Her Perfect Life

by Rebecca Taylor

  Clare felt a tap on her shoulder and jumped. When she turned, she saw Mrs. Cummings standing right behind her. She had pushed to the front of her overflowing grocery cart in order to get closer to Clare.

  “It’s a shame what almost happened to you,” Mrs. Cummings began with a breathless urgency.

  Clare stared blankly back at Mrs. Cummings, her face made strange by a heavy hand of makeup that left her eyes ringed with a mix of dark brown and blue, her bouncing cropped perm hacked like a hedge that ended right at her dimpled chin.

  “That boy, drinking like that, putting your life at risk. It’s simply a miracle you weren’t killed as well.”

  Clare got the impression that this woman had been waiting for exactly a moment like this to express herself on the topic of Adam Collins and the shocking thing that had happened last year.

  Mrs. Cummings placed her bloated fingers on Clare’s shoulder. “The hand of God. His watchful eye.” She nodded. “I just hope you know how much this whole town is grateful that you didn’t have to pay the ultimate price for that boy’s sins. If ever you need anything…” She nodded her head, the space between her eyes crinkling for emphasis.

  Clare couldn’t conjure words. They had deserted her, and in this moment when she needed them most. She stared at Mrs. Cummings’s foundation-filled pores and remembered that it was her oldest son, Greg Cummings, who had once yelled at her from his lunch table surrounded by his friends, “Hey, Clare? If you ever need some extra cash, I’ll let you suck my dick for ten bucks!”

  Two tables away, Adam had overheard Greg. He got up out of his seat, strode over with his fists clenched, and punched Greg Cummings in the face. Back then, Adam had only been Adam, recreational basketball player, son of the piano teacher, good student, her best friend. And now he was gone. Her Adam was dead. The realization kept attacking her when she wasn’t ready—like now, standing in line at the grocery store, listening to some fat, middle-aged bitch who knew absolutely nothing tell her how lucky she was.

  “Oh.” Mrs. Cummings pointed over Clare’s shoulder to the clerk waiting to scan her box of doughnuts. “Your turn, sweetheart.”

  Clare turned from the woman, paid for her doughnuts with a wad of one-dollar bills pulled from her front pocket, and left the store, forgetting all about Help Wanted signs, red aprons, name tags, and any seedling thought she may have been entertaining about moving on with her life. She rushed through the parking lot and pulled the car keys from her fleece jacket, barely registering what she was even doing until she was sitting behind the wheel of her mother’s car, doughnuts still in her lap, the early Sunday morning sun blinding her through the dirty windshield.

  In the privacy of the car, Clare gasped, filling her lungs several times. One of her migraines was blooming, right behind her left eye, a storm swirling and gathering speed. Flashing lights began to strobe in her peripheral vision.

  “Shit,” she whispered, dreading the pain, like a vise on her skull she would now be enduring alone in her darkened bedroom for the rest of the day. She placed the box on the seat next to her and managed to get the key in her shaking hand connected with the ignition slot. Any minute, the waves of pain would blind her, leaving her incapacitated. She considered heading back into the store right now and calling her mother to come pick her up in her patrol car.

  She turned the key, cranked the starter, and pumped the gas until the engine turned over and she could back out of her parking space. If she ran back in and called for help, two horrible things were for sure going to happen. One, she’d definitely run back into that bitch Mrs. Cummings. And, two, it would take much longer for her to get to the orange bottles that held an assortment of pills that had been prescribed for her assortment of problems—including her head—that the accident had left broken.

  “Ten minutes, please, brain. Just give me ten minutes to get home.” All her meds were lined up on the dresser she shared with Eileen in their bedroom. The sooner she got home, the sooner she could try to chemically ward off the seizure starting in her head.

  Clare took another deep breath and gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make her hands sweat and her knuckles turn white. She could do this, she told herself as she accelerated out of the parking lot and took a right onto the street.

  Ten minutes later, her vision blurred by lightning strikes of pain, tears rolled down her cheeks as she pulled the car onto their driveway. Forgetting everything except her need for the cool dark of her room, Clare managed to at least put the car into park before she pulled herself out of the driver’s side door and made her way to the front stoop with her eyes squeezed shut and her temples pressed hard between the heels of her hands.

  “Clare?” Eileen’s voice broke through the electric currents pulsing across both hemispheres of her brain. Clare heard the screen door open and felt hands on her upper arm and back guiding her up the stairs and into the house. “Mom!” Eileen shouted, sending a fresh shock wave from Clare’s ear to the base of her skull.

  “What’s wrong?” their mom asked from somewhere nearby. Clare kept her eyes squeezed tight.

  “Oh! Again? Get her to her room, Eileen. I’ll get some water for her pills.”

  As her sister guided her down the short hallway, Clare dragged her hand along the wall to help keep herself steady. Once they were through the bedroom door, Clare dared to open one eye the thinnest of slivers. Light pouring in from their south-facing window made her clasp one hand over both eyes. “The drapes,” she croaked.

  Eileen helped lower her onto her bed, and then Clare heard the sound of the plastic drape hooks sliding along their metal runner as her sister pulled the cord until the heavy blackout fabric met in the center of the window and transformed the room into a cocoon of darkness.

  “Grab her pills,” her mother said as she entered the room with a glass of cool tap water.

  “Which one?” Eileen asked, picking up two bottles to inspect the labels.

  “Here,” their mother said. She placed the water on the side table and took the pill bottles from Eileen. “You go close the car door. I’ll do this.”

  As Eileen left the room, Clare rolled onto her side and pulled her knees to her chest with her head cradled between both her arms. Light, sound, breathing sent a continuous stream of pain radiating out across the interconnected network of neurons throughout her head.

  “Clare, here,” her mother said as she uncurled one of Clare’s clenched fists and placed two pills into her palm. With as little movement as possible, Clare brought the meds to her lips and turned her head enough to allow her mom to get the glass of water to her mouth. After three tiny sips, a thin stream of water ran down her chin, but Clare managed to wash the pills down.

  “What else can I do?” her mom asked.

  “Nothing,” Clare whispered. Even this small sound echoed through her head like a wrecking ball. “Just go.”

  She felt her mom’s cool hand on her neck. It rested there for a moment and then moved to the side of her face. Clare knew she was trying to help her feel better, but even this touch was like a siren screaming across her nervous system. Clare just needed her to leave, close the door, and allow her to wrap herself in silence and darkness until the fireworks exploding in her head stopped. When it didn’t seem like that was going to happen any time soon, Clare begged, “Please…go.”

  On the bed next to her, Clare felt her mother’s weight shift and heard her sigh. “Okay,” she whispered and stood up. A second later, the door latched closed with the softest of clicks. Clare, finally left alone with her pain, waited for the medication to cut the edge.

  She didn’t move, barely breathed. Her only concern was keeping a steady pressure on her head and any light from entering her vision. Minutes passed, the drumbeat in her brain an erratic spasm that at first gave no sign of giving way to the drugs meant to keep her from feeling like her brains were exploding all over the inside of her skull. But
after a while, the pulse slowed, the intensity softened, and Clare was finally able to pull her arms from her head and open her eyes to the soft gray light in the room created by thin lines of bright midmorning sunshine leaking around the edge of the thick curtains. The flashes of light across her vision had stopped, along with the accompanying swell of nausea that always went hand in hand with these episodes.

  Before her accident, Clare had never experienced anything more uncomfortable than a hangover. Now that her body had been ejected thirty feet through the windshield of Adam’s truck, and survived, debilitating migraines had become a regular part of life. It was just one more thing about her existence that was awful now.

  Clare pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and crawled to the end of her bed, reaching her arm across the narrow space between the bottom of her bed and the dresser. She grabbed the bottle of pain pills and scooted back to the top of her bed. Clare propped herself against her headboard and opened the bottle. It was a recent refill and still mostly full. She tipped the bottle and let all the pills pile into her palm.

  She’d thought about it many times over the past year.

  Because how hard would it be? A handful of pills. Wash them all down. Lie back and wait. Sleep. Go. Die. Painless.

  She didn’t know what the point of anything was anymore. She hurt, physically, mentally.

  Adam was gone.

  She would never get over that. She would never let herself. She loved him, even now. He had been gone over a year, and she still loved him just as much.

  More even.

  She missed him. All the time. Talking with him, his laugh, listening to him play the piano, watching him play ball, holding his hand, kissing him—making love to him.

  Clare let the pills tumble from her hand and onto the bedsheet. She used her finger to spread them out, then pushed them back into a pile. She wished she had been the one to die that night. Why hadn’t it been her? What was the point in her surviving? Adam was the one with his whole life, a real life, ahead of him. His talent, his brain, his gifts—if there was a God, like fucking Karen Cummings was so sure of, and that God had spared Clare’s life that night instead of Adam’s, well then, God had made a huge fucking mistake.

  Clare grabbed the water glass off her side table. She picked up a pill between her thumb and index finger, placed it on her tongue, held it there for a moment, then washed it down. She picked up another, placed it on her tongue, then washed it down.

  She wanted to die. Her life was useless; she was useless. What was she ever going to do? How could she, Clare Kaczanowski, nobody from nowhere, ever possibly be worth anything without the one good thing, the one amazing person she had lost? What was left? Living with her mom in Casper forever? Red smock and a name tag? Clare picked up another pill, placed it on her tongue, and took another swallow of water.

  The handle on the bedroom door turned, and the latch clicked.

  Clare pulled her blanket up over her pile of pills.

  “Clare?” Eileen whispered as she poked her head through the crack in the door. “Oh.” Eileen smiled at her. “You’re up. I wanted to check on you but not wake you if you were sleeping.”

  “I’m not sleeping,” Clare said.

  “Are you okay now?”

  Clare hesitated. For half a second she considered tossing the blanket back and showing Eileen the pile of pills she was planning on slowly making her way through. “I’m okay.”

  “Does it still hurt?”

  “Yes, but not as bad.”

  Eileen came all the way into the room and sat down on the edge of Clare’s bed. “Mom’s upset.”

  Clare looked into her sister’s eyes. “About what?” she whispered.

  “She’s worried about you. I think she’s afraid.”

  Clare stared at the blanket in front of her. “Afraid?”

  Eileen shrugged. “I don’t know. The migraines…other stuff too, I think. I don’t think she realizes they’re getting better.”

  “Better?” Clare raised her eyebrows. “How would you know and how do you figure?”

  “Well, before today, it had been two weeks since your last…episode. And before that, ten days. When you first got out of the hospital, they were every week, sometimes two or three. Mom didn’t realize that they’ve been getting less and less over time. I think she was afraid that you’d never stop having them.”

  Clare looked at her sister. “They’ve been less?”

  Eileen nodded.

  “You’ve been keeping track?”

  “Well, it’s not like it’s hard to notice when you’re shut in our shared bedroom in the dark for hours at a time.”

  “I didn’t realize… I didn’t know they were getting better.”

  “I imagine it doesn’t seem like it when you’re the one dealing with them. Do you think—I mean if you’re feeling better enough—that you could come lie on the couch? I think it would make Mom feel better if we were at least all together, even if we’re just watching a movie and eating doughnuts in the living room.”

  “I forgot about the doughnuts,” Clare said.

  “I brought them in from the car. We’re waiting for you.”

  “The doughnuts are why I ended up with this stupid migraine in the first place today.”

  Eileen wrinkled her brow.

  Clare shook her head. “In line at the store, Greg Cummings’s mom said something to me.” Clare sighed. “I let it upset me.”

  “God, that guy was always such an asshole.”

  “And his mother is horrible.”

  “Well, at least we know where he gets it from.” Eileen smiled. “Will you come out?”

  Clare bit her bottom lip and nodded. “Just give me a second. I’ll be right there.” Clare sat and waited while Eileen got up from her bed and headed back out the door without closing it behind her. She waited a few more seconds, just to make sure she wasn’t going to pop back in, then lifted the blanket and scooped all her pills back into their bottle before refastening the cap. She placed it on her bedside table next to the half-empty glass of water.

  Clare stared at the bottle, then closed her eyes. “I have to leave,” she whispered.

  The realization felt so true, the answer to a problem she had not fully understood until this moment. She had been living under a tremendous weight ever since she had woken up in her hospital bed in Cheyenne. The weight of her old life, her old dreams, her old self. Being here, staying here, all she really wanted was that life back, the future she’d lost. That future, that life with Adam, waiting for Adam to come home, marry her, start a life with her. She wasn’t ever getting that back. She would never stop loving him, but she wasn’t ever getting him back.

  “I’m leaving,” she said again. She would run from this claustrophobic town and her whole goddamn life. Somewhere it would be impossible for her to ever get tapped on the shoulder and emotionally assaulted by someone who believed they knew the first thing about her, her life…her loss.

  Run away from anyone that imagined they could possibly ever know what happened to her the night her life turned completely upside down in the blink of an eye on an old dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

  “Clare?” Eileen called from the living room.

  “I’m coming,” she answered, swinging her legs over the side of her bed.

  Chapter 17

  Eileen

  Since Eileen arrived unscheduled and unannounced to visit with her mother, she needed to wait for half an hour while Ella finished her session with her personal medical assistant and trainer. She was already in the saltwater pool.

  “I’m sorry, but changes to her schedule and routines greatly upset her. It’s important, for her mental health and well-being, to adhere as much as we can to her schedule.”

  Eileen nodded. “Of course.” If this was any other run-of-the-mill retirement home, s
he would be suspicious of being kept from seeing her mother right away. Like maybe the woman was spending most of her days alone, in filth and unchanged soiled bed linens, incapable of advocating for herself, due to the fact that she spent half her waking time believing it was 1995. But the sheer opulence of the place, more like a five-star hotel than geriatric home, made Eileen believe it was highly unlikely. After all, Clare wasn’t paying fifteen grand a month for their mother to endure daily abuse and neglect. One might assume that in addition to the miles of granite, towering displays of fresh flowers, and tasteful artwork, the community was also able to hire top-notch nurses and caring professionals.

  “I’m sorry this is so unexpected,” Eileen added, as if she needed to apologize for her sister’s untimely and inconvenient suicide. “We’ve just had…” She took a breath and considered how to word it. “Some unexpected family news.”

  “I see. Should we have one of our family therapists on hand? To assist with Ms. Kaczanowski with any necessary processing?”

  Eileen’s mouth fell open slightly. “Processing?”

  “Is the news likely to cause Ms. Kaczanowski emotional distress?”

  “Oh, well, yes. But I…I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  The woman’s mouth flatlined. “Very well. Please let me know as soon as possible should you change your mind. We do advise having a therapist present. Responses, particularly for our patients with Alzheimer’s, can be unpredictable and difficult for family members to navigate alone.”

  Eileen could think of no good way to explain, politely, her mother’s long-held views and suspicions about mental-health workers. Perhaps simply letting her know that Ms. Kaczanowski didn’t even like her two daughters speaking with the high school counselor when they needed a schedule change, because only walking into the office could potentially land them on a Freudian couch, their minds cracked like fragile eggs, tears spilling down without end for weeks.