All Fall Down(65)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

“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.