Fire & Water

by Betsy Graziani Fasbinder

  “Have you talked to Jake?” Dad asked as he filled the first row of peanut bowls.

  I tilted my glass, finding the tinkle of ice cubes satisfying. “I don’t really want to talk about Jake.” Despite my reunion with my family, something in me couldn’t tell them the gritty truth about Jake. Perhaps I felt that if I said it, actually formed words and shared them with someone else, it would make it all the more real. In an alcoholic haze, I could pretend otherwise.

  Dad and Tully exchanged glances. “Did Ryan go up to bed, Kitten?”

  “Alice is reading her a story,” Mike answered.

  “Where the Wild Things Are,” Tully explained. “You always loved that one, Katie.”

  I took another warm gulp of scotch. “It’s all about a kid who feels he’s treated unfairly by his mother. Perfect.”

  “Things are topsy-turvy,” Tully reassured me. “It’ll get better. You’ll see.”

  “She’s just taking out her frustrations on you, that’s all,” Dad said. “Once Jake is back home and feeling right as rain again, she’ll be back to her sweet self.”

  I tossed the rest of my drink to the back of my throat and lifted the bottle. “Hey, why shouldn’t Ryan hate me? I’m just the one earning a paycheck. Oh, and I’m selling the only home she’s ever known.”

  Dad filled a beer pitcher with water and began watering his orchids. “So it’s final then, about the house?” I nodded. “What a shame. Such a beautiful place.”

  “It’s too much house. It was a ridiculous, impulsive purchase,” I snapped.

  Tully stirred sugar into his cup. “I know it’s hard with Jake now and all. Well, I’ve saved a few nickels. I could help you out a little, if you need it, Katie.”

  “And I’ve always got some mad money,” Dad chimed in. “Maybe just to tide you over.”

  I put up my hand. “I didn’t ask for your money.” A doctor’s salary should be plenty, but Jake’s debts were choking me. “We need to learn what it’s like to live on what I actually earn. The house is unrealistic. I’ll just have to live with Ryan hating me right now.”

  Dad shook his head and watered his flowers.

  “I’m not the bad guy, you know,” I grumbled.

  “Kitten, everybody needs a little help now and then. Nobody is here to judge.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I grabbed my glass and the bottle and moved to a table at the back of the bar.

  * * *

  The next thing I knew, morning light sliced through the window of my childhood room. Ryan and Alice’s voices rang from the kitchen. “And the green grass grew all around all around,” they sang.

  The smell of pancakes turned my stomach and my mouth felt like a nest of cobwebs. I pulled the covers up over my pounding head.

  “And the green grass grew all around.”

  I made my way to the kitchen. Ryan stood on a step stool beside the stove. When I tried to hug her, she snapped at me. “We’re cooking. You’re going to make me get burned.” I folded myself into a chair at the table.

  “Want a Mickey Mouse pancake?” Alice asked, her tone clipped and formal as she assessed my hung-over demeanor.

  Shaking my head felt like moving a boulder.

  “Feeling well this morning, Katie?”

  “Tip top.” I rested my forehead on the heels of my hands, hoping to stop the imminent explosion. “I’ve got to get some things done at our house tonight. How about we stay there tonight, Noodle? Besides, it’s pretty crowded with the two of us in that small bed.”

  “I want to get some stuff from Daddy’s studio. I have an idea for a project that I want to make for him. He’ll be surprised when he comes home from his trip and he sees it.”

  I didn’t correct Ryan’s assumption that Jake was traveling. “Sure,” I muttered. “Be sure and take care of Daddy.”

  Alice’s eyebrows climbed high on her forehead. “I think I’ll leave the breakfast dishes for you, Katie.” She wiped her hands on a towel and folded it just a little more precisely than necessary. She kissed the top of Ryan’s head. “You have a good day at school, Sweetheart.” Ryan threw her arms around Alice’s waist and squeezed. “Bye, Nana.” Alice descended the stairs without saying anything more to me.

  “Let me dry that hair, Ryan. You can’t go to school with a wet head. I don’t want you getting sick.”

  Ryan tilted her head and put her hands on her hips. “It’s a myth that you get sick from having wet hair. You told me, Mommy. It’s only viruses, diseases, and bacteria that get you sick.”

  “Drat,” I said, poking her ribs with my finger. “Foiled by my own words. Let me towel it off.”

  “I already did that,” she said. Her face was crumpled in a scowl. “Stop telling me what to do!”

  “It would help me a lot if you’d be less grumpy with me.”

  Ryan replied by flouncing off into our bedroom.

  I followed her. Ryan’s bedside lamp glowed, and with the curtains drawn, the light from the lamp still shone. She’d insisted that I bring the lamp from her bedroom at home. Jake had created it for her from shells they’d collected. Unlit, it appeared as a simple lamp—a long cylinder decorated with shells. But when illuminated, it cast a panorama of shadows onto the walls and ceiling, the dark and light creating a scene of woodland animals—deer, birds, butterflies and squirrels—clustered together in a forest full of trees and blossoms. I’d tried for years to see the pattern when the lamp was off, but could see only the shells.

  Ryan plopped onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling. “Daddy’s not working on a job, is he?”

  I lay down beside her and looked up at the shadowy menagerie. “No, not exactly.”

  “Is he still as sick as he was?”

  “They’re just figuring out what medicine can help him the most.”

  “He takes a lot of medicines.”

  “Sometimes it takes a while for doctors to figure out what kind works the best. Every person’s body is different.”

  “Daddy said that the shot he gives himself makes him feel better.”

  “Daddy doesn’t take shots,” I said. “Just pills.”

  “I don’t know how he sticks himself like that. I hate getting shots.”

  I sat up like with a jerk. “You saw Daddy give himself a shot? When?”

  A cloud crossed over Ryan’s face. “I didn’t see him give a shot. I found a bag with his shotters in it when I was looking for paints. A long time ago. Before I started kindergarten. He told me not to touch it because his medicine could make me sick.”

  “Where, Ryan? Where did you find his—his shotters?”

  “In that black cabinet in his studio. Don’t get mad. Daddy told me not to tell you because you’d get mad that I touched his shotter and that he should have locked it up better.”

  Snatching her little hands into mine, I searched for any signs of needle pricks. It was irrational—she’d been in school for months—but panic had taken over my actions. “Ryan, did you stick yourself with Daddy’s needle?” My voice was ragged and sharp-edged. My head pounded both from a hangover and from the adrenaline coursing through me. “Ryan, did you stick yourself anywhere?”

  Tears pooled in her eyes. “No, Mommy.”

  I closed my eyes and pressed my palm to the top of my head, which felt as though it might just blow off any second. What more? How else can Jake screw up our lives? “Listen carefully. Did you touch the needles at all? Did you cut yourself or—”

  “No. I promise. I only opened the bag and saw them. Then I asked Daddy about them. Don’t be mad at me.”

  I scooped Ryan into my arms and clutched her to my chest. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “You’re squishing me, Mommy.”

  I released the clenching grip and rocked her. “I don’t want you to ever touch medicine that you find again. If you find anything, don’t worry Daddy about it. You come to me. I know how to handle medicine, okay?”

  I lay down again beside Ryan and wrapped my body around hers. We
rested there among the shadowy woodland creatures. I missed the Jake who made the magical night-light for his baby girl. I missed the Jake who touched me and made the rest of the world disappear—who could rearrange pebbles on a beach and create art. I missed my friend.

  Ryan finally said, “Mommy, I think I’m going to be late for school.”

  * * *

  After I dropped Ryan off at school, I drove to Sea Cliff. I foraged through Jake’s studio like a dog digging for bones. I thought I’d been through everything looking for bills, but under stacks of paint, tools, and layers of canvas, I unearthed a leather satchel. I opened a bag and revealed a lighter, a strip of rubber tubing, a collection of syringes, wads of foil, clumpy white powder in a sandwich bag, and a bent spoon scorched on the bottom.

  How long had he been using, what? Heroin? Speed? Could he have exposed me through our lovemaking to whatever bacterial or viral nightmare these needles might have introduced to his body? And what about Ryan? What if she had handled these needles and was too scared to confess the truth?

  I’d been in med school when the AIDS epidemic had exploded. Over the course of my career, my needle handling had become fanatical. I’d worked with infected children; I’d attended the funeral of a Stanford surgeon who’d been infected during surgery.

  I jumped from where I was sitting and grabbed one of Jake’s wooden mallets from his worktable. I wanted to smash it all—the syringes, the lighter—then pound the spoon until it was a jagged wad. My whole life had been about repairing things, preserving health, mending that which was broken or diseased. But I wanted to destroy something.

  Like the blue of a sky after a storm, clarity came to me, stopping me mid-motion. Jake hadn’t done any of these things to hurt me or Ryan. Just as my life had been about reparation, his was about creation. He lived for the quick gasp of breath that occurred when someone saw one of the pieces he’d created. In that gasp he felt alive and his life had meaning.

  Illicit drugs had been part of how he’d kept the lion hibernating. How he’d coped with his immense sensitivities. Though he was credited with enormous creativity, Jake actually lacked the kind of imagination it took to live daily life with its compromises and mediocrity. When he could not create, his only option was to destroy—mostly himself.

  I set the mallet on the worktable. With the precision I used when handling surgical instruments, I placed the items back into the satchel, zipped it shut, and returned it to its dark hiding spot.

  * * *

  On my drives to Napa to see Jake, I took in the once spring-green hills of wine country. They had baked all summer and dried to tawny blonde in the rainless days of August. Layer after layer of hills lounged like a pride of lions in repose. I braved the feline guardians each day to enter Jake’s lair, never quite knowing what I would meet there.

  For the first weeks he was a lamb, remorseful, tearful, and filled with apology. Then he began to pace like a caged cat. We sat together on the plastic cafeteria chairs, our dinner trays touching. Jake swirled mashed potatoes with his fork, the tension in his shoulders making him appear ready to pounce.

  “What are you telling Ryan?” he eventually asked.

  “The truth—limited. That you’re taking a break. Resting, trying to get stronger. Trying to find medicine that helps. Once we figure out exactly what we’re going to do, Dr. Malmstrom can help us figure out how to talk to Ryan.”

  Jeanine Malmstrom was the psychiatrist on staff at Serenity Glen. She’d insisted on my participation in some of Jake’s sessions. Though it felt like rubbing my skin with sandpaper, I’d participated, stoically, in each session—if only to comply with the medical advice.

  Jake rammed his tray into mine. Apple juice and decaf coffee sloshed the sides of their plastic cups. “No shrink can teach us how to talk to Ryan. Do you hear yourself? Fuck!”

  “Dr. Malmstrom says you’re doing much better.”

  “Exactly what is better, Kat? Better than what, exactly?” His words were bullets.

  I scanned the room to see all eyes fixed on us. “Jake, stop it.”

  “Stop what? Stop expressing what I feel? That’s all they have me do all goddamn day. The truth? I feel nothing. Nothing! They’ve got me so medicated I can’t get a morning hard-on. Is that what you want, Kat? Maybe I could be like a neutered house pet. One of your dad’s fat cats, maybe. Or better yet a goldfish. A goldfish doesn’t get overstimulated. And if it does, well Whoooosh. You can just give it the old flusheroo.”

  “Lower your voice.”

  “As soon as I form a creative thought, it disappears like, like, like vapor.” Jake’s hands were frantic birds above his head. “I’m not even who I am anymore!”

  “Calm down,” I whispered, looking around at the dining hall full of onlookers. “Why don’t you take part in the art therapy program here? Dr. Malmstrom says that using your talents could be a vehicle to helping you to feel better.”

  “Gluing Popsicle sticks together? Jesus! You said my art was what got me into this shit hole.”

  “Not your art. Your obsession.” Venom sharpened my words.

  “If it’s not obsession, it’s not art. Maybe you want watercolors of barns or baskets of lemons. Macaroni necklaces.”

  “I don’t deserve to be the whipping boy for your bad mood today.”

  “Don’t you? I think you do deserve it. It’s your fault I’m in this place.”

  I folded my paper napkin, set it on my tray, and stood up. “I’ll see you on a day when you can be civilized.”

  Jake stood, knocking his plastic chair over with a clang. “You don’t get to just leave,” he ranted. “You don’t get to just walk out when you don’t like what I’m saying.”

  A broad-shouldered man with “Serenity Glen” embroidered on his blue polo shirt stepped toward us. “Everything okay here?”

  “Fine,” Jake shouted. “Just a little marital communication. You’re all about communication in this place, right?”

  “Why don’t we take this into a private room, Jake?” the attendant said calmly.

  My face burned in the gaze of other patients and their visitors.

  “We have no secrets in here, do we, folks?” Jake pointed his finger at a mousy woman hiding behind her stringy hair. “We hear everything in group, don’t we, Marcia?” She peered up from under her hair curtain. “We know all about Marcia here giving blow jobs for coke. Nick here, he thinks he’s Jesus when he’s off his meds, and Grayson over there is pretty sure they poison the oatmeal. You might just be right there, Grayson. I had some suspicious lumps in my bowl last week and I haven’t taken a shit in four days.”

  The orderly took Jake by the elbow. “Let’s get you back to your room.”

  Jake jerked his arm away and stepped back. “The first complete thought I’ve expressed since I got in here and now they want to SHUT ME UP!”

  “Jake, people are staring.”

  “That’s all you care about. What people think,” he said, his arms flung wide. “What do you care what a bunch of nut-jobs and drug addicts think, Kat? You put me in this funhouse. This is what you get.”

  Fury rose from my gut and I clenched my jaw to stop its escape. I spoke in measured, flattened tones. “You’re here because of your choices, Jake. Not mine. You went off your medication. You put yourself into a heroin-induced stupor. You cut yourself to ribbons.”

  He stared at me, his eyes feral and probing, finding my fear. “My choice was to die. You’re the one who pulled me back into this nightmare.” He turned to the group. “Shall we give the heroic Dr. Murphy a round of applause?”

  One tremulous man stopped rocking himself and clapped.

  I fled the room with Jake ranting behind me.

  * * *

  “You must be psychic. I was going to call you today.” Mary K pulled off her surgical gloves and mask and stepped out from behind the body she was examining—a Latino man of about forty, riddled with gunshot wounds. Mary K wore her sleek hair pulled back and tucked into a blue paper
cap. “What brings you down to the meat market?”

  Jake had been at Serenity Glen for two weeks. Pride and shame took turns in preventing me from confiding in Mary K about the full details.

  “What’s Ryan up to?”

  “She’s at the Aquarium with my dad.”

  “Nice. How’s Bloom?”

  “Still in treatment. Looks like your patient had a pretty bad day,” I said, nodding to the corpse.

  Mary K’s glare let me know she recognized my avoidance of her question. “Yeah, Mr. Aguilar here has seen better days. Most people would think that the holes in his head and body were the cause of death. Take a look.”

  As I stepped forward I heard a jingling sound coming from Mary K’s small adjoining office. On a large dog bed stood black fur ball of a puppy that seemed more mop than dog. His tail wagged and he let out a single yip. Mary K snapped her fingers and the pup sat down, awaiting his next command.

  “And who’s this?” I asked, approaching the dog. His tail wagged faster as I scratched behind his ears.

  “Murphy, meet our newest junior medical examiner, Welby. As in Marcus Welby, MD. But he doesn’t stand on ceremony. Welby will do.”

  “What’s his breed?” I asked.

  “Welby here is a three-month-old BBM,” Mary K said with a smile. “That’s a basic black mutt. Picked him up at a shelter.”

  “I thought Andra was against getting a dog until you got a place with a yard.”

  “Yeah, well… What’s missing, Dr. Murphy?” Mary K said, jutting her jaw toward the corpse.

  I patted the pup and looked up. Mary K was quizzing me, just as she had all through med school. “No blood.”

  “Yup. They shot him up after he croaked. I’ll likely find a belly full of pills.”

  “Why would someone try to make a suicide look like a murder? Isn’t it usually the other way around?”

  “Insurance is null for suicide, not murder. People really should consult a medical examiner before they try this shit.” She tossed her gloves into a wastebasket and reached into her pocket. Pulling out a dog treat, she bent down on one knee and scratched the puppy on his head. She stood. “I’m glad you stopped by. How about you buy Welby and me some lunch? The yogurt in the fridge with the lab specimens isn’t calling my name right now.”