made any difference.

At seven, I left my childhood behind and took on the role of making life run easily and smoothly for my mother. I didn’t want to put one more burden on her already heavily laden shoulders. I was determined to be strong for her because she was determined to be strong for us and I felt like I owed her. I made sure I didn’t cause her any more trouble or pain. I became very skilled at shelving my own pain. I didn’t ask her for anything even on my birthday. I didn’t go to her for help with my problems and became good at figuring things out on my own. When I reached high school and started dating boys, it felt like a betrayal to her so I shied away from those conversations as well. Her heart was going to be forever broken and as I fell in and out of love every other week like teenagers do, I kept it to myself. It felt as if I would be flashing it in front of her face.

I loved my mom, but I never wanted to be like her. In third grade, I made a commitment to myself that I was never going to get myself into the situation she got herself into. I was never going to be so dependent on a man that I couldn’t take care of myself. I would have a career that was my own no matter what. I worked hard in school and got good grades. Unlike my mom, who didn’t hold her first job until she was in her early 30s, I had my first job when I was 10. I had a paper route and by the time I was 12, my weekends were spent babysitting. I started working at the local Sonic after school and on the weekends when I was 14 and worked there until I graduated high school. I also didn’t want my mom to feel responsible for putting me through college so I started saving my money as soon as I started earning it. I couldn’t count on getting a scholarship so I wanted to make sure I had a way to go regardless. I didn’t want my mom to feel any pressure. I got lucky and got a full scholarship to USC.

I’d been hiding my feelings and my problems from my mom for so long that it had become automatic and happened unconsciously, but I wasn’t going to be able to hide this problem. My humiliation was going to be as public as hers had been.

W
hen I got back up to the room, David was sitting on Rori’s bed reading her a book. The ward had a small play area where the kids could play. It was stocked with a Thomas the Train table, a kitchen, and every art supply you could imagine. David must have gone down to the play area while I was having my coffee.

“Hi, Mommy,” Rori greeted me with a weak smile. It was the first time I’d seen her smile since she’d been at the hospital. I couldn’t even bring myself to think about how this would affect her. My heart felt as if it was breaking all over again.

“Hi, honey.” I took a seat next to her and gave her a tight squeeze. Her body had never been so frail. It was like pulling a pile of bones next to me. I rubbed her back and could feel every one of her vertebrae poking through her pink pajamas.

“Daddy’s reading me a book,” she announced.

“I see that. Do you like it?”

She nodded. “He said when I get better he’ll take me to the kid’s room and I can pick out whatever books I want to read. I want Pinkalicious.”

Rori was obsessed with everything pink. Last Christmas, my mother had gotten her the book,
Pinkalicious,
and even though she didn’t know how to read, you’d swear she did as she flipped through every single page never missing a word.

“How about the next time I go home, I bring back Pinkalicious?”

Her eyes lit up and she clapped excitedly.

I settled in next to her on her right side as David sat on her left and finished reading her Bernstein bears. He was only halfway through the next book when Rori drifted back to sleep.

“Robin is going to be here in an hour so we can talk,” David announced shortly after.

“What? How did that happen?”

“I got permission.”

“From who?”

“Dr. Wilcox.” He spoke in a clipped tone.

I knew the moment Robin walked through the door that my suspicions had been true—she knew.

“Hi, guys,” she chirped.

She didn’t give me a hug like she normally would. Her eyes nervously flitted around me, looking everywhere but my eyes. She swept through the room picking up coffee cups and tossing them into the garbage. She brushed off imaginary crumbs from the table stretched over Rori’s bed.

David wasted no time. “Text us if she wakes up,” he instructed and turned on his heels to leave. I followed him down the familiar hallway and into a room on the right side. I didn’t know what I’d expected but I hadn’t expected to have our conversation in an empty hospital room. There was something eerie about it. So sterile and barren. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was empty because some child had just died. Much like our room, it had two chairs and I automatically slid into one. There was no way I was going to sit on the bed just in case a child had died there. David took the other one. He pulled it away from mine, back against the wall underneath the TV as far away from me as he could get. He folded his arms across his chest. His jaw was clenched.

“Who is Rori’s dad?” He glared at me.

“David, can we talk about this?”

“We are. Right now. Who is Rori’s dad?”

“You’re Rori’s dad. You’re her dad. You–”

“Shut the fuck up. I’m not doing this with you. Not now. Not ever. Tell me who her father is.” I’d never seen him look so angry. His was entire body was rigid. He looked at me as if I was a vile creature and it took every ounce of energy he had to restrain himself from attacking me and gouging my eyes out.

“Please, please–I just–I just...” The tears that had been frozen began sliding down my cheeks.

“Celeste, answer my question. You can either answer it now or this will get really ugly. Our daughter is dying and her father might be the key to saving her life. I know you might not care about that, but right now, it’s the only thing I care about. I don’t give a shit how he fucked you or where you fucked him. I just want to know what kind of a fucked up medical history he has so I might be able to save my daughter.”

“It’s not even what you think, David. I swear. It wasn’t even like that. It was only–”

He shot me a scathing look and stood up.

“Please, I want to explain–”

He took a step in the direction of the door. “Fine. We’ll do this the hard way.”

He was in the doorway about to be gone. He was leaving again. He couldn’t leave me. Not here. Not like this.

“David!” I yelled. He stopped. His back still to me. I was shaking uncontrollably. “Phil. It was Phil.”

I waited for him to turn around. He didn’t even flinch, just stood still as a statue. What was going through his mind? What was he going to do? How was he feeling? I wanted to beg him to turn around, look at me, or talk to me, but he never turned around. Didn’t utter a word. He simply walked out of the door without looking back. I crumpled in my chair, sobbing uncontrollably.

This couldn’t be happening. I tried to be quiet as I sobbed, but it was impossible. They came from deep within and shook me to my core. I had done what I had done to keep my family together and now I was going to lose them. The harder I willed myself to stop crying, the harder the sobs came each wave more intense than the last. Robin appeared in the doorway.

“Hey,” she said cautiously from her spot. “I’m on my way out.”

My face was drenched with tears and snot. Normally, she would have rushed to my side and thrown her arms around me, told me it was going to be okay, and begged me to tell her the story. Instead, she stood grounded to her post just like David. She looked at me as if I was a stranger she was meeting for the first time.

“Do you know?” I asked the question even though I already knew the answer.

She stared straight through me with no emotion on her face. “He told me last night.”

“Are you mad at me?”

She opened her mouth as if to say something and quickly shut it again. “I don’t know what I am. I need some time.” She didn’t wait for me to respond. She left in the same manner David had without even a backward glance. I sat alone wondering what I was going to do.

How had this happened? What about my life? My plan? Things weren’t supposed to go this way. It wasn’t right. I didn’t live my life like some people did by letting things happen to them naturally. I planned for the future, diligently prepared for it, and made things happen the way I wanted them to. I liked things to go a certain way—structure, routine, and predictable. Whereas those things drove some people crazy, they contained me and made me feel like things were within my control. There was nothing more I hated than feeling like I was out of control.

That Night threatened to intrude on me again. My stomach convulsed and I rushed into the bathroom, kneeling before the toilet as I heaved. Nothing came up. I was empty. The cold lid felt good against my forehead. That Night had changed everything. It had created a shift in the universe that had set all of this in motion. Now that the memories had been released, they were going to destroy me. It had already begun. It was just like it had been in the days following That Night when images pummeled their way into my consciousness and I had to use every amount of willpower I had to banish them into the far recesses of my mind. It was happening again. I felt the way his hand gripped my neck as he flung me onto the bed and the way the cheap hotel bedspread felt against my cheek. I couldn’t stay in the bathroom. I had to move.

I walked into the hallway as if I was sleepwalking. Nothing felt real. The nurse’s faces wavered in front of my eyes as if they were faraway. The lights were too bright. The voices too loud. There wasn’t enough air to breathe and for a minute, I thought I might pass out on the tiles. I steadied myself against the wall before walking back into Rori’s room. David had his chair pulled up next to her bed as if he was standing guard. I started to cry again at the sight of them.

“Don’t you dare cry,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare.”

I couldn’t help it. His words only made me cry harder. I collapsed in the chair next to him and tried to stifle my ragged sobs. It sounded like I was choking. David didn’t even look at me. The tension was so thick I couldn’t breathe.

“I don’t know what to do to make this better,” I said.

“I want you to leave. I can’t be here with you.”