All Fall Down(36)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

If I’d had time I would have helped more, but in the six weeks since the Journal story had run, traffic to Ladiesroom.com had increased by more than two hundred percent, and Sarah had started hinting that I should think about writing not just five times a week but every day. I’d also gotten a few queries from other outlets—some websites, two in-print magazines, and a cable TV shout-show—asking if I’d want to write or blog or dispense online or on-the-air commentary. So far, I’d turned them all down, but I suspected that if Sarah learned about the offers she’d encourage me to take them, knowing it would only help build Ladiesroom’s brand.

Ideally, Dave would have taken over Ellie duties a few nights a week, and maybe even spared an hour each week for counseling, but Dave, bless his heart, had declined both of those requests and instead signed up for another marathon. I’d tried not to read too deeply into the symbolism, about how he’d be spending hours each week literally running away from his wife and his daughter, and I’d assiduously avoided Googling L. McIntyre’s name to see if she, too, would be participating in the race, thus avoiding the need to imagine the two of them logging training runs along the Schuylkill, trotting side by side along the tree-canopied paths of the Wissahickon. Instead of complaining, I’d bumped my housekeeper up to two days a week, hired a backup sitter who could work nights and weekends, and enrolled Ellie in after-school activities every day but Thursday—tumbling, swimming, Clay Club, even a class on “iPad mastery.” It was heartbreaking, but the more she was out of the house, the more smoothly things ran inside of it. She’d even found a new best friend. Hank did most of the same activities she did—his mom was a urologist who worked full-time. Ellie had all but adopted Hank, who was even more sensitive and high-strung than she was, and appointed herself as his unofficial advisor and life coach.

“If you need to go to the potty, just ask me,” I heard her saying as she unhitched herself from her booster seat, then reached over to help Hank with his buckles. “I’ve been to probably a billion parties here before.”

I helped Ellie out of the car, handed Dave the birthday boy’s gift, and then stood with him in the parking lot, feeling as if we’d been shoved onstage without a script. Normally, we would have kissed before I drove away—just a little peck, a quick brush, enough for me to get a whiff of his scent, which I still found intoxicating, and then we’d separate. Instead, Dave gave me a half wave and a “See ya” before shepherding the kids through the front doors. Part of me wanted to run after him and hug him, taking strength from even an instant of physical connection. Another part of me felt like giving him the finger. Since the birthday-night fight, Dave had barely touched me, and he’d continued to spend his nights in the guest bedroom. I imagined him under the covers, curled on his side with that goddamned BlackBerry pressed against his ear, talking to his work wife, L. McIntyre, while his real wife was alone in bed down the hall, staring up into the darkness, sometimes crying, until the narcotics allowed her to fall asleep.

I sat behind the wheel as the doors closed behind Dave and Hank and Ellie, feeling hollow underneath the euphoria the pills guaranteed. At least I still had that—a guaranteed pick-me-up at the start of the day; a comfort at the end. With a pill or two (or three, or four) coursing through my bloodstream, I felt calm, energetic, in control, as if I could manage work and being a good mother and a good daughter, keeping the house running and the refrigerator stocked and even performing the occasional stint as a chaperone during a Stonefield trip to the Art Museum.

The bad news was that Dr. Andi was being far stingier with the Oxy handouts than she’d been with the Vicodin. “You want to be careful with this stuff,” she’d said the first time I called for a refill. “It’s seriously addictive.”

“Oh, I will be,” I promised. I could keep that promise easily because, during one of my daily rounds of the gossip websites that I wasted too much time on, I’d come across a story I at first assumed had to be fake. “Introducing Penny Lane: the Top Secret Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug You Want.” No way, I’d thought, but the story at least made the site sound legitimate as it described a kind of Amazon.com for illegal substances. You had to use anonymizing software to get to the site, and use encryption to register. Once you’d cleared those hurdles, you could, allegedly, order anything you wanted—anything from pot to Viagra to painkillers to heroin. You’d send the vendors your real name and address—encrypted, of course—and payment via a new kind of online-only currency, and the vendors would send you the goods.