by S. K. Falls
He reached out and took the syringe, staring at it as if he couldn’t believe someone would do that to herself. And really, who the hell does? Who besides me? “You did those to yourself?”
“Yes. And I ingested Tylenol, which is why I was at the hospital that time you came to see me. I did it because I like being sick. It’s the only time someone takes care of me. I’ve been making myself sick since I was seven years old. That’s the kind of person I am, Drew, and because of you, I actually stopped doing it for a little while and began to live my life.” I dropped to my knees in front of him and took his hands, the body of the syringe pressed between our skins. “I wanted to tell you the truth. Last night. I wanted to, but then you asked me to move in with you and it was as if, in that moment, I got to be the star of a movie, of a perfect fairy tale with a real-life Prince Charming. I made a mistake by not telling you then. But I was going to tell you this morning. Before we got texted to go to the hospital. I swear I was.”
He ran his hand over my face, over the plane of my cheek, the bridge of my nose, traveled the slope of my lips. It was like he was memorizing me. I thought he might be crying, but I couldn’t tell for certain because my own eyes were full of tears blurring my vision.
He leaned down and kissed me then, and I tasted tears. Everyone’s tears taste the same, because they’re made of the same stuff—salt and water. But I swear I could taste Drew’s tears as different from mine. His were sadder, sweeter.
When he pulled back, he whispered, “You made it so I could take off my mask. I love you. But I can’t forgive you.”
I sank back, hugged my knees.
He left, playing his own final caesura.
Chapter Fifty
I’m not sure how long I sat there, with my back against my bed. Drew leaving had caused time to pause. He was the conductor, and he wasn’t there to tell time it could resume again.
Out of nowhere I felt this aching need to see him go. I stood up in a fog and walked to the hallway to see out the big bay window. But it was too late; he was already gone. The driveway sat empty and white, the only evidence he’d been here the tire marks next to my BMW. I imagined him in Zee’s car, the two of them talking about me, about the mess I’d made. Would he look back?
As I stood there watching the bare tree limbs claw at the frigid air, a sound filtered into my consciousness—rhythmic and guttural, coming from somewhere behind me.
I turned slowly, wondering if it was my imagination, my grief- and guilt-addled brain concocting sobbing noises to break me out of my trance, give me a hint about what I should be doing. But as I walked down the hallway toward Mum’s bedroom, it got louder.
The door was ajar. I pushed it open the rest of the way, feeling amazingly detached from everything around me. It was like watching a movie, and not a particularly engrossing one. My eyes swept the room dully: bed made, window seat empty, sofa ditto. Then I realized the door to their walk-in wardrobe was closed.
I crossed the room and the sound got louder. Definitely crying. Emotion began to trickle back into me. Was it Mum? I’d never seen her cry, let alone be so noisy about it.
I opened the door and stared at the scene before me, my brain struggling to process the information my eyes were giving it.
My mother, the iciest of ice queens, sobbing like every single person in the world she knew and loved had died. She was on the floor in a fetal position, her silk skirt rumpled and pulled up to show more of her pantyhose than she’d ever dared before. Mascara ran down her cheeks and onto the shiny fabric she held balled to her chest. After a beat, I realized what it was: my infant baptism gown.
Mum was completely oblivious to my presence as she wept onto the swaths of silk. Fear and sadness churned inside me. I had an overwhelming urge to shout “Stop!” Everything in my life couldn’t go to pieces all at the same time. A selfish thought, but what else could be expected of me?
It occurred to me that even now, with me no more than twelve inches away, she had no idea I was there. She continued to cry, soiling the pristine white of my smock. It was as if the world around her had ceased to exist.
“Mum.”
She didn’t hear me over the sound of her weeping.
I stepped closer, wondering if I should touch her, help her up. But I couldn’t. I was afraid she’d disintegrate between my fingers, like a soggy piece of paper. She looked utterly insubstantial, utterly alien. “Mum,” I said, louder.
She stopped then, her eyes opening, her face still a mask of grief. When she saw me, she scrambled to sit up, ripping her expensive pantyhose in a neat, long line from ankle to shin to knee. She swiped at her face, tucked the gown between her back and the wall, and refused to look at me. “Please leave, Saylor.”
My heart raced. Why was she acting this way? What was hurting so badly? Why couldn’t she just tell me, for once, what she was thinking, what she felt? “But—”
She stood up suddenly, her black hair half in and half out of her bun. She walked closer to me, her eyes glittering with tears. “Please. Leave.”
Her gaze somewhere beyond me, she kept walking forward. I backed up until I was outside the wardrobe.
Then she closed the door in my face.
“Mum?” My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it. “Mum, please let me in.”
But she was silent.
* * *
At some point I walked back to my room and turned on the playlist Drew had made for me. It was the next best thing to having him there, and it was easier than thinking about my mother or the irreparable damage I’d done. I closed my eyes and focused on the notes, until it felt like I was suspended in a ball made of nothing but sound, swirling around and above and beneath and even in me. Until I came to be made of it, nothing but a collection of musical notes.
I felt somebody in my room and opened my eyes, which felt curiously swollen. I put my hand up to them and felt tears, which was bizarre, because I hadn’t even realized I was still crying. What time was it? The person next to me moved. I followed the ripped-pantyhose-clad legs up to a thin torso and then to my mother’s face, looking down at me. Her makeup had been reapplied; her hair was back in its sleek bun. As if nothing had happened at all, as if it had all been my imagination.
“May I turn the music down?” she asked, gesturing to my computer.
I nodded.
When she could talk without having to shout, she sat at the foot of my bed, her legs hanging to my left. We were almost, but not quite, touching.
“I’m sorry about Drew,” she said. “He looked fairly upset when he left.”
Fairly upset. Two words to sum up the destruction of trust, of a relationship, of everything I’d had to look forward to every day. I said nothing.
“And I’m sorry I made you leave. What you saw in the wardrobe…” Her voice shook and she stopped, as if to steady herself. “You deserve to know why it happened. You deserve to know more about me than I’ve let you see.”
My breathing quickened and then slowed down. It was somehow startling and soothing at the same time to hear her say this now, after all these years, out of nowhere. I nodded once, to show I was listening.
“There are some things you could be told, I suppose, now that you’re old enough to process them.” She took a breath. “Your grandfather, my father, sexually abused me from the time I was six until I turned twelve. I suppose, at that point, I got too old for him.” A mirthless laugh.
My stomach rolled; I was sure I was going to be sick. I remembered Mum asking me, in the hospital, if I hurt myself because I’d been molested. Had she been trying to tell me, even then? Had I just refused to listen?
But I didn’t have a chance to ask; she continued with her story. “I hated living in that house with them, in England. Even now, when I think back to it, it feels like my entire childhood was nothing but a series of gray days where I sat by the window waiting for a chance to escape. That chance was your father. It’s why I fled with him to the States when I was twenty. We got married
because I got pregnant with you—the pregnancy was calculated, on my part. I can admit that now, to myself and to you. It was one of the best mistakes I made, though I’m only beginning to realize that.”
I stared at her, stunned. Then, pulling myself to my feet, I sat on the bed next to her. I smelled tea rose perfume, but though I strained for it, I didn’t smell alcohol. “Did your mother know about the abuse?”
She stared straight ahead, the lines at the corners of her eyes deepening. “I told her. I finally plucked up the courage when I was nine, and told her what I’d been enduring nearly every night for three years by then. And she didn’t believe me.”
I thought again of the night I’d seen her in front of the fireplace, burning up the Christmas card from her mother. I couldn’t imagine being sexually violated by my own father. Having Dr. Daniels be a pervert and come on to me was sickening, disgusting enough. Perhaps, now that my mother was divulging something so very difficult, I should’ve hugged her. Or patted her shoulder, or held her hand. Any of a dozen things to show I was sorry that had happened to her.
But I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t. So I just listened.
“My father died suddenly when I was about seven months pregnant with you. I had a letter from my mother telling me when and where his funeral would be. I didn’t go. I thought, a bit naively, that I could move on now that he was dead. But being violated by someone who should’ve been your protector… it does pervasive damage to the mind.
“I realized I was terrified of having a child of my own as your due date drew closer. I was even more terrified when I thought about the fact that you were a girl. I had terrible visions of your father doing to you what my father did to me. I thought I’d kill him if he ever tried it, but you never know. Maybe I’d be afraid of being homeless, out on the street. I hadn’t finished my college education. I couldn’t support a child.”
I tried not to think of my life if my father had turned out to be a pedophile instead of just absent. “So what happened once you actually had me? Did it get harder to deal with everything?”
My mother sighed, a deep, deep sound, which seemed to come from the center of her soul rather than from her lungs. “When you turned six, I began to have nightmares. About people hurting you, hurting me, or hurting the both of us together. They became so bad I couldn’t sleep. Your father convinced me to go see a counselor.” She shook her head, and a strand escaped from her perfect chignon. She appeared to not notice. “The counselor thought I was expressing my fears about what might happen to you, that I was projecting what had happened to me at your age. The abuse was beginning to resurface in my mind.” She absently dug a fingernail into the run in her pantyhose and traced it down to her shin. “I’d worked so hard to bury it, Saylor. I’d married your father to get away. I got pregnant so he’d have to stay with me. And then, when I realized I didn’t love him and I wasn’t particularly suited to being a mother, I started drinking. I thought I was a master at keeping the demons at bay, but I wasn’t. I was a failure.”
She blinked rapidly. I thought she might cry again, but her eyes remained dry. “I didn’t want to work hard in therapy, like the counselor suggested. I decided I’d done enough of that. So I retreated into myself instead, refusing to acknowledge my part in a marriage that didn’t work. I didn’t want to think, either, about why I seemed to be such an expert at pushing my daughter away. Everything I’d planned for was falling apart around my ears. But I didn’t want to deal with any of it.”
I felt a stirring of anger and hurt in my chest. “Didn’t you… didn’t you even think how it would affect me? To not have a relationship with my own mother?”
My mother looked down at her pantyhose and worked on widening the hole there. She seemed intent on obliterating it. “Sometimes. But in the end, I was selfish. Anytime I thought of what I was doing to you, the only innocent one in all of this, I’d fill my cup with vodka. I drank until the thoughts got fuzzy and then disappeared. It was easier for me that way. Alcoholics are, by nature, selfish. When you’re drinking to drown your own pain, it doesn’t even occur to you that others are in pain, too, or that you could help stop it.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked. I thought about how she’d looked just moments before, on the floor in a fetal position, my baptism gown held so close. I tried to wrap my brain around the fact that maybe, just maybe, Mum actually might love me in her own way. I kept my voice level, didn’t allow an iota of hope to seep in. “Why now, after all these years?”
“I’m making some changes,” my mother said, looking right into my eyes. The brown that usually vacillated between hard, unyielding stone or frosty, smooth glass was now warm, more alive than I’d ever seen her eyes look. “In alcohol counseling, they say it takes two to keep the alcoholic sick: the alcoholic herself and the person in her life who looks the other way every time she takes a sip.”
I stared at my mother, wondering if she was saying what I thought she was saying. Was she acknowledging that she had something to do with my Munchausen?
She traced her finger lightly over the hole in her pantyhose. “Today, when Drew left, I saw the absolute pain our diseases have caused, not just to us, but to those we love most. I remembered how perfect you were once, when you were tiny enough to wear that baptism gown and sit quietly in my arms as they attempted to save your soul.”
We sat in silence for a second, just looking at the mess around us. Finally, she said, “I’m so sorry. I’ve made mistakes, Saylor, I’m not denying that. But no one says you have to wallow in your mistakes.” We stared at each other for a long minute. “And if we’re being honest, we have to look at every truth. I think your Munchausen has been just as destructive to our lives as my drinking. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I was instantly angry, my hackles raised, my back up like a feral cat about to start a fight. But just as suddenly, the fight went out of me. What was the point in lying? Hadn’t I lost just about everything there was to lose to my disease? My voice came out a whisper, the weight of it too much to bear. “I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry I’ve made life so difficult.”
My mother didn’t rush to reassure me, and for that I was thankful. When I fell silent, she said, “You can turn your life around at any point you want. Tomorrow’s going to come, whether you decide to change or not. It’s up to you whether you want tomorrow to be the first day of your fresh start.”
“Dad wants to send me to North Carolina.” The words hurtled out of my mouth before I knew I was thinking them. I wasn’t sure what I expected from my mother—indignation? Anger? For her to tell me she’d talk to my dad, make him see that wasn’t the way to go?
But she shrugged, something I’d never seen her do. A shrug, to me, belonged to someone who was okay with not knowing, who was okay, even, with ambiguity. My mother, queen of controlling everything, didn’t shrug. Not usually.
“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” she said. “Maybe you could get a fresh beginning there. Leave behind all the baggage. Make some new friends.” She gestured to the syringe Drew had left behind on the desk chair. “Get some new hobbies.”
I lay down, staring up at the ceiling. “Everything’s happening so fast,” I muttered. “Everything’s changing.”
“Well,” my mother said. “Maybe it’s about time.”
Chapter Fifty-One
One month later
Dr. Stone sat back, clasped his hands in his lap, and nodded. “Your mother sounds like she’s coping remarkably well, all things considered.”
The great thing about shrinks was that they never took anything personally. After I told Dr. Stone what had happened, what I’d done and why I’d avoided appointments, he hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t looked disappointed in me, or angry.
But it wasn’t just because of that that Dr. Stone had a special place in my heart. When I’d been terrified and sick and disgusted with myself, rotting away in the stench of my own disease, he’d flung open a door. I’d believed that I’d tricked hi
m into opening that door, one that would teach me how to get sicker, but somehow along the way, I’d come to see that he’d let in air and light and sunshine. He’d let in friendship and love and the promise of what I might be one day.
We’d talked it through. I’d tried to understand my motivations, why I lied. Why I felt like there was nothing to love about me if I wasn’t sick. I still didn’t fully understand it, of course. That would probably take years. But I’d begun the process. Unlike all the other times I’d been in therapy, this time I really wanted to learn. I wanted to change.
I played with the fringe of the pillow I was hugging. “Yeah, she is. She’s doing really well with her alcohol counseling stuff. She’s different now, like, more sure of herself or something. It’s hard to explain.” I shrugged. “But it’s good. She convinced me to go to some Al-Anon meetings. They help.”
“They can be extremely helpful when you’re trying to understand an alcoholic parent’s motives. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that.” With anyone else, I might’ve suspected a bullshit motive behind that statement. But I knew Dr. Stone was 100 percent genuine.
I shrugged again, my face flaming. I was still coming to grips with the whole “survivor of an alcoholic parent” thing. As if many of us didn’t survive. I hadn’t actually thought of it like that before. Maybe many of us don’t.
