People Who Knew Me Read online

It was after midnight by the time we got out of the hospital. Drew’s mom chose a hot pink cast, a rather pathetic attempt to keep the situation humorous and lighthearted. We walked her into the house and Drew got his first look at the disaster it had become. His shoulders slumped in defeat. He sat her on the couch and moved some of the newspapers so he could make a seat for himself. As I made my way to the kitchen, I heard him say:

  “Ma, we gotta talk about this.”

  Drew and I had divvied up responsibilities while waiting in the hospital: he would talk to his mom; I would cancel the trip. I left a message with Jade, telling her I’d be in the office the rest of the week. Then I called Marni. I was hoping she wouldn’t pick up so I could just leave a message, but she did pick up and I had to explain the situation to her. She said, “Oh, Em.” The sadness in her voice made my throat constrict and my eyes water. I told her I had to go and hung up quickly. I recomposed myself and then called the airline’s twenty-four-hour help line. I told the woman on the line that we’d had a family medical emergency. She didn’t say she was sorry for us. She just asked for our confirmation number and the last name on the reservation.

  “So our credit card will be refunded?” I asked.

  “No, ma’am, we can’t give you a refund. But we can give you a credit so you can go to California on a future date.”

  I hated her, the twang of her Texas accent, the fake graciousness of her voice. She was probably playing a game of solitaire on her computer while talking to me.

  “Okay, then, a credit,” I said.

  “You’ll just need to send in proof of your medical emergency.”

  “Proof?”

  “A doctor’s bill—anything with the date on it.”

  “Fine, we’ll do that,” I said. “We’ll send in the bill.”

  It turned out there wasn’t one bill; there were many. I never made copies of them to mail in. It wasn’t that I forgot. I remembered. But it became gravely apparent that California—or any vacation, for that matter—wouldn’t be part of our lives as long as Drew’s mother was part of our lives. On especially bad days, I considered getting the airline credit and taking the trip alone, even envisioned myself on a chaise lounge with a book and a fruity cocktail at my side. But I declared my own idea crazy before Drew had the chance to. I mean, what kind of wife leaves her husband and his ailing mother to sunbathe in paradise? A shitty one, I told myself. A shitty one.

  TEN

  Drew and I had this ritual: Friday nights, after a long week of work, we’d make calzones. It was our thing. He was in charge of the dough and I was in charge of the fillings. We tried to make them a little different every week—different meats, different cheeses, different vegetables. Sometimes we used a cream sauce, sometimes marinara.

  On the day of the last calzone night I remember, he called me on my lunch break and said, “Babe, I was thinking pesto tonight.”

  When was that? It must have been in that period of time after Drew’s mom broke her wrist, after we canceled our trip, but before our lives changed completely.

  “Pesto?” I said.

  “As the sauce, as the base. It’s genius.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Genius,” I said. “I’ll pick up some tomatoes and mozzarella.”

  When I came home that night, the house had that smell that I always looked forward to after excessively stressful weeks full of client presentations and unrealistic deadlines. Drew danced with me in the kitchen. A Goo Goo Dolls song was on the radio. He was in one of his good moods.

  “My love,” he said, kissing my cheek, “tonight’s calzone just may be the very best yet.”

  I put my groceries on the counter and let him twirl me until I got dizzy. We ended up sitting on the linoleum floor, in hysterics, and I thought, for a second, We can always be this happy. I hadn’t even had a sip of wine yet. I was just drunk on optimism.

  * * *

  Drew started visiting his mom regularly after her fall. At first it was just during the days, which were free for him because he didn’t have a job. Slowly, caring for her became his job; or, Marni said, caring for her became the excuse he had for not finding a job. Sometime after the holidays, he decided to make her dinner a few nights a week, meaning I was on my own, eating takeout in front of the TV. When that became a norm, he started calling around eight o’clock saying, “I think I’m just going to stay the night here.” His voice was slurred; he’d had too much to drink. I wasn’t about to insist he get on the road and come back to me.

  By April, he was at his mom’s house more often than he was at home with me. He had a duty, he said. He owed it to her, he said. The loyalty that I used to consider a strength began to reveal itself as a weakness. I tried to understand, but I was angry—especially on calzone nights.

  * * *

  On this particular Friday, I was determined to be the one who had too much to drink. I came home to the dark, quiet apartment, not as sad about his absence as I was about my acclimation to it. I fed Bruce, washed my dishes from that morning’s breakfast, sorted through a stack of mail—bills, mostly, enough bills to drain the paycheck I’d just gotten that day. I took the cork out of a bottle of Merlot with at least two glasses left in it and poured the wine into one of those large plastic cups they give away as promotional items at fast-food restaurants. This one was from Wendy’s.

  I took a sip, then sat myself down at the kitchen table, pondering what to do for dinner. I decided on the Mexican place Drew didn’t like. Even though he wasn’t there to disapprove, I enjoyed the rebellion. I decided I’d been too agreeable with him, generally. I’d never pushed to get my way—for Mexican food and other matters—and look where it had gotten me. Alone on a Friday night.

  As I called in my order to a woman who spoke very broken English, I took big gulps of wine, and started opening the bills, checkbook at my side. I was in charge of the finances in our marriage. It was a role I accepted early on, after Drew forgot to pay the electricity bill and our apartment went dark. He admitted money management wasn’t his strong suit. Remembering this, I muttered to myself, “What is your strong suit?” while tearing open an envelope containing the credit card statement. I reviewed the charges, using a pencil to make checkmarks next to the ones I recognized. Drew used to tease me about my attention to detail with the bills. I’d told him he’d thank me one day, though that day never came.

  There were some unusual charges, but I knew exactly what they were—a Newark grocery store, a Newark pharmacy, a PSEG gas and electricity bill. My face got hot and I imagined steam shooting from my ears like in cartoons. I yanked my purse by the strap, pulling it across the table toward me so hard that my compact mirror and a tube of ChapStick came sliding out along with my phone. I dialed his number.

  “Hey,” he said. I could tell just from that one word—hey—that he was already drunk. I hoped I sounded the same. I hoped he’d feel guilty.

  “Do you think we’re made of money?” I said, raising my voice enough to startle myself. I sounded like some actor playing me in a TV movie.

  “Huh?” Drew said.

  “You’re buying your mom’s groceries? Paying her bills?”

  I never wanted to be that kind of wife, the nagging kind. I used to see women scolding their husbands in public and cringe in embarrassment of them. I’d tell Drew, “They’re giving all women a bad name.” I wanted to be the cool wife, the envy of his friends. It took me a few years of marriage to realize that no woman starts as a nag, no woman becomes a nag willingly; a man makes her that way.

  “Em, we’re waiting on some Medicare payments,” he said. I used to be the other half of the “we” in his life. Now his mother was that person.

  “Okay, let me ask again: Do you think we’re made of money?”

  He sighed loudly. “Try to be patient. It won’t be this way forever.”

  “Really?” I asked, genuinely wanting to know.

  “Have some compassion, Em.”

  He had the upper hand. He was caring for a disa
bled person. It was a sob story that earned the sympathy of anyone who listened. That’s what I hated most—on the rare occasions I told people about the situation with his mom, they said, “God, that’s awful. Poor Drew.” I’d want to shout, while pulling fistfuls of hair from my head, What about me? Marni was the only person who understood. When I told her the arrangement, she said, “Jesus. How are you staying sane?” and I said, “I’m not.”

  “She can’t take care of herself, Em,” he said.

  “Stop saying my name like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re explaining quantum physics to me. I understand the situation, Drew.”

  He got quiet, or maybe he was just taking a drink. That’s what I did—sip wine from my large plastic cup.

  “I don’t know if you understand how bad it is,” he said.

  And I didn’t, frankly. I avoided visiting. When I was away from her, I could hate her. I could blame her for making me resent my husband. When I saw her—with the skeletal body and blank stare of a concentration camp victim, unable to walk or stand without aid—I was overcome with a whole different kind of hate. Hate for myself, for the coldhearted bitch I’d become.

  “Sometimes, pieces of poop fall out of her pant legs while I’m walking her to the bathroom,” he said, whispering, as if she might be in earshot and he didn’t want to destroy whatever dignity she had left.

  There was nothing I could say to this. Any protests would sound selfish and uncaring. In the competition to see which one of us had it harder, he would always win. He was spending his days doling out nutritional supplements because she’d ditched conventional medicine in favor of holistic promises. He was cleaning the dirt from under her nails, shaving her armpits, cleaning out her ears with Q-tips, cutting up her food into tiny pieces like moms do for toddlers. He said just wiping up her drool was a full-time job. She was always drooling. The week before, she was sitting on a footstool, just a couple feet off the floor, and fell forward, busting open her nose because she didn’t have the dexterity or strength in her arms to stop the face-plant. Drew said, “It’s a good thing she didn’t break her nose,” but I thought maybe it would have been a good thing if she had broken her nose. Maybe a doctor in the emergency room would have talked sense into everyone this time, insisted on professional care. I’d told Drew that’s what she needed—a professional. He’d said, “Do you know how much that costs?” and I didn’t, so I’d shut up.

  “I know it’s bad,” I said.

  “Do you?” he said, angrier now. The whiskey, or whatever it was he was drinking, was giving him a tone.

  “I mean, I don’t know firsthand.” I was defeated, I knew that.

  “Right, exactly.”

  “It’s hard on me, too, though,” I said. My voice had become small, weak, the type of voice I’d criticize other women for using in intimidating situations with men. If I used that voice at work, Jade would have insisted I attend a hippie self-empowerment retreat in the Catskills.

  “Babe, you gotta just hang in there. For me.”

  There was a knock at the door—the Mexican food delivery. I told Drew to hold on. When I stood, I realized just how drunk I was. My legs felt wobbly. The boy delivering the food couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. I gave him a twenty and closed the door. By the time I got back to the phone, I wasn’t even angry anymore. I was tired.

  “You just miss me, don’t you?” Drew said, attempting to bring our fight to a sweet conclusion.

  I wasn’t even sure that was it, though. I didn’t miss him as much as I missed the time of our life, our marriage, when everything seemed so simple and we had nothing but hope for our years ahead.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “How can I make it better?”

  It would be easier, I thought, if he was an asshole. Being nice made it worse, just replaced my anger with guilt.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She owns her house, right? What if she took out a mortgage on it? Wouldn’t that pay for someone to help so you could come home?”

  “She already has a mortgage on her house. And now she’s on Medicare. She’s not working. It’s not like a bank is going to give her another loan.”

  I don’t know why I even tried to offer suggestions. He shot them down every time.

  “Even if they did give her a loan,” he said, “it’s unlikely that would be enough to pay for someone, long-term.”

  Long-term, I thought.

  Then he said: “I’ve thought about her living with us, so we could be together…”

  Visions of this possibility flashed before my drunken eyes: coming home to her on the couch, drooling, leaving wet spots on the cushions; forcing polite small talk, straining to hear her, while staring into her sad eyes, large and petrifying because of the deep, sunken eye sockets and eyelid skin so papery thin that the little blood vessels underneath were visible; making all her meals, which included mostly pureed foods like mashed potatoes and soups—foods babies could eat; waking up multiple times a night to walk her to the bathroom so she wouldn’t wet the bed and ruin another mattress—she’d already ruined one. I got visible chills, goose bumps all up and down my arms.

  “She can’t live with us,” I said.

  He was quiet again.

  “Ever,” I clarified. “If she does, I won’t be living with us.”

  “Wow, Em,” he said, with a condescending grunt, like he was in utter disbelief of my cruelty.

  “Stop using my name like that,” I yelled. I’d never been a yeller. I put my hand over my mouth.

  “You sound like your mother.” It was the worst thing he could say to me, a button he’d neglected to push in all the years we’d been together. You sound like your mother. In that one statement, he was calling me a crazy, selfish, irrational bitch.

  “You’re an asshole,” I said, glad he couldn’t see my lip quivering, the tears coming.

  “Em, calm down,” he said, patronizing. “I just want you to have some compassion.”

  I slammed my almost-emptied cup of wine on the table, so hard that drops splashed out the top.

  “Stop making yourself the saint!”

  “I’m not a saint. I’m just doing what has to be done,” he said, which was exactly what a modest, humble saint would say. Somehow, during these arguments of ours, I always ended up apologizing. I had no choice.

  “Look, I—” I began.

  He shushed me. “I think I hear her calling for me.” We were both quiet while he listened. He said she’d call for him from her position on the couch for help to the bathroom or for a glass of water. Her voice was so faint that sometimes he wasn’t sure if he heard her or not. Maybe it was just in his head. It was making him crazy, Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shining crazy, he said. Worst of all was when she called for him and he went and all she wanted to do was comment on the weather or show him something funny on TV. She’d become a burden in just her attempts to make conversation.

  “False alarm,” he said after a moment.

  I wanted to tell him the whiskey probably didn’t help sharpen his senses, but I refrained.

  “Will I even see you this weekend?”

  “Well, I was hoping you’d come out on Sunday,” he said. “For Mother’s Day.”

  I’d forgotten about Mother’s Day completely, but I pretended I hadn’t: “I have my own mother, if you recall. I have a day planned with her.” In truth, I’d never celebrated Mother’s Day with my mom. The Hallmark cards that said things like, “Thank you for always being there for me,” didn’t ring true. I hadn’t even talked to my mom since Drew’s restaurant closed. I hated that she was right about its failure. I didn’t want to hear her say, I told you so.

  “Oh, okay,” he said. I’d made him feel bad. It was my only victory of the phone call.

  “I’ll just see you when I see you.”

  “You know what? I’ll come home tonight,” he said. “She’s ready for bed anyway. I’ll just come back tomorrow in time for breakfast.” Th
at was the main concern—her eating. He’d bought a scale at the drugstore and made her get on it weekly. She was only ninety pounds.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “I know I don’t have to,” he said. “I want to.”

  “Okay.” He’d completely diffused my anger, leaving me empty.

  “I’ll be home in a couple hours.”

  I looked at the clock—almost eight o’clock. I didn’t see the point in him coming home, just to go to sleep together. I was too tired to argue, though. If I did, he’d say, So you don’t want to spend the night with me? What do you want? There really was no winning for me. In this drama, I was cast as the bad guy.

  “Just drive safe,” I said.

  When I got off the phone, I moved to the couch and ate enough to absorb the wine and stop my head from spinning. I fell asleep at some point and when I woke up, it was almost midnight. I was supposed to be worried. A good wife—or just a good, conscientious person—would have been worried. I wasn’t, though. I rolled my eyes, assuming he’d changed his mind or fallen asleep, and got into bed.

  * * *

  At eight o’clock in the morning, Bruce jumped off the bed and ran to the front door, the fur on his back standing straight up. He huffed—he was never much of a barker—and turned in circles nervously. I heard keys jingling and knew it was Drew. Bruce knew, too. He stopped turning in circles and huffing, the fur on his back fell flat, and he started wagging his tail.

  “Hey, buddy,” I heard Drew say.

  I lowered down in bed, pretending to be asleep. I didn’t want to talk to him.

  When he came into the bedroom, I peeked at him through a sliver of open eye. The room was still dark. It was a gloomy, rainy May day, the sun choosing not to make an appearance. Were shadows playing tricks on me? Half of his face looked to be bloodied. I opened both eyes, watched him as he crossed the bedroom, undressing as he walked. It wasn’t shadows—his face was scraped up, badly.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He seemed surprised that I was awake and coherent.

  “Did you get in a fight?”