Chapter Fourteen
Cole
June 17th.
The day my sister died.
I’d need to call my mother later and let her cry on the phone, as she’d done every year since Marissa’s death. They’d sent her up north to a rehab in the hopes of getting her off of the opioids that Sam had gotten her hooked on, and the few times we’d gone up to visit her, she’d seemed better, like she was on the road to recovery.
We’d all felt as though things were getting better, that life was getting back on the track that it was supposed to be on.
Sometimes, I replayed the scene in my head, going into my sister’s room to find her, slumped on the floor, the needle still sticking out of her arm. How long had she been there? Where had she gotten the drugs? Her skin was lukewarm, her lips tinged blue; there was nothing anyone could have done. But I still couldn’t help but wonder if I’d gone in sooner, if we hadn’t stayed at the bed and breakfast, if my parents hadn’t sent her away to that place to begin with, if maybe things would’ve gone differently.
My 1:30 appointment had canceled, so I shut myself in my office and called my parents’ house. My father picked up.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. “How are you?”
He sighed heavily. “We’re doing the best we can,” he said. “Today is always a hard day.”
“I know. That’s why I’m calling.”
“You aren’t at work right now?”
“No, I am, but there’s a break between patients.”
“Oh, okay. Well, we appreciate you calling. We went to your sister’s grave earlier this morning.” There was a pause. “I wonder what she would’ve been like today if she was still alive,” he said.
My father didn’t talk about Marissa much; I knew that he wanted to come across as strong, especially for my mother, but I knew how much it bothered him. He and I were alike in many ways, we both wanted to think that we could fix things, that we could take care of things. But the whole thing with Marissa had shown us, if nothing else, how little control we really had over anything.
“I think about that sometimes, too,” I said. “How’s Mom doing?”
“About as well as you’d expect. Would you like to speak to her? Here she is.”
He got off the phone before I could object; I could tell from the slight quiver in his voice that he was doing his best to hold his tears back. The only time I had ever seen my father cry had been at Marissa’s funeral.
“I’m so glad you called,” my mother said when she got on the phone. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” I said. “How are you?”
“I’m trying to hold it together. Today is always hard. I planted some pansies at your sister’s gravesite. It looks very nice. There was some moss growing on the headstone, but I scraped that off.”
“I’m sure it looks nice there, Mom,” I said.
“We were there for a while. I know your father wanted to leave, but I just couldn’t. I know that doesn’t entirely make sense, since she’s not really there, but I always feel like I’m leaving her behind.”
“I just don’t understand why this had to happen,” my mother sobbed. “Still, all these years later, and it hurts as much as it did when we first found out. She’d been clean for so long—why would she use again? She had such a bright future ahead of her. She’d turned a corner—the hard stuff was in the past. Wasn’t it?”
“That’s what everyone thought, Mom. But obviously it wasn’t, at least not in her mind.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand it.”
“You might not,” I said. “We’re all trying to do the best we can. I know it doesn’t always seem perfect, and things haven’t gone how anyone thought they would, but we’re all trying, Mom.”
“You are more than anyone. I feel so guilty—”
“Don’t.”
“But I do. Everything that you’ve taken on, that you’ve had to deal with, it hasn’t been fair to you, and—”
“Mom, I’m not doing anything I don’t want to, okay? We’re a family, right? Remember you were always telling us that? That we’re a family, we’re all on the same team, and sometimes that means stepping up and doing things for the team. That’s just how it goes.”
“I just wonder sometimes how things might have been different if I hadn’t asked you to—” Abruptly, she stopped talking. My father must have come back into the room. “Thank you again for calling,” she said. “You know it means so much to me.”
“I love you, Mom,” I said. “I better get going; I’ve got another patient to see in a few minutes. I’ll see you guys on Sunday, okay?”
“Okay, sweetie,” she said. “I love you, too.”
I got off the phone and then leaned forward, putting my arms on my desk, then resting my forehead on top of my arms.
That evening, after Declan had a bath and I got him to bed, I went into my bedroom and opened the closet. It was a walk-in closet, with a shelf running along one of the walls, about eye level. Toward the back was a shoe box with things like my birth certificate, my passport, and a life insurance policy. I took the box down and opened it. Inside, underneath all my own personal belongings, was a folded piece of notebook paper. I took it out and unfolded it, the creases soft, the paper starting to yellow. My sister’s loopy handwriting in blue ink still seemed just as bright as it had been the day I’d found the note next to her already-cooling body.
I just don’t want to live anymore. I know that’s not the right thing
to say, the right way to feel, but it’s the truth. I’ve caused other
people so much pain, and I’m so tired. I hope you can forgive me
and not blame yourselves because there is nothing anyone could
say that would change my mind. All I ever wanted was to be happy,
but for some reason, despite all the privilege I was born into,
I am unable to feeling anything but this overwhelming sadness.
I forgive you, Cole, for what you did—
I stopped reading. The letter continued for several more lines, and sometimes I was able to make it to the end, sometimes I was only able to read the first couple of words.
I forgive you, Cole.
As if she knew I’d be the one to find her.
What she probably did not realize, though, was that I would take that letter and slip it into my pocket and never speak to anyone about it. Everything that had already been going on with Marissa had really taken its toll on my mother. Well, both my parents, but especially my mother. She had cultivated such a truly wonderful upbringing for the two of us, that something happening like this just would not be something she could cope with. Especially not my sister choosing to take her own life. My mother would take that personally.
Keeping such a secret was hard. The decision had been made; there was no walking it back now. There had been a window of time after I had found Marissa that I could have come forward with the note, could have let my parents know the truth about what had happened, but that window had closed, and now, this was just one more secret I had to keep.
I considered it a fair trade, though. I wasn’t supposed to know that my mother was on antidepressants—she had never told me—but my father had let me in on it. Yet, even the best antidepressants could not always keep the sadness at bay, and that was very much the case for my mother.
I put the letter away. Perhaps someday I would throw it away—was there really a point in keeping it?
I went downstairs and was standing at the sink, washing dishes, when I heard a knock at the door. I turned the water off and went to answer it, expecting it to be Ben. Allie stood there, a small bouquet of yellow and white flowers in her hands.
“Hey,” she said. “I know it’s late, but I wanted to drop these by.”
“Come on in,” I said, stepping back so she could come in.
She handed me the flowers. “These are for you. I know that today must be hard, and that flowers aren’t going to make it any easier, but... I guess I just wanted you to know that I’m thinking about you.”
“That’s really sweet of you,” I said. “Thank you.”
I found a vase for the flowers and filled it with water and put them in. There was a tightness in my throat, and for a second, I thought that I was going to actually cry. But I took a deep breath and felt that ache in my throat ease.
“I’m not going to stay long,” Allie said. “I just wanted to give you those.”
But she took a step closer to me, and I went over to her, my arms going around her waist, pulling her toward me. She hugged me, and I closed my eyes and let out a long exhale. I felt exhausted, frankly, and though there was that part of me that was very much sexually attracted to her, right now, just standing there, her arms around me, felt as good as anything I could remember. I don’t know how long we stood there like that, but it was a while. When we finally pulled back, she had a slight smile on her face.
“I’m going to go,” she said. “I don’t want to, but I’m going to.”
“Then I’d at least like to do this before you do so.” And I leaned down and kissed her, lightly, once on the lips. She kissed me back, and though it didn’t involve any tongue like it had the first time, it was just as nice, and I knew that even though it wasn’t going to happen tonight, soon, soon we would sleep together.
Now that the date had come and gone, I felt as though a bit of a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, at least until next June. Would it be like this forever? I certainly wasn’t expecting my mother to ever forget about Marissa, but it seemed as though the pain of her death was as fresh to my mother as it had been when it first happened.
“This is looking better,” I said, standing up to survey the garden area that Allie had been working on. The previous neighbor, a woman named Bette, had kept the garden in good order for the first year we’d been here, but then her health started to decline, and as that happened, so did the state of the garden. I thought it was admirable that Allie was trying to get it going again, even though it was clear she didn’t really have a clue what she was doing.
“Look, I found a worm!” Declan said, proudly showing us the pale, wriggling thing held between his fingertips.
“That’s a good sign,” I said. “Worms are good for the soil, so if there’s worms in here, that means the soil is good.”
“He’s slimy.”
I kneeled back down and yanked out a few more weeds that were trying to push through the chicken wire surrounding the plot.
“Any idea what you’re going to plant in here?” I asked.
Allie, who was a few feet away from me, also on her knees, her back to me and giving me a nice view, shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I know I’m pretty late in the game here. When I drive to work, I’m always seeing people’s beautiful gardens, and they’re definitely bountiful and flourishing, and while in my head I think that’s what I’d like, I know the reality is probably going to be quite different. What’s something I can plant now in the middle of summer?”
“Hmm,” I said. “I’m not so sure about flowers, but I know there are some vegetables you could do, like peppers or green beans.”
“Maybe I should do that. You know what flower I really like though? Asters. I wonder if I could get some of those.”
“Sounds like a trip to the garden center is in your near future.”
“Can we go with you?” Declan asked immediately. “I like the big room with the glass and all the flowers. It feels like a tropical jungle!”
“That’s the atrium,” I said. “It’s pretty cool, if you haven’t seen something like that before.”
“You know what I’d like to do?” Allie said. “I’d like to have a cookout. Do you guys have plans tomorrow?”
“Nothing in particular,” I said.
“Then why don’t you guys come on over tomorrow afternoon? That grill has been sitting there on the deck, looking a little neglected.”
“That sounds great.”