Page 70 of The Cadence
His rejection would hurt a lot worse, too, because I had a lot more invested in him than in some headboard. I’d spent seven years harboring a crush, but now my feelings had evolved. What I’d told Kirsten was right: after living with him, I had seen a lot more of his character and of his flaws, and that crush had grown into love. When I’d known him in high school, I’d been wild for the person I thought I knew, the handsome, strong guy who was also so smart and confident. He’d had another side that he sometimes showed me, like when he’d let me see his list of goals or when I’d helped him after his graduation.
I thought about what had happened that day. We had been in the car on the way to my grandma’s house when his mother had called him but after they’d spoken, we had changed destinations. “Her words were so slurred that I could barely understand what she was saying,” he’d told me as we drove to his house instead. It was the first time I’d ever been to that place, and I’d been momentarily awed by its size and grandeur. Years later, when I saw the Bodine ancestral home that his relatives had lost, I had realized what “grandeur” really was—but at the age of fourteen, I had stood next to Will’s car in their driveway and gaped.
He had already run inside and the front door swung a little behind him. I had approached carefully, but then I’d heard his voice cry out, and it was full of shock and horror.
“Mama!”
Then I’d run, and I had found them on the second story (there were three in that big place). A woman sprawled unconscious on the floor of a bathroom that was larger than the room where I slept in my grandma’s house. But I didn’t notice any details of anything, not the big four-poster bed that I sprinted past, not the closet that you could walk right into, not the low dressing table with crystal bottles of perfume and fluffy makeup brushes.
All I’d seen was a small, dark-haired woman and then Will kneeling next to her, trying to get her to wake up. There was also a puddle of vomit but I didn’t smell liquor in the air. “What did she take?” I asked him.
“I…” His face, so visible without the beard he wore now, had been blanched of color. I’d looked around and saw an amber medicine bottle. Unlike the pills my own mother sometimes had, which came in baggies or containers labeled with names that weren’t her own, this one said “Ophelia Bodine.” I didn’t recognize what they were.
“What is this?” I had asked Will, thrusting the bottle at him.
He’d blinked a few times before focusing. “These are for pain. She broke her ankle a few months ago.”
“Pills for pain” was something that I understood. “How many were in there?”
He had studied the label. “It was a five-day supply. There should have been fifteen.”
That wasn’t so many, but I hadn’t known anything about the potency. Maybe these had been extra strong pills and when I looked again at the puddle of puke, I didn’t see any evidence thatthey’d come back up. Was this what his mother had been doing instead of attending his graduation? Where was his stupid dad?
It hadn’t been in my mind to seek more help, since I never had for this kind of situation in the past. “I’ll make her throw up,” I’d said briskly.
“What?” he had asked, still confused. “I need to call an ambulance.” He took out his phone and that was when I met his father. A man who looked so much like Will, except that he was blonde and a lot smaller, had barged into that bathroom.
“What the hell did she do?” He had stared contemptuously at the unconscious woman on the floor.
“Dad, we need help. She took too many pills,” Will had told him, and handed over the bottle.
“She had these and she didn’t tell me?” He seemed annoyed that he hadn’t known about her stash rather than concerned about his wife’s condition. “She’ll be fine.”
“I’m calling nine-one-one.”
“Like hell you are,” the man said, and he’d grabbed Will’s phone.
“Dad!” Will had yelled. “Give that back.” He was so much bigger that he could have forced its return, but he had stood frozen as his father walked away.
“She’ll be fine,” he had repeated over his shoulder. After a moment, we heard the front door slam.
“Jesus Christ. You don’t have a phone, right?” I hadn’t. “I’ll go to a neighbor’s house,” Will said, but he didn’t move. “She’ll be humiliated.”
I was used to adults acting crazy and I hadn’t bothered to pay much attention to the scene between him and his dad. I was busy turning his mom onto her side and getting ready for the purge. “It’s going to be gross,” I warned him, and then I’d stuck my fingers down her throat. I had done it before and I held her jaw with my other hand to try to avoid a strong bite. After a moment and a lot of retching, the pills started to come back up. I did it a few times until I was sure that there wasn’t anything left in her stomach.
“Get her into the shower,” I had commanded next, and he’d carried his mother into a separate little room where I helped him to sit her up against the tiled wall. Then I’d turned on cold water and we had all been drenched by it, but it had worked. She’d shaken her head and moaned but then, she’d opened her eyes.
“Who the fuck are you?” she’d slurred at me. “Leave me the fuck alone!”
“She never cusses like that,” Will had immediately said, like a few objectionable words were going to offend me, or that they were the problem at hand.
“Did you take anything else besides those twelve pills?” I’d asked her loudly. I had counted the remains of the medication as it came up.
It had taken her a few moments, while the cold water continued to run on our heads, before she’d answered no. Then we had gotten out of the shower and he had helped his mom find some dry clothes as I had cleaned the mess she’d made in her beautiful room. She’d had coffee and dry toast, which had always been myown mother’s recovery choice when she’d taken things too far. None of us had spoken as we’d sat around the kitchen table. It was the same table where we’d also sat after the death of Will’s father, the blonde man who hadn’t helped.
Will was now sitting on a tall barstool in his own kitchen when I arrived, but it was a very different experience when compared to finding his mother on the bathroom floor. I felt an immediate rush of happiness when I saw him there.
“Hello, Calla,” he said to me, and then I stopped dead.
