by Janet Rebhan
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
Nancy’s voice did not work on the first try, but then she regained composure: “I’ve got a suicide attempt: a razor cut to the left forearm approximately six inches long and a half inch deep. I think it may have sliced the radial artery.”
Nancy gave the operator Fiona’s address. As the last of the bloody water drained out of the tub, she rested Fiona’s head flat so as to keep whatever blood was still in her body pumping into her brain. One by one, Nancy extended and elevated Fiona’s legs, resting each ankle high on the opposite end of the claw-foot tub to get as much blood as possible moving back in the direction of Fiona’s heart. She reached for a nearby towel and covered her friend’s lower extremities. She knew the paramedics would place defibrillator electrode pads on both sides of Fiona’s bare chest just above her breasts to monitor her heart, possibly even administer an electrical shock, but there was no need to expose the rest of her body to the highly skilled technicians who would soon arrive to try to save her life.
Yet first, they would search all too frantically for a vein, any vein, in a body already perilously drained of its life-giving, oxygen-abundant blood, so they could start intravenous feeds of precious liquids back into Fiona’s system—liquids that would not bring oxygen (only a transfusion of blood could do that) but would nevertheless keep her veins flowing with something so they could remain open.
By the time her colleagues arrived and raced up the stairs toward the master bedroom, she worried it was already too late, even though they had arrived within minutes of her call. She was not sure how long Fiona had been in the tub before she had come on the scene.
She felt an overwhelming urge to return to the living room to find Charlie. He crept into her arms readily and easily, and she rocked him back and forth in the living room. She walked back up the stairs, one at a time, the cat frightened in her arms, not purring, only slightly comforted, kneading his furry declawed paws against Nancy’s clavicle and sniffing lightly at her ear lobe.
She stood in the doorway and watched the controlled chaos of three men and two women simultaneously administering first aid to Fiona’s reluctant body: first, they applied direct pressure in the form of a clamp; then, one particularly adept male paramedic who looked familiar to Nancy attached a bag valve mask, sealing it over Fiona’s nose and mouth with a large outstretched palm, his pinky and ring fingers laced under her lower jaw, gently cradling her head. When Fiona’s chest failed to rise and fall with the squeezing motions to the attached oxygen-filled bag, he switched quickly, adroitly to intubation with a tracheal tube.
Just before they wrapped Fiona’s listless body in a silver thermal blanket and lifted it off the floor, placing it on a stark white stretcher and hurriedly carrying it down the stairs to the waiting ambulance, they pummeled it with last-ditch-effort electric shocks that caused her naked breasts to flop about. The indignity of it all was more than Nancy could bear on her friend’s behalf. She squatted slowly to her knees, hot tears flowing freely down her cheeks.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Nancy found herself pleading. “Fiona . . . Fiona . . . Oh dear, dear Fiona, what have you done?”
CHAPTER 15
The landline in the kitchen rang four times before it went to voicemail. Caroline stirred from her nap on the family room sofa. The afternoon light poured through the high clerestory windows on the west wall, causing Caroline to squint and wonder how long she had been asleep. Cali Cat lay beside her, purring loudly, curled into a ball close to Caroline’s head. Caroline pulled the cat close to her chest and kissed her between her fuzzy ears. Cali squeaked out a yawn and licked the tip of Caroline’s nose.
Caroline sat up and looked around, somewhat disoriented at first. Then she noticed the wineglass on the coffee table, felt her lethargy, and let out a heavy sigh. Cali jumped off the sofa and stretched her paws out in front of her, leaving her tail end high in the air before prancing off down the hallway toward her water dish. Caroline noted the time on the wall clock: 2:30 p.m. “Shit!” She stood and made her way slowly into the kitchen, where she dialed the number on the telephone to check her voicemail:
“Oh hi, Mrs. Martin, this is Debbie at St. Jude’s. We had you down for two o’clock today to sign for our family orientation event. If you’re running late, or if you can’t make it, please give me a call as soon as possible so I can try to line someone else up to take your place. Thank you.”
Caroline hung up the telephone and looked again at the wall clock. “Shit,” she said again. She picked up the phone and began dialing before she paused, hung up the receiver, turned, and retrieved her wineglass from the coffee table. “It’s too late now,” she said. “Anybody in the audience who can’t hear will just have to read lips today.” She refilled her glass and sat down at the kitchen table. Cali Cat padded back into the room and jumped into her lap. Caroline looked into her cat’s eyes, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. She thought of the people she had let down and began to conjure a story:
I had a flat tire on the way and then found out my Auto Club membership had expired. Then my phone died because I forgot to charge it the night before so I couldn’t call to tell you I wasn’t going to make it in time.
Or she could tell the truth:
I’m depressed because I aborted my daughter and now she’s in a foster home because she ended up being born to a murderer instead.
She decided the lie would go over better than the truth. But she would wait and call tomorrow. At this point, it didn’t make any difference because the orientation was already over. It crossed her mind to call her AA sponsor—the same one she had worked with ten years ago when she had been in the car accident that had fractured her spine. The same sponsor who had helped her get through the grueling months of bed rest and therapy without drinking herself silly. The one Jake had insisted she call or else. But right now she just didn’t feel like calling anybody.
So she sat at the table, Cali in her lap, and sipped her wine. She thought back to the first time she ever tasted alcohol. She had been in high school, and her boyfriend, Bradley, a popular guy who was a tight end on their award-winning football team, had just dumped her for the head cheerleader—a well-endowed girl who had a reputation for “putting out” with the boys she dated. Caroline, who had never been dumped before, was devastated. To make matters worse, she was actually a good friend of the cheerleader. They had both been on the pep squad together in middle school and had precalculus and English lit together their junior year. Her emotional pain was so bad, her chest actually hurt as if her heart really had been broken. She remembered taking a bottle of burgundy from her father’s wine cellar and retreating behind the pool house with a blanket after her parents had retired for the evening. She spent the night looking out at the stars and the view behind her backyard and dreaming of a future where no one could ever hurt her like that again. She decided it didn’t matter whether she fit in or not. After that, she cruised through the rest of her senior year without many friends. She focused on her studies and ignored the rumors that swelled around her. Rumors that she was a frigid bitch who thought she was better than everyone else. Rumors she had threatened Bradley’s new girlfriend. Rumors she’d slept with Bradley’s best friend. All of them absolute falsehoods. All started by Bradley because she, Caroline, had refused to spread her legs for him. She ended up losing her virginity during her freshman year at college to some random guy she never saw again. But in high school, she had stayed faithful to her mother’s wishes, was in fact her beloved mother’s only daughter, a straight-A student with two parents who doted on her. She eventually became acutely aware that she belonged to a class of wealthy, educated, and privileged individuals living in the hills of Los Feliz, and she often felt compelled to make excuses for it. Ultimately, she decided that because she had been given more, she wanted to give back, so she went out of her way to be kind to others and help those in need. She volunteered for a number of charitable organizations throughout her college year
s, particularly those that helped young children. Yet in most other circles, it continued to be an uphill battle getting others to look beyond all the window dressing and see her as just another human being trying to make sense of her life and find her purpose. In her world, it seemed disingenuous adults were everywhere. It was the children who were honest and uncorrupted.
Caroline lay back down on the sofa and slept some more. She awoke the second time when she heard the hallway door that led into the garage slam shut. Her husband was whistling, which was something he never did unless his day had gone well. Caroline swaggered into the kitchen and splashed some cold water on her face while Jake slipped into his office to empty his briefcase and check his messages.
Moments later, they were already in an argument. Jake had only asked how her day had gone. Caroline made the mistake of telling him about her missed appointment. Then she told him she was worried because her depression was getting worse. Jake, from his happy stance, responded too quickly. “I don’t know why you’re so depressed. I mean, look at you. My God, you’re beautiful,” Jake said. “Most women would be happy just to wake up every day looking like you do.”
Caroline sighed heavily. “What is it with you men? You think beauty makes up for anything. So long as you have looks, nothing else matters; everything else will simply fall into place.”
“Well, doesn’t it?” Jake asked.
Caroline paused. Her shoulders slumped and her head cocked sideways as she stared quizzically at her husband. “You’re joking, right?” Jake pulled a face and shrugged his shoulders, his gaze remaining steady on his wife. It was the end of a long workday, and he stood in the kitchen, his tie loosened, mail in hand, seemingly unprepared for her dark mood.
Caroline stood across the room near the sink. She wore black leggings and a thin white T-shirt. Her hair was pulled up in a high messy bun on the top of her head, her face makeup-free. A glass of red wine on the countertop near the sink was almost drained. She turned away from her husband and fixed her gaze on something outside the window above the sink.
“I mean, all my life I’ve heard people say this to me. I guess it’s easy to make the assumption that if you’re beautiful everything just gets handed to you on a silver platter.” She shifted her weight and squinted her eyes at the diminishing sunlight angling through the window from the west. “But this so-called gift of beauty is a razor-sharp, double-edged sword.” She raised one arm in the air, demonstrating with an open-palmed hand. “It cuts both ways, with one edge cutting toward the light and the other edge slicing through to the dark side. And the older you get—particularly if you’re a woman—the sharper it gets on the edge of darkness.” Caroline paused, breathed in deeply, turned toward her husband again, and continued. “Unless of course, somewhere along the way, you manage to form some character and some passions outside of maintaining your looks. But that usually takes longer when the world caters to you just for looking like you do. Eventually, you get lazy, and you just start to skate through life simply because everybody lets you. Everyone is your codependent enabler, granting you free rein to be less than—less than they would otherwise expect of you were you not so pretty and less than you’re capable of. So it’s just as much the fault of our society as it is the outwardly beautiful person if they never live up to their truest and best potential.”
Jake stood, unmoving. “Wow,” he said. “I had no idea you could be so . . . so cynical.”
“I’m not cynical!” Caroline snapped. “I’m just sick and tired of being told that beauty alone should solve all my problems—especially coming from you! Have you even been listening to a word I’ve just said?”
“It was a compliment, Caroline! I was only trying to cheer you up!”
“I refuse to be less than!” Caroline shouted.
The room went eerily quiet. The icemaker in the refrigerator made a knocking sound, and Caroline began to shake uncontrollably. Jake crossed the kitchen floor and reached for his wife, but she pushed him away, grasping instead for the open decanter atop the center island filled with wine: a Cabernet Sauvignon from the Bordeaux region of France. It was her favorite, made from thick-skinned grapes that yielded an age-worthy wine that blended well with others: unique yet adaptable. And there were more bottles in the wine refrigerator underneath the center island.
Caroline liked to keep her Cabernet at sixty-three degrees Fahrenheit. She knew the fuller-bodied reds were best served slightly chilled. But she was careful not to overcool it, either, because that could cause the wine to lose the subtler aspects of its flavor. That was one reason she always held her wineglass by the stem and not the bowl—especially if the wine was high end. She wanted to maintain its perfect temperature.
She was a woman who prided herself in her culinary expertise and her knowledge of fine wines. It had caused more than a few people to call her a snob, but she insisted she just knew what she liked. She was insulted the first time this happened, but by the time she had reached her fortieth birthday, she had learned not to care what other people thought about her. She had resigned herself to her fate: that she would never be completely understood by anyone, not even her own husband. But she was okay with this. She knew who she was. And she was finally comfortable in her own skin.
“Hon, you better go slow; you’ll get another hangover.”
“What do you care? It’ll be my pain, not yours,” Caroline said, pouring herself another liberal glassful, sipping it immediately.
Jake let out an involuntary huff of breath and shook his head from side to side. “You just don’t get it do you?” he said. “Your pain is my pain. I love you. If you hurt, I hurt.”
Caroline bit her bottom lip and narrowed her eyes at her husband.
“I’m trying really hard to understand, but sometimes I just don’t get you,” Jake continued. “You’re overly sensitive at times. I mean, and where is this self-destructiveness coming from?”
Caroline looked down at the floor and touched the lobe of her right ear, twisting the diamond stud that pierced it as she thought.
“I feel . . . helpless. I feel powerless. And when I drink, it takes me away from that so I get a break from it all. The wine makes me not care as much.”
Jake paused, studying his wife with a careful eye. “You know,” he said, “it amazes me how you can step outside yourself and analyze yourself from a shrink’s perspective, yet you’ll continue with your self-destructive habits anyway. Why, Caroline, if you know that what you’re doing is only going to harm you and not help you, do you continue to do it anyway? Why?”
“Because I’m at the point where I just don’t care anymore; all I feel now is apathy.”
“Oh sure,” Jake said. “If the doorbell rang right now and a representative from children’s services stood ready to hand over baby Rachael to you, no questions asked, something tells me you would care.”
“Of course I would, but that’s not happening, is it?”
“It will, Caroline; give it time. Where is your hope? You have always been such a positive person. I don’t like who you become when you drink too much. And drinking certainly isn’t going to make you a better mother, Caroline. You’ve got to remain sober and fight for what you want. So either you stop drinking, or I may just move out until you do.”
Caroline let out a dry chuckle. “You would never do that,” she said flatly, taking another swallow and looking away as she did.
“Don’t push me, Caroline,” Jake said. “I won’t stand by while you self-destruct. That’s not something I can watch or take part in again.”
“If you love me, you’ll ignore me while I wallow in my own self-pity. I’m not asking you to watch or take part in it. Just leave me alone.”
“Fine,” Jake said. “Have it your way.” He turned and climbed the stairs two at a time. When he reached the master bedroom, Caroline heard the door slam shut. She reached for her wineglass on the kitchen counter, knocking it over. Pausing momentarily, she stared at the light-ruby color as it pooled between gl
eaming pieces of broken glass, thinking perhaps it had happened for a reason, to deter her from drinking any more, to make her stop and think—an invisible hand from an unseen dimension trying to send her a message. But she didn’t want to stop and think. She was already well on her way to passing out, and that was exactly what she was aiming for. After soaking up the spill with paper towels and throwing the broken glass away, she opened another bottle she had chilling on the third shelf of the wine refrigerator—the one reserved for full-bodied reds. She refilled her glass and set it down on the counter before heading to the powder room to take a couple Tylenol. On her way back to the kitchen, she saw Jake standing by the center island, duffel bag in hand, looking at her refilled glass. When he turned toward Caroline, his eyes were filled with tears. Caroline’s vision blurred, too, and her temples began to throb. She blinked hard, and when she reopened her eyes, Jake had disappeared. She heard the heavy hallway door that led directly into the attached garage close shut behind him. She paused for a moment, waiting to see if he would open the door again—pretend he’d forgotten his toothbrush, give her a chance to engage him, give him a reason to stay, anything to keep him from following through with his plan to spend the night at the hotel half a mile down the street from their house. But the door didn’t move, and Jake didn’t come back. She heard the deep growl of his Maserati, followed by a familiar heavy thud as the large outer door to the garage shut decisively.
Caroline inhaled a jagged breath. For a moment, she almost let herself think about how Jake must be feeling. Then she caught herself and placed that thought in an invisible box she kept inside her psyche, a box she kept for things to consider later, as she allowed herself the time she needed, craved even, to mourn the loss of her baby. The thought that she had inadvertently aborted the very life she had so desperately wanted to bring into the world made her cringe and choke back a sudden nauseous billowing in her throat. She wanted to make sense of what had transpired before she became immersed in the overwhelming grief she knew was coming.
