Housebreaking (36 page)

“The only thing I've done with your mother is walk the dog.”

“Is that what you call it? Sounds like something from the Kama Sutra. I don't blame her, though. You're hot. You're the hot older guy.” She batted her eyes at him, her mall-girl act again. “Wouldn't you like someone younger? Me, for instance.”

“Cut it out.”

“What, you're denying it? I saw you checking out my ass that day. That's why I flipped you off. You're a horny old fucker, aren't you?”

He shook his head. “Your story doesn't make sense. You break into my house and trash the place. Now you bring back a ring worth thousands of dollars?”

“So?”

“So, why not keep it? Why not sell it?”

“I felt guilty.”

“You could've just left it in the mailbox if you felt so bad.”

“Didn't think of that.”

“I don't believe you. You're covering up for your boyfriend, aren't you? He broke in, didn't he? That kid Billy.”

It pissed her off, him thinking that she couldn't rob his house by herself—even if she hadn't. “I took your fucking ring, okay? I steal things all the time. I took it and now I'm bringing it back. You should thank me instead of breaking my balls.”

He sighed, looking at her with his puppy dog eyes. Her mother had fallen for that gaze. “Fine. Thank you. Now you should go.”

She got up and went down the hall and knelt next to the dog, rubbing its belly. “Would you mind if I warmed up in front of the fireplace?”

“Yes, I would mind,” he said.

“Chill out, Ben. Don't be so uptight. Go pour yourself another scotch. Get one for me too. I deserve a reward, don't you think?”

“Ah. So that's why you came to my house at this time of night. For money.”

“Not money. Something better.”

“Like what?”

“Like what you do to Audrey.”

“That's enough,” he said. “It's time to go.” He grabbed her elbow and pulled her toward the front door. She was surprised at his strength, how easily he was dragging her along, and she felt weightless and unable to resist. No, this couldn't be happening, she couldn't leave without raiding the cabinet. She gathered herself and wheeled away from him, swinging her arms, yelling, “Let go of me, motherfucker!”

She screamed—as loud as she could. When he dropped her arm, she ran up the stairs, clutching the banister for support. Everything was moving so slowly. It seemed to take an unusual effort to move her arms and legs. She heard his voice, close behind her.

“Hey, come back here!”

At the top of the stairs she ran into the bedroom and ducked into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. In the mirror, the sudden appearance of her face startled her, pale and wide-eyed, her lips bluish.

He pounded on the door.

“You hurt my arm, asshole.”

“I'm sorry.”

She opened the medicine cabinet. There it was: the stash. All those brown bottles—more than she'd remembered—and the cardboard packets of morphine, stacked on the bottom shelf, right where she'd left them.
Ativan
, she decided. Ativan had that nice mellowness, just what she needed to dissolve the stress of first-degree larceny or whatever crime she was committing. She fumbled with the childproof cap, giddy with the effort. How to line up the lines. Turning, twisting, like her dad's old Rubik's Cube, looking for the groove. Finally, the happy click.

Ta-da.

There were only five pills in the bottle. She dumped them into her hand and bent under the faucet for a mouthful of water. She popped all five, like Tic Tacs.

Good-bye, anxiety.

She went to work on the cabinet, taking off the caps and dumping the pills into her pockets. She didn't need the bottles; she knew the pills by sight. Halcion were the tiny round blue ones. Ambien, the cylindrical white ones. OxyContin, perfect yellow circles. The jumble of reds, whites, and blues, the colors of America. And what was more American than modern pharmacology? God bless Pfizer and Merck. If only they didn't torture and kill dogs, the fuckers.

When he banged on the door, she froze. For a moment she'd almost forgotten where she was. “Leave me alone,” she told him. “I've got cramps.” The magic words; they never failed to scare off teachers, horny guys, anyone who wanted you to do something you didn't. She filled her pockets, enough to last a year, longer. And she would hide them well this time, where her mother wouldn't find them. She returned the empty bottles to the cabinet, lining up the labels.

Done.

She pulled on her sweatshirt and raised the hood. When she opened the door, he was standing directly in front of her, a worried expression on his face—worry and something else too.
Fear
. She saw it in his eyes. He was frightened of her. This exhilarated her, made her want to go further.

“If you tell my mother I was here . . .” The words felt heavy in her mouth. She started again: “If you tell her any of this, I'll say you raped me.”

“She won't believe you.”

“Maybe not. But my father will.”

She pushed past him and scrambled down the stairs and out the front door. She broke into a run, the pavement rising to meet her, the pills shifting in her pockets like handfuls of sand. She ran all the way to her house and slipped open the kitchen door. From her parents' bathroom came the sound of a running faucet.

She closed her bedroom door behind her and collapsed onto her mattress. She removed one of the packets of morphine from her pocket, spilling some pills onto the floor, and tore open the box. She pinched one of the capsules out of the foil. Down went her jeans, in went the bullet. After a few moments, the pill seemed to expand as it warmed to her body, then softly explode. She pulled up her jeans and rolled onto her back.

Mission complete
, she said to herself.

She waited for the euphoria. She stared at the white stucco ceiling, and after a while the ceiling seemed to multiply and morph like a screen saver. She blinked, watching the cosmic vision, the kaleidoscopic patterns, but it soon made her feel sick. A dizziness overtook her. She tried to blink it away, but it got worse. This wasn't blackout. This was something different. Something scary.

She tried to get up, but the force against her was too strong. Then the void came all at once, like a roller-coaster drop. She disappeared for a moment. Where was she? Had she passed out? Her arms felt numb. The muscles in her legs started twitching. An alarm sounded in her ears, nearly too much to contain. This was wrong, this was not like before. She tried to call out for her mother, but no sound came forth. It took a great effort to conjure the word and get her voice:

“Mom!”

Then she fell into the void, downward, toward a deeper darkness.

The display, unseen on her cell phone, read:

11:58
P.M.

Monday

November 26, 2007

Mother and Daughter

Two hours earlier

LATER, AUDREY
would remember the silence, the first sign that something was wrong. She looked up from the TV, realizing that she hadn't heard a peep from Emily for a while—no blow-dryer, no music, no opening and closing of closet doors, none of the usual sounds her daughter produced.

“Honey?” she called.

She didn't expect an answer. Her daughter hadn't really spoken to her for weeks. She knocked on her daughter's bedroom door. “Is everything okay?” Getting no response, she cracked the door and looked in. The bed was unoccupied, the blankets askew. Audrey checked the bathroom, then turned out the lights in the room and searched for her daughter—kitchen, living room, basement, garage. Nothing. Emily wasn't home. Ten o'clock at night and her daughter had snuck out. So much for trying to ground her. She wondered if Emily was even sick. Or had she just been feigning illness all along? Audrey didn't think so. Her daughter hadn't looked well for a couple of weeks, and it would be unlike Emily to want to stay home, away from all the excitement of the world. Maybe sneaking out meant she was finally feeling better. Maybe that was a good sign. With Emily, nothing was clear.

What now?

Audrey got her jacket and went outside. Andrew, as usual, was no help. He hadn't come home from work yet. Audrey didn't bother calling him. Emily had probably gone to meet a boy. He would have arrived at
the appointed hour, some suburban badass driving his father's Mercedes. She would be wearing her black cardigan, buttoned too low. He would honk the horn, or maybe she'd told him not to so her parents wouldn't hear, and she would jump in—and disappear until dawn again.

In the distance an animal howled—a coyote, it sounded like—from somewhere on the mountain. Audrey listened, holding her breath, and the coyote pealed again, a sort of laughing now, trailing away. She suddenly felt foolish, standing watch like some chaperone:
Mom the bummer
. She didn't want to play that part anymore. Emily didn't listen to her anyway. Tell her to stay away from the ocean and she would swim out to the jetty. That was her nature, to test the limits. Audrey just happened to be the one setting those limits. She'd been silly to think she could ground her daughter. So Emily had snuck out. That was to be expected. Audrey was surprised it hadn't happened sooner. Maybe it had; maybe she just hadn't noticed. There was no need to call the cops or wait up all night, as she had done the last time. No need to worry. Emily would return when she was ready, as always. Adolescence was a form of insanity under the best circumstances—the body changing, desires bulging, insecurities howling. How could she make her daughter understand that this was only temporary?

Audrey went back into the house and began the ritual ablutions of day's end: creams and cleansers, scrubbing and brushing, nose blowing and bladder emptying. When had it become such an enormous effort just to go to sleep? Fifteen minutes later she emerged from the bathroom, lathered with lotions, and slipped into bed.

She reached into the bottom drawer of her night table and opened the compact case, where she kept her Valium, where Emily wouldn't find them. She took two. This was how she slept without dreams, without grief rousing her at 3
A.M.
—the only way she could sleep, now. The holiday had made it worse, as always. She turned out the light and stretched, a luxury to have the bed to herself. Almost immediately, she fell asleep.

Later, she would wonder how she heard the sound, so faint, like a faraway bird. Her head felt clogged, her body heavy. The sound persisted until it drew her to the surface. Her cell phone, she realized. She cursed. She didn't want to open her eyes and get out of bed—the floor was cold, she was exhausted—but she found herself rising and shuffling to the dresser, drawn by some maternal force. It might be Emily; she might be in trouble. She flipped open the phone and said hello.

“Audrey?”

“Benjamin? Is that you?”

“Yes. I'm sorry to call so late.”

“What time is it? Why are you—” She held the phone out to check the display and dropped it. It knocked against the night table and fell behind the bed. She cursed, reaching to turn on the lamp. When she retrieved the phone, the call was lost. Why would he call at this hour? He'd never done that before. She dialed him back, but the phone rang a few times and then went to voice mail. She hung up without leaving a message. Without her glasses, she squinted at the screen. She didn't recognize the number; it was not his usual phone.

The last time they spoke, she'd told him she would get in touch after the holiday. He hadn't waited. Instead he'd woken her from a dead sleep. Did he not respect her at all, to call at this hour? She checked for a message; there was none. She returned the phone to the dresser and climbed back into bed. Rude of him, she thought. What could he want from her at this hour, other than the obvious? Booty-calling, like some college kid. She remembered that night at Starbucks. He'd gone to his car before her, leaving his coffee cup on the table. She had brought it to the garbage and tossed it in with a splash. Cleaning up after him, just like she did with Andrew. That was the way of men, leaving their messes behind. She felt a surge of disdain for him. It angered her, enough to shake off the effect of the Valium, enough to keep her from returning immediately to sleep.

A moment later she heard the faint cry:

“Mom.”

She sat up in bed and turned on the light. What now? Had she heard her daughter's voice or imagined it? She got up and shuffled down the hallway in her slippers. There was a light coming from beneath Emily's door.

Thank God, she's home.

She knocked. “Emily? Do you need something?” There was no answer. She would not lecture; she wouldn't even mention her little escape. She just wanted her daughter to say something kind to her—to wish her good night, a spoken word, any word. They'd gone too long without speaking.

“I just want to say good night—” Audrey said, opening the door.

Emily was lying on the mattress, her hair spread out around her like a
shawl. All the lights were burning in the room, like a crime scene. There was something strange about her face. Her lips were bright blue. Audrey wondered why Emily would put on such strange lipstick. Then she realized it was not lipstick, but her lips, somehow turned that unnatural color, as if she'd been frostbitten.

“Emily?”

When she didn't open her eyes or stir, Audrey went to her, stepping on something—tiny pills;
prescription pills
—scattered all around her bed.

“Emily, wake up.” Audrey knelt beside her and touched her daughter's cheek; her skin was cold and clammy. Her breath came in rasps.

“Emily, what did you do? Can you hear me?”

She grabbed her daughter's arm, squeezed her, jostled her, slapped her across the face. But Emily did not open her eyes, did not show any response at all, except for that terrible raspy breathing. She needed to call an ambulance. But she seemed unable to move. She did not want to leave Emily alone. It took all her will to get up and run to the kitchen.

* * *

AT LAST
the sirens sounded.

Audrey rushed outside, wearing only her T-shirt and hospital pants. Soon a fire engine roared to a stop, lights flashing. Why would they send a fire engine? The big rig stopped on the street and an ambulance turned in to the driveway. Two EMTs got out, a man and a woman.

Time altered, a herky-jerky acceleration. The EMTs clambered down the hallway in their blue uniforms, their two-way radios emitting human voices and squelching sounds. Their boots were open, the laces dragging behind. Emily lay on the floor, the EMTs working over her. Audrey stood behind them, looking over their shoulders.

“Whose pills are these?” asked the male EMT. He gathered the pills off the rug and examined them one by one.

“I don't know.”

“Has she ever done anything like this before?”

“I found some pills in her closet a while back and threw them away. I don't know how she gets them.”

“What sort of pills?”

“I don't know. Vicodin. Please help her. She's freezing cold.”

“We're trying, ma'am,” said the female EMT, without glancing up.

A fireman appeared in the doorway, standing quiet and motionless.
Sheba padded into the room; the fireman took her by the collar, and Sheba sat by his side, watching and whining. A stretcher was unfolded and Emily was lifted onto it and strapped down with Velcro wraps. They carried her to the ambulance, and Audrey climbed in after her. As the vehicle began to move, Emily's head flopped to the side. Her lips, that terrible shade of frostbite blue, a shade Audrey would never forget.

* * *

THEY TOLD HER
to wait in the curtained cubicle. Waiting, she called Andrew. There was no answer. Just like before, absent, unavailable. She left a message, telling him to come to St. Francis Hospital, now. A minute later she tried again. Voice mail, again.

She sat with her head in her hands, half-listening to the muffled humdrum: nurses chatting at their station in the center of the ER; the beeping and buzzing and whirring of a thousand different machines; the sudden yelp of the intercom; an amplified voice; the creaking wheels of stretchers rolling past; doors and curtains opening; squeaky-soled shoes; a janitor's mop swishing along the tiles; the orderlies talking in Spanish; the sudden complaint of a drunken man; the low groan of the building itself. She couldn't say how much time passed. It might have been twenty minutes. It might have been hours.

She had been here before. This was a replay of the worst hours of her life. It seemed impossible that this could be happening again. She felt her mind reeling and breaking, unable to differentiate between now and then. She was back in the ER, everything in between then and now leading to this same place. What had she done to deserve this? What could she have done to avoid this? She had failed her daughter. That was clear. She had refused to look her in the eyes. She had wished her daughter dead in place of Daniel, and this, this now, was her punishment.

* * *

AT LAST
the ER doctor entered the cubicle. He told her that they were giving Emily a drug to offset the narcotics. It was a matter of getting the poison out of her system. The problem was, there was no antidote for some of the pills she had taken. She had to excrete the toxins through her urinary tract, so they were hydrating her through multiple IVs to assist that process. These fluids would keep up her blood pressure, said the doctor. When she started breathing normally again, they would take her off the respirator, but not until then.

“In simple terms, she has to wake up,” the doctor told her.

“Will she?”

The doctor squeezed her arm and left the cubicle.

* * *

EMILY WAS BACK
at their house in Cos Cob. All the furniture had been taken away and the walls were painted a fresh coat of white, the wooden floors polished. In the living room a gust of wind blew the curtain away from the window, and bright sunlight filled the empty rooms.

A deer was standing perfectly still in the center of the room, its head lowered, as if its antlers were too heavy. She approached the animal and touched its velvet fur. The deer raised its head, observing her with its large kind eyes.

Follow me
, said the deer.

The animal moved toward the kitchen, its hooves clacking and echoing on the wood floor. She hurried to keep up, passing through the kitchen and then up the narrow rear staircase to the third floor. She lost sight of the deer but heard its steps, directly above her. On the third-floor landing, she pulled down the attic ladder and stepped up, one rung after another.

The attic seemed bigger than she remembered, a long, deep cavern. All the junk they'd piled up there—their discarded furniture, summer-camp trunks, old toys—was gone. In the far corner, behind cobwebs, she noticed a tiny door in the baseboard, no bigger than a postcard. She bent down and pulled open the door and peered inside, and there came a sudden expansion, the doorway widening to reveal the secret room.

It was a sunny room with sloped walls. There was a large bay window where she could sit and look out over the backyard. Down in the grassy yard below, two children were playing with a beach ball. A boy and a girl, four or five years old. It was she and Daniel, she realized with a thrill. He caught the beach ball against his chest, and she ran after him, calling his name. She couldn't catch him, he was so fast, running in circles.

Look, Daniel! It's us!

I know.

Is this where you've been? All this time?

Yes.

I didn't know. I should have known. All along, I knew you were somewhere. I just never thought to look in the attic.

It's a secret.

Outside, in the backyard, he threw the ball high in the air. She shaded her eyes as the ball climbed into the sky—so bright, so blue. The ball soared, and she waited for it to come down, her arms stretched wide open.

I'm so sorry, Daniel. I should have found you.

You're not supposed to be here.

It's beautiful. You can see everything from here. And you must be lonely.

No.

I am. Without you.

High above, the beach ball hovered in front of the sun, becoming the sun, exploding in brightness. A fearsome light emerged, ripping apart the sky. Something terrible was coming forth.

Daniel, I'm scared.

You can't stay.

I can't leave without you.

Yes, you can.

But I want to stay.

No, Emily. You have to go back.

Do I have to?