Ballads of Suburbia
Page 30
That was what I’d vowed to do when my parents first checked me in to a private psych hospital to be treated for heroin addiction and selfinjury. But on day nineteen of my sixty days, I’d realized that I actually had to stay sober. Even though my therapist, Dr. Larson, had urged me to tell my brother what I’d learned that day, I’d kept it to myself, convinced Liam would scoff at my epiphany. Now I had a choice: spill or leave with Liam hating me.
Nervously fingering the hem of my black baby-doll dress, I took two tentative steps toward the window. “Liam, there was this girl named Annie that I had group therapy with-”
“Dude, I don’t want to hear it!” Liam clapped his hands over his ears. “I don’t want to hear a single thing you have to say unless it’s ‘I’m not moving away.’”
Dropping my notebook, I wrenched Liam’s hands off his ears and held them firmly between mine. “Annie. I thought she was the craziest one in the bunch because the rest of us were in there for drugs or drinking, but we were normal. Annie had some kind of breakdown. She didn’t talk. She’d shaved her head and she had big bandages on her arms, ‘cause she tried to slit her wrists or whatever.”
Liam squirmed in my grip, freeing one hand, but he just used it to take his cigarette from his mouth. “Like Maya,” he said softly.
“Like Maya,” I repeated, kneeling in front of him, continuing to cling to his other hand. “But I didn’t even think about that at first. I was minding my own business, just counting down the days till I got out. Then there was this group therapy session where Dr. Larson made me share. Remember how Mom brought me that newspaper clipping about Adrian?”
“Yeah.”
“I had to pass that around. I was like, ‘My boyfriend got arrested for breaking into a vet’s office and stealing ketamine to sell at raves. He’s doing nine months in County. My mom wanted me to see what path I was on.’” I rolled my eyes, demonstrating the attitude I’d had about sharing. “Some girl across the circle said, ‘That’s not the path you were on. You checked in here after a bad overdose, right? You keep using and you’re gonna die.’”
“Whatever,” Liam interrupted, fluttering his long lashes. “You never OD’d before you shot up.”
“And that’s exactly what I said. But then Annie spoke up for the first time.”
I remembered the way her vacant eyes suddenly focused. They’d met mine as she whispered hoarsely, “You can’t use heroin in moderation.”
That was when I really studied her. The wispy red hair just beginning to grow back, the bandaged arms. My stomach turned when I realized, That’s how Maya’s arms would have looked if she survived.
I felt sicker still when Annie continued, “My older sister was like you. She OD’d and died the day after she left rehab. Two weeks later, I did this.” Annie extended her arms, palms up, forcing me to stare at the white gauze taped around them, wrist to elbow.
While Dr. Larson encouraged Annie to share more, I recalled one of the last thoughts I’d had before passing out at Scoville Park: Liam won’t have anyone to hold on to at your funeral.
“So what the hell did she say?” Liam demanded impatiently, releasing my hand and tapping his fingers against the windowsill.
“That her older sister OD’d on heroin and died.” Feeling the tickle of tears in my nose, I bit my lip. “Annie tried to kill herself after her sister’s funeral. I thought of you…I realized I have to stay sober for you, Liam.”
“Wow. Thanks, Kara.” Liam nodded, sounding sincere, but when he lifted his green eyes to meet mine they were filled with rage. “But that doesn’t explain why the fuck you’re leaving. If it’s so important to be there for me, why are you abandoning me?”
“Because I have to stay sober.”
Liam leapt off the windowsill, shoving me out of his way. He bounced up and down like an out-of-control marionette in the center of his room. “So go to fucking meetings! Isn’t that what addicts like you do?”
Slowly rising to my feet, I studied him: his matted blue hair that hung to the bottom of his earlobes, the raccoon circles under his eyes, the huge jeans that hung off his wiry frame, and the twig-thin arms that poked out of his T-shirt. Instead of band shirts, he’d taken to wearing plain white tees and writing slogans on them in Sharpie. “Rehab Is for Quitters” was scrawled across his chest. “You’re a drug addict, too, Liam,” I said, picking up the “Stories of Suburbia” notebook again.
He rolled his eyes at me and ashed his cigarette on the carpet. “Whatever. I never OD’d. I never shot drugs-”
I clapped the notebook against my thigh, causing the flimsy material of my dress to billow. “You were going to bring me drugs in rehab!”
Liam had been allowed to see me alone for the first time on day forty. He played the sullen-teenager role so well that no one but me noticed he was using. I recognized the way he fidgeted in his seat. Everyone else was distracted by his sighs and eye rolls.
Without parents and a therapist present, Liam didn’t work very hard to conceal his strung-out appearance. His shirt that day inexplicably read “Tiger” and his pants drooped farther off his skinny hips than usual, revealing way more of his plaid boxers than I wanted to see. He tugged the dirty jeans up, apologizing, “Sorry, they took my belt and my wallet chain, too. You’re, like, on serious lockdown here. They practically body-cavity-searched me, but…” He leaned in and whispered, “Next time I’ll bring you something, put it in plastic, and keep it under my tongue. Good plan?”
Closing my eyes to the memory, I sighed. “The day you offered to do that was the day I knew I had to move. Before that, whenever Mom, Dad, or Dr. Larson brought up going to Wisconsin, I told them that my friends I got high with were either in jail or dead, so I’d be fine staying in Oak Park.”
“Oh, so now it’s my fault that you’re leaving?” Liam kicked a sneaker across the room. “Why didn’t you just tell me that you didn’t want drugs? I’ll keep that shit away from you if that’s what you want.”
“Liam, I can’t stay sober here and I can’t be a good sister to you if I’m not sober.” I shook my head sadly. “Look, I’ve talked to Cass about this. She was mad when Wes bailed at first, but when she got to California this summer and saw how good he was doing, she knew he did the right thing. She wishes I didn’t have to move to Wisconsin, but she understands. And Stacey understands. Please, can’t you try to understand?”
“No.” Liam crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ve ditched me too many times.”
“Okay,” I stammered. “But can I at least have a hug?”
“You can have a hug when you’re moving back home.”
Tears dripped out of my eyes. “Fine,” I murmured, and started to walk away. But then I remembered that he was a drug addict. Quentin had OD’d and died. I’d OD’d and almost died. And then there was Maya, whose death hadn’t been drug related, but the last time we’d spoken, we’d fought and I couldn’t worry about that happening again.
I spun around and enveloped Liam in an embrace before he knew what was happening. “Call me when you want help,” I cried into his dirty hair.
He shoved me away. “Fuck you.”
I dried my tears on the back of my hand before exiting Liam’s room, then headed for the bathroom. I sat on the closed toilet and straightened the top of the spiral binding on the “Stories of Suburbia” notebook. Grazing my fingertip with it, I thought, Not very sharp, but it’ll have to do.
Since I was wearing short sleeves and would probably be forced to do so from now on even in deepest winter, I flipped up my skirt, scratching my inner thigh with the metal wire until finally a teeny drop of blood. A wave of relief.
But shame followed immediately on its heels. “Fuck,” I murmured. I’d been out of treatment for all of an hour and I’d already messed up.
Mom rapped on the door. “Kara, you okay in there?”
“Yes, I’ll be out in a sec!” I hurriedly pressed a piece of toilet paper to my minuscule cut, tossed it in the toilet, and flushed.
Dad had agreed to stop at Maya’s grave before we left town and Mom offered to pick up anything I wanted to bring to Maya. I’m sure she was thinking flowers, but she’d gotten Winston cigarettes and red Manic Panic dye like I requested.
I placed those items on either side of the flat stone marker and sat down in front of it. Dad remained in the car, pretending to read a book and give me privacy, though he kept glancing over to make sure I didn’t burn myself with my own cigarette.
“Sorry I haven’t been to visit you lately, but I’ve been in rehab. I’m sober. And I learned to draw while I was in there.” I laughed at myself, crying at the same time because I wanted to hear Maya’s chuckle.
When I opened my sketchbook, I wanted her to come up behind me and point at my horrible sketch of a hissing cat and say, “You call that drawing?”
“Okay, I’m not very good. I don’t have your talent,” I said as if we were having a real conversation. “But I did spend all summer working on a picture for you.”
I flipped to the back of the book and carefully tore out a sketch of Maya and me sitting on the bottom of a slide at the kiddie playground at Scoville. I’d drawn it all in dark pencil except for Maya’s bright red hair and my blue bangs. My arms were flung outward, mouth open as I grinned and said, “Tada!” Maya’s arms were wrapped around my waist, her lips smooshed against my cheek in a melodramatic kiss. I’d drawn it from a photo Liam had snapped. There was a brief period of time after Christian had taken me to the playground with his sister that I wanted to seesaw and slide while Christian and Liam skated. Maya had eagerly indulged me.
“Why’d you stop playing there?” Dr. Larson had asked when I showed him my sketch.
“Winter came. By the time it was warm enough again, I was a junkie.”
Dr. Larson recited the words I’d inscribed on the bottom of the drawing: “‘I wanna be a kid again. I wanna play in the park.’ What does that mean?”
“They’re lyrics from a Slapstick song, a local ska band that Maya loved to see live.”
“Dr. Larson was obsessed with getting me to write instead of draw,” I told Maya. “So whenever I did write something, he really read into it. I guess those lyrics did mean something, though. This is the way I wish our friendship could have been, just playing in the park. Forever.”
Part of me wanted to collapse on her grave sobbing, but I knew that meant my dad would come and carry me to the car. I needed to leave with dignity, so I kept talking through my tears.
“I’m going away, so I can stay sober. Liam didn’t understand, but I know you would’ve. And Cass will be back soon to visit you. While she was in California, she sent me all this information on USC’s film program. I still really want to go to school for screenwriting. Learning to write screenplays is the one good thing that came out of this past year.”
Dr. Larson had furrowed his bushy white eyebrows when I told him that I wanted to make film school my long-term goal. “But you refuse to write. You always insist on drawing.” Sketching how we felt or writing unsent letters were the options we were given in treatment when we wanted to cut or use. I always did crappy drawings.
I explained it to Maya like I had Dr. Larson, “I don’t write about real life anymore. I’m writing a screenplay about vampires. If I can’t escape with drugs, I’ll escape into imaginary worlds.”
Maya, of course, said nothing. Though I kind of wished she would. I traced the letters on the small, flat marker. Maya Estelle Danner. Estelle was her grandmother’s name. “I wish they’d inscribed one of your grandmother’s sayings,” I told Maya. “I miss them. They were good advice. What would you tell me now?”
Words Dr. Larson had often repeated echoed in my brain as I flipped through my sketchbook to a drawing I’d made following Liam’s visit: “You’ll need to write and talk about real life someday, Kara.”
Immediately after Liam left, I’d knocked on Dr. Larson’s door. As I sat down in the chair across from his desk, I informed him, “My brother should not be allowed to see me. He’ll bring me heroin.”
“Is your brother a drug user?” Dr. Larson had asked pointblank.
I couldn’t bring myself to betray Liam. Not when I was about to hurt him so badly by moving away. He’d need an escape. Cass did acid to cope with Wes leaving and she’s fine, I’d reassured myself as I lied: “No, Liam just has friends who deal.”
But when I returned to my room, I crudely sketched a tombstone that read, “Here Lies Liam. It was all his sister’s fault.”
Looking up from the drawing, my whole body shook as I started to cry silently. The tips of my fingers traced Maya’s middle name again. “Your grandmother would say, ‘Secrets lead to sickness.’” It was the last “wisdom” Maya had shared in her ballad.
I kissed Maya’s headstone and walked back to my dad’s car. “I’m ready to go,” I said in a scratchy whisper.
Handing him my sketchbook, I added, “But you and Mom should plan on getting Liam some help.”
EPILOGUE (PART 2)
THE BALLAD OF THE STORY COLLECTION
“One day there’ll be a place for us One day I know there’ll be a place called home.”
—PJ Harvey
December 1999
IT TOOK FOUR YEARS FOR MY BROTHER to accept that he needed help. During that time, I graduated from high school in Wisconsin and moved to California to pursue a degree in film at USC. Whenever I heard from Liam, I ended up in my therapist’s office for an emergency session.
Sometimes Liam called when he was wasted and wanted someone to talk to. Mostly he called when he was broke. I’d refuse to wire cash to Chicago and he’d scream at me, but I never gave in. Finally, on a hot day in July just a few months before his twentieth birthday, I got the kind of phone call I’d hoped for:
“Kara, I’m flying into LAX tomorrow and I want you to pick me up and check me into rehab.” With all the cigarettes and god knows what else he smoked, Liam finally had that Johnny Cash baritone he’d desired at age four. He also had a laugh that sounded like a cough. “Preferably one with hot celebrities.”
I took a deep breath. “Does Mom know about this?”
He chuckled again. “Who do you think bought the plane ticket? I spent my last dollar on a speedball that landed me in the ER. Though at least I did my last shot in some Gold Coast high-rise. Where were you? Facedown in the dirt at Scoville Park?”
“Yeah, you’re way classier than me, Liam,” I replied sarcastically, writing down his flight information.
He’d already done a twenty-eight-day program in Chicago, but he knew if he was really going to get his act together, he’d have to get away from home like I had. He wanted my eagle eye on him after he did one more inpatient stint and then moved into what he termed “a very glamorous halfway house.”
“After that, I want to go back to school,” he told me as he paced around my Echo Park apartment, marveling at my view of palm trees while he chain-smoked. “I don’t know if they’d let a loser high school dropout into USC, but maybe if I do time at community college first. Don’t laugh, but I think I want to be a social worker. You know, help kids so they don’t have to hit rock bottom like we did.”
I pointed at him with my mouth open like I was about to laugh, but then I grinned. “I think that’s awesome, Liam. You always did give good advice. If only I’d taken some of it.” I sat down on my bed, encouraging, “Seriously, you’ll get there. I got to film school, after all.”
He stopped pacing and looked at me. His eyes were a little lined for his age, but at least the circles were gone. And he’d shaved off the dreads, reverting to the strawberry blond buzz cut he’d had as a kid. “You haven’t slipped, not o
nce?”
“I’ve done a pretty good job staying away from drugs. I drink occasionally. It’s the cutting I couldn’t give up for the longest time, but I haven’t done it in over a year.” I displayed my arms. White lines stood out against my tan skin, but there were no fresh pink scars there or on the tops of my legs or on my belly, where I’d continued to cut secretly through my sophomore year of college. “I was working a high-stress job this spring and I almost started up again. The important thing is to know your triggers. Also, you love your cocaine and that shit is everywhere here,” I warned Liam.
Worry puckered his forehead as he plopped down beside me. “I know,” he nodded gravely. “And I’ve already messed up this rehab thing twice. But that was when Mom made me go and when it was court-ordered. I didn’t want to do it. Now I really do.”
“Then you will do it and I’ll help.” I hugged him tight, pleased he didn’t feel nearly as bony as he had when he was using.
Liam squeezed me back and reached for the ashtray on my nightstand. He noticed the ragged red notebook that sat on a stack of school books on the bottom shelf of a nearby bookcase. “Shit, you still have this thing?” He ran his fingers across the ransom-note lettering of “Stories of Suburbia” on the cover. “Did you read it?”
“Aside from Maya’s entry, no. I’m not allowed because I never wrote in it.”
“You never wrote in it?” he asked, appalled. “Even I wrote in it. You should write in it now so you can read it.”
I took it away from him and stuffed it back on the shelf. “No, I’m not ready. Shrinks have been encouraging me to write about my feelings and memories of Oak Park for years, but I just can’t. I don’t see the point of reliving it.”
Five months later, when Stacey convinced me to come home for the first time, Liam insisted on putting the notebook in my carry-on. “Maybe you’ll write in it or at least let it remind you to stay out of trouble.”