All Fall Down(62)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

I slipped my hand into my pocket, touching my tin. At this point, I could guess just by its weight how many pills it contained. Ten, I estimated. Surely ten pills would last me until tomorrow, if they had to? Maybe I could excuse myself, tell Janet I had to make a call, and see if one of my doctors would phone in another prescription, just to tide me over.

“All these clothes,” she repeated. “Skirts and suits and jackets. High heels. All that stuff, just hanging there.”

“You’ll wear them again,” I told her. I knew Janet’s plan had been to start working part-time the previous fall, when the boys started kindergarten. But then Conor had gotten his ADHD diagnosis, and Janet had spent what felt like an entire year at some doctor’s or therapist’s office every day after school. As soon as Conor had been stabilized with the right combination of medicine and tutoring and a psychologist to teach him cognitive behavioral strategies for managing his disorder (translation: how to keep from screaming and throwing things when he got frustrated), Dylan had started acting out, getting in fights at school, yelling at his teachers, hiding in the bathroom when recess was over. This, of course, meant therapy for him, too. Somewhere in there, Maya had stopped speaking to her mother. When Janet had described her attempts to give Maya the “your changing body” talk, and how Maya had literally thrown the helpful Care & Keeping of You book into the hallway so hard it had left a dent in the paint, Barry and I had laughed, Barry so hard there were tears glistening in his beard, but I could tell that Janet was heartbroken at her daughter’s silent treatment.

“Five years from now you’ll be running the attorney general’s office, and you’ll be too important to take my calls,” I told her.

“Ha.” It was a very bleak “Ha.” I wanted to reassure her that we’d get through this time, that in three or five or eight years things would come around right and we would find ourselves again the smart, vital women we’d once been . . . but who was I to talk?

“OMG,” Janet said, looking at the clock. Somehow, it was five-thirty. “Are you okay to drive? Are you sure?”

“I’m good.” I’d had only a single glass of wine. At least, as far as she knew.

“Want me to come with you?”

“That’s okay. I’ll have the boys back here by six-fifteen.”

She nodded. Then she hugged me, with her wineglass still in her hand. “You’re my best friend,” she said, and, briefly, rested her head on my shoulder. I gave her a squeeze, located my purse, got behind the wheel, and pulled out of Janet’s driveway. My heart lurched as I heard a car honking and the word “ASSHOLE!” float down the street. Shit, I thought, realizing how close I’d come to backing into the side of someone’s BMW. Oh, well. The other car had probably been speeding. I hoped Janet hadn’t seen it as I put the car in drive and proceeded toward Stonefield, coming to a full stop at each stop sign, keeping assiduously to the speed limit. Where had that BMW even come from?

I pulled up at a red light, with my eyelids feeling as heavy as if someone had coated them with wet sand. I kept my foot on the brake and let my eyes slip shut, feeling the warmth of the pills surging through my veins, that intoxicating sense of everything being right with the universe. My head swung forward. I could feel my hair against my cheeks . . .

Someone behind me was honking. I bolted upright, opening my eyes. “Jesus, cool your jets!” I hit the gas and was jerked backward as my car leapt through the intersection. Why was everyone in such a goddamn rush? What happened to manners? I squinted into the rearview mirror, trying to make out the face behind the wheel of the car that had honked, wondering if it was anyone I knew . . . and then, in an instant, the sign for Stonefield was looming up on my right. I stomped on the brakes, hit the turn signal, and heard the squeal of rubber on the road as I made the turn, cutting off the car in my right-hand lane. My heart thudded as I hit the brakes. There were two cars in front of me, and I could see Janet’s twins waiting, in their baseball caps and matching backpacks, along with Eloise, in the Lilly Pulitzer sundress she’d picked out herself. I put the car in park, grabbed the key fob, and hopped out of my seat. The heel of my shoe must have caught on the floor mat, because instead of the graceful exit I’d planned on, I tripped and went down hard on the pavement, landing on my hands and knees.

“Ow!” I yelled. My palms were stinging, dotted with beads of blood, and my pants were torn at the knee. I wondered if anyone had seen me. I looked around, swallowing hard as I spotted Mrs. Dale, one of the teachers in Ellie’s class, standing at the curb with a clipboard in her hand. Just my luck. Miss Reckord, the other teacher, was a sweet-faced, dumpling-shaped twenty-five-year-old with rosy cheeks and a whispery voice. The little boys all nursed crushes on her, and the girls fought to sit on her lap at story time, where they could finger her dangly earrings. Mrs. Dale was a different story. Thin-lipped, broad-shouldered, and flat-chested, with hair the color and consistency of a Brillo pad and skin as pale as yogurt, Mrs. Dale—who had, as far as I knew, no first name that was ever used by anyone in the Stonefield community—had been bringing five-year-olds to heel for more than thirty years. Mrs. Dale was not impressed with your special little snowflake. She did not believe in affirmations or unearned compliments to boost a kid’s self-esteem, or the unspoken Stonefield philosophy that every child was a winner. She believed in children keeping their hands to themselves, not running in the hallways, and coloring inside the lines. She took zero shit off of anyone, and she never, ever smiled.