Her: A Memoir (3 page)

I’d been in trouble for a while with crippling pain. The doctor had said too many hours a day in the darkroom, standing on a concrete floor, hunched over developing trays had put my back out. I was going to need to start taking better care. Practical shoes and more calcium were in order. I’d needed to see a chiropractor, go to physical therapy, and, for God’s sake, stand up straight. To get me through the worst of the pain he gave me a prescription for Soma, a non-narcotic muscle relaxant, and a script for Valium, a benzodiazepine that also helped soothe the muscles but should only be taken at bedtime, and never mixed with Soma.

Cara was staying the weekend while Jedediah was away on business. I never liked to be alone for very long, a consequence of being a twin, and I was glad to have Cara nearby. She didn’t like to be alone, either. We spent that weekend watching stand-up comedy on television and drinking margaritas from salt-rimmed glasses until we were tipsy. We switched to giant cups of water with ice when we got too drunk—pulpy wedges of lime bobbing up against our lips as we sipped. We ate steaks grilled the right way: charred fast and hot so the outside was seared. The insides stayed cool and red and the centers bled when the knife cut. Twin weekends, the rare weekends we spent alone, were occasion for food and drink.

The music we listened to in college—Tracy Chapman, Indigo Girls, Violent Femmes—played festively throughout those weekends. We were like kids without parents, but we were wives without husbands. Cara liked to hold one of my cats, a slick gray Siamese, and dance through the house with him, bouncing him on her hip to the music, like a baby. The cat stuck his little pink tongue through his teeth in delirious joy, his head tipping back as he whirled with her.

Sunday rolled in faster than we would have liked during our daylight saving time fest—the extra hour wasn’t enough. The woods around the house had gone dark and still. Jedediah was due home the next morning.

Cara and I sat together on the sofa. I hunched over my laptop, writing out lesson plans for the Monday morning photography seminar I taught at a local college. Cara was grading student essays for the Introduction to Writing course she TAed at UMass. Papers heaped on her lap, ink on her face, she tossed the essays one by one onto the floor as she finished. They lay in a mixed-up pile at her feet. The pages were marked with checks and commas, and long lines of notes ran down the margins.

“How the hell do you manage to keep all of those straight?” I bent down to tidy the papers, to give the pile some order.

“I don’t. It’s a song and a prayer at this point. They don’t pay me enough to be organized.”

“They never do, do they?”

“Nope. You think it’s cold in here?”

“It’s getting there.” The woodstove had burned down to embers and I noticed the dog sleeping, my pampered Chihuahua, a fleck of cinnamon in a pile of white, burrowed up to her nose in a basket of warm linens I’d fetched from the dryer. “I’m going out for firewood,” I told her.

“Want help?”

“No, no thanks.”

“You sure? I know your back has been sore.” Cara rubbed her hands together to warm them and tried to lay them on my shoulders. “I could rub your flip-flop muscle,” she teased. This was her name for the tense, tight area between our big and second toes.

“I don’t want your help,” I said, surprised by my tone. We’d had a nice weekend, and I was sorry to spoil it. I tried to be kind, to turn the other cheek, but no matter how I tried to mask it, resentment returned.

Accepting help from Cara was a deal with the devil. She used my weakness as leverage against me. Her arsenal was well stocked—I’d recently confided in her that I was restless in my young marriage, feared it was unraveling, and had doubts I should remain. When she felt afraid that I might abandon her because of her drug use, she’d remind me that she knew my secret. She was willing to tell Jedediah and explode my marriage if I left her. My fall would be her pleasure, not because she didn’t love me, but because she did—she wanted me for herself, down in the same muck she’d been flailing in. Nobody wants to be alone in misery. Cara experienced no shame in admitting that need. Not only did she not want to suffer alone, she demanded co-suffering from all who dared love her.

I knew she was back on drugs. It had taken years, but I’d learned the signs—no-shows for dinner, broken relationships, a lengthy paper trail she thought she’d hidden.

I’d been reading her e-mail for months, looking for receipts from Canadian and Mexican pharmacies. I was tipped off to look for them when I opened her glove box and stacks of half-empty unmarked foil-packaged pills tumbled out. A handwritten invoice for “Medicines,” signed with a smiley face and wedged beneath an unpaid parking ticket, sat just below her stockpile. I did what I had to do. I logged in to her e-mail and guessed her password; it wasn’t difficult. Hers was the exact same as mine: our beloved first pet’s name, a cat.

I tried to intercept deliveries before she was able to get them. The pills were colorless and had a tooth to them—they weren’t smooth but rough, and as round and large as pennies. Each delivery consisted of 120 pills packaged in punch sheets wrapped in thick brown paper. Some weeks she bought Vicodin and others Valium. No matter the drug, they looked the same, like rat poison molded into horse pills. She’d been spending hundreds of dollars weekly on them and, even though I seized half of what she ordered, she didn’t allow the missing packages to deter her from ordering more.

Pills made her slower, sluggish. It sounds strange but her hair fell flat when she used; her hair had been limp for months. I knew I’d probably not even scratched the surface of what Cara was able to procure, but I continued looking. I convinced myself that there was no hiding her problem from me. That was true, but soon enough I’d learn that my discovery would never be enough to save Cara. Her life was in her own small hands.

I could see she was high as soon as she walked into a room. I looked for her flaws at first glance, just as she looked for mine. I relished them. Twins love, but they bicker and fight and judge. Twins are wicked and harsh, as hard on their twins as they are on themselves. Harder. All of the things a twin hates about herself are obvious in her twin. For twins, self-loathing means it’s sibling hunting season.

Twins: it’s always tit for tat.

We were constantly keeping score and upholding double standards.

That daylight saving weekend, our last alone, I wasn’t giving Cara the satisfaction of accepting her help.

I walked to the medicine cabinet and took a dose of Soma, two pills, and walked out into the cold to get some logs and kindling.

I attempted to carry an armful of wood from a neatly stacked pile of seasoned oak. Cara watched from a window like she was rubbernecking a car wreck. She looked on as I dropped piece after piece of wood. I picked up each one, only to watch it tumble to the ground again. I struggled foulmouthed, a stubborn Quasimodo in a dress—I was furious at my sister for being such a lout. I did need her help. I thought of what I’d said,
I don’t want your help
, and shouldered the weight of the wood.

I managed to hulk an arm full of it up the stairs and dropped each log in the big empty copper bucket beside the hearth. “This should warm your bones,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood, a passive apology for snapping at her. The pills were starting to kick in a little bit. The pain wasn’t lifting but my mood was.

I brushed off the bark and dirt from my dress and went into the bathroom, opening a bottle of Soma, swallowing two more. A half hour passed and still there was pain. I took two more. I worked away at my computer, and another half hour passed. The spasm in my back crashed down on my tailbone. I opened the medicine chest and retrieved two more pills, chasing them down with two tablets of Valium. An hour passed and I repeated the same dose.

I sat down at the kitchen table to resume my course work and lost consciousness.

*   *   *

I came to in my sister’s embrace, and was surprised to see Jedediah standing in the kitchen off to the side. He’d come home early from his trip to find his wife strung out, cradled in her sister’s arms. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I slurred. We were like two kids caught snooping through a porn stash. It was exactly how it looked.

“What did you give my wife?” Jedediah walked over and pulled me from Cara’s grip.

“Nothing, I swear.” Cara picked up my purse, flipping through my wallet for an insurance card. “We need to get her to the ER, don’t you think?,” she said. She was defiant and deferential, taking claim of me but also allowing for the possibility that this scene didn’t bode well for more weekend parties, just the two of us. She stood with her hands on her hips, bent down, and tilted her head to the side, baby-talking me. “Tell him. Tell him I didn’t give you anything.”

I didn’t have the strength to answer her.

Jedediah is tall and thin; he stands six feet and weighs no more than 155 pounds. My husband was skinny and some might even say frail. He managed strength to pick me up, though, and carried me to our car, sitting me upright in the front passenger’s seat. Cara chased close behind and got into the backseat.

“Don’t you dare die on me,” she begged.

“Just stop it. Would you?” Jedediah pushed the gas down hard, skidding out of the gravel driveway, rocks popping and then shooting out beneath the tires. “I can’t stand your moroseness.” We rolled in place for a few seconds, having lost traction on dirt and pebble, so Jedediah gunned it and the wheels screeched out loud as he hit blacktop.

Cara ignored him and leaned in over the headrest, whispering in my ear, “I’ll kill you if you die, and then your husband will kill me.” She reached around from behind my seat and straightened out the twisted shoulder strap and lap belt that Jedediah had hurriedly snapped into place. “What use are we if we’re both dead?”

Cara wiped the sweat from my forehead. Jedediah rolled down the windows, and I craned my neck out, vomiting. “Do you want me to call anyone, let them know there has been an emergency?” Cara asked, slipping her hand beneath the collar of my shirt, stroking the bare skin of my back. “You might not be out for a long time.”

My head hung limp from my neck and swayed as the car moved. She’d caught me off guard. There was only one person I’d wanted to talk to for the last several months and I’d been doing it in secret. “Call D,” I blurted. The pills had impaired my judgment and I immediately regretted mentioning D. We’d met over the summer and even though he was twenty years older, in my husband’s mind he posed a threat to our marriage, to my fidelity. Jedediah shifted gears hard.

Cara said, “No problem, love. I’ll let him know that you’ve gotten yourself into a bind.”

The hospital was only a mile from the house. Jedediah had figured I’d be in the ER sooner, having my stomach pumped, if he took me himself. An ambulance would have taken too long.

Cara phoned the hospital from the car and told them to wait for us at the door with a wheelchair—she said there had been an emergency, an overdose, a suicide attempt. She told the nurse on call that I’d need a psychiatrist to approve an overnight stay, and then a transfer to a behavioral facility. My twin was a pro, she’d done this before, only, before, she had always been the one barfing out the window while I frantically drove, or stood by as doctors worked to bring her back to life.

The nurses were by the ER door as requested, with a chair. They wheeled me into a hospital room, where a doctor waited with a puke pail and a dose of activated charcoal in liquid form. I drank the many ounces of the thick, gray, chalky drink. Its dose absorbed the poison of my many pills.

The doctor asked me what I’d taken and I told him.

I explained exactly what I’d done, how I’d been impatient to get rid of pain and maybe a bit too celebratory from my sister’s visit. I explained the back spasms and recent job stress, the frustration I’d felt with my husband for retreating so fully into a book he was working on. It was all run-of-the-mill, I assured the doctor; and it was. He nodded and scribbled some notes on a writing pad. He asked me several times if I’d wanted to harm myself on purpose or had any plans to die.

I told him I didn’t, though I knew I lusted to numb my troubles, which seemed dangerous enough. I told the doctor I’d been reckless but didn’t want to kill myself. That desire would come within the year, but that was far away, waiting for me in my new life, in the next winter. I pleaded with the doctor. It was an accident. I was a married professor, responsible. I needed the doctor to believe I hadn’t turned into my sister.

The doctor warned that I might want to consider my behavior, clicked a pen on his clipboard. He told me that sometimes an accidental overdose is not such an accident. He closed my chart and walked into the hall. I could hear him talking to my sister just outside the door.

“You’re not going to admit her?” Cara asked.

“She’s free to go home as soon as her stomach settles.”

“This is ridiculous,” Cara whined. “An overdose should require at least a consultation with a psychiatrist. I know protocol.”

The doctor was testy. “Your sister is fine. I think she’s learned a good lesson here. Just get her home and have her husband put her to bed.”

“I can’t fucking believe this. If that were me, I’d be checked into the Happy Valley funny farm by now.”

She was right. I was always getting away with things she wouldn’t have.

“Well, good thing she’s not you.” I wondered if he’d been an admitting physician for one of Cara’s ER overdose admits. “I’ve got to get back to rounds.”

Cara tried another avenue with the doctor. “She’s been stealing my pills on the side, Klonopin. I’ve counted and she’s taken more than half the bottle this month. Thanks to her, I’m out. If you’re not going to admit her, can you at least write me a script to replace them?”

The doctor turned from her, and his footsteps grew faint as he made his way to another emergency.

*   *   *

Cara
was
right. I did occasionally sneak into her handbag and take a generous helping of her sedative. My sister lost herself to a rape and drugs. I lost myself first in the fight to save her—my battle began before she’d taken her last dose of heroin. I was at war with her to live and then, quietly, with myself because I was powerless. I thought my occasional need to surrender to a pill was justified. But that need was also a warning: I was closer to being Cara than I knew. While she was alive I was vibrant, responsible, steadfast, and holding her up. I was her opposite. In the wake of Cara’s death I became her. The events of our lives unfolded before me. There was no stopping them.