Drowning Erin

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  “It’s more complicated than that,” I argue.

  “No, it’s not. You’re just fucking scared. That’s all this is.”

  I’m pissed when I hang up the phone. Maybe in small part because I wonder if he’s right. I reach the interstate, planning to head south, but I go the opposite direction instead—heading somewhere I should have gone long ago.

  71

  Erin

  Present

  Rock bottom. This must be it.

  I cannot find Sean. I have called every friend of his I know of. But “know of” is the key phrase. And the people I don’t know are the people he’s with when he’s using. Which is obviously why I can’t locate him.

  I need to tell my parents. I just don’t know how. Like a child, I’m sitting here, waiting on a miracle. A last-minute reprieve, a Hail Mary. Except the hours are passing quickly. The attending informs us that they’ve scheduled the surgery for late this afternoon, at which point I stop counting hours and switch to minutes instead.

  There are 202 left.

  But Rob promised he’d look for Sean, and while I seem to fail at almost everything I do these days, Rob does not. In the short period of time since he arrived from Amsterdam, he’s already begun to turn things around. Thanks to him, we’ve now got the area’s best neurosurgeon performing my dad’s surgery, and he took care of my parents’ mortgage payment for the next few months.

  It’s hard not to see the pattern here: life falls apart without Rob, and it comes back together with him. Rob never hurt me the way Brendan has. Maybe he isn’t perfect, but there’s a lot to be said for the absence of pain.

  136 minutes remain. My father wakes and asks if Sean is almost here. I tell him I think so, part of me hoping he just falls asleep before the surgery so he never learns the truth.

  100 minutes, then 72.

  My dad stops asking. He just watches the door.

  And then, at the 58-minute mark, Rob walks into the room.

  “Brought you a visitor,” he says.

  And behind him stands Sean.

  We all burst into tears—me, my mother, my father. All of us relieved and sick with grief, knowing this may very well be the last time we’re all in the same room.

  Sean and my mother go to my father’s side, and Rob comes to sit next to me. I hear my dad telling Sean he’s a good son and he’s proud of him. I guess my mother and I aren’t the only liars in the family.

  “How did you find him?” I ask.

  He wraps his arm around my shoulders. “I’d do anything for you, Erin. You should know that by now.”

  I do know that. I can’t begin to thank him. We were broken—I was broken—and now things feel like they might come together again. All because of him.

  “I want you to move back home,” he says. “Harper’s roommate must be due back any day now. I just want to take care of you.”

  I hesitate. It feels wrong, but when has making a decision based on what I feel ever proven helpful? Brendan’s the only person who’s ever felt right, and he was never even a real option. That verse from the Bible comes to mind. It’s time to set aside childish ways. I need Rob. I’m overwhelmed and incompetent on my own—look at what a mess I made of my life in the short time he was away—but he came back and fixed everything. He is what will keep me from ending up like my parents and Sean. He is the thing that will stand between all of us and disaster.

  “Okay,” I tell him. My voice is barely a whisper but he hears it.

  My father is wheeled from the room to go to the OR, and my mother weeps. The hours pass, and she continues to weep, aside from the time she spends blaming me for all of it. She doesn’t say it aloud. She just says, “I wish this hadn’t happened,” and looks directly at me.

  Sean is using again. He’s too pale, too restless. For the first time in my life, I’m beyond caring. I’m glad he’s alive. I’m glad my dad got to see him. It feels like little else matters at the moment.

  “I can go talk to the chaplain if you want,” Rob suggests. “I’m sure he could marry us here after your dad’s surgery.”

  I blink. I’d forgotten that was even under discussion. I shake my head. “We’re not ready for that, Rob. And it feels like tempting fate, planning something that depends on my dad making it.” What I don’t say is that the very thought only adds to my grief, and I already have plenty.

  He squeezes my hand. “Sorry. I just thought it might help if you had something to focus on.”

  I know part of why I agreed to get back together with him was gratitude. He found Sean. Agreeing felt like a small concession in light of everything he’s done for us. But it’s also simply that he’s safe. He’s solid ground. He’s the thing that keeps my head above water so I can do the same for everyone else.

  When we get the news that my father has survived the surgery, I go to the chapel. I thank God for letting my father make it this far, which is easy to do, and then I say another prayer of thanks for Rob. That one, oddly, is more difficult.

  Part of me still desperately wishes things had gone a different way.

  72

  Brendan

  Present

  The assisted living facility sits in an enviable location. When I arrive, the sun is in its last moments of fullness, hanging heavy before it descends behind the mountains. It’s the kind of view that makes you stop in place for a moment, and Gabi is never really going to see anything like it again. The guilt I feel about what happened with her is a constant in my life, but right now it’s so amplified I can’t feel anything else.

  The woman at the registration desk tells me Gabi is probably in the art room. They use a lot of euphemisms here. They label the rooms—music room, art room, game room, library—not for the residents, but for the people who love them. It’s a way of pretending anyone here has a normal life.

  I walk into the room, seeking one blank face among many, and I find it. Gabi’s hair is short now, but I would know her face anywhere, even with eyes that no longer flash or let me see inside her soul. Immediately I wish I hadn’t come. She won’t understand my apology. I’m not even sure if I came here for her or just to make myself feel better—which is something I don’t deserve.

  A man approaches me from the other side of the room. It takes me a minute to place him because he’s aged a decade in the three years since I last saw him: Gabi’s father, a man who must hate me above all living beings.

  We haven’t spoken since he came to my apartment in Italy to retrieve her stuff. Another hard memory. He’d wanted to see the bathtub, which I hadn’t even seen myself, since the place was still considered a crime scene. The look on his face when I opened the bathroom door to her blood still glazing the tub made me wish I’d refused.

  “Hello, Brendan,” he says. He extends a hand, which I did not expect. His wife certainly wouldn’t have done it.

  “I’m sorry…” I hesitate. “I can come back.”

  “No,” he says, indicating the table where Gabi sits, staring vacantly at the wall. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  I take the seat on one side of Gabi, and he takes the other. It’s been a long time since I was this near her, and I have the same desire I did the last time: to shake her, tell her to wake up, to come back, to stop doing this to all of us.

  “It gets easier,” he says softly, looking from my face to Gabi’s. “You get used to it.”

  I nod. There’s a lump in my throat, as much for him as for his daughter. I can’t imagine living with this kind of pain, and it’s pain I caused. Gabi is his only child. I think about this every time I hold Caroline—how unbelievably awful it must be to have a lifetime of memories with your little girl, only to lose her. To know you’ll never chat with her at breakfast again or watch her open birthday presents, that she had so many big moments taken from her, all that potential gone.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” he says. “About my wife. I’m sorry about the calls.”

  My gaze rises. The last thing I ever expected from him, o
r wanted from him, was an apology.

  “I’ve tried to stop her, but she waits until I’m asleep.”

  I swallow hard. “Don’t apologize. I don’t blame her for calling. I deserve it.”

  He looks surprised. “I hope you don’t mean that.”

  I stare at my hands as they clench and unclench, and then at Gabi’s hands, now incapable of action or intent.

  “What happened…” I say, my jaw tight, “happened because of me.”

  “I loved my daughter,” he says. His eyes tear up a little, making this so much harder to watch. “I will always love my daughter. But she had problems. It’s something my wife never wanted to admit and still won’t admit. She was always dramatic and high strung. You told her no when she was little, and she’d either fly into a rage or weep like her heart was broken.” His small smile at the memory twists. “It was cute at the time. But as she got older it was…less controllable. She was diagnosed as bipolar her freshman year in high school, but I don’t think either of us really knew how bad it was until the first time she tried to commit suicide.”

  He must see the utter shock on my face. “You didn’t know?” he asks.

  I shake my head. I had no idea. The only unhappiness I ever saw in Gabi was the unhappiness I caused.

  “Several times, beginning in high school. Sometimes it was over a break-up, but once over a bad grade. I didn’t want her to go pre-med. I didn’t think she could handle the pressure. I didn’t want her going to Italy, either, without one of us with her. My wife, though—she just wanted Gabi to be normal, wanted to believe she was better. She told me your boss knew about Gabi’s history and was going to keep an eye on her. I didn’t learn until much later that that was not the case.”

  I look at Gabi’s face. She’s still beautiful, but she’s gone. I don’t know how he stands it.

  “I’m still the one who drove her to it.”

  “Brendan, you were a kid. You’re still a kid. People change their minds about a significant other all the time. I can’t tell you how many of my friends are divorced because someone changed their mind 20 or 30 years in. It’s hard, but people are allowed to do that. So for you to take responsibility for all this when you only knew her a few months is insane.”

  “I still shouldn’t have—”

  He cuts me off. “Stop trying to convince me you’re at fault. If this hadn’t happened with you, it would have happened soon enough. The first year of medical school? I can’t imagine she’d have made it all the way through. So please move on. And stop taking my wife’s calls. It’s easier for her to blame you than blame herself, but it’s time for her to accept the truth.”

  I sit with the two of them, awed by this man’s ability to forgive. I don’t think I’d be capable of the same. When I leave, I sit in my car, staring out into the darkness and letting everything he told me sink in.

  Maybe it really wasn’t my fault. Maybe it’s just who she was.

  Something begins to loosen inside me, something that’s been strung tight for a long time. And as it starts to spin free, all I can think about is Erin.

  I wake in my apartment the next morning to find reminders of Erin everywhere—the running shoes she never picked up by the door, her moisturizer on my bathroom sink, the holes I’ve put in my wall.

  In my closet is the box of mementos Gabi once dumped on the floor. I hate that box, and I hate the moisturizer and all the other shit. I hate them because they remind me Erin’s gone, and that I was so fucking happy when she was here. How could I have ever thought history might repeat itself with her? Erin isn’t Gabi. Hell, of the two of us, I’m the one close to losing it right now, not her.

  When I get home the box is still sitting there, and what Will said yesterday finally sinks in: committing to Erin would be easy. It doesn’t scare me in the least, because there’s nothing I wouldn’t give up to have her, and because I know I’m not going to change my mind.

  Now I just have to hope that Erin hasn’t changed hers.

  73

  Erin

  Present

  My father is released from the ICU the day after his surgery, and while the cirrhosis is not something we can cure, we are told he’s “out of the woods” for now.

  Later that afternoon, I get a voicemail from the chancellor at ECU, asking if we can meet to discuss job opportunities. I can’t imagine any way in which I could gracefully return to my old position, but I would not be surprised if that’s what he wants me to do. I’ve heard quite a bit from Harper about the state of the marketing department since I left, and apparently Tim hasn’t fared too well without me to do his job.

  So it’s a day full of miracles. I just wish a day full of miracles was enough for me. Everything has turned around, but I’m still miserable.

  With the surgery behind them, my parents begin planning for the future, and with each minute that passes, I find myself pushed a little closer to the altar. “Did you talk to Rob about getting married at our church?” my mother asks me. The question is entirely for Rob’s benefit, as she knows I have not.

  Rob raises a brow. “Church?”

  “You need to be married in the church,” my father explains, his voice raw from being intubated, “so you’re married in the eyes of God.”

  “It’s a Catholic thing,” I whisper, praying he will at least wait until we are alone to object. “We can talk about it later.”

  “No,” says Rob to my mom, as if she is the bride, “I’m happy to be married wherever you want.”

  It’s early evening when I get paged to the nurse’s station. It’s a relief to go—my mother’s happy tears are even more annoying than her sad ones.

  I’m almost to the desk when Brendan steps into my path. He’s unshaven, with circles under his eyes, but he’s still so beautiful it breaks my heart. He holds out his arms, and I walk straight into them. I bury my nose in his chest and wish I could stay exactly like this forever.

  “I heard your dad made it through surgery,” he says, his voice low against my ear.

  His voice, the smell of his skin, the feel of his chest beneath my cheek. These are things I have lost. These are all things I will never have again. God, how am I going to stand living in a world where these things are no longer mine?

  “Rob got this amazing neurosurgeon,” I tell him. “It’s a miracle.”

  He scowls at the mention of Rob’s name. “Can we talk?”

  I agree, and he leads me down the hall, turning in to the first empty room he finds.

  He reaches for my hands, linking our fingers, and suddenly stiffens. His gaze jerks from my eyes to the engagement ring on my finger.

  “Why are you wearing that?” he asks, his hands tightening on mine so I can’t pull away. “Why the fuck are you wearing that ring?”

  “Don’t make this harder,” I whisper. “Okay? This has been a terrible couple of days, and I just can’t deal with… You didn’t want me, Brendan. So you can’t come in here now and make it all worse.”

  “I did want you,” he says adamantly. He lets go of my hands and cradles my jaw, forcing me to meet his eye. “I wanted you so much, and I was so fucked up over the thing with Gabi I wouldn’t let myself try. But some things that happened yesterday made it finally sink in—what you’ve been telling me all along—and I’m ready now. I’m ready for this to be anything you want it to be.”

  That mournful thing I felt inside of me the moment I saw his face rises up. “You’re too late, Brendan,” I whisper.

  “No. No, I’m fucking not. You aren’t married. There’s nothing here you can’t undo. You don’t even love him.”

  “I do. It’s not the same as with you, but I love him. It’s just different.”

  “You love him like a friend, Erin. You don’t marry someone you love as a friend. You don’t belong with someone you only love as a friend. You want more, and you’ve wanted it for a long time or you’d already have married him.”

  “Maybe I did want more, but I was wrong to,” I tell him. “I�
��ve never spent weeks crying over him. I didn’t feel devastated when it ended, but I did with you. I’m just better off with Rob. Around him, things go the way they’re supposed to.”

  “But around me you’re real. You get to be the person you actually are, the good and the bad. I love that girl, and he doesn’t even know her.”

  “He knows about my dad. I told him. He’s going to help me get him into rehab.”

  “Yeah, because you were forced to tell him,” he hisses. “But does he know the rest? Does he know how long it’s gone on? Does he know the things you love? That you hate listening to NPR and that those bluegrass interludes they play make you want to put a knife in your eye? That you’d rather sit outside or hear a band than go to some fancy fucking dinner? That you test drive a Ducati every time you’re here?”

  “No, but—”

  “Are you ever going to dance with him in the middle of the night wearing nothing but a T-shirt? No, because he won’t even dance. Because he wouldn’t even understand why you’d want to. Are you ever going to strip off all of your clothes and spread out on his couch when you want to get laid? Are you going to bake for him and sing at the top of your lungs while you do it? Let me answer for you: No, Erin, you won’t. That’s not who he is or what he wants, and you won’t. And those things aren’t peripheral. They are you.”

  Maybe he’s right, but none of those things even feel relevant right now. My family is sinking, and I have a duty to them. That’s what’s important here, not whether I ever dance half-naked again. As much as I might want Brendan, what I need most is to know that we—me, my parents, Sean—are safe. And even if I could afford to risk it, there’s no guarantee Brendan won’t change his mind. The past few weeks have been awful, but to lose him when I’d really thought we had a chance would be so much worse.