Days of Awe, page 23
When her sister, Abigail, called her at college and said, “You need to come home,” Cheryl asked, “Is this for real?”
“Yes,” Abigail said.
“Can I talk to Mom?”
“No.”
“Is it Mom?”
“I don’t know,” Abigail said.
“What does that mean, you don’t know? It sounds like you’re not telling.”
“I really don’t,” Abigail said. “You know how Mom always puts herself in the middle of things.” Abigail paused. “And bring good clothes.”
“You’re scaring me,” Cheryl said. “Should I be scared? No one in L.A. wears good clothes unless . . .”
“I don’t know,” Abigail said again. “Just come home.”
Abigail had done this before. The summer Cheryl was thirteen, Abigail made her come home from sleepaway camp. Their parents had gone to Europe; Abigail stayed behind. She was seventeen and supposed to be in summer school.
* * *
—
It was six months after their younger brother, Billy, had died while they were visiting their grandparents in Arizona. Billy told the grandparents that a poisonous snake had bitten him. “Put a cold washcloth on it,” they said, and then he was dead.
“I need you to come home,” Abigail had said.
“Did the plane crash?” Cheryl asked.
“What plane?”
“The plane Mom and Dad were on?”
“No,” she said.
“I thought maybe it did, because you told camp it was an emergency. The camp director came and got me out of the lake.”
“Sorry,” she said, “I thought I told them you could call me back.”
“You told them you’d hold on.” Cheryl was standing on the porch of the camp office in a dripping-wet bathing suit. She was talking on a phone with a long yellow curly cord that had been passed through the open window. She used the drops from her wet suit to spell her initials on the wooden porch.
“Where are you?” Cheryl asked.
“I don’t know,” Abigail said. “I’m lost.”
“What do you see around you?”
“Eye shadow,” she said.
“Are you in your room?” Cheryl asked.
“Come home,” Abigail said.
“I’m in the camp play and the talent show,” Cheryl said. “This week there’s a bunk cookout, an overnight adventure, and it’s my turn to be the baker’s assistant. Plus, I’m in the bugle corps—I play reveille.”
“Don’t make me beg,” Abigail said.
When they were young, Abigail was a fairy. She wore white wings everywhere she went. She didn’t like to answer questions, didn’t like to be pinned down.
Their mother joked that she drank too much coffee when she was pregnant with Abigail. “It wasn’t the coffee. It was the pills, diet pills,” their father said.
“The doctor gave them to me,” their mother said.
“What kind of doctor wants a pregnant woman to lose weight?” their father asked.
“A Beverly Hills doctor.”
Cheryl packed her footlocker and said good-bye to her bunkmates.
When she got home, there was a huge sign, drawn in red lipstick on a white sheet, hanging between the telephone poles: WELCOME HOME, BABY SISTER.
And Abigail was very thin.
“Have you stopped eating?” It probably shouldn’t have been the first thing Cheryl asked, but it was.
“I’ve been picking at things. There wasn’t much left.”
They went outside and looked at the “edible” garden where the swing set used to be—their parents had planted it to encourage Abigail to take an active role in her own nutrition. Most of the plants were dead.
“You have to water it,” Cheryl said.
Abigail shrugged. “I have trouble with things that are so needy.”
They sat up in Billy’s bedroom and talked about how weird it was that no one talked about anything. Abigail was the keeper of the feelings; she hung on to everything. Their mother used to say, “You wear your feelings like jewelry.”
When they were young, Abigail was afraid of floating away. She was so worried she might simply vanish that she literally wanted to be tethered to another person.
First they used some old laundry line, then climbing rope and carabiners, until they discovered the small weights that you use to keep helium balloons down. Abigail kept them in her pockets—a big help.
And for a while she was better; she married—Burton Wills, her plastic surgeon—but she also kept her room at home, not like an office but like how it was when she was a kid. Burton didn’t seem to mind.
* * *
—
For Cheryl this time, coming home from school in Minneapolis feels even more difficult. On the way from the airport to the house, the car passes a field of oil pumps in the middle of nowhere, milking the earth, which already looked decimated, barely able to feed scrub and the occasional sagebrush. All of it feels entirely different, alien.
“How did you pick Minneapolis?” Cheryl’s friends from high school had asked. “We never heard of it before.”
“I wanted to go to the most normal place I could find. It’s where Charles M. Schulz grew up.”
As soon as she arrives at the house, Cheryl walks right through it. She passes through the living room and steps outside; the pool is an inky black wishing well—no toys, only a floating sensor. The view is limitless, all of Los Angeles spread out below. She takes off her shoes and dips her toes in—hot. The heat is like a physical lozenge, a sedative. There is no edge—she has no body, there are no boundaries; she, the water, and the air all are one.
She used to stay out there at night, lingering in the darkness. Her father would come and get her out of the pool. “It’s a wonder you don’t just shrivel up,” he’d say. The pool felt safe, she could hide there—invisible. She takes her feet out of the water and goes back into the house. Her wet footprints evaporate behind her, vanishing as she walks.
“Where are you?” she texts her sister.
“In traffic,” Abigail texts back.
The accountant who lives next door comes out onto his deck. His hair is longer, and he now has breasts. He waves. She waves back.
“Where’s Esmeralda?”
“She’s driving the car.”
Twenty minutes later she hears the car pull up. The engine turns off and suddenly she’s afraid, flushed with the feeling that this is the before—the end of the familiar. She hears the front door open and close. She stays put, or it’s more like she can’t move; she’s immobile on the lounge chair by the pool.
Abigail comes out onto the patio, so thin that she actually looks flat. Her arms and legs are white like copy paper. The only things normal about her are her feet, jutting out in sandals with red nail polish that catches the light like safety reflectors.
“Should we go inside?” Abigail asks.
“Here is good,” Cheryl says, still paralyzed.
“We need to talk.”
Esmeralda brings glasses of water with lemon and a plate of carrot and celery sticks.
“Is it that bad?” Cheryl asks, looking at Esmeralda for confirmation.
Esmeralda makes a face; she doesn’t want to be the one to say so, but yes.
Esmeralda has been with them since before Billy was born. She was the baby nurse, the nanny, and then the housekeeper, and now Esmeralda does everything for them, because apparently they can’t do it for themselves, or maybe it’s just been so long that they’ve forgotten how.
Abigail drinks. Cheryl eats. Amid the hyperconsciousness about food, the threat of starvation, she overeats, having not one or two sticks but the entire plate.
“Is it Dad?” she asks.
“It’s Mom and Dad,” Abigail says.
“Are they getting a divorce?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was Dad, and then it was Mom.”
“Can you just tell me what happened?”
“Dad was at work. He had an incident.”
“Like an occurrence?”
“An episode.”
“Like a crime show?”
“Like a problem,” she said.
“When did this happen?”
“Last Wednesday?”
“And why did no one call me?”
“We wanted to see what happened. We hoped there would be a turnaround. There was nothing you could have done.”
Esmeralda gives her a hug. “I’m sorry.”
“I could have prayed,” Cheryl says softly to herself. She prays every day, something she’s never told anyone. “So where’s Mom?”
“She’s at Cedars, too.”
“Did you tell her I was coming home?”
“I told her,” Abigail says. Her voice sounds odd.
“What?”
“Mom was at the salon. She had cucumbers on her eyes, was eating almonds—you know how she does. . . .”
“Fifteen almonds a day.”
“And you know how she has so much filler and Botox and everything.”
Cheryl nods. “Yes. And she doesn’t even like the way it makes her look. She just does it because that’s what people here do.”
Abigail, who has also had all the filler and Botox, nods back. She doesn’t smile or frown, because she can’t. “Well, somehow a peanut got in. She blew up, and no one noticed because her lips are already so puffy. They didn’t get bigger on the outside—she puffed up inside.”
“And?”
“She’s not ‘at’ Cedars, she’s ‘in’ Cedars.”
“In the same room?”
She shakes her head. “They’re heavily sedated and on ventilators.”
“Will they wake up?”
“No one knows. She was seriously oxygen-deprived.”
“This is like a nightmare.”
“That’s why I called you.”
“It’s like the nightmare where I’m trying to tell everyone that something is wrong and no one can hear me. It’s like a zombie apocalypse,” Cheryl says. Abigail puts her arms around her. They are so thin and ropy that it’s like being encircled by Twizzlers.
“I called Walter,” Abigail says.
“My Walter?”
Walter is her best friend from childhood, pre-childhood—infancy. “I thought he might be helpful. He said he’d come over later. Shall we go to the hospital?” Abigail asks.
“Should we bring her a plant?” Cheryl asks. “Mom always liked African violets.”
Cheryl marches into the house, takes the African violet off the windowsill in the kitchen, clutching it for comfort.
Their father is in the Neurointensive Care Unit. He has what looks like a turkey thermometer stuck deep into his head.
“Is that like a pop-up timer?” Cheryl asks.
“It tells us the pressure in his head,” the nurse says.
“Is it permanent?”
“You’ll have to speak with the doctor,” the nurse says, exiting the room.
“He looks terrible,” Cheryl says. “He would never wear a shirt that color.”
“You mean the hospital gown?”
“Can we put on his regular clothes?” Cheryl asks. “Do we need permission?”
“Like we could make him any worse?” Abigail says. She tugs on the front of her father’s gown, trying to pull it off him. “He’s heavy.”
“We could try to lift him,” Cheryl says. “Or how about we just put a shirt on top?”
The clothes he was wearing when they brought him in are in a big plastic bag in the closet. Abigail lays the shirt on him and pulls up the sheets, tucking him in. Cheryl takes his shoes to the bottom of the bed and puts them on the ends of his feet, hanging off his toes.
“Better?” Abigail asks.
“He looks awful.”
“Maybe it’s the medication,” Abigail says.
“Maybe it’s what’s left of him, maybe it’s all there is. This is not good,” Cheryl says, shaking her head no, no, no, as if the repeated motion will set things free. “Not good at all. Can we see Mom? I need to see Mom.”
They take the elevator to nine.
“It’s me,” Cheryl says, squeezing the mother’s hand. “Are you in there, Mom?”
“Hard to tell,” the nurse’s aide says.
“Burton thinks Mom looks good, very relaxed.”
“She’s unconscious.”
Esmeralda rubs the mother’s feet. “She always liked me to rub her feet.”
Cheryl kisses her mother on the forehead. Her skin is taut, smooth, no wrinkles. “I love you, Mom. Happy Administrative Assistants’ Day.”
“Is it really Administrative Assistants’ Day?” Abigail asks.
“It said so on my calendar.”
“Mom loves a special day.”
Cheryl puts the African violet on the ledge, in the sun.
“I know you find it offensive, but I have to eat,” Cheryl tells Abigail as they’re waiting for the valet to come with the car.
“How about a smoothie—they don’t really smell.”
They drive to a juice bar. Abigail orders just kale, parsley, and cucumber. Esmeralda gets mixed-berry açai. Cheryl orders the Kitchen Sink, and while she’s waiting, she eats some raw vegan cookies. “Do you have soup?” she asks.
“Cheryl, it’s a hundred and one degrees outside. There is no soup,” Abigail snaps.
As soon as they get back to the house, Cheryl is drenched in aloneness, the cologne of empty, the odor of nothing. Midafternoon, she has a pizza delivered—she meets the guy outside, eats the whole thing standing on the other side of the fence, and throws the box away out by the curb in the neighbor’s recycling bin.
* * *
—
Later she finds Abigail in her room, sitting on the floor, ruler in one hand, scissors in the other, cutting the pile on her green shag rug like it’s blades of grass, one thread at a time. “It should only be an inch and a half—these are two inches.” She shakes her head. Cheryl sits on the floor next to her sister. “I won’t be okay if they die. That’s always been the issue—how alone I feel. I married Burton because he doesn’t intrude on my loneliness, but at the same time I’m never actually alone.”
“I know,” Cheryl says.
“I’m trying to be the big sister, the one in charge, but it doesn’t come naturally.”
“You’re doing a great job. What’s the plan for later?”
“Later when?” Abigail asks.
“Tonight, tomorrow, and all the days after?” she says.
“Burton would be fine with me just staying here,” Abigail says, cutting the shag a little more quickly.
Cheryl realizes that if Abigail stays, even for one night, it will create a whole new problem: Abigail will move back home, and Cheryl will be stuck living there with her—forever.
“That’s okay,” Cheryl says. “I’m fine to be on my own. Nothing is going to happen to me. All the bad stuff has already happened.”
“Is Walter coming over? Did he text you?” Abigail asks.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He asked, ‘How bad is it?’ ‘Bad,’ I said. ‘Big bad?’ he asked. ‘Supersized,’ I said.”
Esmeralda is ready to go. “I have to make dinner for my family. I’m sorry. I’ll bring you leftovers tomorrow, empanadas.” Cheryl sends Abigail with her, giving her a hug, then wishing she hadn’t. Abigail is like a human Post-it; there’s nothing to her—no dimension.
When they leave, Cheryl locks herself in the bathroom—she feels the need for a safe room. She needs to be held, comforted, and in the absence of humans the space between the tub and the towel rack will do.
She sits on the floor, not crying, maybe not breathing either. She sits on the floor telling herself to let the tile hold her, let the grout be the cement that keeps her whole. She digs her nails into the rubbery vein of caulking along the side of the tub, takes a deep breath, and instead of an exhalation out comes a bellowing, puking wail. She sobs hysterically until her phone makes a loud ping. The ping acts like an OFF switch; the flood stops as suddenly as it started. She abruptly ceases crying and pulls the phone from her pocket. A text from Burton: “Abigail arrived home—do you happen to know, did she eat anything today?”
“She had a smoothie,” she types back, wiping mucus from her face.
“Where are you?” Walter texts a little while later.
“I’m hiding,” Cheryl writes.
“Where?”
And because she doesn’t want to say, “Between the tub and the towels,” she gets up, pulls on a swimsuit and a wrap, unlocks the sliding glass doors, goes out to the pool, and sits.
“In the backyard,” she types.
Walter comes in through the pool gate.
“You remembered the code,” she says.
“One-two-three-four. Some things never change.”
“Until they do,” she says. There’s a pause. “You look good—muscly.”
“Eating meat again.”
“It’s really good to see you.”
They grew up together, each other’s witness and confidant.
They go into the house. “Should I try to distract you?” Walter asks, digging around the game closet. He takes out the game Operation. She uses the electrified tweezers to extract the wishbone—her favorite part.
“Is this helping?” Walter asks.
“It’s certainly matching how strange I feel,” she says.
When the game is over, she goes into her parents’ bedroom, moves from object to object, touching her mother’s things—moisturizers, custom-compounded sun creams made by the dermatologist, tanning sprays.
Walter comes out of the bathroom wearing her father’s robe, his arms filled with pill bottles. “Did you know your dad was on all this stuff?”
