“And are you aware that as mandated reporters, the staff at this clinic is required to alert the Department of Children and Families of any instances of child abuse or neglect?”
Molly still said nothing. I’m flying. Far away from this clinic, and this life.
“Leaving a child alone in a freezing car isn’t a sound show of judgement, Ms. Monteith.”
Molly’s panic was all-consuming. “No! I left her with…” Who was the woman she’d passed on the way in? She’d attended group counseling with her for a few weeks after being admitted to the clinic and had chatted with the woman more than once. “Jordan!” she said triumphantly, as Victoria had opened her mouth to speak. “Jordan was keeping an eye on her while I ran inside. I passed her on my way in.”
Molly darted for the exit, her heart jackhammering in her chest. “I’ll make sure I’m on time tomorrow,” she said. It now seemed far more important to get out of there without Victoria reporting her to DCF than it did to get her dose. Molly opened the door and sprinted outside.
What had she been thinking? It was freezing, so how could she have left Audrey in the car?
She was so shaken from the confrontation inside the clinic that it didn’t occur to her to be thankful the Civic started on the first try. She sped from the parking lot, turning onto Route 108.
“Mm—mommy,” Audrey said from the backseat, “I’m re—really, really hungry.” The girl was shivering, and her cheeks were wet; she’d been crying while Molly had been gone.
“Right,” Molly said. A pack of cigarettes was tucked into the crease of the passenger seat, and Molly threw it to the floor when she discovered it was empty. She squinted at the Dunkin Donuts ahead. It would be a splurge, but she could bum a cigarette and appease Audrey at the same time. “How about some Munchkins?” Molly sing-songed. “If we go to Dunks, will you forgive me for pulling you away from your pancakes this morning?
She’d meant it as a joke, but Audrey considered this question solemnly. Molly’s chest tightened above bruised ribs.
“I gu—guess,” the little girl said.
The Dunkin Donuts off Route 108 was an extension of the clinic parking lot—the stage on which many a drama went down—and Molly remembered this upon observing the countless cars and the sea of familiar faces through the plate-glass windows. She tried to convince Audrey that the drive-thru would be just as fun, but Audrey wouldn’t hear it and Molly owed her at least this one small indulgence.
Coffee and greasy bags of donuts in hand, Molly scanned the restaurant for a place to sit. She was about to tell Audrey that it looked like they were going to have to eat in the car after all when Molly’s assumed babysitter, Jordan, gestured to Molly. Molly hesitated, then wondered if she could let Jordan in on the white lie she’d told Victoria. She ushered Audrey forward.
Jordan made room for Audrey, while Jordan’s friend pulled a chair over for Molly.
“Thanks,” Molly said, burning her tongue on her coffee. “It’s been one of those days.”
“Yeah?” Jordan studied Molly. “We were wondering about that. You miss your dose?”
Molly blinked, embarrassed to find that tears stung her eyes.
“What are you going to do?” Jordan’s friend asked. “Sorry,” she blushed. “I’m Cassie. I don’t mean to be nosy, it’s just that I missed my dose last week for the first time. I know how you feel.”
“What can I do?” Molly said. “I’ve got to grin and bear it ‘til tomorrow.”
Jordan and Cassie exchanged a look, and panic rose in Molly’s chest, a feeling that was becoming as common as a wellspring that rose with the rain. Did they doubt her intention to stay clean? The last thing Molly needed was a second instance of her ability to mother Audrey called into question in a single morning. Jordan dipped a chunk of muffin into her latte. Cassie fished a lip gloss out of her sweatpants pocket and applied a fresh coat.
“It totally sucks though,” Jordan said a moment later. “Being sick. It’s like when you’re first getting stable on the clinic and they take for-goddamn-ever to bring you up on your dose. They make you fill out a form with your counselor once you’ve been coming a certain number of days, so every time you want to go up, it’s like an act of Congress.”
“Did you hear about when Kristy Hughes first got admitted?” Cassie asked.
“Of course,” Jordan said. “Who hasn’t?”
They looked at Molly and saw that Molly hadn’t.
“Tell, tell,” Jordan goaded Cassie, “Molly wants to know.”
“Well, Kristy was on Valium, had, like, PTSD from an abusive relationship, but they told her she was on too high of a dose and made her taper off. At the same time, her counselor followed the clinic’s smoking cessation policy and recommended Kristy get on Chantix. They brought her up on her dose at a snail’s pace and she was constantly complaining of withdrawals. Between that, being off her Valium, and the severe depression that came with the Chantix, Kristy—”
“She tried to kill herself,” Jordan interjected.
Molly took a long swallow of coffee and tried to recall if she’d ever been in group with a Kristy Hughes. The name didn’t ring a bell, but it was harder to concentrate and she had a general sense of unease that had nothing to do with her current company. It also seemed unfathomable to have been craving a cigarette.
Don’t tell me I’m going into withdrawal already.
Cassie and Jordan were still talking, debating the plausibility of another recent rumor they’d heard through the clinic grapevine. Molly rubbed her temple and tried to focus.
“Johnny P. said he saw it with his own eyes!” Cassie was saying.
“Johnny P. is full of shit!” Jordan said, matter-of-fact. “He also never leaves his mother’s basement, so I’m not buying a story that involves him hiking through the Scoutland trails any more than I believe him when he says it was the lab’s fault his drug screens were dirty.”
Molly smiled weakly. “Sorry, I zoned out for a second. What about hiking in the woods?”
Cassie turned to Molly. “You know the woods in Rollinsford? Well, those trails are a popular place for people looking to get high. There’ve been… reports from those who’ve gone into the forest, claiming that one second, they’re alone with their drugs, and the next, they look up to see a set of stairs in the woods.”
“They’re not, like, part of a demolished stone wall or anything like that,” Jordan clarified. “They’re stairs right out of Suburbia, USA, only smack in the middle of the woods!”
“Stairs?” Molly echoed, confused. “Why would there be stairs in the woods?”
“No one knows,” Cassie said. “But everyone who’s seen them describes them the same.”
“If you go looking for them,” Jordan said, in a tone appropriate for telling ghost stories around a campfire. “If you go to the exact same spot where they were last seen… they’re gone!”
“Have you looked for them yourself?” Molly asked.
“Well, no,” Jordan admitted, “but Cassie’s friend, Crystal, she’s friends with Nicole Price, and Nicole’s boyfriend, Eddie, and he says that he was walking one of his dogs in the woods and threw a stick way ahead of them on the trail. When he caught up to the dog, it was standing there at the edge of a clearing, looking up at a set of stairs.”
“Did he get a picture?” Molly asked.
“No,” Jordan said, disappointed. “I guess he didn’t have his phone with him.”
Molly yawned. Her eyes watered, and her nose ran. Cassie studied her knowingly.
Molly feigned ignorance. “I’ve had a bit of a cold lately. It’s been freezing all week and my landlord’s a dick. We’re lucky if the thermostat sees sixty all winter.”
“Right,” Cassie said. She glanced at Audrey, who was still distracted by her talking teddy bear. “So what do you think? Will you make it until tomorrow without calling your old dealer?”
Cassie’s eagerness broke through the fog of Molly’s methadone-starved brain. She realize
d how stupid she’d been to share anything with these women. Even the most mundane details of her life were fodder for the gossip mill, and now Cassie and Jordan knew that she was in dire straits until tomorrow morning. She shuddered as she thought of how close she’d come to letting Jordan in on the lie she’d told Victoria. Better to keep quiet and hope for the best.
Molly almost toppled her chair as she stood. “I have to go. Thanks for sharing the table.”
Molly looked back at the two women before she and Audrey slipped from the restaurant. Leaning over the table, heads almost touching, they were too engaged in conversation to notice.
It was eight by the time she’d put Teddy aside to read Audrey a bedtime story of her own. She’d quelled the shaking of her fingers in order to smooth the girl’s hair, and set her teeth against the ache of her muscles as she pulled the covers tight across Audrey’s tiny frame.
The sun had retreated from the sky, pulling its patterns of light from the walls and floor with it as it went, leaving a world of shadow in its wake. Molly stood in the living room like the survivor of a shipwreck, unsure how to get through a night that stretched before her like the sea.
The voices told her to abandon her resolve, to throw it all away while her daughter slept, to look at the squalor of her life, at the bruises on her body and the layers of scar tissue that marred the crooks of her arms, and pose the obvious question: what was the point?
She walked to the bathroom compelled by the apocalyptic feeling that accompanied every stage of opioid withdrawal. She rummaged through the medicine cabinet until she’d amassed a decent stash: Trazadone, Nyquil, the Gabapentin Audrey’s father had given her years before, and a Clonidine script that bore the name of her old roommate.
Alone, none of the medications would go far toward alleviating her distress. If she was lucky, the Trazadone and Nyquil would help her sleep, the Gabapentin would assuage her restless legs, and the Clonidine would lower her blood pressure enough to keep her calm. Molly knew the clinic would consider this instance of self-medication a relapse, but if she could get through the night without reaching for her phone, she’d call it a success.
Molly laid everything out on the coffee table and lowered herself onto the couch. She would try to sleep while she still could and take the medication—like a Band-Aid on a bullet wound—when the withdrawals were unendurable.
—
Molly did not immediately recognize the thunderous banging as someone knocking on the door. When she sprang from the couch, nausea and anxiety hit her like a tsunami. She crossed the apartment in three long strides, and before she could speculate who was on the other side, Molly gripped the frame and flung the door open.
The woman was younger than Molly, but in her smart navy suit and pearls, clipboard under one arm, she seized the upper hand straightaway. Her blond hair was pulled back into a low, tight bun, and her cardigan enveloped a body sculpted by Pilates.
The man was close in age to the clipboard-wielding woman, caramel-skinned, bespectacled, and apologetic. Molly realized what was happening too late; her reaction to the Division of Children, Youth, and Families on her doorstep only made things worse. She kicked at the door, trying to shut it in the woman’s face, but the woman caught it and pushed it open again, Molly’s sluggish limbs no match for reflexes unimpaired by withdrawal.
“Ms. Monteith? I’m Kate Shephard and this is my colleague, Henry Mendoza. We received a report on the possible neglect of a child under your care. May we come in?”
Kate Shephard did not wait for a reply. She walked past Molly and into the apartment, her head on an immediate swivel. “Where is your daughter now?” she asked.
“She’s sleeping,” Molly said. “You can look in her room if you want. I’m sorry I tried to shut the door on you, I didn’t mean to, I panicked and…”
Kate was surveying the mess of dirty pans on the stove, the mixing bowl caked with batter, the juice glasses attracting fruit flies.
“I… I was late this morning and didn’t have time to clean up.”
“Late for the clinic, is that right?’ Kate asked. She glanced at her notes. “But you missed your dose regardless, if I understand correctly. That’s when you left your three-year-old daughter alone in the car to plead your case despite the knowledge that the clinic is bound by law from administering methadone after eleven AM?”
Molly’s stomach churned with fear and rage. “It was only for a second,” she stammered. She turned to look at the closed door of Audrey’s room. If she could only get them to peek in on Audrey, in the room that was right out of a fairy tale, at the clean, warm comforter Audrey slept under, and the posters and books and toys and clothes that lined the walls and shelves, then everything would be okay. But Kate had no interest in observing Audrey; Kate only wanted to judge Molly and all her failings as a mother.
“And she wasn’t alone. I had asked a friend to watch her.”
“Right. A Jordan Pendelson,” Kate said, referring to her notes again. “We spoke to Ms. Pendelson, Ms. Monteith. She said you never approached her with a request to look after your daughter. She also said that you were not feeling well when she saw you at Dunkin Donuts this morning and that she doubted your ability to care for your daughter in the face of withdrawal.”
Molly felt as if her organs had been replaced with stones.
Kate continued, “We will be opening an investigation into your parenting of Audrey Monteith. Please be present at our Somersworth office on Monday at nine AM, with Audrey in tow, at which time we will begin the proceedings to determine if your daughter should remain in the home with you or be removed from your care. If you fail to—”
Kate’s voice ceased to have form or meaning as Molly’s gaze travelled to the coffee table. There, her insurance policy against withdrawal was splayed out for anyone to see, the dayglow orange of the prescription bottles in stark contrast to the table’s light wood. She said a quick prayer, desperate for Kate to remain unaware of the cache, for Henry’s eyes to refrain from alighting on the names on the prescription bottles, the names that were not her own.
Molly flashed back to the scene, twenty-five years earlier, when she’d been ripped from her own mother’s bruised and bleeding arms and placed in the back of a social services van. She couldn’t let that happen to Audrey. Molly maneuvered herself between the state workers and the pile of drugs on the coffee table, and when Kate’s monologue came to an end, Molly responded without hesitation.
“I understand,” she said.
For a beat after her reply, Molly felt the universe shrink to the few square feet separating Kate Shephard from Molly’s potential ruin, and Kate seemed to intuit Molly’s simmering terror. She suppressed an exhalation of relief when Kate turned to Henry, made a final admonishment for Molly not to be late on Monday, and nodded for him to follow her out of the apartment.
With that, Molly was alone. Understanding seemed divorced from thought, and she stood, unmoored, in the center of the room. Her breathing came in ragged gasps, her body unable to withstand the torment of withdrawal when coupled with the mental agony of the ramifications of the state workers’ visit. She spun toward the coffee table, planning to jump the gun on the pharmaceutical grab bag of relief. She stopped mid-stride.
In the tapestry of her mind, a seam ripped opened. Through that hole, a tempest blew.
Molly sprinted out the door and up the stairs before she could talk herself out of what she was about to do. It occurred to her, as she banged on Klay Shoemaker’s door, that there were a million things wrong with her plan. Klay might be out, or have company, another woman he billed with his fists and his fury, another woman who breathed in mouthfuls of his filthy, beer-smelling rug while pieces of her soul cracked off and drifted away, never to be recovered.
Following the creak of hinges, Klay’s massive form filled the doorframe. He was backlit by the glow of a television, beer in hand. A pungent wave of sweat and marijuana seeped into the hall.
“I need a favor,” Molly
said. She felt both piercing shame and monstrous anticipation. Flip sides of the same daedalian coin.
Klay leered knowingly. “You here to pay January in advance?”
Molly grimaced but forced herself to press on.
“Something important has come up and I have to run out. I should be back in a half hour, forty-five minutes, tops. Do you think you could watch TV in my apartment until then and keep an eye on Audrey for me?”
Klay couldn’t keep the surprise from his face.
“What the hell, Molly? I ain’t no babysitter. What do you have to go do?” His eyes narrowed. “You ain’t going to do what I think you’re going to do, are you?”
“Of course not! But I can’t get into it right now. Can you do this for me? Please? I’ve got a fifty-inch flat screen,” she said.
She refrained from telling him she hadn’t had cable in months.
Klay sighed. “I guess. Jesus. You’re going to owe me for this. Know what I mean?”
“I know. Whatever you say.”
Molly’s mind was already five steps ahead. It was with monumental effort that she came back to the present.
“Audrey’s sleeping and should stay that way until I get back. If she happens to wake up, give her a glass of milk, stick a tape in her Teddy Ruxpin, and tell her I’ll be home before it gets to the end of the story. Got it?”
—
No matter how long Molly stayed clean, her dealer’s phone number never changed. With the heroin in her pocket, the world Molly traversed that night was a different one. The moon was full, but the sky was starless, and Molly walked in search of the perfect place, the Civic having finally shit the bed. The last cruel affront in a day—no, a lifetime—full of them.
The town was strung with Christmas lights, but their splendor fell far short of penetrating Molly’s consciousness.
Molly walked until she no longer felt the cold through her slippers. She walked until the swishing of her arms against her threadbare jacket lulled her into numbness. She walked until the lights of the town fell away and the moon was as bright as the sun. She walked until the buildings and shops gave way to long stretches between houses, then to farmland, then to woods.
Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked Page 15
