I’m dying. I’m not scared. I thought I’d be scared but I’m happy. It’s a relief. I’m trying to tell you this. Can’t you hear me? I’m happy now.
SNAP: It’s the weight of Ricky’s head on my lap under a gnarled Alice in Wonderland weeping willow.
Oh, my God, it’s really happening. I’m dying.
SNAP: It’s Dad letting me sleep in my new sneakers, tucking me in after stories and lullabies and good-night kisses. The look on his face when I told him I loved my new shoes and thank you so much Dad they’ll make me run faster you know.
This is how it happens. This is how you die.
SNAP: It’s Mom. Sitting on the couch watching the The Wizard of Oz with me on her lap, like it was the first time and not the fiftieth time she’d seen it. Her hand smelling like lilac, holding me into her chest when the Flying Monkeys flapped down and grabbed Toto. Talk to me, Cammy. That’s all she wanted to do is talk to me. I couldn’t do that for her.
Learning to ride a two-wheeler. Our old beagle, Felix, licking my face with his sandpaper tongue. Mom’s pancakes. Playing Barbies with Hannah, my best friend in lower school.
Wait. There’s more. Wait, just let me think of it. So much more to say. To remember. Wait, let me.
Let me think of some more.
Do they know I love them? Please let them know I love them.
This is how it happens. This is an overdose. I thought it would be fast if it happened. I thought people just passed out and didn’t feel anything.
I’m dying. This is how you die.
Samantha
The phone rang a little after eleven at night. Shocking me bolt upright. I answered it quickly like it was the middle of the day and I’d been waiting for a call. This is how it happens, I remember thinking. This is how you get terrible news.
“This is Swedish Covenant,” the voice said. I struggled to understand the words. Swedish Covenant? I don’t think I said anything out loud.
“The emergency room,” the voice said.
I knew it but I had left my body by then. I was watching myself from the ceiling.
“Who is it?” he asked from his side of the bed. The man I am married to. My husband, I thought. That is my husband’s voice. He is about to be split in half, too, I thought. He’ll leave his old self behind and we’ll both be half of who we used to be. That’s what I was thinking.
“Your daughter was brought in a few minutes ago,” the voice said.
“Cammy?” I heard my question. Cammy? I asked. As if I had another daughter.
“What’s wrong?” Bob pulled at my sleeve. I looked over at him. I was holding the phone to my ear. Somehow I’d sat up. Against the headboard. I was sitting up as if we were watching TV.
“Sam, what is it?” I know he was saying the words out loud but all I saw was his mouth moving.
The phone dropped out of my hand. Bob fumbled to hang it up, reaching across me to put it back in its cradle. I looked at his arm stretched across my breasts. Foreign. Someone else’s arm across someone else’s breasts. Then, suddenly, we were fluid. Moving. Like this was a drill we’d been doing for years. Somehow I had sweatpants on. A sweater on top of my sleep T-shirt. Boots from the front hall closet. Somehow I was ready to go. Bob was moving around, scrambling too. I had entered a dream state. A waking nightmare.
Then Lynn was standing in the front hall in her coat over her pajamas saying go, go, I’ve got it from here. Call when you know anything. Then Bob and I were in the car. Then we were driving through all the red lights. At that hour some were blinking.
By the time the car screeched into the hospital parking lot the transformation was complete. The other me stepped out into the night. The new me ran across the lot in through the sliding glass doors of the E.R.
Then we were standing in the fluorescent light at a nurses’ station. Listening to the doctor. The hollow me looking over his shoulder at an intern heating up leftovers.
This is what it will feel like from now on, I stood there thinking. I looked at a hand on my shoulder and wondered whose it was. I traced it up the arm then shoulder then the head of my husband. My husband’s hand on my shoulder. This is what it will feel like forever.
When he said, “We’re so sorry …” I finally focused on his face. I looked at this doctor who was so sorry. Sorry for what? I wanted to ask. Sorry that it happened? Sorry we weren’t good enough parents to keep it from happening? Sorry sorry sorry. The word bounced in my head like a pinball.
“What happened?” I heard myself asking. “What are you saying?”
I felt Bob trying to lead me to a chair. I felt all their eyes on me, like my reaction would determine how this would go.
“But I don’t want to sit down.” I looked at Bob, bewildered that he’d suggest it, though everyone wants to sit down for bad news. I can’t blame him for that.
“She had most likely slipped into a coma before she even got here,” the doctor was explaining it further. Was that supposed to ease the pain for us? “We administered CPR and attempted to pump her stomach, but …”
He purposely trailed off. He avoided having to say the sentence again.
“But what?” I heard my words echoing down the white hallway. “But what? What the hell are you saying?”
Bob stepped into my field of vision. “Sam …” He spoke softly.
So I asked him: “What are they talking about? I don’t understand these words.”
I hear a siren in the distance and I wonder if she heard them from the emergency room while they did CPR on her. Did she feel the pain of strong hands trying to beat air back into her lungs? Did they try everything?
She had enough Vicodin in her system to kill a horse, the toxicologist said. He hadn’t put it that way at first. We’d asked him to translate the numbers he referred to on his clipboard. Her alcohol level was within normal limits. There was OxyContin in her system but it appeared not to have been ingested at the same time. It’d been consumed earlier, maybe only by a few hours. The vomit was difficult to ignore when they lifted the sheet back. It had dried in her hair. I wondered what she’d eaten even though I knew food wasn’t what made her sick. But what was the last thing she ate? Did she enjoy the taste of it? They had wiped her skin up but there was a little blood still caked toward the back of her right shoulder. They said she’d fallen, that she’d suffered abrasions at the base of her skull, that she’d hit the corner of the metal Dumpster on her way to the pavement. Some pebbles remained near embedded on the palms of her hands. Her lips were blue like someone had smeared frosted lipstick on them.
Drained of blood and soul, her skin had a pallor. It was gray. Pasty. Far from the Mediterranean olive she hated so much. She was pale.
She finally matched us.
I heard a moan. A howl. Like a werewolf. I covered my ears to drown it out but somehow that made it louder. I felt myself shaking. I felt my teeth chattering. The moaning ricocheted off the hospital walls. It wouldn’t end. Nurses were rushing forward. That’s when I realized I was the one howling. The moans were coming from my mouth. I felt hands in my armpits lifting me off the floor I wasn’t aware I’d sunk to. Tissues were wiping my face and I realized my cheeks were wet from tears.
One Week Later
I found her journal a few hours after the sedative wore off. I tore through her room looking for whatever we’d missed. I reached in the pockets of the army pants she wore and pulled out a frayed book of matches. Only two left. A receipt for Snapple from the 7-Eleven. A crumpled dollar bill.
Her black skirt balled up and tossed to the corner of the room like it’s in a time-out. The top corner of the Marilyn Manson poster curling in.
The journal. At first I thought it was a textbook. It was covered in a brown grocery-bag cover. She’d called the sparkly ones at office stores retarded. She’d drawn all over it like she had every other schoolbook. She’d traced her hand. I held mine patty-cake against it. Hers was smaller. Thinner. Delicate. I started crying thinking about those parking-lot p
ebbles and how it must have hurt to hit the ground full on. Once again I found myself on the floor. On the shag carpet she wanted replaced. I couldn’t even do that for her. It wouldn’t have cost that much … her room is the smallest. I wouldn’t replace the stained shag carpet she begged me to change.
It took me an hour to read her journal. She didn’t put the date on a lot of entries. Arrows pointed everywhere. So some early ones were in the back, some in front. It was impossible to find a rhythm. Some pages I had to read two or three times before I made sense of them. Some I could date from content alone.
I’m pretty wasted right now. But not too bad. Last night was an okay night. How bad could a night be when you get to pet a kitten? Seriously. It’s hard to feel like shit when you’re holding a tiny furry thing that’s motoring just because you’re petting it. And when you think about it, shouldn’t we be the ones purring? And this is a total stoner thing to say but if you think even harder, isn’t purring a fucking miracle? It’s like your insides are smiling.
Wow. That’s some deep shit. I sound like such a retard.
Paul found this tiny orange kitten at the far edge of the lot. It was wandering around a beaten-down bed of weeds next to a rotting Dunkin’ Donuts cup.
“It was like he was in a pinball machine,” he said.
“What’re you, the frigging humane society?” Banana Smith said. I have no idea why he’s called that but his last name isn’t Smith, I know that much.
Paul’s the kind of guy who doesn’t have to tell people to shut up. They just do. He’s that kind of cool. He was holding the kitten in the crook of his arm. Like a natural. Like he did it every day.
“Can I hold it?” I walked up to him holding my hands together like back when I went with my friend Olivia to her church and we went up to get wafers.
“Yeah, for a minute,” he said.
Banana Smith came over to me and petted it too roughly.
“Dude,” he said over his shoulder to Paul. “Let’s get it high.”
I twisted my shoulder around so he’d stop touching it.
“No, better one,” another kid said. “Give her this. Let’s blow her mind, man.”
And that was it. I tucked the kitten in close and ran back home. I was wearing a hoodie with a hand warmer built in and she fit perfectly in there. I held her gently so she wouldn’t bounce while I ran. I slowed down when I was sure no one was following me.
It was hard keeping her from waking everyone up but I kept stroking her until she fell asleep right next to my head on my pillow. I slept with my clothes on. If she mewed I’d start petting her again and she’d fall back asleep. I couldn’t believe my luck. To have this tiny little creature right here, nestled up to me. I didn’t want to fall asleep.
It was a different story keeping the boys from finding out in the morning.
“Mom! Mom! Cammy’s got a kitten!”
“Can we keep it?”
“Mom!”
“Dad, did you see Cammy’s kitten?”
“Cammy, let me hold it, Andrew, I called it!”
“Mom, why does Cammy get a kitten and I don’t get a dog?”
“Can we keep it?”
“It’s totally not fair. I want a dog.”
That’s the kind of thing Ideal with every day. They’re total tattletales.
Samantha said Bob has allergies and we can’t keep it. Even when I said I’d keep her in my room so he wouldn’t even know she was there, Samantha didn’t let me. The boys named her Mia after the only girl they could think of who was half-decent. Mia Hamm. Soccer player. I fed Mia with an eyedropper for a few days. Then Samantha came home and said she found a home for her. Some family with a kid named Lexi. They renamed her Fluffy, which is more retarded than Mia. She says they love her.
I’ll never forget that night when her little head was right up against mine on my pillow and we slept together on and off through the night. It’s like we were in it together, Mia and me. So gay to write but it’s true.
She may be with another family or whatever but at least she’s not getting high with Banana Smith in the library parking lot. Thank God for that.
Then there was this:
DEAR GERRY WILKES:
HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?
My wailing was so loud Bob came running. All week long I’d cried, but he’d kept a distance. His pain was his pain. Mine was mine. On the floor in Cammy’s room, holding her journal, the wailing broke through to him. I felt him reaching for me to pull me up but I wouldn’t let him.
“You bastard!” I screamed. “You goddamn son of a bitch! How could you do this to her?”
“Sam,” he said. He stood there, looking down at me. He saw the book open in my lap. Her handwriting. He leaned down for it.
“Get out.” I clutched the journal to my chest. Mine. Mine, I wanted to say.
He left me rocking there on the floor of our dead daughter’s room. His pain. My pain.
I crawl across the hall from Cammy’s to our bedroom. I curl up on the floor by the old easy chair in the corner by the window. No one’s sat in it for years. It’s piled with stacks of catalogs I keep meaning to sort through. Clothes that need ironing. A pile of stuff for the dry cleaners. It’s all meaningless now. It’ll not be touched for years more.
The wool Berber carpet is pushing a pattern into my cheek. Craig. Craig Craig Craig. Just thinking his name stops my tears. Like meditation. Somewhere he is moving around in the world. He is worrying about me. Frantic probably. He might even be sleepwalking again. Sleepwalking through his days like he did before we were us. He is waiting for some word from me.
One of the last lucid moments I had was pushing past Bob out through the hospital doors into the night air. They’d pulled the sheet back over Cammy’s face and Bob tried to put his arm around me. I felt him pulling me in close. My elbow lifted against him. My shoulder too. I didn’t slough him off. It was more aggressive than that.
I was clear-minded. It was me before I shattered. Like a car window spiderweb-cracked but still in one piece, but if you poked the middle it would crumble into tiny pieces.
I spit words at him there in that sterile room.
“You didn’t love her enough,” I hissed. “You never even wanted her in the first place.”
I remember him ashen. I saw the impact of my words. They punched him. He said Sam, oh, Sam before he started sobbing. His shoulders pumped along with the tears. His arms down at his sides.
“You’re wrong,” he choked.
“I can’t look at you,” I spat. “I can’t breathe the same air as you.”
I remember the sound of the hospital door sealing shut behind me. I remember gasping. Like I’d held my breath until the outside so I really didn’t have to share Bob’s oxygen. I remember feeling for my cell phone.
I dialed the number. Craig answered right away.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.
That’s how I knew he had lied to me. The whispering. He hadn’t left Evie and gone to a hotel like he’d e-mailed me the day before yesterday. Or maybe he was at a hotel and he was sleeping with another woman. Maybe the whole thing with me was just that. A thing. Either way he wasn’t alone.
“Where are you?” I asked him. I’d called to tell him about Cammy. I’d called to beg him for help. And there I was in a cold foggy hospital parking lot trying to define us. Craig and me. As if there had ever really been a Craig and me.
“Where are you?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?”
Was his tone defensive? I knew he was trying to shift the focus off himself back onto me. He’d wanted me to be sorry for waking him. He was feeling guilty.
“Are you at home?” I asked. “With Evie?”
I could tell he was moving to a place where he could talk and wouldn’t be heard.
“Sam …”
I had my answer. It was the way he said my name. In a “let me explain” tone. He was at home. He was in bed with his wif
e. He was never going to leave her. He’d told me he’d moved out. He’d told me he’d gone to a hotel and had even started looking at condos and I’d thought it was quick but he’s very decisive so it made sense. I hadn’t questioned it. It had been a lie.
“So you lied,” I said.
I stared at the glow of the blue neon Emergency sign.
“Sam, listen …”
I closed my eyes because I knew the rest. I didn’t need to hear it.
“Cammy’s dead,” I said. Then I folded the phone shut and opened my hand and let it drop. It was ringing as it hit the pavement. Maybe he lied. Maybe he didn’t. There was a story he had to tell me. Or, more likely, there were questions he wanted to ask. Cammy’s dead? What? Oh, Jesus, Sam … He would feel bad about the start of the call, realizing the only reason I’d tried him in the first place was for comfort. He could justify that to whomever he was sleeping with.
Wait, Cammy’s dead? My Cammy? My Cammy’s DEAD?
Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. Oh, God.
“Ma’am? Do you need help? Ma’am? Help! We need some help over here!”
A paramedic on break helped me walk back in to the E.R. He asked if I had anyone they could call for me. I said no. He held my hand until the sedative kicked in.
Three Days Later
I sit on the couch like I’m an elderly person in a rest home. The house orbits around me. The sun beams through the front window in the morning. At some point I realize it’s moved to the side of the house. I can see dust floating in the shaft of the afternoon light. Then a glow of light comes from all sides and I know it’s nighttime.
I know I have to retrace our mistakes. I know I have to plunge into all the signs we missed. We’ll yell and scream and cry and blame each other, Bob and I. These scenes wait for us. That’s what we have in store. But right now? Right now I can’t shake the stupor.
There’s a relief in not caring. Halfway through brushing my hair I realize I’m brushing my hair. I leave off and go to the medicine cabinet for my toothbrush and toothpaste but once I get there I forget what I was going to do there. I choke food down because my body is required to keep going. It’s nothing but fuel, a plain white T-shirt kind of taste. Midway through the day I look down and see that I am dressed and I have shoes on but I have no memory of how I got that way. Did someone else dress me? How did I get out of bed?