Film at 11

Last week, I caught Anne and Babe in the bathroom doing crack; I realized I no longer knew who she was. I grounded her but she ran away, far away from here, as far away as she could get from me.

She called from a motel near Venice Beach, said that she was going to kill herself.I rushed and  took the next flight out in a race against time, a race to fight for everything we loved about her.

I found Anne at 11 p.m, sprawled across the floor of her motel room, vomit pooled her tiny body, with a half-drunk bottle of Scotch, a broken wine bottle and an open bottle of Valium lying next to her.

***

The ambulance siren sliced through the darkness. I sat next to her, holding her cool, greyish hand.

***

At the hospital, the doctors said,  "No promises. She knew what she was doing. We don't know if she'll make it. No promises."

I beg of you now: You must return to us, to our home. Our family's too fractured.  I can't forgive you, but I need you back.

Anne was the symptom-bearer of all that went wrong in our marriage.  She was the only child after Michael left for college and it was too much for her.

A chill filled the house, it cooled her heart, it stilled her soul.

Trying to live at home with us was a little death for her.

She walked on eggshells,  whispering and walking on tiptoes throughout the house so as not to disturb the fragile underpinnings of the marriage. She didn't want to wake us becauase that would be when the hell would start. Again. It never stopped for her. She was the hell to pay. Now she is making us pay.

Our marriage very nearly killed her, there was no room left to love her between the vitriol.

As she lay there, unconscious, I stared.  It was as if she stared back in a silent recrimination, accusing me of leaving her in this hell. I could not deny that she was right.

Her blank, icy silence spoke volumes from her eyes. At the hospital, they said, 'No promises.'

She was unconscious for nearly a day.

The doctors wondered how she knew that this particular recipe of booze and drugs could kill her so quickly and with so little pain, this sure-fire recipe for death. 

I told them: We never drank or took pills.

They asked again: Where'd she get this? 

I told the doctors: I don't know,  I don't know, I don't know.  I don't know how and I don't know why. I only know that she must live - she must come back to us so we can make it right. It is our one chance.

She was very close, they said.

The social worker asked about the marriage. What could I tell her?

I told the social worker: It was broken before it began; what we never knew hurt her.

I was with Anne when the doctors put the breathing tube in.I held her hand, hoping she'd wake up.

I spoke to Anne, cooed her like a baby, kissed her cheek and patted her hand. Still her eyes remained closed.

The image of Anne lying there like the living death she was became too much for me.

If she did not live, I wanted to die.

I wanted her to know how much I tried, how much I should have tried, how much I could have done, have yet to do. How much I want to prove to her I love her.

After a day, she awoke.

She said: Her stomach hurt.

The doctors gave her something for the pain caused when they pumped her stomach.

She said: She didn't feel hung over; she didn't feel drugged from the pills.

She didn't remember breaking the wine bottle; she didn't remember taking the Tylenol, the Valium.

She didn't remember falling to the floor with vomit pooling around her. 

After you left, we shouldn't have left her alone.

You need to come home.

I'm taking the summer off from work, to be with her.

It was those years of unspoken anger, the things we said, ways we'd pulled her into our arguments that did this.

She told me she didn't want to live without both parents living together.

The doctors said: It was too close to be an accident. She knew what she was doing.

The social worker said: We need family counseling.

This time, the social worker said, was practice.  Next time she'll succeed.

Anne said she didn't want to die, but she wanted to teach us that to ignore her pain is wrong.

She wants, more than anything, for us to be the family she thought we were when she was young.

Smiling. Loving. Perfect. Happy.

We were never happy. We were never perfect.

We were always broken, yet we smiled through our discontent.

We make the same mistake we always made,  we know no other way.

This time, we must try differently.

All our lives depend on it.

Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski. All rights reserved.

Previously:

The refrigerator hums along in middle C

Just when I need you all so damn much

The summer I found the rabbit by the side of the road

Love Begins