The Breakdown Lane

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  No.

  It looked like an inmate’s room.

  “Gabe!” she called. “Come here!” and I started to bawl.

  By the following afternoon, Hannah had washed surfaces I believe hadn’t been touched by human hands since we’d owned the duplex. Hannah got on ladders and washed the crown molding. She made rice with beans, rice with chicken and broccoli, rice and lentil soup, rice pudding. She made matzoh balls. She starched and ironed my blouses, which had hung in my closet lately like a group of tacky Quasimodos. She dumped Gabe’s backpack out on the living room floor and went through it scrap by scrap.

  It being Sunday, Gabe spent six hours doing assignments, even ones he insisted were “study guides” that didn’t need to be turned in for grades.

  “So you study them by doing them and then you can burn them,” Hannah said. Gabe gave me a look both withering and panicked. He had no idea how to do algebra.

  “Call Luke,” I suggested.

  “He’s worse than me,” Gabe muttered.

  “Call someone else,” I whispered.

  “No one else in the class talks to me,” he said. “I don’t know if their name is Dick or Dave.”

  “Call Klaus,” said Gabe Senior, who’d been more or less preoccupied with the phone since he’d arrived. I knew what he was doing, trying to find Leo, calling Leo’s friends, his colleagues.

  “They’ve gone on a trip,” Caro said hopefully, trying unsuccessfully to slide her own backpack into the hall closet with her foot. “They won’t be back for ages.”

  “Unless there’s a guy who looks like Klaus shoveling the walk, they’re not gone anymore,” my father-in-law replied without looking up. “I guess ages has arrived. He’s a scientist. He should know math. Go ask him, Caroline. Or I will.”

  Miserably, my children went to find Klaus, who quit shoveling long enough to help the kids. My tenants were not exactly friends of ours, and they were never intrusive. But I knew they had realized something of what had transpired; and they began doing kindly, if not particularly useful things, such as bringing Aury fossilized dinosaur dung, which they left in our mailbox with a funny card. Klaus had also—in writing, on letterhead—offered to drive the children anywhere if I should need the help “for any reason.” Gabe later told me that Liesel made tea for them; and that they seemed happy to work on math with my children, even though their own unpacked suitcases were sitting in the hall. They’d arrived home from Saint Lucia or Santo Domingo or somewhere, it turned out, on the same plane that had brought Leo’s parents from Florida. The kids were gone for at least an hour. During that time, Hannah, with consummate delicacy, scrubbed the tub and filled it with steaming, scented water for me. She slid naked Aury, slippery and curved as a dolphin, in beside me, with the silent message that my sturdy two-year-old’s physical support would be more important to me than my ability to wash her dark curls. Hannah waited outside the curtains until Aury was, at least, cleaner. Then, when Aury had run off for her Scooby shirt, Hannah found one of my expensive sponges and, without asking, began to wash my back and hair, her eyes averted. I sobbed and finally, against every previous instinct I’d ever expressed, took Hannah’s spatulate hand with its imbedded gold band. “Is this from depression, Julieanne?” she asked softly. “Has my son done this to his wife?”

  “No,” I told her. “It’s actually…I so very much didn’t want to have to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “I have multiple sclerosis, Hannah.” Her breath quickened. “I’m not dying. And I’m not this way all the time. This is just a reaction to the shots I have to take so the symptoms don’t get worse.”

  “What symptoms?”

  “Oh, some problems with my legs. My vision. Balance. They come and go.” Hannah dropped her eyes. I went on. “I…don’t blame Leo. But I need Leo. I need Leo to come home.”

  We sat up late that night. Gabe Senior was talking about a petition for habeas corpus based on mental incompetence or some notion—he’d become quick with the Internet since my husband had given him a laptop, corresponding often from Sarasota with my Gabe and his golf pals in Door County. My son had never betrayed a word of this. When he once again suggested legal action, I finally sighed and said, “I can’t do that, Papa. We took out a power of attorney before he left. Leo and I have power of attorney for each other. He can sell things without my signature. He can take money from our accounts. He could do that even if we hadn’t got power of attorney. He can take out money whenever he pleases. We’re still legally married.”

  The elder man pinched his brow. “In all my life, in all the years I’ve known my son, I imagined that he might do things I wouldn’t agree with, but never that would shame me. When did this start? This hippie business was one thing…Julie.”

  “That went on for a year. You knew about that. But the trip was a big shock. It’s my getting ill that’s fouled everything up,” I said. “I don’t mean what Leo has done isn’t inexcusable. But I could have made it, somehow, if I hadn’t gotten sick.”

  “Julie, why didn’t you tell us how wrong he’s been acting?” Hannah pleaded.

  “I thought he was having a little midlife thing…what do you call it…?”

  “A crisis,” suggested my father-in-law, his surprised frown eloquent at my inability to grab the word.

  “And when it was over, it would be over,” I went on. “I never expected that he wouldn’t be back by now. Or that I would be too ashamed to tell anyone for how long he’d been gone. And how disgusting I’ve been…. He sent the kids candles and jam at Christmas. From a zip code in New Hampshire. No address.”

  “Disgusting,” Hannah spat. “As if you chose to be sick. You told Cathy the extent of it…why not us?”

  “Only because she was here. You understand. I thought it would all be…okay.” I was almost too weary to form my mouth around the words. I could feel my eyelids fluttering. “At first, I thought I was just…sick from grief. Then flu. And when I found out, I was…it was just too much to tell you. I have some pride left.”

  “Pride isn’t for that, Julieanne. You made a graceful home for our son. You gave him beautiful children…” Hannah protested. “And you didn’t plan to be ill in order to get Leo’s sympathy.”

  “Look at you! All this! And you kept up your work,” Gabe Senior, prompted. “Julie, the first thing you have to do is close down all those bank accounts. Clean them out. Change banks.”

  “I will, Papa,” I said. “About the work. I wasn’t that heroic. Not at first. I can do it now,” I told them. “But at first, Cathy and Gabe wrote my volume…I mean, my column! And imagine, they were…bigger, I mean they’re better than I am. I got a syndication contract since…I got ill. Because of Cathy and Gabe. They’re hip, Cathy and Gabe.” I said then, “I’m sorry…Gabe, Papa…I know we weren’t supposed to name him after you because you’re living and Jews don’t do that.”

  He waved his hand, perplexed both at my fumbling and the lack of sequence. “My father died when I was seven. I always thought you named him for my grandfather, also Gabriel. Every second person in this house is named Gabe. And why would you bring this up now of all times? We have to find a way to have Leo declared incompetent, Julie. Hannah, you see this. We have to find a conservatorship, before he cleans this whole family out—”

  “Because,” I said, cradling my head in my arms on the table, “you’re being so nice to me. That’s why I brought up the name. And he wouldn’t have left maybe, if I had been, I don’t know, more understanding.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Hannah said. “Julie, listen. We’ve always felt you were a very modern girl. Very much a self-sufficient person. But things have to be done here. Caroline just tried to leave—and it’s nine-thirty at night! She says her mother lets her go out at this time.”

  “No, I just…can’t stop her. Not until I’m on my feet. Probably by tomorrow.” I cringed inwardly at this admission of my parental impotence.

  “And so I said, Missy, you have been taki
ng advantage of your mother’s illness, and that is going to change…” Hannah went on.

  “She just lays there like a zombie,” Caroline put in, suddenly standing with her hands on her hips in the kitchen door. “She doesn’t even try to get up. It’s like, guh, guh, I’m asleep. Like, every other week!”

  “That’s not true, Caro!” I said. “Shame on you!”

  “It is! If Cathy doesn’t come over, we’re eating cornflakes. If I go to Mallory’s, at least I get a hamburger….”

  “And have you ever known your mother to do this in your entire life before these past few months, Caroline? Ever? Didn’t she always look like a fashion model?” Caro snorted, but Hannah went on, “Or a socialite, before this? Do you think she wants to feel this way?”

  “I think she could try a little,” Caroline said, stepping into the doorway. She looked like the Broadway cruisers my girlfriends and I used to titter at from the back of my father’s car. Glittering gold eye shadow. Miles of legs under a skirt so short Aury could have worn it. And rage. Rage that seemed to seize her every muscle from her shoulders down. “I think she could take the medicine Cathy says the doctors want her to take. I think she could give a shit—”

  “Shut your mouth, Caroline,” Leo’s father said, wearily. “Go wash that crap off your face and go to bed.” Shocked, because this man, her most gentle of relatives, had never spoken to her without a leprechaun’s charm, Caro slumped away to obey. “And Caroline! Spread quilts on the guest room floor, for you and Aury…” he called after her. “Grandma and I need firm mattresses.”

  From the hall came an outraged bellow, “Me? Me, sleep on the floor?”

  “Solly, Cholly,” her grandfather answered, with a kind of shrug and grin. “We’ll be needing the beds. We need to stay here until your mama is on her feet.”

  I wakened with a jerk, realizing I’d fallen asleep at the table.

  “And you get to bed now,” Hannah told me, lifting me firmly by one elbow. “We’ll talk treatments and condos and money and…these, Gabe, what did you call them?”

  “Skip tracers,” said Gabe Senior.

  “They find people,” Hannah explained.

  “I don’t have money for that,” I told her softly, as I brushed my teeth.

  “You don’t have to have all the money in the world,” Hannah said. “Other people also have money.”

  “I can’t…take anything,” I said, as I lay down on blessedly clean sheets.

  Hannah sat perched on the edge of the bed, straight-backed, perhaps a hundred pounds soaking wet, pert in her khakis and UW sweatshirt, her still-black hair cut short and brushed back like a boy’s. “You know in the Bible, Julie, about Ruth?” I nodded. “Well, Ruth refused to leave Naomi. She was in danger, and she wouldn’t leave. And she said the thing that is probably the only thing anyone knows from that story, which was, you know it, of course, ‘Whither thou goest, I will go. Whither thou lodgest, I will lodge’…. Sometimes people think that Naomi was Ruth’s mother.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But she was her mother-in-law.”

  “Naomi wanted her to go,” I said.

  “But Ruth was too loyal for that. And it all worked out,” Hannah told me, brushing back my hair with a hand that smelled of fabric softener.

  FIFTEEN

  Gabe’s Journal

  While passing the second semester of freshman year with Ds in every class—and these were pity Ds, purchased by ratting out my sick mother, absentee father, and the constant travail on behalf of my poor younger siblings—I also had become a syndicated columnist before I was sixteen. I, Gabe Steiner, known geek and future high school dropout, was being read by millions of fans across America.

  Okay, maybe thousands.

  Cathy and I were a pretty good team. She came around a lot, but she also tried to stay away as much as she could—so my mother wouldn’t feel like Cathy considered her a helpless amoeba. Every day, though, she called, and when my mom would let her, she stayed over with Abby Sun.

  Having to do my mother’s job periodically was a good distraction, because otherwise, after Tian left, I was zoned. If I got a free minute, I played some mind-out game like Roller Coaster Magnate or listened to music on my actually-kind-of-nice stereo or didn’t do a few dishes or entertained thoughts of nearly drowning myself to get sympathy. I knew my moping around bothered my mother. But she was using her good hours to go to a shrink and do all those speeches, which I gathered were helping to support us. And she was also trying, without any success, to get fucking Caroline to do anything after she’d been out all night, smoking (cigarettes) with Wonderbrain Mallory and Justine, and Caro’s excellent new love, Ryan, the dumbest air-breathing bipedal hominid since Mallory. He looked to be, like, thirty, and had more hair than an Irish setter (not only on his head). Prying Caro’s ear off the phone was about as possible as my being named a Rhodes scholar.

  Grandma Steiner one day asked if she could “speak” to Caroline. Privately. They had stopped living with us—they stayed only for a few days—but they were over almost every day. I could imagine the topic of conversation Grandma wanted with Caro—my having heard, earlier in the week, a short but pointed lecture about the two plates with mozzarella stuck to them under my bed.

  Caro showed up in my room ten minutes later, looking literally thinner from fury. Caro wasn’t used to big emotions. She was a “whatever” sort of person.

  “I now have a list of chores,” she shouted. “What the hell is this? Little House on the Prairie?”

  “No,” I said. “This would be Little Asylum on the Prairie.”

  “Well, I don’t give a shit, Gabe,” she said. “I’m not doing laundry and…reorganizing ‘the baby’s’ clothes. I have my own life.”

  “You would be the only one who does,” I told her.

  “Look, life didn’t end for the rest of us when Miss Saigon left.”

  At that point, I hadn’t hit my sister since I was about seven. But I punched her then as hard as I could reasonably hit a girl, right in the bicep. She slapped me across the face.

  “You are the most fucking selfish witch I ever met,” I said. “Why are you the one who gets to play Miss Popularity while the rest of us take care of Mom? I’m doing her fucking job half the time.”

  “Well, oh well,” Caroline said, wiggling her fingers. “You’re such a good little boy, Gabe.”

  “I mean, you could read to Aury one night,” I sneered at her. “You could get up by yourself and not have to have me wake you up like I was your daddy.”

  “You’re nowhere near being like our dad.”

  “Thank God for small favors,” I told her.

  “Gabe. Are you really being fair to Dad? I mean, you have to admit Mom was fairly…out there before this happened. She was all about her ballet classes and being Miss Too Good for Everybody.”

  I never saw our mother like that, but I could see how a person could. She hadn’t been like Luke’s mom, either hanging on his father or yelling at him, talking to all the neighbors and bringing them pies. Mom had her own orbit, true…. But I wasn’t about to admit it to Caro. Partly because a lot of what my mother had been taken up with, before she got sick, had been me.

  Though I had mostly hated her for it, Mom had taken on the role of engineering the push, pull, and drag method of getting me through school. I owed her at least a defense.

  So I gave her one.

  “Even if she was, she’s your mother, Caro. Ever think that even Mallory might help her mother out if she had MS and her dad took a powder? I mean, she really totally abandoned you all your life, right, didn’t she? When you wanted to be in shows and she’d sew the dresses or teach all the kids the dances? Every time you puked or pissed the bed or needed a Halloween costume made overnight because you found out some other girl was going to be Cinderella….”

  She started to cry then—mad, hot tears. “I’m not a stone or a piece of shit, Gabe! I just sort of don’t want to get sucked down, all right? I’m, like
, only almost fifteen! Y’know? Not thirty! I can’t handle the whole Dad desertion, Mom crackup thing.”

  “Shoot, Caro. I understand. Because it’s all about you.”

  “Go to hell, Gabe,” she said. “Don’t ever expect me to stick up for you again. Kids say you just wander around school looking like someone who needs his own shopping cart with a Chihuahua.”

  “You’re a bitch.”

  “I’d rather be a bitch than a retard.”

  It was all very all-American and functional.

  She had a point about school. I did wander around it. High school dwarfed me. Half the time, I wondered why I even showed up. I had a whole other set of responsibilities and real-life shit, and there I was every seventh hour, sitting in the dunce chair and being hocked by Mrs. Kimball for completing only half my biology lab. My mother was a biology lab. If Kimball had showed a teaspoonful of compassion, it might have been different. But Mrs. Kimball, LD specialist and professional sadist, thought everything I did wrong was on purpose. I was used to this, but taking care of a whole damned family in secret more or less made their bullshit about ninety percent more annoying. My mother was coherent three-quarters of the time, and what I had to explain was how I forgot how to do an algebra problem between the end of the ninth-hour class and the half-hour ride home. Klaus helped, but you can ask a neighbor only so much. Mrs. Kimball helpfully wrote my mom a letter, though my mother never saw it, about her belief that this was passive-aggressive behavior and I might need to be “looked at” by the emotionally disturbed specialist, too. You could try to explain it to her, but all Kimball would do was give you this constipated little smile.

  The bad part was, I didn’t understand it myself, and no one ever thought to question why. I didn’t learn until years later that I had a language-processing disorder along with my other crap. I could understand perfectly what a teacher was saying while he was saying it, but when I tried to play it back, it was like the tape recorder had picked up gibberish. It was like he was saying, “If the missing number is X, then Y must be the factor to the right of the moon, just below one of the rings of Saturn….”