Best Kept Secret (20 page)

He paused to flip through what I assumed was my file, running the tip of his index finger up and down the pages until he found what he was looking for. “Ah, here it is. You told the intake physician that you left Charlie alone in the house one night to go purchase more alcohol?”

I’d said that out loud?
I didn’t remember the words leaving my mouth. I nodded once, tightly pressing my lips together to keep from crying.

“That’s something we’re required to report. But I think you should do it.”

I shook my head in a brisk motion. “I can’t.”

He leaned forward and set the file down, resting his forearms on his desk. “You can. And you should. It’s better if you self-report.”

“Better how?” I couldn’t fathom making this call. I couldn’t fathom that any of this was happening at all.

“In case anything legal comes up, your calling is taking responsibility for the action.”

“What do you mean, legal?” I asked, my blood pressure rising.

“Let’s not worry about that now.” He reached for the phone on his desk and punched in a number before handing me the receiver. “Here, I’ll sit with you while you do it, okay?”

I put the phone to my ear and waited for someone to answer. When the operator directed me to the right department, I held the receiver back toward the doctor. “I can’t do this.”

He nodded and gently pushed the phone back at me. “Yes, you can.”

I took a deep breath and spoke to the voice saying “Hello? Can I help you?” on the other end of the line.

“My name is Cadence Sutter,” I began shakily, “and I need to . . . I want to let you know . . .” I looked at the doctor and he nodded encouragingly.

“You want to let me know what?” the man on the other end of the phone asked.

“I left my son alone in our house in the middle of the night so I could go buy wine.” The words came out in a rush, tripping over one another.

“And how old is your son?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and a few tears made their way down my cheeks. “He’s five.” A sob tore at my chest. “Oh God, he’s only five.”

The caseworker took down the details of the night I left Charlie
and I cried while he told me the incident would become a part of my permanent record.

I stumbled my way numbly through the next week. I talked to as few people as possible, choosing instead to sit alone at the table in what I learned was called the community room. I colored through my days. I spoke when spoken to, answered Dr. Fisher’s questions in low, monosyllabic phrases. I took the pills the nurses gave me. The pills made me sleepy, so I slept. A lot. It was the easiest way to pass the days. Every time I woke, I slowly rose into the consciousness of where I was and what I’d done. It instantly felt like a huge boulder was sitting on my chest.

Wine, pills, hospital.

Charlie.

Gone.

When I thought about my son, my breathing became shallow and sharp. My insides hemorrhaged despair—it oozed through my body like hot, black tar. I found escape from this thought only through coloring, the focus on the pencil to the page. It was the only thing I could do.

“Your son will love these,” a nurse said one afternoon as she looked over my shoulder at the picture I was working on.

My throat suddenly closed and my eyes blurred. I shook my head. I wasn’t coloring these for him. I could barely allow myself to even
think
about him. I couldn’t. It hurt too much. I knew he was okay; he was with his father. Still, anxiety swarmed through my flesh like a regiment of fire ants. I would have done anything to exterminate how I felt.

Another patient chose that moment to snap the television on in the other corner of the room.
Clifford the Big Red Dog
flashed onto the screen. The sight of the cartoon Charlie loved was too much for me. The sobs took over again.

This is how my time in the hospital was spent. Coloring and crying. Crying and coloring. Besides sleeping, it was all I could do. I lost track of what day it was. I didn’t care. I hurt my son. I lost him. Nothing mattered but getting out of here and making everything right.

During my second week in the hospital, I finally brought myself to turn on my cell phone and check for messages. There were two from Jess, the first seeing how I was and the second to let me know that she had spoken to Charlie and he was doing fine with Martin. He missed me, but understood I was “sick” and in the hospital so the doctors could help me get well. The third was from a number I didn’t recognize. As soon as I heard the voice, though, I knew who it was: Martin’s divorce lawyer.

“Cadence? It’s Steven O’Reilly. Martin tells me he has some serious concerns about your ability to take care of Charlie. He told me you’ve been drinking and things got bad enough that he had to come remove Charlie from your home.”

My pulse began to ricochet through my veins.
Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God.

“Martin has spoken to Child Protective Services and they’ve informed him you’re on record putting Charlie’s life in danger. He’s filing for full custody and I’ve submitted the necessary paperwork to grant Martin temporary guardianship while you’re incarcerated in the hospital. I certainly hope what Martin told me about what you’ve been doing is wrong, but if it’s not, you’re going to want to contact a lawyer at your earliest convenience.”

“No!” I howled. I threw the phone across the room and it smashed against the wall. I grabbed the sides of my face with my fingers. My nails raked my skin as I dropped to my knees on the cold linoleum. The pain I felt was bigger than my body, bigger than the entire room. It pressed down on me and threatened to smother my every breath. A nurse rushed into my room.

“What is it, Cadence?” she asked, trying to wrap her arm around my shoulder.

I jerked away from her touch and fell to the floor, shrieking, “No!” over and over again.
He can’t take Charlie. I won’t let him. I’ll die first.
My body longed to shed its skin and move on to being another person altogether. A person who didn’t get drunk in front of her son.

The nurse pressed the red button by the side of my bed and a moment later, there was a rush of bodies around me and I felt myself lifted by strong arms into my bed. Next came the sharp sting of a needle in my arm. It took less than a minute for the drug to take effect, and I drifted off into restless sleep, only to wake a few hours later to cry again.
What have I done? What have I done?
This phrase played over and over in my mind.
Martin took Charlie. I’ve lost my child and I’m not going to get him back.

I sunk down into that hospital bed and stayed there for two days, pinned down by agony. I wept. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t deserve to have Charlie as my son. Not with what I’d done. Nurses checked on me every few hours and gave me the pills they said I needed to keep taking. I swallowed them, knowing they would let me sleep, the only kind of escape I had left. The nurses tried to lull me out of bed with promises of relief to be found in group therapy, yoga, and meditative walks. I shook my head and refused to budge. Finally, Dr. Fisher sat on the edge of my bed and set a warm hand on my shoulder.

“Cadence. You need to get up.”

“No.”

“If you don’t get up for you, get up for Charlie.”

I started to sob again at the sound of my son’s name. Picturing his face brought on a tangible sensation of razor blades sliding across my skin. “I can’t believe what I’ve done,” I cried. “How did I let things get this bad?”

He moved his hand up and down my arm in a soothing motion. “I know it’s hard. But if you don’t get out of bed, what are you going to teach your son?”

“My ex-husband took him,” I said, sobbing. “He’s not even mine anymore.”

“Of course he’s yours.”

I shook my head into the pillow.
He didn’t know. How could he know? Had someone taken his son away?
“I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t. I just can’t. It hurts too much.”

“I know it hurts. But if you give up, if you decide to kill yourself, Charlie won’t have a mother at all. Not even a part-time one.”

I paused, my tears finally slowing. Dr. Fisher squatted down next to me, his next words whispered right into my ear.

“Do you know what else might happen to him?”

I shook my head, rubbing my wet face into the pillow, knowing I did not want to hear what he might have to say.

“It’s possible he’ll kill himself, too. Studies have shown us that a child whose parent commits suicide is twice as likely to commit suicide themselves. Do you want that, Cadence? Do you want Charlie to someday swallow pills or shoot himself in the head because you couldn’t find a way to step up and face your problems? Is this what you want to teach him to do when he can’t handle his?”

For the first time in two days, I made eye contact with another person. Dr. Fisher had a sweet, round face; his eyes were gentle. I must have looked like a train wreck.

“Is that true?” I asked.

He nodded.

I got out of bed.

I
n the middle of
February, when I first arrived at Promises Treatment Center—fresh from the psych ward and detox—I was surprised to find a three-story, nondescript steel gray Colonial-style house in an area of Bellevue where many homes have been converted into businesses. Promises’ aged cedar siding was cracked in a few spots and the landscaping consisted of a yellow-lined parking lot and several groupings of slightly bent rhododendron bushes. The building wasn’t broken down, but its weathered appearance did little to foster a sense of confidence in the establishment’s healing capabilities. I voiced as much to Jess, who drove me there.

“It looks fine,” she said. “And it’s the only one your insurance completely covers.” Her voice was uncharacteristically thin. It practically wavered. She was tired. Exhausted of me, I supposed, of the situation. She was the one who called all the available treatment facilities while I was on suicide watch on the psych ward. She was the one who agreed with Dr. Fisher that I should spend twenty-eight days as an in-patient at Promises. She further committed me to another six months of continuing care, during which time I would attend a weekly group session, as well as an individual meeting with a counselor twice a month. Jess picked up my mail and fielded furious calls from Martin. She relayed the details of what was going on with me to my mother. I still hoped I might wake up any moment from
this nightmare. That none of this was real. Maybe I was playing a part—the alcohol-numbed woman stumbling her way into treatment. I could be a goddamn Lifetime movie of the week.

“Where’s the Zen garden?” I asked. “I imagined sitting in a Zen garden while I pondered the recesses of my fucked-up soul.” Sarcasm became a tic for me when I got nervous—worse than an eye twitch and just as impossible to control.

Jess sighed. “You can ponder your fucked-up soul among the rhododendrons.”

“I don’t know,” I mused. “I was hoping for a little pizzazz. A welcome wagon of a massage therapist and personal dietician, at least.”

“Let’s go,” Jess said. I went, unable to put off the inevitable.

I soon learned that Promises’ understated front was for discretion’s sake; rare is the woman who wants to be walking into an establishment which boldly proclaimed
FORMERLY DRUNK WOMEN ENTER HERE
! in neon lights. It was designed so she could be going in to see a dentist or get a massage. No one would be the wiser.

But now, two months later on the Monday morning after I’d dropped off Charlie with Martin, I arrived for my continuing care group session with Andi and three other formerly drunk women already a little irritated, so the vision of Promises’ decidedly dowdy exterior serves only to irk me further. It is a drizzly, cold day—Lake Washington a perfect gray reflection of the angry, cloud-laden sky. Traffic had been a bitch over the 520 bridge; wet roads render a large portion of Seattleites into inattentive idiots behind the wheel. You’d think the opposite would be true. You’d think they’d be used to it, seasoned veterans made into stronger, better drivers in the rain. You’d think this, yes. But you’d be wrong.

“Hey,” I say to Promises’ daytime receptionist, Lily, as I walk in through the front door.

Lily looks up from her flat-screen computer. Her station is a delicate, scrolled maple desk in the entryway to what I assume was originally a living room, but now serves as a waiting area. It’s painted a
peaceful sage green and filled with three overstuffed couches and muted lighting. Tinkling piano music plays softly in the background and a tabletop river stone fountain sits over in the corner of the room. I imagine the space saying, “Hello, welcome! Please, sit comfortably while you prepare to visit your drug- and/or alcohol-addled loved one. . . .”

Lily is a young slip of a girl, twenty-one if she is a day, with a mass of blond poodle curls and watery, pale blue eyes. “Hi, Cadence,” she says, blinking rapidly. She is polite, well-trained.

“Anyone else here yet?”

She nods, her curls bouncing like a clown’s wig. “Serena’s here, and Madeline. A new gal, too. She’s meeting with Andi before group starts.”

“Thanks.” I step down a long, narrow hallway, past the poster-covered walls. “Let Go and Let God” one proclaims; “One Day at a Time” says another. I grimace a bit, still, at these phrases. They seem trite, as though a mess as complicated as my life could possibly be rebuilt through tiny, ineffectual sentence structures. To my left is the large, sunny yellow kitchen and dining area; to my right, behind the waiting area, the four small offices shared by the staff. At the end of the hall is a stairway leading to the third floor, where the twenty or so in-patient residents stay, grouped together in five rooms sleeping four each, complete with knotty pine bunk beds and two large community bathrooms.

I head downstairs to the group rooms and enter quietly.

“One day at a time, my sweet brown ass!” I hear Serena exclaim as I step through the door. She snorts. “More like one breath!” She is a short, pretty black woman with an intricate configuration of dark, shoulder-length braids hanging in shiny, thin ropes about her face, swinging around like jungle vines. She appears slightly coltish beneath her cinnamon skin, all joints and smooth muscles, with a complexion marred by nothing but disappointment in how her life has worked out so far. She manages a small downtown cafe that
provides the kind of insurance that covers her trips to treatment. This one will stick, she is convinced. It has to. She looks up, sees me, dark eyes bright, and gives me a huge, white-toothed smile. “Hey, girl!”