The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [60]
“We put him back on the pills, the antidepressants, as soon as I found out. I insisted and I trusted him, but maybe he wasn’t taking them, or maybe he started and they made it worse. I was sure all those pills would fix everything. They’d always worked before.”
I think I understand, but I need to say it out loud.
“He killed himself.”
She nods. Her head moves so shakily, I think it will fall off her neck.
“By taking pills.”
“Yes.”
“How did he get them?”
She laughs, and it comes out like a cackle. “Sweetheart, that man had more pills than a Duane Reade. He had access to pills; he had extra pills; he was never at a loss for pills. His life had been run by pills since before I knew him—pills to control the depression, pills for migraines, pills to sleep at night.” It occurs to me that I inherited my migraines from him. I’d always assumed it, since my mother doesn’t get them, but she’d never said anything.
“Jesus Christ,” she adds angrily, standing up now to pace. “He was a bloody anesthesiologist. He knew exactly how to overdose. He’d made a career out of preventing overdoses.” I never knew what kind of doctor he was. No wonder his oncologist remembered him; even if they hadn’t worked together, this is, like Jeremy said he said, the kind of story you don’t forget.
“And you didn’t want me to know.”
“Of course not. Oh God, when you were in first grade, do you remember, you asked me why you didn’t have a daddy. I couldn’t, I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to think he left you like that.”
“It was third grade,” I say quietly.
“It would have been the only thing you remembered him for.”
“You didn’t give me anything else to remember!” I shout, standing up too now. “I pretended my parents were divorced ever since then—since that day in third grade. I told everyone he left us to move to Arizona.”
She looks shocked, like it never occurred to her that not knowing made me different, made me have to create some better story, some easier explanation.
“You never told me stories about him, never told me about the things that we did together before he died. Maybe I could have had some memories if you’d helped me.”
She doesn’t say anything. I keep digging for information. “And so no one outside the family knew, then. Everyone figured it was the cancer.”
“Yes. In that case, the cancer was a convenience.”
“I’m glad it was convenient for you,” I say, and I hate how nasty I sound.
She looks straight at me now, and her expression is devastating. I immediately regret being cruel, having shouted. “You said you were old enough now,” she says softly. “You said you could take it. No one outside the family knows, and no one should. This is a”—she chokes on the word—“a private matter.”
I nod. “Yes, Mom, it is a private matter, a matter for family. But I’m just as much a part of this family as you are, and you didn’t trust me with it.”
“Well, you have it now. What are you going to do with it?” She looks frightened.
This question stops me cold. I’d been so concerned with getting the facts that I never gave any thought to what I’d do once I had them. I sit back down on the couch, lowering myself onto it without turning to look and make sure it’s there. “I don’t know. I’m just—I’m going to live with it. I’m going to figure out how you live with it.”
She nods.
I look up at her and ask: “How have you lived with it?”
She sits down next to me.
“It’s not as hard as you think,” she exhales. “You just … get used to it.”
“I’ve been used to living without a father for a long time.”
“Yes, but now you have to be used to living with a father who took himself away from you.”
As if she can hear me thinking the word “abandon,” my mother shakes her head.
“I was mad at him for so long. He knew what he was doing. He put his affairs in order and made sure that you and I were taken care of. It was his idea that I sell our townhouse. I remember thinking he was nuts to want