Other than occasional dips in my sisterās pool or trips back to Philly, Iāve spent most of the summer so far working on my book. (Full disclosure: In my case, writing a book involves a lot of time spent mooning around my apartment procrastinating writing, feeling quite terrible about all the procrastinating, and watching TV.) Since the book is pretty much all I think about these days, I figured Iād share another bit of it with you (this is what immediately follows the first excerpt, which you can find here).
October 4, 2018 | Philadelphia
My phone is on silent, so I donāt see my motherās texts until several minutes after she sends them: Maddie has been admitted to Baystate medical center in I canāt think Baystate medical center multiple organ failure Iām on my way down.Ā
My sister Maura has already written back: Jesus. Your phone is going straight to voicemail. Call me when you get this and weāll conference Kate in.Ā
I turn on the volume of my phone and walk with it from my office at the back of the narrow row house we moved into a few weeks earlier to the living room at the front. My boyfriend, M., sits on the couch, the computer on his lap tinting his face silvery blue. We havenāt fully unpacked yet, let alone bought curtains or shades; out the window behind him cars are parked on either side of the street that separates our house from a large park.
During the day the park is full of kids being pushed on swings by their parents, walkers stopping to let their dogs sniff at trees, basketball players elbowing each other out of the way as they race down the court for a layup. Now I can see teenagers sitting on top of the tables next to the empty playground, the orange tip of a passed blunt flaring as they inhale.
I want to walk across the street to the park and lie on the grass, yellow and brittle after a long summer. I want the plane trees with their mottled, peeling bark to tower above me. I want to be small and still and close to the earth.Ā
When I first learned Maddie was using heroin, I lived in fear of the Phone Call, someone on the other end of the line telling me her blue body had been dumped outside the sliding glass doors of an emergency room or found stabbed to death in a roadside ditch. But the initial urgency of her addiction soon gave way to a kind of drudgery. Instead of the Phone Call, there were so many other phone calls. She needed a ride, money, a place to stay. Sheād been kicked out of rehab, asked to leave her sober house, arrested and needed bail.
The Phone Call always lurked, but it was obscured by other crises. These other phone calls might deliver terrible, terrifying news, but if the phone rang and it was her voice on the other end, she was alive. If she was alive, she could get better.Ā
When I didnāt hear from her, when she didnāt call to ask for money or help, the Phone Call stepped into the silence like a stranger following me down a deserted street at night. I could hear his quickening step, see his shadow moving closer to mine on the sidewalk, feel his breath on the back of my neck.
So it was a relief a week earlier when Maddie called my mom from the Springfield, Massachusetts, Police Department. Sheād been āin the wind,ā as my mother called it when Maddie disappeared into her drug use, for almost a month, messaging us on Facebook to say she was sick. Iām scared, she wrote back when I asked her to go to the ER. The hospital checks for warrants. So I relaxed when she was arrested; if she was in jail she was safe.Ā
M. looks up from his computer as I stand in front of him in the living room holding out my phone and asks me whatās going on, but I canāt bring myself to say it out loud. This seems particularly badāwhat if the Phone Call was actually a text? I hand him the phone and let him read for himself.
M. doesnāt doesnāt worry or despair when bad things happen, nor does he comfort or console. Focus on what you can control, he advises when Iām upset about something, which is what he does when heās upset about something. What I find terrifying or frustrating or sad, he sees as a problem awaiting a solution. In the three years weāve been dating he has researched treatments for opioid addiction, facilitated phone calls with therapists who specialize in trauma, suggested visualization exercises I could do with Maddie when she called from jail. But when he finishes reading my momās text he doesnāt offer advice or some way to fix my sister, and the look on his face is not one Iām familiar with: Heās scared.