Life On Hold

by Karen McQuestion

  There was a long pause while I waited for her to tell me more. I knew the end of the story—obviously Gina lived—but I wanted to know what came after the pills and before she became my mother. “Why did you want to die?”

  “Typical story. I was depressed. I had boyfriend trouble, a lot of stress in my life. It all seemed like too much.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to your parents if you had problems?”

  She snorted. “They were the cause of most of my problems. It wasn’t easy being their daughter, trust me. They had high expectations. I couldn’t get a break. Nothing I did was ever good enough. They were always on me about my grades. They hated my friends, my makeup, the way I dressed. When I turned eighteen, I couldn’t get away fast enough. I would have stayed away forever except for you. You were so beautiful. I wanted to show them I finally did something right.”

  “Grandma said they didn’t even know I existed until I was a toddler.”

  “Yeah, and you know what she said when they first met you?”

  I looked at her expectantly.

  “I told them your name, and she said, ‘Oh Gina, no, please tell me you’re kidding. You didn’t really name her Rae, did you?’”

  She didn’t like my name? I loved my name. It was different, but not too weird. “What’s wrong with Rae?”

  Mom shrugged. “I told you, nothing I do is good enough for them.”

  “They’re not like that anymore, though,” I said, defending them. “Grandma only says good things about you now.”

  “I bet.”

  Man, Gina could hold a grudge. “So what happened after you took the sleeping pills?”

  She sighed. “It was kind of an impulsive thing. I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but when I felt the pills starting to take effect I told Vickie. She freaked out and called my parents, and they had me rushed to the hospital. After that, they shipped me off to a mental institution for a month. When I went back to school, I was this freak, this wacko head case. Guess what? No one wants to take the suicidal girl to prom.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I said, tapping her arm. “You told me Grandma and Grandpa sent you to the mental hospital for no reason at all. You told me that they lied about you being suicidal. Why did you say that?”

  “I was still pissed off about it. And you know what?” she said. “I wasn’t really suicidal, if you want to know the complete truth. Yes, I did take the pills, but I wasn’t serious about killing myself. The emergency room doctor said the amount of drugs in my system wouldn’t have killed me. I would have made it through the night, and the next day I would have felt better and the whole thing would have passed. I could have just continued with my life if they hadn’t overreacted and sent me to the nut-job factory.”

  “But they didn’t know all that. They thought they were losing their daughter. They were probably scared.”

  “I guess.”

  A woman in scrubs pushed a cart past our feet. One of the wheels spun crazily around like it had a mind of its own. I waited until the soft swoosh of her footsteps had receded down the hallway, and then I said, “What do you think Grandma and Grandpa should have done instead?”

  “They could have talked to me, for starters. They never talked to me. Not once. They were always talking at me. They never even bothered to find out what I wanted out of life. It was all about them and what they wanted.”

  “But they want to talk to you now,” I said softly. “They try all the time, but you never give them a chance.” I leaned over and rested my head on her shoulder. Even now, at the end of a long day, I could still smell her berry-scented shampoo. “Couldn’t you at least give them a chance and try to be nice to them? For me?” I looked up and gave her the puppy-dog eyes.

  She lowered her head so we were almost nose to nose. “You’re asking a lot of me, Rae.”

  “Please?”

  She gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

  We sat there for a little bit longer, wondering all the while if we should just go home, but feeling like we should stay. Finally one of the nurses, a cute young one with short, dark hair, took pity on us. “You didn’t hear it from me,” she whispered conspiratorially, “but your friend is going to be fine. The wounds on her wrists weren’t angled enough to cause a fatal blood loss, and she didn’t take anywhere near enough pills for it to be lethal. She’s sleeping peacefully now, and we have someone with her.”

  “Her aunt and uncle are on the way,” my mom said.

  The nurse nodded. “We’re aware of this; we’ve talked to them.”

  There was nothing left to do then but get in the Saturn and drive home.

  Chapter 35

  Bad News Travels Like Wildfire

  Everyone at school had heard about Allison’s failed suicide attempt by Monday afternoon. Kids who looked right through me before now stopped me in the halls to ask about it. Suddenly I was worthy.

  I didn’t give up much—yes, I said, Allison ran away, yes, my mom and I found her at her old house. Yes, she was in the hospital now. Anything past that I pleaded ignorance. I believed Allison deserved her privacy even if Blake, the bigmouth, didn’t agree. He told everyone about the e-mail she’d sent and that the police had interviewed all of us after she’d gone missing. I heard through the Whitman grapevine that she’d hitchhiked nearly all the way there in the middle of the night, and that she’d spent the weekend in the hospital but was being transferred as an inpatient back to our local Mental Health Unit for Children and Adolescents.

  By lunchtime Tuesday, sick of hearing people ask about Blake’s cousin, I was glad to be leaving early, right after lunch. This time it was no surprise. My mother had written a note excusing me from school so the two of us could visit Allison at MHUCA. The day before, Meg had called, saying Allison wanted to speak to both of us as soon as possible.

  When we got there, my mom and I went through the same entrance I’d used with Blake. We got buzzed through the door and signed in at the front desk. The woman there directed us to a visiting room on the second floor. Three minutes later we sat on a vinyl-covered couch in a tiny room, glass walls all around.

  Allison walked in right after we did. She wore her regular clothes and looked fine. The only things different about her were the white bandages peeking out from the edges of her sleeves. My mom got up from the couch right away and gave her a hug, and I did too—for some reason it seemed natural now. I guess when you’ve seen someone at their lowest point, there’s nothing left to get in the way.

  “How’re you doing, hon?” my mom asked.

  “Pretty good.”

  “You look really good,” I said and regretted it as soon as I saw the look on her face. Unspoken were the words: compared to the last time I saw you, when you were trying to kill yourself. I tried to cover my blunder. “I’m glad you’re better.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled shyly.

  After we sat down, Allison and me on the couch, my mom on a molded plastic chair just opposite us, Allison said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve been kind of depressed lately.” She made a kind of fake, throat-clearing laugh, to show she was joking.

  “But you’re better now, right?” Gina asked.

  “Not really.” She looked down at her hands. “I don’t want to die anymore, but I don’t really feel like living either.”

  My mom looked alarmed. “You don’t mean that. A beautiful girl like you, Allison, you have so much to look forward to. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal, losing your parents and all, but you still have a lot to live for. You have your whole life ahead of you. Don’t you agree, Rae?”

  “I think,” I said slowly, “that it’s okay for Allison to feel like that. You can’t always just brush away your problems and move on. Sometimes you have to work through things. Don’t you agree, Mom?”

  I could tell by the look on her face that my words hit home. She recovered pretty quickly though and turned to Allison, saying, “Of course you should take all the tim
e you need to get through this, hon. You’ve been through a lot.”

  Allison nodded and twisted her hands. “I wanted to see you guys today to thank you for all you’ve done for me. Both of you have been great, really. And I also wanted to tell you myself that I’m not going back to Whitman. I can’t live at Blake’s house anymore, or deal with all the people at school knowing about me. It’s just too much to deal with.”

  “So what will you be doing?” I asked.

  “I’m going to stay here as an inpatient for a while. My doctor and I put together a plan. They have an alternative school right on the grounds, and I’ll go there for now. It didn’t really work out at Uncle Dan and Aunt Meg’s, so when I’m better I’m probably going to live with my aunt and uncle in Iowa. They never had kids, and they say they want me.”

  “Iowa is really nice,” my mom said. “We lived in Des Moines for a year. When was that, Rae?”

  I shrugged. Who could keep track? “I don’t remember Des Moines.” I turned my attention to Allison. “So you’re going to keep living here for now?” Through the glass wall I saw a woman in a business suit stride past, her high heels clicking on the linoleum.

  Allison gestured in a circular motion. “This is it for the next few weeks. Right back where I started from. Remember when I first saw you, Rae, right outside in the yard?” She pointed toward the back of the building.

  “I remember. You tried to warn me about the other kids, but I didn’t understand. They scared the hell out of me when they rushed the fence.”

  Gina looked puzzled, but she didn’t say anything. I knew I’d have some explaining to do later.

  “You didn’t look scared.” Allison tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “You just picked up your backpack and walked away like it was nothing. And then later when I got the tour of the school with Mr. Smedley I saw you in the lunchroom. I knew right away it was you.”

  “That was the day Blake slipped and fell down next to our table.”

  She nodded. “He was so pissed off, and you just laughed. Then when he was about to get in your face, Mason stepped up to protect you, like he was your bodyguard or something. I thought, That has to be the coolest girl I’ve ever seen.”

  Me? No one ever thought I was cool before.

  “I was such a mess. When I saw you, I could tell you weren’t afraid of anything. That’s why I asked Mr. Smedley to pair you up with me.”

  “But you weren’t very friendly after that. I mean, considering you asked for me and everything.”

  “I know. I’m not sure why.” She looked down at her lap. “Maybe because I was afraid you’d think I was this big loser and not want to hang out with me.”

  “I would never think that.” I meant it, too.

  “Oh, Allison.” Gina got up to sit between us and wrapped her arms around her. She was good at comforting people. “You poor baby.”

  Allison’s chin rested on Gina’s shoulder, her face turned toward me. She closed her eyes and said, barely audible, “The worst part of all is, I really miss my mom.” She started crying hard, the sobs coming out in big gulps.

  “Oh, of course you do.” Gina reached up and stroked her hair, the way she’d done for me a thousand times. And then I moved in to be part of it, and the three of us hugged and cried and talked and promised to keep in touch, until a man came in to tell us our time was up and we had to leave.

  Chapter 36

  Father’s Day

  Sitting in our parked car, I filled my mom in on the day Allison had tried to warn me about the other MHUCA kids. “I didn’t know what she was trying to tell me, so I completely ignored her,” I said. “Then those kids came running up to the fence swearing at me and scared the hell out of me.”

  “And she actually remembered you when she saw you in the lunchroom later?” Mom put her key in the ignition, but didn’t start the engine. I guess neither of us was in a hurry to leave just yet.

  “Yeah, that’s what she said. Pretty amazing that she was able to pick me out of the crowd.” Really amazing, if I thought about it. All I’d done was walk past a fence and laugh at a boy in the cafeteria, and because of those two things I wound up saving a girl’s life. You never really know what a difference you can make in someone’s life, if you’re willing to let them in.

  “I almost lost it when she said she missed her mom,” Gina said. “I mean, you know Grandma and I don’t see eye to eye, but still, at least I know she cares.” This was a first. The beginning of a reconciliation maybe? No, probably not. “I can’t imagine what Allison’s going through, not having a mom at her age.”

  “Yeah, that has to be hard. Almost as bad as not ever having a father. Or even knowing who he is.”

  She looked pained. “Look, Rae, if I tell you, can we be done with this topic? Forever?”

  I was startled. After being put off for so many years, I hadn’t been expecting a straight answer. I said, “I just want to know the truth. His name, what he looked like, where he is.” I looked at her straight on, and she met my eyes.

  “Okay, this is the truth.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know his last name or where he is. You’ll never be able to find him, so get that out of your head right now. His first name was Ray. I met him when I was eighteen and working in a bar in Kansas City. He was a long-distance truck driver, and he used to come in all the time when he was in town. Sometimes we’d go out when I got off work. I went out with him three, four times, and then I never saw him again. By the time I realized I was pregnant, he was long gone. I tried to contact the trucking company he worked for, but they wouldn’t give me any information. My guess is that he was married.”

  “You slept with some guy and didn’t know his last name?”

  She paused to get a cigarette out of the pack. “He told me his last name, I think. I just wasn’t paying attention. It was a different time, Rae. The people I hung around with drank. A lot. And when you have drinking, you have casual sex. I’m older and wiser now, but that’s the way it was. I wish I could tell you more, I really do.” She rapped the pack against the dashboard until a cigarette slid out. “Over the years I hoped you’d stop asking. He’s not here, I am, so I didn’t think it made a difference.”

  “It makes a difference to me.” I felt deflated. I’d always thought there’d be more to the story than this. A truck driver. How uninteresting was that? “What did he look like? Did he have any interests?”

  She lit the Marlboro and inhaled. “Brown hair, nice features, medium build. His eyes were like yours. He liked sports. He was helpful.”

  “Helpful?”

  “Yeah, like if someone at the bar needed their car jump-started, he was the first to offer to help. He left good tips for waitresses. When people looked sad, he tried to make them laugh.” She looked thoughtful. “Ray was a nice man. He was maybe thirty when I knew him. I thought he was really old at the time.”

  “Do you have a picture? Anything?”

  “What I just told you is all I have, Rae. If you want the name of the trucking company, I have it somewhere. You can try them again if you want, but sixteen years ago they weren’t all that cooperative, and I can’t imagine anything’s changed.” Mom pointed at me. “And don’t you dare tell your grandparents. Their opinion of me is low enough already.” She took a drag on her cigarette.

  “Why wouldn’t you tell me this before?”

  She exhaled, the smoke coming out in a rush. “It’s embarrassing, quite frankly. It makes me sound stupid, and I didn’t want you to think of me that way. Besides,” she added, smiling, “who needs him, right? The Maddox girls have always done fine on their own.”

  Chapter 37

  The Real Rae Maddox Integration Program

  I was still digesting this information when she started the engine and eased out of our parking space. I was now Rae, daughter of Gina and Ray—Ray’s location unknown. I wondered if he still drove a truck. He could have logged millions of miles by now. He could be anywhere.

  Had we been chasing
him my whole life? I wondered if on some subconscious level mom was looking for him everywhere we went. We were traveling while he was traveling. We probably kept passing each other unawares, like in the movies where two people miss each other going in and out of side-by-side elevators. One of us really needed to stay put.

  “Where to now?” Mom asked, interrupting my thoughts. “I don’t have to work until three. You want to get something to eat?”

  “No, I better get back to school.” I pulled down the visor and checked myself out in the mirror. With all the crying, I was going to need a major eyeliner touch-up before I went back to class. “I have a big test seventh hour. I don’t want to miss it.”

  Gina laughed. “You have the option of skipping school and you’re choosing to go back? I would never have done that.”

  “Well, we’re not exactly the same person, are we?”

  When we got to school, I asked Mom to come inside to sign me in. Technically this wasn’t necessary—high schools are more worried about kids leaving than sneaking back in—but she didn’t know that.

  In the office the usual lady was at work behind the counter, tapping away at her computer. What she was typing in there, I couldn’t tell you. I had a theory that the office ladies spent the day shopping online and forwarding teacher jokes to friends, but I couldn’t prove it.

  She looked up when the door closed behind us. “Hello, Rae, what can I do for you?”

  “I just returned from an appointment. My mom came to sign me back in.”

  Office Lady looked a little befuddled. “You don’t need to do that if we have you down for an excused absence. You can just go on to your class.”

  “I was also wondering if Mr. Smedley is in his office. I’d like him to meet my mother.” While she picked up the phone to check with the Smedster, Mom raised her eyebrows questioningly. I whispered, “He’s the vice principal, the one that paired me with Allison.”