Songs Without Words (11 page)

She also had dyed blond hair—and not just streaks, or one color this month, another next month, but seriously, professionally dyed blond hair, and she had had it since sixth grade, according to someone Amanda knew. Like, in fifth grade her hair had been brown, and then suddenly. The person Amanda knew had said the dyed hair was Aimee’s mother’s idea, which Amanda thought was sad. Amanda was always thinking things were sad when Lauren was grossed out. Lauren always had the wrong attitude.

Which was probably why Amanda was dumping her. Before Lauren’s mom had left for the city last night, she’d suggested Lauren call Amanda to see if she wanted to go to a movie Saturday, and against her better judgment Lauren had called. Amanda, it turned out, was “busy.” There was this horrible long silence as Lauren gripped the phone. She felt seasick. Finally Amanda said, “How about Friday?” and it was all Lauren could do not to tell her to go fuck herself. She said she was busy Friday, and when she saw Amanda before school this morning, she lied and said she needed to spend lunch in the library.

Because of Thanksgiving, next week was just Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Lauren didn’t know which was worse, a full week of school or a four-day weekend at home. Her aunt and uncle and cousins were coming up from LA: Steve and Kelly would sleep in the guest room, Austin and Parker would get Joe’s room, and Joe would get the foldout in the upstairs TV room. Lauren wasn’t exactly affected, but she always felt kind of squished anyway.

Then there was the bench. Her mom, for weeks, had been painting an old bench with the dorkiest plaid pattern. Who ever heard of a plaid bench? And the colors were just awful, bright like kids’ colors. Lauren had asked her if she was going to cover it while Steve and Kelly were visiting, and her mom had been like, Why? It was going to be mortifying. Her mom’s furniture painting was so pathetic. What was the deal, anyway? Didn’t she have enough committees to keep her busy? Lauren thought it was all a way to copy Sarabeth and her lampshades, except Sarabeth’s lampshades were cool.

She looked across the aisle again. Aimee had her cell open, hidden behind her propped-up math book, and her thumb was busy punching buttons, texting someone in another class. She looked up and gave Lauren such a cool stare that all Lauren could do was look away, her face on fire. In her peripheral vision she saw Aimee return to her cell—probably to key in “OMG! Tht girl Lauren nxt 2 me is fugly.”

Mr. Pavlovich had asked a question. Lauren knew not because she’d heard it, but because the atmosphere had changed. Everyone was alert, listening now whether they appeared to be or not. Chalk in his dusty fingers, Mr. Pavlovich scanned the room for a victim. He was the only one of Lauren’s teachers who regularly called on people who weren’t raising their hands, and Lauren tried for a look of slightly confused attention. He scratched the side of his pockmarked neck, leaving a smudge of chalk dust. “Aimee?” he said.

Aimee’s face didn’t change, but her hickey seemed to get a bit darker. She was actually a little on the dumb side, and all at once Lauren felt sorry for her. If she’d known the answer herself, she would have tried to find a way to pass it to Aimee.

“I don’t know,” Aimee said. She stared hard at Mr. Pavlovich, and now
his
face changed a little, reddening as he ran a finger across his upper lip. The moment seemed endless, and Lauren honestly didn’t know which of them would prevail. Mr. Pavlovich should, but Aimee was Aimee and even he knew that. Was he thinking he wanted to fuck her? Maybe he
was
fucking her and had crossed a line by calling on her. When Amanda’s sister was in tenth grade, a PE teacher was discovered to be having an affair with a freshman.

The bell rang, and the whole thing collapsed, Mr. Pavlovich’s uncertainty, Aimee’s strength, Lauren’s idea that any of it was interesting. She loaded her stuff into her backpack and left the room. The only person Aimee was fucking was Tyler Moorhouse, Jeff Shannon’s best friend. Actually, they weren’t necessarily fucking, which was all about Aimee’s cred, since Tyler was a senior. Tyler and Jeff were probably leaving their math class right now. God, had Aimee been texting Tyler? Until now Lauren had never thought that every last period Aimee could be texting Tyler and saying stuff about her that he would say to Jeff. She suddenly saw herself as possibly more visible to Jeff than she’d ever considered. What mean stuff might Aimee have said? Lauren’s heartbeat felt crazy, and she paused for a moment to catch her breath. If Aimee was telling Jeff stuff about her, then she wasn’t starting on level ground; she was starting
down.
She was screwed. In fact, she might as well ask him out, have him laugh in her face, and call the whole thing over right now.

She stopped at a drinking fountain and gulped water, really thirsty. Straightening up, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and turned, and there he was, right behind her, waiting for a drink: with his tall, lanky body and his chiseled mouth and his incredible blue eyes. “I’m Lauren,” she blurted, and then in complete mortification she bolted, speedwalking halfway to her locker before she realized he’d be passing by on the way to
his
locker and she absolutely couldn’t be standing there dialing her fucking combination when he walked by, not after the way she’d just humiliated herself. She stopped and turned, thinking forget it about the rest of her stuff, and there he was, coming right at her, and he stared into her eyes and gave her a long, knowing smirk.

Liz was having a bad morning. She was out of half-and-half. She’d burned two batches of toast. She’d been counting on Brody to take the kids, but he had to get to work early for a conference call. And Lauren: Lauren had done it again.

I’m not going to school today.

Liz was in her closet, shoving her feet into shoes, and as soon as she got home from dropping Joe, she and Lauren were going to have a talk.
Sweetie,
she would say,
I’m getting worried about you.

Which was a lie. She wasn’t getting worried, she was worried—she hadn’t had an unworried day in two months, if not longer. The schoolwork explanation had been as empty as empty could be. Lauren should see a therapist. And Lauren would not want to see a therapist.

Back in the kitchen, Brody and Joe were as she’d left them, in twin states of ill repose. Brody had the paper open, but it might as well have been upside down for all she believed he was reading it. Joe was eating an English muffin with his head so low it was practically on his plate.

“Liz,” Brody said, glancing at his watch and getting up from the table.

She looked at him.

“I’m really sorry. If this were something I could skip…”

“Forget it,” she said. “Go. It’s fine.”

He waited a moment, then gave her a perfunctory kiss and left the house.

When Joe was ready she went up and told Lauren she’d be back soon. There was a heavy fog outside, and the air was cold and damp. She looked up and down the street, and there wasn’t a person visible, not a single sign of life anywhere. Days like this, the rest of the world, even the next block, seemed entirely hypothetical.

“What a morning,” she said as she stepped up into the van, and from the passenger seat Joe looked over at her with nervous eyes. Lauren these days—how was it for him? “Oh, sweetie,” she said.

“Just drive.”

The school was up in the hills. The drop-off line started a block back, and you inched forward, more and more slowly as the first bell approached. Liz recognized a number of people, or recognized their cars: the khaki Sienna, the silver Odyssey, the massive dark orange Hummer. It was a community of vehicles. “Vehicular mayhem” came a phrase to her mind.

The car in front of Liz moved forward, and when she’d closed the gap Joe opened his door and jumped out. “See you later,” he mumbled, and she watched as he dove into the stream of kids heading for the school. All those kids, all those backpacks: they reminded her of nothing so much as ants marching along, each with its own burden. Childhood was hard, mainly because you hadn’t learned perspective. Nothing was real beyond the present. The unknown future wasn’t comfortable or uncomfortable—it simply didn’t exist.

She needed a little more time, and once she’d circled the school she headed north rather than turning south toward home. Thank God it was Friday; she didn’t think she could stand another day in this week.

She found a parking place right in front of Starbucks, but the line was long so she ducked into the bakery next door and bought a loaf of bread first. Back at Starbucks, she waited in what was now a longer line, then realized only after she had her coffee that she was out of decaf and would need some for Thanksgiving. She stood in the beans line while the counter person tried to cope with the fact that she was being asked to work, here at her job. She was probably eighteen or nineteen, surly, and so slow it had to be intentional. Liz understood clearly that this would not bother her so much if she didn’t fear Lauren would end up just the same.

Finally, a pound of beans in hand, she left the store. She got into the car and thought: It doesn’t have to be like this.

Then she realized that she had it, the thing to say to Lauren.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
With concern, with hope, and without pressure. She had just the right thing to say when she got to Lauren’s room.

But Lauren wasn’t in her room. For many hours she had fought an idea, and now the fight was over and she was grateful. The worst possible decision had turned out to be a great relief. She had done it, and she lay in the empty bathtub (she had not wanted to leave a mess), and bled, and sank into the thing the pills were helping her with, the not feeling, the not thinking that was going to help her with not being, because being was not…working…for her….

Warm where her wrist touched her face.

part two

10

A
fterward, Brody would not remember the drive to the hospital, the adrenaline blast to his system, the way his hands kept slipping off the wheel as he sped across intersections where yellow lights were going to red. The entire thing would be lost to him, and in moments when he wasn’t plagued by other things he would be plagued by the idea that he might have hurt someone, that he didn’t know he hadn’t hurt someone on his breakneck race.

What he started with, what his memory would start with, was the emergency room waiting area, where Liz’s parents were watching for him, both of them.

“Where is she?” he said, and Marguerite tried to take his hands, and the image of her hands—her soft, wrinkled, slightly arthritic hands as he pushed them away: this was flash-printed onto his mind.

He sprinted past them and pushed through a pair of swinging doors. All he’d really gotten on the phone was:
Lauren, hurt herself, ambulance, hospital, now.
He dodged an elderly man on a gurney, and there was Liz, turning and seeing him and bursting into tears.

Again, all he could say: “Where is she?”

“Brody,” she cried.

He remembered himself and took her in his arms, felt her weight against him, felt, as he pulled away, her hair detaching from his cheek, where the dampness of her face had made it stick.

“Where?” he said.

“God,” she wailed, but then she indicated a door, and he pushed through it and saw: Lauren’s bare legs, three people standing over her, machines and an IV bag.

“Sir,” the one man said, “you can’t come in here.”

“I’m her father.” He moved for a better look: her eyes were closed, and there was a tube in her nose, something black smeared all over her face. “What happened? Is she unconscious?”

“Sir,” said one of the women. She was doing something between Lauren’s legs, and Brody looked away.

“OK, I’ll go,” he said. “But just tell me…”

The man—Brody took him to be the doctor—faced him. “Your daughter had a drug overdose. We’re monitoring her vital signs and giving her activated charcoal to absorb the toxins.”

“A drug overdose?” Brody said. This was impossible; Lauren didn’t do drugs. Everything was happening too fast. “What do you mean, what did she take?”

“Tylenol. And apparently some Benadryl. The medicine cabinet was empty when your wife found her.”

Brody’s pulse raced. He knew from somewhere that too much Tylenol could be really bad; that was why the liquid stuff you gave babies came in such tiny bottles. He put his palms together and took a deep breath. He had to slow down. He turned away, only to realize that he’d been looking at Lauren’s left wrist and that it had been wrapped in a bloodstained bandage. He looked back: the other wrist, too.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “She slit her wrists?”

The doctor was studying one of the monitors. “The cuts are the least of it—we’ll stitch her up in a minute. It’s her liver we’re worried about.”

“Her liver?”

“Why don’t you wait outside? We’ll talk in just a bit.”

To Brody, the lights were suddenly far too bright, and a wind roared past his ears. Then things were normal again.

“OK,” he said. “I’ll wait outside.”

In the hallway, Robert and Marguerite had joined Liz. As soon as she saw Brody, she broke away from them. “What’d they say? Are they pumping her stomach?”

“The doctor said he’d come talk to us in a minute.”

She put her face in her hands and wept. “No, no, I can’t stand this.” He touched her, and she jerked back. She looked at him and cried: “I went to get coffee.”

He had no idea what she meant, and he turned to Robert and Marguerite. Was there a coffee machine in the waiting area? Did she
want
coffee?

“After she dropped Joe at school,” Marguerite said. “She went to get coffee before she went home.”

“No,” he said. He took hold of Liz’s shoulders and bent to look in her eyes. “Oh, no.” He meant
Don’t do this to yourself,
but a terrible sound came out of her, and she wrenched herself away and sobbed harder.

“You didn’t know,” he said.

“I did!” she shrieked.

“Honey.” He reached for her again, but she pulled away. “Liz. Where did you find her?”

“Stop!” she cried. And then: “In their bathroom!”

He tried to picture the inside of the medicine cabinet in the kids’ bathroom, but all he could come up with was some very old Johnson’s Baby Shampoo sitting stickily on a glass shelf. There was Tylenol in there? Benadryl? He remembered bribing Lauren to take Benadryl when she was four or five—for every tiny sip she got a jelly bean. Joe stood nearby, waiting for a jelly bean or two of his own.

The door behind him swung open, and he turned. One of the nurses came out, and behind him Liz and Robert and Marguerite moved forward, almost as one. They crowded behind him, and he had a sense of himself as not just their spokesman but also their protector. “What?” he said, but the nurse just held up her forefinger and kept going.

After several hours in the emergency room, Lauren was moved to the pediatric ICU, but it was a while before Liz fully registered the change, how it was calmer here, and quieter; and the light, thank God, was dim. Lauren had a tiny room to herself, and she said over and over again that she wanted to go home: she said it crying, not crying, crying again. She couldn’t go home, though, and so Liz wouldn’t, and so it was Brody who left at ten to pick up Joe from Trent’s house, where he’d spent the evening.

Joe. Sitting in the dark next to Lauren’s sleeping body, Liz thought back to the middle of the afternoon, when Brody had left for the first time, to meet Joe after school. The plan had been for Brody to call once he’d told Joe what had happened, but it was Joe who called, saying “Mom?” when she answered, his voice breaking slightly on the single syllable, and it had taken her long moments to be able to speak.

Light from the hallway bisected Lauren’s face. Liz leaned forward and ran her hand over Lauren’s hair, then held the backs of her fingers over Lauren’s mouth to feel her breath. Terrible things had been done to her today, following the terrible things she’d done to herself: they’d punctured her veins for IVs, pumped bottle after bottle of charcoal into her stomach. By far the worst was the vile liquid they’d made her drink, four separate times—it was sulfurous and repulsive and necessary to counteract the effects of the Tylenol on her liver, which remained, even now, in great danger.

She could go into liver failure. She had to keep drinking the horrible stuff, every four hours through the weekend, and she could still go into liver failure.

Liz leaned back in her chair and tasted salt at the back of her throat. How could she have allowed this to happen? How could she have let the last months happen, sitting by while Lauren fell? She was on a tiny island, surrounded by the vast ocean of her guilt, and the water lapped and lapped at her ankles, its undertow strong enough to pull her in should she somehow avoid the headlong dive she kept imagining. All that kept her out was how much Lauren needed her now, how much more than ever, though she’d not need her now if only Liz had had an ounce of sense, a gram, in the last few months. What had she been doing this fall? Yoga! Painting a bench! In her mind she slammed a mallet against the bench, splintering the wood; she threw paint remover on it and watched with pleasure as it burned through her gay colors. She reached into her body and tore at her muscles, then plunged her fingers into the crevices of her joints and ripped at them until they were permanently damaged.

Then she thought: Is this how Lauren lived? Ravaged by self-hatred? And she wept again.

A sound woke her sometime later to the bed she had improvised, her upper body curled in a chair, her legs reaching under its wooden arm to rest on the metal frame of Lauren’s bed. She was incredibly sore, her mouth dry and sour. Lauren was still asleep. How soon before they came to draw blood again? To administer the next dose of the disgusting stuff.

She pulled her legs back and sat up, moving as quietly as she could. Slowly, painfully, she stood. She edged out of the narrow space described by the chair, the bed, and the table, and she went into the windowless bathroom. She hit the light and hid her eyes for a moment, then stared at herself in the mirror. She was wrecked, hideous. Then she realized that was exactly what she was looking for, evidence that this had undone her, and she turned from the sight of herself and wept. She eased herself onto the closed toilet and sobbed at her own self-pity, and she sobbed at it all: Lauren, Joe, Brody, her parents, her family, her life, her home, her child, her child. She sobbed and sobbed. And then, after a while, there came a moment when it ebbed, and she watched herself through it curiously, unwilling to allow a single moment of falsity; she felt she could cry, but only if she couldn’t not cry. She couldn’t not: it was back and she sobbed again. But it slowed, and it faltered, and after a while she
could
not, so she stopped. She mopped her face with a hand towel. She began to feel composed, and she glanced at her surroundings,
a hospital bathroom,
and then she was going into the bathroom again, the kids’ bathroom yesterday, Lauren bleeding in the bathtub, and she began to cry again. This happened several times, the slowing and the fresh onslaught. Finally, in a lull, she went to the sink and ran cold water over the towel and pressed it to her eyes, and because the coolness felt so soothing she bathed her eyes with handfuls of water, then dried her face and ventured the mirror again.
You,
she said to herself.