Hope and Other Luxuries (76 page)

Nothing lived there anymore. Nothing could possibly live there.

It seemed impossible that those words had come from me.

In a state of disbelief, I jumped up from the bed and went to find my books. I brought the whole stack of them back to my bedroom and shut the door again. I opened a book and read the first thing I saw.

The silent woodcarver glanced up quickly to study Lady Mary. His lean face was the color of bones, and his eyes were the clearest, brightest green. There was caution in those eyes—intelligence, too—and he stared after the old woman hungrily, as if he were learning her by heart. One long, penetrating glance,
and he was working at his carving again as if he had never stopped.

I was in the garret of our German house
, I thought,
when I wrote this paragraph. I was staring at the ceiling of the bedroom at night when I first saw my werewolf's green eyes
.

But, to save my life, I couldn't remember
where
the werewolf had come from—how it had felt to bring his character to life. And when I looked inside my imagination, he wasn't there anymore. All I found was a memory of him from the book, going through the motions that were trapped on its pages.

It was a good thing, I realized sadly, that my werewolf's story was written down. Otherwise, I'd never get to see him again.

One by one, I went through my books, but all that moved were their pages. The lives I had caught there—the lives that had been so much broader and deeper than the books themselves: every single one of them was gone.

Last of all, I picked up my very first book, the one with my oldest child-characters in it. If anyone could live for me, they would.

I flipped it open at random.

Kate felt them shift as if the horse had stumbled. She took her eyes off the pursuing moon and glanced ahead. They were on a level field, but the horse's racing feet were sinking into it as if it were quicksand. He was not slowing his gallop; if anything, he was running faster, his legs invisible below the earth. In another few seconds, Kate's feet were gone, too, and just as if the field were a mist or sea, only the horse's head plowed along above it. Now the horse's head was gone, and the ground was rising up around her, lapping at her without waves until it reached her chest and then her neck. She screamed in terror, the goblin's arms clamped tightly around her as she threw back her head for one last glimpse of the moon.

I remember writing this
, I thought.
I remember thinking that I wanted something interesting to happen
. And now this paragraph was down here on the page.

But
how
did it get here?
How
did I see this scene? I didn't know what had happened to bring it to life.

Once, I had sat in a corner and watched my characters as they went about their busy days. I couldn't stop watching them even when I wanted to. They had never once left me alone. The inside of my mind was like a bus station, crowded with imaginary life. I had put only a few of the many things I saw there down in the pages of my books.

But now, there were no more characters left inside my mind. There weren't even statues of characters. There weren't even pictures on the walls.

It was white—dead white, like an empty page.

I used to be a writer
, I thought as I felt the books' hard boards and ruffled the pages and ran my hands over the slick covers.
These books are proof. They have my name on them. I used to be a writer
.

And I put them down and went off to load the dishwasher.

Valerie came to find me to chat, and I listened to her with pleasure. But after a while, she broke off and grew quiet.

“Hey, are you all right?” she asked with a frown.

I was matching socks as I talked to her. It felt pleasant to do mindless work.

“Sure, I'm fine,” I said.

This was absolutely true. The pain I had felt while running away was something I couldn't quite remember. It seemed to have vanished down the cracks between my bones.

“If you say so,” Valerie said suspiciously. And she picked up her book and went outside.

I told Joe about this little conversation that night as we were brushing our teeth. “I guess I still hurt,” I said philosophically. “So do you. We all hurt, we just don't notice it anymore.”

“I notice,” Joe said sadly, and I spared a few seconds to feel sorry for him, the way I might feel sorry over an item in the newspaper. But I felt a little complacent, too. I was glad I didn't have to feel like that.

“So, did you get any writing done?” Joe asked as he hung up his shirt. “Do you think you'll be getting that manuscript to Holt before the end of the year?”

I couldn't very well explain to Joe about the day I'd spent reading through old files—about how the last few sentences of a broken-off story should feel like a signpost pointing which way to go, but instead they felt like crude wooden crosses that said
HERE LIES
.

I couldn't tell Joe that I used to be a writer.

“I didn't get very far today,” I said.

“On what? On Elena's memoir? You need to ditch that memoir.”

“On anything, really,” I said.

Joe stood by the closet door, and he frowned at me, too, as I walked around the room, straightening things up. But I wasn't frowning. No longer was I split between two worlds, between reality and make-believe. Instead of seeing ghosts or goblins hanging in the air, I saw the small, neat room before me.

It was a relief, really. It felt good to have a grip on the real world.

“What's the Holt book going to be about?” Joe asked. “I'd like to read a chapter if you've finished one.”

This generous offer made me smile.

Once upon a time, long ago, I had positively pestered my family to read my stuff. I had printed out chapters and met Joe at the door with pages in my hand. Once upon a time, long ago, my girls would pause a dozen times a day to read the latest paragraphs over my shoulder. “Write lots! Write lots!” they shouted as they raced off. And I did write lots.

Once upon a time, I couldn't stop writing. I couldn't turn off the nonstop movies I saw behind my eyes. I couldn't quiet down the mob— the zoo!—of characters milling around inside.
Me next! Me next!
they had clamored.

Now, as I squared my books into a neat stack, I paused to take another look inside the white room of my mind.

Not even the goblin King was there.

And if he was gone, there was truly nothing left.

W
hen I got up the next morning, Elena was already out of bed. She had been out of bed quite a bit the last few weeks. The lineup of pill bottles had changed, too. She was seeing a new therapist, who was working with her new psychiatrist. Certain powerful drugs were now gone.

Was Elena eating more? I didn't know.

Was it my business? She surely wouldn't think so.

But when Elena asked me for a ride to her new therapist's office, I was perfectly happy to provide it. In fact, I was perfectly happy to fill up my time with all kinds of routine tasks. It would be an opportunity to get out and run some errands. It would help me use up the day.

There was no need to hold on to writing time anymore.

So I drove Elena to her new therapist's appointment and ran errands while she was there. Then she called, and I swung back by to pick her up. Driving was such a nice, safe, enjoyable activity: I moved my hands a little bit, and the world went by. I hardly had to do a thing.

Elena opened the car door and sat down in the passenger's seat in silence. In silence, I drove us to the grocery store. Once, I would have begged her for details about her day. Once, she couldn't have stopped herself. But those people—those long-ago, far-off people: we weren't those same people anymore.

As I pulled into the grocery store parking lot, Elena cleared her throat and said, “The therapist agrees with you.” She said this in a formal tone, as if I were her professor instead of her mother.

“Oh?” I said without particular interest. After all, it would be impolite to say nothing.

“Yes,” Elena said. Then she elaborated as carefully if she were giving a business presentation, “I told her that I was very upset with you and that contracts are bad for anorexics because they force us to give up control. That control is all we have left to count on, I told her. But she said you were right to take drastic action. She said that psychological treatment is expensive, and I've only got insurance for another year. This is an opportunity, and I'm running out of time to use it.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, what do you think?”

“I don't know,” Elena said.

A year ago—six weeks ago—my heart would have leapt at this. I would have seen it as a fork in the road, a chance for a fresh start. I would have launched into a passionate appeal. I would have pinned all my hopes on it.

But now, I found a parking space and turned off the ignition. “I'll be about twenty minutes,” I said. “You can wait in the car if you want.”

“No, I'll go in,” Elena said.

She trailed me around the store as I checked items off my list and moved them into the cart. Once, I had studied her every look and gesture in the grocery store, and I had put in the cart anything she had glanced at. But today, I didn't. I had my list, and I worked my way through it.

I was standing next to the frozen meat when she spoke again. “I've made my decision,” she said. “I'm going back into treatment.”

Six weeks ago, I would have burst into tears of relief. I would have hugged her and told her I knew she could do it. But now, I looked around the freezer cases. It was always so cold over here. I'd wanted chicken thighs, but all they had were bags of drumsticks.

“Did you hear me?” Elena said.

Did I? Yes. Then why was I not answering? Treatment meant weight gain even if it meant nothing else. Weight gain meant a reprieve of a few months from finding her dead.

My heart should leap with joy and relief.

But it didn't.

“You can't go back to Clove House,” I said as I opened the freezer door and pulled out a bag of drumsticks.

“I know that,” she said. “I'm going to go to Sandalwood, across town. And this time,” she added, “
this
time, I'll make it work.”

Wasn't that wonderful? What was wrong with me? Why wasn't I brimming with excitement? Why wasn't I walking on air?

“I won't do the calls for you,” I said as I dropped the icy bag into the cart.

“No, I'll call, as soon as we get home.”

And that's exactly what Elena did. She drove herself to the intake interview and arranged to be admitted the following week. And she drove herself to school to withdraw from all her classes.

When the reality of this finally dawned on me—when I finally realized that this was, in fact, going to happen, that my child was going to seek help again and work to find a way back from the brink—I did a thing that nobody understood. Least of all, me.

I lay in bed all day long and cried.

“Are you okay?” Valerie wondered, coming in to check on me.

“I guess,” I sniffled. I honestly had no idea.

Elena came to the door. “Look, if you don't want me to do treatment, I won't,” she said. “I thought you'd be happy.”

“I
am
happy,” I sobbed. “Just shut the door on your way out.”

Joe came home and sat beside me. “I think you're just feeling relief,” he said.

“Maybe so,” I gulped, wiping my eyes.

But it didn't feel like relief. It felt as if a room-size lead-gray block of misery had pinned me down to my bed.

“You'll feel better in the morning,” Joe said. “Elena's going to be away at therapy all day, and you and Valerie can just spend time playing with Gemma.”

“You think so?” I asked.

I didn't think so. I couldn't see that happy day, myself. I saw myself staying there, hiding there, while Valerie worried and Joe got more and more exhausted and depressed and I never wrote another book. And if I didn't write that Holt book, sooner or later they were going to want their advance money back, and what were we going to do then?

The next morning, Joe and Elena left to go to their respective workplaces—Joe to the office and Elena to Sandalwood. After they were gone, I finally ventured out.

Valerie and Gemma were in the living room. Valerie was sitting on the carpet by the hearth. Gemma was standing on wobbly legs and, handhold by handhold, making her way around the coffee table.

“Hey, Momma,” Valerie said. And Gemma gave a happy cry and waved at me.

“Look
out
!” I cried, grabbing Gemma's free hand.

“Okay . . . ,” Valerie said. “What was that about?”

I felt too shaken to answer.

I had seen it all: Gemma was waving at me, and then her free hand slipped, and she toppled sideways and clonked her head on the corner of the hearth. The corner brick hit her right in the temple, and when we lifted her up, there was blood. And then there was wailing, the waiting room, the MRI . . .

“We need to get padding on these corners!” I said. “We need to do that today. The electrical outlets. We haven't done the outlets!”

“Seriously?” Valerie said. “Momma, she's never out of our reach. How is she going to get something into an outlet?”

But I was seeing new images: Gemma, finding a pin in the carpet and sticking it into that outlet over there. I could hear her shrill screams and see the burn. Only, in the next instant, I saw her
eat
the pin instead, and it was so vivid that I started scanning the carpet for pins, even though I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen one in this house.

“Your uncle stuck a bobby pin in an outlet when he was two,” I said.

“Yeah, and he became an electrician.”