Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [82]
“What happened?”
More hand-wringing. “Can I bring you gals some coffee?”
“We’re fine,” I said, the same instant that Kimmie said, “Yes, please.” Five minutes later, we each had a cup of microwaved brew, and Rita was perched at the edge of a plastic-slipcovered armchair while Kimmie and I sat on the sofa facing her.
She plucked the teabag out of her mug, realized there was nowhere to put it, and dunked it back in. “You know your dad had been really sick.” Rilly sick.
“I know my father was a drug addict.” I was done with euphemisms, done with pretending. Maybe it comforted her to think that my father had a disease instead of a weakness, but it wouldn’t comfort me anymore.
She pressed her fingers to her lips. “He fought so hard against it. So hard.”
“Just tell me,” I said. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Please,” said Kimmie.
The woman sighed and pressed her hands together. “He came back here when he finished with that place,” she began. That place was probably the sober-living house. I nodded, wondering what it was like to leave a group-living home where there were schedules and counselors and mandatory AA meetings, and then come back here, with Rita, where he’d done so much drinking and drugging. Maybe I should have made other arrangements, found another place for him to go, rented an apartment...
Kimmie touched my forearm. I forced myself to stop thinking about it. Hindsight wouldn’t fix things. He was dead now, and what I had to do was get through the funeral and clean up the mess he’d undoubtedly left behind.
“For a while he was doing okay,” Rita continued. “He’d go for walks, or to the library. He’d go to the gym, pedal that sit-down bike they have. He’d have dinner waiting when I came home from work. Simple things,” said Rita. “Chicken patties, or hamburgs. Spaghetti. Like that.” I nodded, remembering his sad attempts at omelets when I’d come for breakfast.
“The night it happened . . .” She pulled in a long breath. “I went to bed at about ten, that’s what I do, because I work, you know, I need to be up real early.” I nodded. “At two or so I heard him up, rustling around . . .” She gulped. “And then when I got up, I found him there, on the bathroom floor. His head . . . his head was . . .” More gulping followed, and a single spastic gesture with her hand. I’d find out later what she hadn’t been able to tell me, from the police photographs and the autopsy report, that my dad had died with his head in the toilet and a crack pipe in his hand. It was a detail, in all honesty, that I could have gone to my own death without knowing.
I kept my eyes on my lap, the throbbing pressure of tears filling my head. It was what I’d expected, but still, hearing it like this, out loud, in this tacky little apartment, made it real. Rill. Kimmie took my hand. I wondered what she made of all this, how far away it was from her own life, her own diligent, hard-working parents. All I wanted was to get out of this place, to breathe the fresh air, to get back on the plane that would take me home and have all of this be someone else’s problem, someone else’s mess.
“I’m so sorry, Julia.” My name sounded strange in her mouth. I hadn’t been Julia since high school. But my father had called me Julia, and Julia was what I’d been when he’d discussed me with this woman. “He tried so hard. He fought it. He really did.”
I got up before she could continue. “Thank you,” I said. What did I mean by that? Thank you for taking him in? Thank you for letting him stay? Thank you for giving him a place to die, so he didn’t have to do it on the street? “The funeral’s Monday morning, in the veterans’ cemetery,” I said. “You’re welcome to come.”
When she hugged me, I could feel her soft body against mine, and I smelled her scent of stale coffee and cigarettes almost overcoming that strange chemical odor that I thought was probably eau de crack. When she pulled away she was crying, and talking fast, words tumbling over