TWELVE
Mrs. Dale got the kids out of the car and drove it to the teachers’ lot. She left me in her classroom, then disappeared with Ellie and the boys. I hoped she was taking them back to the Enrichment room, giving them treats, letting them play with the newest toys. I took a seat at one of the munchkin-sized desks and pulled out my phone. Janet answered on the third ring.
“Allison?”
“Hey!” I said, trying to sound upbeat and untroubled, even though fingers of cold sweat were tracing the curve of my spine and I’d noticed my hands shaking as I’d punched in her number. “Just letting you know that I’m running a little late. The traffic was a mess,” I lied, knowing that Janet would believe me. “Sit tight. I’ll have them home as soon as I can.”
“Take your time,” she said.
We hung up, and I rummaged through my purse for a bottle of water. I sipped it, looking longingly at my tin, knowing how stupid it would be to take a pill now, now of all times. My heart was still beating so hard I could feel my temples pounding, and I could feel more sweat collecting there, beading above my upper lip. Then I thought, In for a penny, in for a pound. The pills were my normal. They’d help me calm down. They would get me through this. And if they did, I promised God and Ellie and whatever forces or spirits might have been listening, I would stop. I would.
I slid two blue pills under my tongue just as Mrs. Dale came into the room, carrying a steaming WORLD’S BEST TEACHER mug and packets of sugar and Cremora and Sweet ’N Low.
“Thanks,” I said. I dumped fake cream and sugar into the cup and sipped. Mrs. Dale sat at her desk and loaded folders into a tan leather satchel. I waited for the lecture to begin. When it didn’t, I started talking.
“Listen. I appreciate what you did out there. I understand that it’s your job. But, like I told you, I had one glass of wine, this afternoon with Janet Mallory. You can call her if you don’t believe me.”
She looked at me steadily. “Were you taking anything else?”
That’s when I glimpsed my loophole. My way out. The light at the end of the tunnel, shining glorious and gold. “Oh my God,” I whispered, widening my eyes, letting my jaw go slack, doing everything but slapping my forehead. “My back went out over the weekend, and I’m taking . . . God, what’s it called? A muscle relaxer, and a painkiller. I totally forgot I’m not supposed to drink with them.” I hung my head, my expression of shame entirely unfeigned. “Oh my God, what is wrong with me?”
Maybe I imagined it, but I thought Mrs. Dale’s expression softened. So I kept going. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t believe I didn’t double-check.” I swallowed hard. The enormity of the situation—the trouble I could be in, the fact that I could have hurt children, mine and someone else’s, or hit someone else, some stranger on the road—was covering me like a skin of ice, freezing my feet, my knees, my belly. If she reported this, I could lose my daughter. If Dave found out that I was driving under the influence . . . I shook my head, unwilling to even think about it. I couldn’t let myself go there. Containment. Containment was the name of the game. “You were absolutely right to not let me drive. I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again.”
Mrs. Dale’s expression was unreadable. Was she buying any of this? I couldn’t tell.
“You were taking painkillers?” she finally asked. I started nodding almost before the last syllable was out of her mouth.
“That’s right. And a muscle relaxant. My back . . .”
She looked at me for another long moment. “When my niece had a C-section,” she finally said, “they gave her Percocet. Her doctor kept prescribing them for almost six months after she’d given birth, and when he cut her off, she found another doctor, a pain specialist, to write her prescriptions for Vicodin and OxyContin.”
I tried not to flinch. Vicodin and Oxy. My favorites, my nearest and dearest . . . and, at that very moment, I wanted about a dozen of each. I wanted not to be there, not to have been seen by the ladies in the carpool lane, who were probably already spreading the word, not to be in that classroom that smelled like little-kid sweat and banana bread, being lectured by some old battle-ax who probably had no idea what it was like, trying to raise kids and hold a job and run a household these days.
“She took those pills for years. I believe that we all got used to it when Vicki didn’t seem quite right, or when she was tired all the time. We’d ask her about what she was taking, and she’d say it was no big deal, and because she had prescriptions, because she was under a doctor’s care, none of us worried. We didn’t know she was borrowing pills from her friends when her prescriptions ran out, or buying them from someone she met at the gym . . . or that she’d gotten a prescription for Xanax and was trading those for her neighbor’s painkillers.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“What happened was, she died,” Mrs. Dale said. In the quiet, empty classroom, I heard myself gasp. “On the death certificate it said respiratory failure, but she had taken about five times more pills than she should have, and she had a few glasses of wine on top of it, and she went to sleep and she didn’t wake up.” She looked at me, unflinching. “Her little girl found her. It was a school morning, and my niece’s husband was in the shower, and Brianna went into the bedroom and tapped her mom’s shoulder.” I sat there, frozen, my body prickling with goose pimples, my eyes and nose stinging with unshed tears. I could picture it—a woman about my age, in a nightgown, on her back in bed, underneath the covers. The sound of running water from the bathroom, the billow of steam and the smell of soap, and a little girl in Ariel pajamas shaking the woman’s shoulder gently, then more insistently, not noticing the stiff, unyielding texture of the flesh, or how cold it was, saying Mommy, Mommy, wake up! And in my head, the little girl was Ellie.
I swallowed hard. Oh, God. What was I going to do? I had to stop, that was clear. But what if I couldn’t? Mrs. Dale was looking at me. I wanted to explain, to tell her how this had happened, how stressful my life was, between my job and my parents and my husband and his work wife and Ellie, and how sometimes I didn’t like being a mother much at all—how I liked the concept, but the reality of it was killing me. I couldn’t take the tears and tantrums and endless Monopoly games, the way Ellie would wander down the stairs half a dozen times after she’d been put to bed, requesting a glass of water, a story, her night-light turned on, her night-light turned off, how she’d bang on the door when I was in the shower, or even on the toilet, just trying to pee or put in a tampon, until I was ready to scream, to grab her by her little shoulders and shake her, shouting, Just stay in bed, please! Just leave me alone and give me five minutes of peace!
“Brianna was four,” said Mrs. Dale.
“Four,” I repeated. I imagined Ellie going to move-up day with only her daddy in the audience to cheer as she crossed over the bridge to first grade. I thought about her getting her period with no one to tell her what to do . . . or, worse, some bimbo of a stepmother who’d regard my daughter as competition. Her bat mitzvah . . . her first date . . . senior prom . . . college acceptance letters. All without a mother to encourage her and console her, to love her, no matter what.
I dropped my head. No more, I thought. I can’t do this anymore. And right on the heels of that thought came, inevitably, another: I need them. I couldn’t imagine leaving Ellie to face life without a mother . . . but I also couldn’t imagine facing my life without a chemical buffer between me and Dave, me and my mother, me and the Internet, me and my feelings. How could I survive without that sweet river of calm wending its way through my body, easing me, untying knots from the soles of my feet to the top of my head? How could I make it through a day without knowing I had that reliable comfort waiting at the finish line?
I gave my head a little shake. This was stupid. So I had let things get a little out of hand. So I’d come to school a little loopy. Nobody had gotten hurt, right? And I wasn’t going to die. I wasn’t. I wasn’t taking that much, and it was prescription medication, not heroin I was buying on the streets. It wasn’t like I was some cracked-out junkie . . . or like I’d end up dead in bed with a mouthful of puke and a little girl to find me. I was smarter than that.
Except, a little voice inside me whispered, wasn’t Mrs. Dale’s niece on the same stuff as you? And you’re buying extra, and you’re not taking it as prescribed. Not even close. I told the voice to shut up, but it persisted. Instead of taking one every four hours, you’re taking four every one hour . . .. and you’re drinking on top of that.
You need help.
No, I don’t.
This can’t go on.
I’m doing fine!
“I’m fine,” I muttered, half to Mrs. Dale and half to myself . . . but, even as I said it, I could imagine a little girl shaking her mother’s shoulder. Her mother’s cold, stiff, dead shoulder.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” said Mrs. Dale. “But I know what this looks like. And I know it can happen to anyone. The nicest people. The smartest people. My niece was so beautiful. You’d never look at her and think that she was a drug addict. She was just taking what the doctors gave her. Right until she died.”
“I appreciate what you’re saying, but that’s not me. I don’t have a problem.” Never mind the surveys I’d taken, the questionnaires I’d filled out, the increasing number of pills I needed to get through the day. Never mind the promises—not before nine, not before noon, not while I’m working, not when I’m with Eloise—that I’d broken, one after another, every day, stretching back for months. “I don’t. I just made a mistake today, and you were right to take my keys, and I swear, I swear on my daughter’s life, that it’ll never happen again.” I took a gulp of lukewarm coffee and forced myself to ask, “Are you going to report me?”
After an interminable pause, Mrs. Dale shook her head.
“Thank you. I’m sorry. I promise . . . I swear to you,” I repeated, “this will never happen again.”
She gazed at me, and her eyes, behind her bifocals, looked kind. “There’s no shame in asking for help if you need it,” she said . . . and then she walked out, leaving me alone with my coffee, and my keys.
I waited until she was out the door before I shoved my hand in my purse and touched the Altoids tin, then the prescription bottles, one, two, three, four. I had pills halfway to my mouth before something inside me, the little voice of reason, rose up and demanded, What the F*ck are you doing?
I put the pills back. I put the cap on the bottle. I put the bottle in my purse, and laid my head on top of my folded arms . . . and then, alone in the empty classroom, I started to cry.