All Fall Down: A Novel

SEVEN

“Welcome to Eastwood.” The woman who met me on the front lawn of the Eastwood Assisted Living Facility had her silver-gray hair in a neat bob, a high, sweet voice, and a cool, brisk handshake. She wore khakis, a sweater, and a nametag with KATHLEEN YOUNG written on it, and she led me through the doors with a bounce in her step, like a former high-school jock who’d stayed on campus to teach phys ed. “Let me show you around!”

Her bubbly, energetic manner only made the handful of residents—a man in a wheelchair by the door, hands shaking as he held up the Examiner; a woman in a pink-and-white bathrobe, using a walker to make her slow way toward the art room—look even older and sadder. I tried to picture my father here, my smart, strong, competent father in a bathrobe, requiring the kind of care a place like this could give him. It hurt, but it was a distant kind of pain. The pills let me consider his future without feeling it too deeply. It was almost like watching a movie about someone else’s sorrows—now her father can’t remember his granddaughter’s name; now he’s having temper tantrums; now he’s having accidents, and wandering away from home, and crying—and knowing they were painful without feeling them acutely. Narcotics were like a warm, fuzzy comforter, a layer of defense between me and the world.

“Follow me, please,” said Kathleen, bounding down the hallway on the balls of her feet. I grappled with a brief but fierce desire to go sprinting back to my car, to burn rubber out of the parking lot and never see this place again . . . only what good would that do? My mother was unlikely to take this on. Someone had to step up and do what was required.

In the foyer I braced myself for the smell of urine, of industrial cleansers and canned chicken soup that I remembered from my dad’s last hospital stay, but Eastwood’s green-carpeted corridors smelled pleasantly of cedar and spice. There was a basket of scented pinecones on top of the front desk, behind which two women in headsets were busy typing. Behind them was an oversized whiteboard, the kind I remembered from Ellie’s preschool, with sentences left open-ended, so the kids and teachers could fill in the blanks. Today is MONDAY, read the top line. It is APRIL 7th. The weather is . . .. Instead of the word “sunny,” someone had affixed a decal of an affably beaming sun. Our SPECIAL ACTIVITIES are BINGO in the Recreation Parlor, and a TRIP TO THE CAMDEN AQUARIUM. I felt a tug at my sleeve, and heard a whispered “Help me.” I looked down. While Kathleen was deep in conversation with one of the head-setted ladies behind the desk, a tiny, curled shrimp of a woman had wheeled up beside me and grabbed my sleeve.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

The woman gave a very teenager-y eye roll. Fine white hair floated around her pink scalp in an Einsteinian nimbus. Her frail torso was wrapped in an oversized pink cardigan, and she wore pink velour pants and a pair of white knitted slippers beneath it. Her veined hand trembled, but her eyes, behind enormous glasses, were sharp, and I was relieved to see a full set of teeth (or realistic-looking dentures) when she started talking.

“This place is what’s wrong,” she murmured, speaking out of the side of her mouth, like a prisoner in the yard who didn’t want the guards to overhear. “The steak is tough. The pudding’s bland. They’ve been promising me for weeks to order my gluten-free crumpets, and . . .” She lifted her hands in the air, palms up, a mute appeal to the God of gluten-free crumpets. “Also, my kids never visit.”

“I’m sorry,” I stammered, then squatted, my face close to hers. She extended one of her gnarled paws toward me.

“Lois Lefkowitz. Formerly of sunny Florida, until I broke my hip and my kids moved me back here.”

I shook her hand gently. “I’m Allison Weiss.” I shot a glance at the counter, making sure the brisk Ms. Young was still occupied, before I whispered, “Is it really that bad here?”

She patted my hand and shook her head.

“What’s not to like?” she asked. “I don’t have to cook, I don’t have to clean, I don’t have to shop, and I don’t have to listen to Murray go on about his fantasy football team. I read . . .” She tapped the e-reader in her lap. “With this thing, every book is a large-print book. I go to the museum, I go to the symphony, and the beauty shop’s open once a week for a wash and set.” She patted her wisps of white hair, then put one gnarled paw on my shoulder. “Mother or father?”

“My dad.”

“Memory loss or just can’t get around?”

“He’s got Alzheimer’s.”

“Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry.” Pat, pat, pat went the wrinkled little hand. It felt surprisingly nice. Both of my grandmothers were long gone—my mother’s mother had died of breast cancer before I was born, and my father’s mother, Grandma Sadie, had gone to Heaven’s screened-in porch when I was in college. I liked to imagine her sometimes, sitting in a rocking chair, listening to the Sox and yelling at my grandfather. “They’ll take good care of him here.”

My throat felt thick as I swallowed. “You think so?”

“I see things. I watch. They’ll make sure he’s safe. Do you have children?”

“A little girl.”

“Pictures?”

I pulled my phone out of my purse. Ellie, in her favorite maxidress, was my wallpaper. In the picture, she stood on the beach in a broad-brimmed sun hat, with waves foaming at her feet. My new friend peered at the screen, then sighed. “It goes so fast,” she told me. “One minute you’re putting diaper cream on their tushies, the next thing you know, you’re walking them down the aisle. Then they’re putting you in a place like this.” She sighed again, and I thought I saw the glimmer of moisture on one seamed cheek. “And you sit here and wonder where the time went, and how you never wanted to live long enough that someone should be changing your diapers.” Another sigh. “Still. I wouldn’t have missed a day of it.” She poked at my phone. “You got Candy Crush on here?”

“Oh. No. Sorry.”

Kathleen Young was heading toward us, her pleasant smile still in place, but I noticed the creases around her eyes had deepened.

“Mrs. Lefkowitz, you’re not scaring away prospectives, are you?”

My new friend gave Ms. Young a sunny smile. “You mean I shouldn’t tell them about the rats in the showers?”

“She’s kidding,” said Ms. Young. Mrs. Lefkowitz gave me another smile of surpassing sweetness.

“I hope I’ll see you again,” she said. “And that pretty little girl!”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, and gave her little paw another squeeze.

“Right this way,” said Kathleen Young. “This is the Manor,” she said, walking at a swift clip past opened doors with nameplates on them. “Our residents who require the most care stay here. This,” she said, opening a door, “is a typical double room.”

I stepped inside. The room wasn’t large, with most of the space taken up by adjustable hospital beds with side rails that could be raised or dropped. There were two oak dressers; two bookcases; two armchairs, one on each side of the room, each upholstered in blue plastic, dyed and patterned to make it look like cloth. The bathroom had all of the stainless steel rails you’d expect, with a metal-and-plastic chair in the oversized walk-in shower cubicle, and grippy mats on the floor. Back in the room, I let my fingertips drift along the armrest of one chair and tried not to wince at the feeling of plastic. Would my dad see the difference between the furniture in his house and this stuff? How could he not? Noticing my expression, Kathleen said, “Of course, our residents are welcome to bring their own furniture. Most do. We find it helps with their sense of dislocation.” I nodded, mentally erasing the hospital bed, the cheap bureau and bookcase, and the plasticized armchair, and replacing them with things from my parents’ home. Better.

“Are there single rooms available?”

“Of course. They’re significantly more expensive . . .”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” I said, and watched Kathleen’s pupils expand. Years ago my father, in a tacit admission that my mother was equipped to handle precisely nothing that his golden years might entail, had bought himself a life-insurance policy and all kinds of disability and extended-care policies, too. There was money to pay for everything he’d need, and to pay for the help my mother might eventually require, now that my father was unable to arrange her days. “Tell me about the, uh, level of care.” I’d done all kinds of research about the questions I was supposed to ask, even if the answers were all on the website. As Kathleen recited statistics about physician’s assistants, physicians on call, and nurse-practitioners, LPNs, and nurse’s aides, and how it was a goal at Eastwood to encourage as much independence as was feasible and safe, I thought of when I was twelve, and my father had taken me to New York City.

The whole thing was an accident. He’d gotten the tickets for South Pacific as my mother’s birthday present. For weeks, she’d gone around playing the cast recording, singing “Younger than Springtime,” making appointments for a haircut and color, trying on and returning different dresses. I had come home on the Friday afternoon of their proposed trip and found her sick in bed. Some kind of twenty-four-hour bug, I’d thought, remembering the sounds of retching, murmuring behind closed doors, my dad asking if she wanted a doctor and my mother, shrill and weepy, saying she’d be fine, just fine, she just needed to sleep. My father had emerged tight-lipped, visibly unhappy. He’d already paid for the tickets, made plans for dinner, reserved the hotel room. If there’d been time he would have found a way to cancel the whole thing. Instead, he’d mustered up a smile and said, “How’d you like to go to the Big Apple with your dear old dad?”

At twelve, I was not looking good. My breasts and my nose had both sprouted to what would become their adult dimensions, with the rest of my body and my face lagging behind. I had braces, with rubber bands to pull my upper jaw back into alignment with my lower jaw, and my oily skin, in spite of all the Clearasil and the benzoyl-peroxide-soaked scrubbie pads, was routinely spattered with pimples. I was wearing my hair with bangs, figuring the more of my troubled complexion I could hide, the better, and my oversized button-down shirts, paired with pants pegged at the ankles and flowy everywhere else, did nothing to minimize my size. But on that night, due to some miracle of luck and timing, my skin was clear, my hair was behaving, and I looked like a girl any father would be happy to escort to a show.

“Try my silver dress,” my mother had croaked from her bed. It was meant to be knee-length. On me, it was a hip-skimming tunic. Paired with plain black leggings and my mom’s black leather boots, it made me look almost like a grown-up, sophisticated and smart. She swept my bangs back with one of the wide cotton bands she wore to yoga, then blow-dried and straightened my hair and let me wear a little lipstick, red, which made my skin look olive instead of sallow. “Nice,” she whispered with a smile, before turning on her side and falling noisily asleep. My father had been dressed in his newest suit and the tie my mom had gotten him for his birthday. His eyes widened in appreciation as I came down the stairs, with my mother’s good black winter coat draped over one arm. “Those boys don’t know what they’re missing,” he’d blurted, and then instantly looked ashamed, but I carried that compliment close, like a jeweled locket, something wonderful and rare. He had held the car door open for me, regaled me with stories of the brain-dead interns from Penn’s and Temple’s graduate schools who descended on his office every summer, and how one of them had gotten so drunk at the managing partner’s Fourth of July party that he’d vomited in the hot tub. Exiting the car, paying the parking-lot attendant, holding his arm out to hail a taxi, or holding a door open and saying “After you,” he’d looked so handsome, tall and assured in his camel-hair topcoat, his shoes polished to a high gloss, the Rolex my mother had bought him for his fiftieth birthday gleaming on his wrist. In the theater, he kept one hand lightly between my shoulder blades as he steered us toward our seats, and in the restaurant, the pride in his tone was unmistakable as he introduced me to the maître d’ and the waiter, who both seemed to know him, as “my daughter, Allison.”

I could remember everything from that night—the look of the theater, lit like a temple in the frosty Manhattan night, the smell of perfume and silk and fur in the air, the rustle of programs as the audience settled into the seats, the plaintive voice of the lead actor, lamenting about how paradise had once nearly been his. I remembered how women’s eyes had turned toward my father, the approving looks they gave him, how I’d felt about the way he belonged in their company, tall and smart and successful. I could name everything we’d eaten at the little French bistro on Fifty-Sixth Street, and could conjure up the taste of lobster bisque laced with sherry, profiteroles drizzled in dark chocolate, the single sip each of white wine and red wine and after-dinner port he’d let me have. Half-asleep in the taxi’s backseat as it cut through the traffic, humming the overture to myself, I had thought that I would never feel more content, more beloved, more beautiful.

Today is MONDAY, read the sign in the dining room, where tables for four were draped in pink cloths and set at wide intervals, the better to steer wheelchairs around them. On a shelf were dozens of paperbacks by Lee Child, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor. Was there some kind of law that men who wrote military thrillers had to have two-syllable names where the first and the last sounded interchangeable? There were romances for the ladies—your Nora Roberts, your Danielle Steel—and board games in worn boxes, some with their sagging edges reinforced with duct tape, the same games I played with Ellie: Sorry! and Parcheesi and Monopoly and Battleship. Our next meal will be DINNER, read the whiteboard at the front of the room. Tonight we are having CREAM OF MUSHROOM SOUP, LONDON BROIL, MASHED POTATOES, and GREEN BEANS. Oh, Dad, I mourned, and wondered how my mother would survive, seeing her beloved husband in a place like this.

Kathleen interrupted my reverie, giving me a glossy “Welcome to Eastwood” folder and a big smile. “If you’re ready, we can go back to my office. There’s some preliminary paperwork you can fill out, and then, once our finance department has had a look, they’ll be in touch. Did you bring your father’s tax returns?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. The insides of my eyelids were stinging, and I was already blinking back tears. “I think I’m going to have to take care of that another time.”

“Are you all right?” Kathleen’s tone was not unsympathetic. She must have seen this dozens, if not hundreds of times—spouses and children who thought they were ready flipping out and running when it came time to sign the forms, to write the checks, to make it real. I managed a nod, and then hurried past the front desk, through the doors, out to the parking lot, and into my car. One dream in my heart, I heard in my head, and brushed my sleeve against my cheeks to wipe away the tears. One love to be living for . . .. One love to be living for . . .. This nearly was mine.

EIGHT

“Allison Weiss?” The girl waiting at the door was tiny, with a nose the size of a pencil eraser and feet so small I bet she had to shop in the children’s department. It was May, the weather springtime-perfect. The scents of flowers, cut grass, and freshly turned earth wafted on a warm breeze (I could see a gardener digging the beds adjacent to the parking lot), and the sky outside the television studio was a perfect turquoise, dotted with cotton-ball clouds.

I smiled at the young woman with the warmth and goodwill that only the pure of heart, or the people who’ve recently swallowed a handful of OxyContin, can muster. “I’m Allison Weiss. Are you Beatrice?” I had gotten the call the night before, from a woman who’d introduced herself as Kim Caster, a producer for The News on Nine, the local evening newscast. “Did you hear about that mess in Akron?” she had asked.

“I did.” The mess in Akron was the kind of story that had become depressingly familiar since every teenager in America, it seemed, had been issued an iPhone. On a fine spring weekend, a fifteen-year-old girl had gone to a party. She’d gotten drunk. Four different boys, all football teammates, had taken advantage of her. Then, just to add to the fun, they’d posted photographs of their deeds on Instagram and video on YouTube. Within the next twenty-four hours, almost every kid who attended the town’s high school saw what had happened. The girl had tried to kill herself after a few of the most lurid shots ended up on her Facebook page. The boys had been arrested . . . but their defenders spread the word that the girl had come dressed provocatively with a vibrator in her purse and had texted her friends that she was looking for action.

“As someone who writes a lot about sex and relationships—and, of course, as a mother yourself—what are your thoughts?”

“I don’t think owning a vibrator, or even having one with you, is a standing invitation for guys to do whatever they want,” I’d said. “A girl can wear a short skirt and not be asking for it. She can even get drunk and have the right not to be raped. It’s never the victim’s fault.”

“Mmm-hmm . . . uh-huh . . . great . . . great,” said the producer. “And what about the argument that it wasn’t really a gang rape because some of it involved only digital penetration?”

I’d rolled my eyes. A columnist at no less an institution than the Washington Post had made that very point on the op-ed page last week, and the Examiner had reprinted his column. In our better days, I might have given Dave some grief about it, but these days Dave and I were barely speaking. It felt as if we were trapped in the world’s longest staring contest, neither of us willing to blink and bring up the topic of L. McIntyre, or Dave’s ever-lengthening stay in the guest room, or the pills. “There’s no ‘only’ when it comes to rape,” I said. “I don’t think it matters whether it’s a penis or a finger. Anything you don’t want inside you shouldn’t be there.”

The producer had seemed impressed enough with my answers to invite me to come on the air for the channel’s Sunday-morning Newsmakers on Nine show, where local folks gave their opinions on the issues of the day. I’d spent an hour on my makeup and allotted myself fifteen minutes to just sit quietly and catch my breath after wrestling myself into many layers of compressing undergarments, and now here I was. I’d calibrated my dosage carefully; just two pills, enough to take the edge off, to let me push through the sorrow that threatened to keep me pinned to the bed in despair.

“Follow me, please,” said Beatrice, whose hair bounced as she walked. “We’ll go right to makeup.”

“That bad, huh?”

Beatrice stopped mid-stride and turned and studied me carefully.

“That was a joke! Don’t answer!” I said.

“Oh. Okay.”

Kids these days, I thought, as Beatrice waved a plastic card at an electronic eye and glass barriers parted.

“Makeup” turned out to be a closet-sized room with two beauty-salon chairs, a mirror that covered one wall, and a table stocked with a department store’s worth of pots and tubs and containers of eye shadow and foundation and fake eyelashes arrayed like amputated spiders’ legs. One chair was empty. In the other sat a middle-aged white guy with short, sandy hair, bland features, a wedding ring on his left hand, and a class ring with a gaudy red stone on his right. The makeup artist introduced herself as Cindy, handed me a smock, and went back to patting foundation on the man’s face.

I sat down in the empty chair. “Hey, that’s my brand!” I said to the man, who did not smile. “Hi, I’m Allison Weiss. Are you on the panel, too?”

Without meeting my eyes, he gave a stiff nod. “I am.” His small brown eyes were sunk back into the flesh of his oddly rectangular head, like raisins in dough that had risen around them. “You must be the sex worker.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Sex worker? Who do you think would hire me?” When the man didn’t answer, I realized that he wasn’t kidding. “I’m not a sex worker. I’m a blogger.” Realizing that might not sound any different to the uninitiated, I said, “I write about marriage and motherhood on a website called Ladiesroom.com.” Which, I thought with a sinking heart, also sounded vaguely pornographic. I mustered a smile. “Trust me, I’m about as far from a porn star as you could be.”

“We’re all set,” said the makeup lady, giving the man’s nose a final dusting. He stood up and unsnapped his smock, revealing the plain black shirt and white clerical collar underneath. Oops.

“Good God,” I said. The makeup lady giggled. The pills did not make me slurry or sloppy, but they did lower my inhibitions. On them, I’d say whatever was on my mind, and think it over later. Usually it wasn’t a problem. This might turn out to be an exception. I bit my lip and wondered if it had been a good idea to take anything before leaving for the studio. This, of course, led me to wonder if the shipment I was expecting that day would show up, and whether I had enough to get through the weekend if it didn’t. I wondered, as I walked down the hall, who Penny Lane’s vendors were, the druggy Oz behind the Internet’s green curtain. Were they cancer patients willing to sell their meds and suffer in order to pay off their bills and leave their kids cash? Scummy thieves who robbed cancer patients, then sold their pills for cash? Kids who worked in drugstores, sneaking out five or ten pills at a time, or people getting them from doctors without ethics, or maybe even actual doctors?

Never mind. “Did you do your own makeup?” Cindy asked, cupping my chin in her hand and turning my face first left, then right.

“My friend helped.” Janet and Maya had come over that morning, lugging a light-up mirror and bags of makeup. Maya had actually been excited enough to speak directly to her mother while they debated brown versus black eyeliner and whether my brows required additional plucking.

“Not bad,” Cindy said.

“Just please don’t make me look too slutty,” I said, as she began filling in my lashes with a brush dipped in brown powder. “Slutty would not do.” With that in mind, I’d worn a pencil skirt and pumps with a not-too-high heel, a fuchsia cardigan with a pale-pink T-shirt underneath, and a single strand of pearls. I was going for “mildly sexy librarian,” and I’d already solemnly vowed to refrain from looking at any and all online commentary on my outfit, my figure, or what I had to say.

“Good luck,” Dave had told me as I’d gathered my car keys and my purse. He sounded friendlier than he had in weeks, and, almost without thinking, I’d turned my face up toward his for a good-luck kiss. Maybe he’d just intended to brush my lips with his, but I’d stumbled, as a result either of the heels or of the Penny Lane pills, and we’d ended up with his arms around me, the length of my body pressed against his, close enough to feel the heat of him through the cotton and denim, to smell his scent of shampoo and warm, clean skin. I’d opened my mouth and he’d settled one hand at the small of my back, tilting me against him, the better to feel his thickening erection, the other at the base of my neck so he could keep my head in place while he kissed me, lingeringly, thoroughly . . .

“EWWW!”

We sprang apart. I stumbled again—this time, it was definitely the heels—and staggered backward, praying that my skirt wouldn’t rip. “Ellie, what’s wrong?” I’d asked. Ellie, predictably, had started to cry.

“I don’t like KISSING. It is DISGUSTING.”

“Not when mommies and daddies do it!”

“That,” my daughter proclaimed, chin lifted, “is the MOST DISGUSTING OF ALL!”

“Well all righty, then,” I’d muttered, as Dave helped me to my feet. I could still barely believe what had happened, and wondered what had prompted it. Had he realized that, deep down, he really loved me . . . or, my mind whispered, had L. turned him down, telling him to go home to his wife unless he was ready to leave her?

“Later,” he’d whispered, and I’d sailed out the door, resolved not to think too hard about it, buoyed by this unexpected show of affection, by lust, and by the confidence that only a dose of narcotics could give me. Maybe everything was going to be fine. Maybe I’d go home and we’d make love (in my fantasy, Ellie had been whisked away, possibly by the Indomitable Doreen). Dave would tell me that he loved me, that he’d always loved me, and, more than that, that he was proud of me. He would tell me he was grateful that I’d kept us going during hard times. Then he’d tell me that he’d come up with another book idea, that his agent loved it, that the publisher loved it, that they’d given him another advance even bigger than the first one, and that L. McIntyre had been transferred to Butte, Montana.

“No slutty,” said Cindy. Working quickly, she touched up my foundation, patted concealer underneath my eyes, glued a few falsies into my lashes, and ran a flat iron over my hair. “Put on more lipstick and lipgloss right before they start,” she said, handing me tubes of both. Beatrice and her clipboard were waiting in the hallway.

“I’ll take you to the greenroom. You’ve got about ten minutes.”

“Who else is on this segment?” I asked as we walked.

Her heels clipped briskly against the tiled floor. “Let’s see. It’s you, Father Ryan of the Christian League of Decency, and, um, a parenting person. She’s a child psy . . . psychologist? Psychiatrist?” She frowned at her clipboard as if she were disappointed it wasn’t volunteering the answer. “A child something.”

“Great. Can I ask you a quick question?” Without giving her time to mull it over, I said, “You guys know I’m not a sex worker, right?” The line between her eyebrows reappeared as Beatrice looked from her clipboard to my face, then down at her clipboard again. “So you’re not a sex worker.”

I shook my head.

“But you work in the sex industry?”

“No, no I don’t. Really, the most accurate thing you could say is that I work for a website that sometimes addresses women’s sexuality.” Sarah, I thought. Sarah was Ladiesroom’s go-to sex-positive person, but she wasn’t here because this was Philadelphia, and I was the local girl.

She scribbled something on her clipboard. “Got it.”

I was unconvinced. But I said, “Okay, great,” and followed her pointing finger into another closet-sized room. This was the greenroom—painted, I noticed, an unremarkable beige. It had a conference-style table, a big flat-screen TV set to Channel 9, and a cart with three cans of Diet Coke, a bucket full of water I assumed had once been ice, and a black plastic tray covered in crumbs and two barely ripe strawberries. Father Ryan sat at one end of the table, with his Bible open and his head bent. At the other end sat a tiny, dark-haired woman in a red suit talking into a Bluetooth headset. “Mmm-hmm. That’s right. Have Dolly pick up the sushi on her way in. The flowers come at five and the caterers start at six. Right—oh, hang on.” She jabbed at her phone with one fingertip. “Hello, this is Dr. Carol Bendinger, how can I help you?”

I took one of the cans of Diet Coke and found a seat. When neither of my fellow panelists acknowledged me, I pulled out a copy of my morning blog post and highlighted the points I wanted to make. Being sexually active is not an invitation to rapists, I’d written. True. The fact that a teenage girl chooses to have sex with someone doesn’t mean she’s willing to sleep with everyone. Also true. But rape wasn’t sex. Should I be making more of a distinction between a girl using her vibrator with her boyfriend (or girlfriend, I reminded myself) and what the boys at the party had done to her?

I rummaged oh-so-casually in my purse until I found the Altoids tin. Flipping it open, I counted two, four, six, eight, ten pills. I’d taken those two pills less than an hour ago, but I was already starting to feel the familiar anxiety working its way through my body, nibbling at my knees, making them feel as if they were filled with air instead of flesh and blood and bone, and my brain was revving too quickly, flooding with thoughts of Ellie and Dave and Sarah and Ladiesroom and whether I really needed to start writing seven times a week and how I was going to get two hundred plastic eggs filled with school-approved treats before the Celebration of Spring on Monday afternoon. There was the mortgage that needed paying. The roof that needed replacing. The second car we needed to buy, and Ellie’s tuition, and summer camp, and had I ever made her a dentist appointment? I couldn’t remember.

“Panelists?” Beatrice and her clipboard were back. “We’re going to mic you, and then get you seated during the commercial break.”

I held still while a big, bearded man with delicate fingers clipped a microphone to my sweater collar and looked me up and down before hanging a small black box with an on/off toggle switch to the back of my skirt’s waistband. The Decent Christian got his clipped to the back of his belt. The parenting expert, evidently a TV veteran, produced her own microphone from her pocket. Then we were led onto the set that I’d seen a thousand times from my own kitchen and living room—the curving desk where the sports guy and the weather girl would banter with the anchorman, a map of Pennsylvania off to one side. The three of us were positioned on a raised platform, in armchairs grouped around a coffee table with a neat stack of books and a vase of flowers on top of it. As soon as the commercial break began, the Sunday anchor, a gorgeous woman named LaDonna Cole, came and took the seat across from us.

“Pretend we’re all just sitting around talking,” she instructed as a woman with a blow-dryer in a leather holster around her waist sprayed something onto LaDonna’s hair and another lady brushed powder onto her cheeks. “Interrupt each other! Jump in if you’ve got something to say! Keep it lively, ’kay?” She gave us a twinkling smile. I studied her face anxiously. She was wearing a ton of makeup, even though, as far as I could tell, her skin was flawless. Should I be wearing more?

“In three . . . two . . . one.” The bearded man behind the camera pointed two fingers toward LaDonna, who flashed her dazzling teeth again. “Good morning. I’m LaDonna Cole. It’s the case that’s on every paper’s front page, and all over social media. It happened in Akron, last Friday night, and almost everyone knows the details. A fifteen-year-old girl goes to a party hosted by an eighteen-year-old classmate, whose parents are away. There’s drinking. The girl passes out. Her ex-boyfriend, who’s seventeen, tells her friends that he’ll take her home. Instead, according to the girl’s testimony, he and three of his friends carry her down the street, to one of the friends’ basements, and sexually assault her, posting pictures and video of the assault to popular social media sites. And that’s where things get complicated.” Photographs flashed on the screen behind LaDonna’s head to illustrate her talking points—yearbook pictures of the accused, candids from the football field. “The ex-boyfriend, a popular athlete, says that she did, in fact, consent to their activities. He claims he had no idea that his friends were recording them. The other boys also posted pictures of a vibrator the girl allegedly had in her purse. The case has sparked vigorous debate,” said LaDonna, angling her body expertly to face a second camera. “Does the young woman have any responsibility for what allegedly happened that night? Is this a case of rape or, as some have said, a case of a girl who woke up with regrets the morning after? We’re joined this morning by Father David Ryan of the Christian League of Decency, Dr. Carol Bendinger, child psychologist and author of Online and On Guard: Keeping Our Kids Safe in a Wired World, and Allison Weiss, a popular blogger whose column at Ladiesroom.com deals with sexuality, marriage, and motherhood.”

Okay, I thought. Not bad.

“Father Ryan, let’s start with you.”

“Of course, what happened last Friday is a tragedy, for all the young people involved—the young woman and the young men,” Father Ryan intoned. “None of them will emerge from this unscathed. The young woman’s had her reputation ruined, and the young men are now facing the possibility of prison time, and of having to be registered as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.”

“And you think that’s wrong,” LaDonna prompted.

“I think it’s a tragedy, and I think that the young woman has to shoulder some of the blame.”

“Why is it her fault?” I asked. All three of their heads turned toward me, and, out of the corner of my eye, I caught the camera’s motion. “She went to a party and drank. So did the boys. We’ve got a lot of he-said/she-said about whether she consented to sex. But the pictures aren’t ambiguous. The pictures don’t lie. And what the pictures show is a group of boys assaulting a girl who is clearly unconscious, a girl who is in no position to say yes or no or anything at all.”

“The pictures also show how she was dressed,” Father Ryan said smoothly. “You can’t go to a party wearing little more than underwear and not realize that you’ve put yourself in danger.”

“So she deserves to be raped for wearing a short skirt, and the boys who did it, and the ones who took pictures of their buddies, they don’t deserve to be punished at all?” I was surprised to find how furious I was, how easily I could imagine my own daughter wearing the wrong thing, downing a drink that was stronger than she’d known, letting the wrong guys walk her home. “What kind of fine, upstanding citizens go to a party and take pictures of one of their buddies having sex, and then put those shots online?”

“Those boys were provoked,” Father Ryan said.

“So she was asking for it?” I could feel my anger . . . but I could feel it from a distance, from behind the protective, warm bubble of the drugs, the invisible armor that let me be brave.

“It might be a pleasant fantasy to imagine that women can dress any way they want to and nothing bad will happen,” said Father Ryan. “But we live in the real world. Teenage boys, teenage boys who’ve been drinking . . .”

“. . . know that stealing is wrong. They know that arson is wrong. Yet these boys managed to get drunk without helping themselves to anyone’s wallets or setting the house on fire. It’s ridiculous to give them a free pass for sexual misconduct, to think that everything they know about what’s right and fair and legal goes out the window because they’ve had a bunch of beer and they see a girl in a short skirt.”

“Let’s hear from Dr. Bendinger,” said LaDonna. Her widened eyes suggested that she might have gotten a more lively conversation than she’d envisioned.

Dr. Bendinger said the case illustrated how social media raised the stakes of all of our actions; how no matter what you did, it would dwell online, forever.

“And is that fair?” asked LaDonna.

Father Ryan shook his head. “This was a youthful indiscretion,” he said.

“This was a rape,” I replied.

He shook his head again, looking annoyed, like I was a mosquito who wouldn’t quit buzzing. “A young girl goes to a party in a short skirt and a tank top. She gets drunk. She’s announcing her intentions to have sex. She’s got a vibrator in her purse . . .”

“None of which meant it was okay for four guys to carry her down to the basement and rape her.”

“So you don’t have a problem with a fifteen-year-old having a vibrator?” asked LaDonna.

“I do not,” I said. “I think it’s better for a young woman to use a vibrator in a loving, committed, monogamous relationship, or to use it all by herself, in no relationship at all, than for her to participate in hookup culture, where she’s there to service a guy, where he gets off and she gets nothing.” Was I allowed to say “get off” on TV? Never mind. The pills were lifting me, buoying me, making me feel invincible, effortlessly witty, even cute. “Maybe vibrators are actually keeping girls out of trouble,” I said. “Maybe every girl should get one along with her driver’s license. A chicken in every pot and a vibrator in every purse!” I said. Father Ryan looked horrified. I, on the other hand, felt great.

“With that, I’m afraid we’re out of time,” said LaDonna Cole, who looked more than slightly relieved. “Father Ryan, Dr. Bendinger, Ms. Weiss, thank you so much for joining us.” When the camera was off, we all shook hands; then, still glowing with triumph, I sailed out of the building and into my car. My phone was buzzing, flashing Sarah’s picture on the screen.

“Hi!”

“A chicken in every pot and a vibrator in every purse?” She sounded somewhere between bemused and grossed out. “Dude. You have got to write that and get it up ASAP.”

“ASAP,” I repeated, and giggled. Oh, but I felt good! And a few more pills—two, maybe even three, why not?—would only make me feel better. I could surf this delicious, happy wave all the way home. I could write my next blog post, make love with my husband and fall asleep in the warmth of his arms, and then I’d get up, go to the grocery store, and buy the ingredients for his favorite coq au vin for dinner. While it was simmering, I’d call Skinny Marie and give her carte blanche and a blank check. My house would finally have furniture. My life would finally be okay.

“Six hundred words. Quick as you can.” Then Sarah paused. This was uncharacteristic. Sarah was usually full speed ahead, without as much as an “um” to disrupt the staccato rhythms of her thoughts. “This is kind of awkward, but I need to ask you something.”

“Ask away!” I said. Just like that, the delicious wave of joy collapsed underneath me, leaving me splayed on an icy shore. Suddenly I was terrified. She knows, I thought. Maybe I’d accidentally typed my work address at Penny Lane, and they’d delivered a package of Percocet or Oxy to the office?

Sarah cleared her throat. Then, before I could beg her to put me out of my agony, she said, “There’s some money missing from the petty cash account.”

“Oh!” Ladiesroom maintained the account Sarah had mentioned, a few thousand dollars that all writers and editors above a certain level could access if they wanted to, for example, pay for membership to a sex club without using their own credit card or having to wait for the expense reports to wend their way through the accounting department (which had been, we guessed, outsourced to some country where women would work for a dollar an hour).

On Wednesday afternoon, sitting idly at my computer, I’d realized, with an unpleasant jolt, that at my current rate of consumption I would run out of pills by Sunday. Purchasing drugs online was a tedious affair that involved buying Internet currency on one site, then moving those coins to Penny Lane . . . and I saw, as my heartbeat sped up, that the checking account I used to fund my illicit activities was almost empty. I could transfer money in from a household account, or get a cash advance from one of my credit cards, then make a deposit . . . but what if Dave decided to look?

Unable to think of a solution, feeling desperate and trapped, I’d taken a thousand dollars out of the petty cash account, moved it to my personal checking account, and then used it on Penny Lane. I’d planned on replacing the cash first thing Monday, as soon as I got paid, and hoped that nobody would notice.

Except, of course, somebody had.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” I said, apologizing to buy time while I tried to come up with some kind of plausible explanation. “I meant to tell you. What happened was, I got caught short on my property taxes. I had no idea how high they’d be out here—I mean, obviously, I did know, at least at some point, but I must have repressed it. So my accountant called me last Wednesday and was, like, you need to pay this before the end of the workday, so I just moved the money, and I was going to e-mail you about it, and of course I was going to pay it back as soon as I got my paycheck Monday morning, but it must have totally slipped my mind. It was a really stupid thing to do, and I am so, so sorry . . .”

I made myself shut my mouth. In the silence that followed, I imagined the cops showing up, Ellie watching as they snapped on the handcuffs and led me away. Sarah had every right to accuse me of stealing. Petty cash was for work-related expenses, not property taxes. She could turn me in to the cops, or to Ladiesroom’s bosses. Worse than that, she could demand to know why I really needed the money. My tale of property-tax woe sounded flimsy even to my own ears.

Instead of asking more questions, though, Sarah said, “Okay. I figured it was probably something like that. It wasn’t like you were trying to be sneaky about it . . . I mean, you didn’t exactly try to cover your tracks.”

I felt like my internal organs were turning to soup, like my bones were caving in. I was shaking all over, sweating at my hairline and underneath my arms, struggling to keep my voice steady as I repeated how sorry I was, how stupid I’d been, how of course I would put the money back immediately if not sooner and how I would never ever ever do anything that dumb again.

“It’s okay.” Sarah sounded a little stiff. My eyes prickled with tears; my cheeks burned with humiliation. Did Sarah have any idea what was really going on? Had I lost her respect and her trust? “Just get home and get to writing. ‘A chicken in every pot and a vibrator in every purse.’ I wonder if we can get T-shirts made?”

On that happy note, I apologized some more, then unclenched one sweat-slicked hand from the steering wheel and shoved it into my purse. I didn’t have enough pills to calm myself down, to erase what I’d done and make it okay. When I was wound up like this, four or five or even six pills could barely take the edge off. But I had to do something to slow my racing heartbeat, to get rid of the sick, sinking feeling in my gut, the shame that had taken up residence in my bones . . . and this was the only thing I knew. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m done writing,” I said, and slipped my medicine under my tongue.

• • •

I paid close attention to the speed limit and kept a safe distance between my front bumper and the car ahead of me. I’d never been the most mindful of drivers even in my pre-pill era, and a fistful of Oxy did not do much to improve one’s concentration. More than once since I’d found Penny Lane, I had pulled out of our driveway with my coffee mug on top of the car or driven away from a gas station with the gas cap still dangling. I put on music, practiced yoga breathing, and tried to tell myself that everything was fine, that I’d dodged the petty-cash bullet, and that, as soon as I finished my blogging, Dave and I could pick up where we’d left off.

That thought should have been enough to keep me occupied. When we first fell in love, we had a fantastic sex life. We were spontaneous, but we would also plan elaborate surprises for each other, scavenger hunts and carefully thought-out gifts and getaways. Even when we didn’t have a lot of money, we had always managed to delight each other on special occasions and, sometimes, just on regular Friday nights.

For our first anniversary, I’d done an Alice in Wonderland–style adventure. I had propped a stoppered glass vial filled with Dave’s favorite Scotch on the kitchen table, with a card reading DRINK ME and an arrow pointing down the hallway. A trail of roses led to the bedroom. After contemplating and rejecting the idea of lying on the bed naked, except for some cute lace panties with a card reading EAT ME affixed to the waistband, I’d instead left those words on a card with a single chocolate-dipped strawberry beside it. On the flip side of the EAT ME card was another clue, telling Dave to go “where I like to get wet.” This led him to the Lombard Swim Club, where we’d splurged on a membership for the summer. The girl behind the desk had given him an Amazing Race–style envelope with a handmade crossword puzzle, which had sent him to the Boathouse Row Bar in the Rittenhouse Hotel, where I’d been waiting with cocktails and a reservation at a restored Victorian bed-and-breakfast in Avalon down on the Jersey Shore, where we would run in a race together the next morning.

Maybe I should plan something like that again, I thought as I swung the car onto our street. True, I hadn’t been running much these days, but it wasn’t as if I’d been sitting around doing absolutely nothing. (You run after drugs, my mind whispered. You run to the bank. You run to the pharmacy. I told it to shut up.) A few weeks of training and I’d be able to run at least the better part of a 5K. I’d find a race somewhere pretty, not too far away, get Doreen to take Eloise for the night or maybe even the weekend, buy a bottle of good Champagne for when we were through . . .

A blue Lexus was parked in our driveway, with Pennsylvania plates and an Obama bumper sticker. Hmm. I grabbed my purse, got out of my car, and walked in through the garage, hearing the sound of singing coming from the kitchen. Ellie was standing on a chair, performing what I recognized as her Legally Blonde medley. “ ‘Honey, whatcha crying at? You’re not losin’ him to that.’ ”

“A star is born,” Dave said to a woman sitting at the table. Ellie was in full Ellie gear, with a tutu around her waist and a tiara on her head, a fake feather boa wrapped around her neck, and my high heels on her feet. Dave was wearing jeans and a Rutgers T-shirt, his hair still wet from the shower. The woman at the table looked as comfortable as if she lived there . . . or as if Dave had called some casting agency and asked for a slightly younger, significantly hotter version of me. Her jeans were crisp, dark, and low-rise, tucked into knee-high leather riding boots. Her fuchsia T-shirt had just enough Lycra for it to hug her torso in a flattering line, with a boatneck showing off her collarbones and pale, freckled skin. Her blonde hair was drawn into a sleek ponytail that looked casual but must have taken at least twenty minutes of fussing and a few different products to achieve, and she wore subtle makeup—light foundation, a little tinted lipgloss, mascara and pencil to darken her brows and her lashes. L. McIntyre, I presumed.

“Hello,” I said, and dropped my purse on the counter. I rested my left hand on Dave’s shoulder, wedding and engagement bands on proud display, and extended my right. “I’m Allison.”

“Lindsay is a work friend of Daddy’s,” Ellie explained.

“She came by to drop off some documents,” Dave added. I thought I could feel him flushing.

“Wasn’t that nice,” I said. “Do you live out this way?”

“Old City,” L. answered. “I’m Lindsay McIntyre.” She had one of those cool, limp handshakes, with no grip at all. I moved her fingers up and down once, then let go.

“Dave, can you come give me a hand for a moment?” My voice was sugar-cookie sweet. His expression was unreadable as he followed me through the kitchen and into the mudroom.

“What is going on here?” I hissed. “You’re bringing your girlfriend over for playdates?”

He raked his fingers through his damp hair. “Allison, she isn’t my girlfriend. I’m married. You don’t get to have girlfriends if you’re married.”

“Glad we’re on the same page with that. So what is she doing in my house?”

“Your house?” Dave repeated. Underneath the TV makeup, I felt my cheeks get hot.

“Our house. Why is she in our house, at our kitchen table, singing show tunes with our daughter?”

“She’s doing exactly what I said. She was dropping off some information I needed for a story I’m working on. It’s part of the election series,” he added, his tone suggesting I was supposed to know what that was. Since I didn’t, I said, “And she just decided to hang out and do a number?”

“She and Ellie seemed to be getting along.”

How nice for you, I wanted to say, that you can audition my replacement before I’m even gone. Cut it out, I told myself. Maybe this was completely innocent. Maybe the pills were making me paranoid.

My phone buzzed in my purse. Sarah, terse as ever, was texting me. ETA? she’d written. Shit.

“I need to write something. Can you keep Ellie amused for an hour?”

“I actually need to get to the office. I’ve had her all morning,” he said.

While I was goofing off, I thought. Instead, I walked wordlessly into the kitchen, where Ellie was wrapping up her finale.

“I should get going,” L. said, after Ellie, who’d moved on to The Sound of Music, hit the last notes of “So Long, Farewell.” She got to her feet, straightening her shirt and giving her hair a pat. It was astonishing, really. A few subtle changes in features and hair color and she could have been me, ten years ago.

“Can we go to the zoo?” Ellie wheedled after L. and Dave had departed.

“I’m sorry, honey. Mommy has to blog.” On the couch, my laptop open, Ellie bribed into compliance with a bag of jelly beans and the remote control, I thought of what Lindsay McIntyre had seen when she stopped by. The kitchen, at least, had furniture. There was a cheerful jumble of family pictures on the refrigerator. One wall had been painted with blackboard paint and turned into a calendar, with “Clay Club” and “Daddy’s 10K” and “Stonefield Pajama Party” written in colorful chalk. There were apples in a yellow-and-blue ceramic bowl, the orchid that I hadn’t managed to kill in a clay pot on the windowsill. You would never see my kitchen and guess how many milligrams of narcotics I required to drag myself through the day. You would never look at my living room and know how much I’d cried reading comments on one of my blog posts, or looking at the online banking site and fretting about the increased frequency with which I was moving money to my secret account or the widening gap between what I put in each month and Dave’s contributions. You’d check out the big house with its princess suite, the princess herself, her brown hair for once neatly combed, and imagine that we had a happy life. Nothing to see here, you would think. Everything is fine.

NINE

In all my years of working at the Examiner and then for Ladiesroom, I’d never had anything come close to going viral. When I’d organized the slide show of nude cyclists that ran with the paper’s coverage of Philadelphia’s annual Naked Critical Mass ride, the pictures had gotten a tremendous number of hits, but that had all been local attention. Nothing I’d done, and certainly nothing I’d said, had ever gained national traction. Maybe it was a slow news week, or maybe it had to do with prudish, hypocritical America’s fascination with anything related to women and sex, but by Sunday night the “vibrator in every purse” sound bite was racking up hits on YouTube (I’d smartened up enough to know not to watch the clip or even glance at the comments). On Monday morning, a nationally syndicated conservative radio host spent ten minutes frothing into his microphone, incensed at the notion that the writers and editors of Ladiesroom—“a pack of pornography purveyors,” as he put it—wanted the government to equip innocent teenage girls with vibrators. Where he got the idea that we were asking for government money, I wasn’t sure, but I welcomed the attention. Every hyperbolic, spittle-flecked “THIS is what liberals WANT!” harangue got Ladiesroom.com another ten thousand hits. More hits meant more attention, and more money. Money: Our corporate masters offered a generous bonus for pieces that topped fifty thousand views. I stuck the cash directly into my Naughty Account, knowing I’d need drugs to get through the backlash, the inevitable dissection of my looks and politics and sex life, or lack of same. I was planning on cutting back . . . just not now. There was even a bit on The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart smirking as he repeated my line: “A chicken in every pot and a vibrator in every purse! Just make sure you don’t get them mixed up,” he said as the screen behind him showed a picture of a Hitachi Magic Wand in a Dutch oven. My inbox overflowed with e-mailed condemnations and praise, which I quickly gave up trying to answer. A “thank you for reading my work” would suffice, whether the reader was telling me that I was a genius and a hero and an inspiration to girls everywhere, or a fat ugly whore bent on making men obsolete.

I tried to distract myself by writing something new. “A Mother’s Guide to the Online World” was the idea I’d been playing with, a series of tips and how-tos for protecting girls on the Internet and in real life. Nothing scared me more than the idea of Ellie as a teenager, among peers who accepted as normal things like girls texting topless shots of themselves to boys they liked, or boys filming sexual activity and then making the video available to their buddies. She was too young for even the most preliminary conversation—only six months ago I’d stumbled through a speech about where babies came from—but I thought if I could come up with a list of what to do and what to say, maybe I’d be prepared for when she was eight or nine or ten or twelve and the conversation was no longer theoretical.

“Mommy, come visit with me!” Ellie would say, banging on my locked bedroom door in the days and weeks after my TV debut.

“Mommy’s working right now,” I would call back, telepathically begging her babysitter to come upstairs and whisk her away. Katrina, bless her heart, meant well, but she would usually come with some elaborate craft or cooking project that would take a while to arrange, leaving Ellie free to wander the house, or bang on my door, while her sitter laid out pages of origami paper or baked gingerbread for a gingerbread house.

Dave, meanwhile, had gone back to being tight-lipped and silent, his face unreadable and his body rigid as he passed me in the kitchen or the halls. I was afraid to try to grill him about L. McIntyre. I wanted to know the truth . . . but I suspected that the truth would burst my opiated bubble, revealing the unhappy realities that even four or five Oxys couldn’t mask—that my marriage was a sham, that my happiness was an illusion, that even though the pieces were in place and everything seemed okay, underneath the veneer of good looks and good manners, the three of us were falling apart.

Or, at least, I was.

Two weekends after my television triumph, the guilt got to me. I woke up early, chewed up sixty milligrams of OxyContin, took a shower, and announced, over a breakfast I’d cooked myself, that I was putting everything on hold and taking Ellie on a girls’ day outing.

“Great,” Dave said. He even managed to smile. Ten minutes after I’d made my announcement, he had his running shoes in his hand, his high-tech lap-and-pace-counting watch on his wrist, and his body covered in various wicking and cooling fabrics made from recycled bamboo. “Bye,” he called, closing the door behind him. Ellie gave me a syrup-sticky smile. “Can we go to my museum? And the Shake Shack? And the zoo? And to sing-along Sound of Music?”

“Sing-along Sound of Music was a special treat. How about you pick two of the other things?” I said pleasantly. Meanwhile, I was performing a mental inventory of how many little blue Oxys I had left, and how I’d space them out to get me through until noon the next day, when my next batch would come in the mail. You’re taking too many, a voice in my head scolded. I stacked dishes in the sink, then rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher, and told the voice to shut up. How much money did you spend last month? the voice persisted. Four thousand dollars? Five? I can afford it, I thought uneasily, shoving aside the memory of the petty cash I’d borrowed, or how worried I was that Dave would take a hard look at our joint checking account. As long as I stay on top of things, as long as I’m careful, I’ll be fine.

After lengthy deliberations, Ellie decided on the zoo, and burgers for lunch. For two hours, we admired the elephants, held our noses in the monkey house, screamed “Ew!” at the naked mole rats, and sat on a bench eating soft-serve pretzels in the sunshine. I let her have everything she wanted—a pedal through the pond on the swan boats, a pony ride, and a trip on the miniature train that circled the zoo. She got her face painted to look like a leopard (a pink-and-white-spotted leopard) and bought friendship bracelets and a souvenir keychain and widened her eyes in disbelief when, at the Shake Shack, I said she could have both cheese fries and a milkshake, when usually I made her choose one or the other.

The cashier gave Ellie a buzzer—by far, one of the highlights of the Shack. “It’ll go off when your food’s ready.”

“I KNOW it! I KNOW it will!” Using two hands, Ellie carried the buzzer to our table and set it reverently in the center after cleaning the surface with an antibacterial wipe from my purse. “Now, don’t freak out,” she instructed the buzzer.

“Okay. I won’t. I won’t freak out,” I answered, in character as Wa, which is what we’d named the Shake Shack’s buzzers, for the wah-wah-wah sound they made.

“Just be CALM, Wa,” she said, giggling.

“I’m gonna. I-I’m gonna be calm,” I stammered, in Wa’s trembling, not-at-all-calm voice.

“Just say, ‘Your food is ready,’ in a NORMAL voice. Don’t LOSE YOUR BUSINESS,” Ellie said, her eyes sparkling with mirth.

“I got it. I got it. No freaking out. No losing my business. No . . .” Ellie was already starting to giggle as the buzzer lit up and started to hum. “WA! WA! WA! Yourfoodisready!” I said. “Wa! Wa! WAWAWAI’MFREAKINGOUTHEREWA!”

“Wa, calm down! It’s just a burger!” Ellie gave the buzzer an affectionate pat as I continued to narrate its breakdown. An older woman sitting at the counter watched the proceedings. On our way back with our tray, she tapped my shoulder.

“Excuse me. I just want to say how much I’m enjoying watching you and your daughter.”

“Oh, thank you!” I said, touched almost to tears.

“So many parents, you see them on their phones, barely looking at their kids. You’re giving your daughter memories she’ll have forever.”

Now I was tearing up, thinking about what the woman would never see—the times I had been on my phone or my laptop or napping when Ellie wanted my company.

“That’s really nice of you to say,” I said, just as—irony!—my phone rang. I gave the woman an apologetic smile. “Hello? Mom?”

For a minute, all I could hear was the sound of her crying. “He f-f-fell . . . out of bed . . . I tried to pick him up and then he p-p-pushed me . . .”

I sat down in my chair. “Okay, Mom. Take a deep breath. Is Daddy there?”

“He left! He ran away!” Another burst of sobbing. “I tried to stop him, but he pushed me down and he ran out the door. He’s got bare feet, or maybe just his slippers. I couldn’t s-s-stop him . . .”

“Okay.” My head spun. Ellie, for once, was sitting quietly, maybe appreciating the seriousness of the situation, staring at me wide-eyed over the lid of her milkshake. “Do you know where he went?”

“No,” she sobbed. “By the time I got to the door he was gone.”

“Okay. I think you need to get off the phone with me and call the police.”

“What do I say?” she wailed.

“Tell them what you told me. Tell them that Daddy has Alzheimer’s, and that he was confused and that he’s . . .” Run away from home? Wandered off? Gone for a walk in his bare feet? “Just tell them what happened. I’m in Center City, I’m going to put Ellie in the car right now. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” Even as I was talking, I was packing up my purse, handing Ellie a wipe for her face, rummaging for my parking stub and a twenty-dollar bill.

“Good luck,” the woman who’d praised my parenting said as I hustled Ellie out the door, across the street, into the car, and, as fast as I could legally manage it, over the Ben Franklin Bridge and into New Jersey.

There were three police cars at my parents’ house when I arrived, one in the driveway and another two parked at the curb in front of the house. On my way over, I’d had a two-minute conversation with Dave, telling him what had happened.

“What can I do?” he’d asked, and I’d found myself almost in tears, melting at the kindness in his voice.

“Just sit tight . . . Actually, you know what? Can you call . . .” What was the woman’s name? I pulled to the side of the road and rummaged through my wallet until I found the business card I’d tucked in there for this very moment. “Kathleen Young. She’s at Eastwood—you know, the assisted-living place out here?”

“Kathleen Young,” Dave said, and repeated the phone number after I read it.

“If she’s not working on the weekend, ask for whoever’s handling intake. I went there a few weeks ago, just to check it out, so they know me, and they’ll at least know my dad’s name and his situation. If you tell them what’s going on, maybe they’ll have a bed for him, or they’ll be able to find us someplace that does.”

“Got it,” said Dave. “Call when you can.”

I parked on the street behind one of the cruisers, grabbed Ellie, and raced into the house. My mother was on the couch with an officer in uniform on each side of her. My father, in sweatpants, his bare feet grimy and one big toe bleeding, was sitting in an armchair, his face completely blank. He was missing his glasses, and his hair hadn’t been combed.

“Oh, Dad,” I said. I put Ellie down and half sat, half collapsed on the couch next to his armchair. He didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge me, just kept staring into the middle of the room as my mother, bracketed by cops, cried into a fistful of tissue. “What happened?” I asked the room. My mother continued to cry. My dad continued to stare. Finally, one of the cops, who introduced himself as Officer Findlay, said that they’d found my father two blocks away from the house, walking toward the elementary school in his bare feet. “He appeared disoriented, but he didn’t give us a hard time.”

“Climbed right in the backseat and let us take him home,” said the second officer. “Your mother was explaining your dad’s situation . . .”

“We should call his doctor,” I said to my mom. I hoped, foolishly, that she’d say she’d already done so—that she’d done something. Of course she hadn’t. She just sat there, mutely, shaking with sobs.

“I’m going to call,” I told the police officers.

I got Ellie situated in front of the television set, handing her the remote and watching her eyes widen as if I’d given her a key to the city, and went upstairs to my dad’s study to try to reach his physician. Of course an answering service picked up. I left my name and number and a brief version of the story. Then I called Dave.

“They have a bed available,” he reported. “But it’ll have to be paid out of pocket until you finish giving them your dad’s insurance information. They’ll need a copy of your parents’ tax returns, too. I’m going to e-mail you all that information,” Dave said, in his full-on brisk-and-businessy reporter mode. “There’s an Emily Gavin you’ll be talking to—she’s handling intake over the weekend. They e-mailed a packing list that I can forward along . . .” While Dave kept talking, I let my eyes slip shut.

“Do you think . . .” I swallowed hard. Here was the part I hadn’t quite figured out, the puzzle piece I’d never managed to snap into place. “Honey, would it be okay if my mom stayed with us for a while?”

I’d expected objection, at least a pained sigh. But Dave’s voice was gentle when he said, “Of course it’s fine.”

I started to cry. “I love you,” I said as the call waiting beeped to let me know that someone from my dad’s doctor’s practice was calling.

“Love you, too,” said Dave.

I sniffled. How long had it been since I’d felt that certainty, that unshakable belief that Dave had my back? And did he know that I had his? Would he come to me in a crisis, or just try to get through it on his own . . . or, worse, would he turn to L. McIntyre, with her understated makeup and sleek ponytail, and ask her to help?

My father’s doctor was calling from a movie-theater lobby. “Count yourself lucky that no one got hurt,” he said. “Now, clearly, Dad’s ready for a higher level of care.”

I agreed that Dad was.

“You picked out a place?” He’d given my mother and me a list of possibilities the same day he gave us my father’s diagnosis.

“Eastwood has a bed for him.”

“Good. They’re good people. Don’t forget to bring two forms of ID when you go. Pack all his medication—they’ll probably let him take his own meds for the first night, then they’ll have their doctors call in new scrips for everything, just so they know exactly what he’s taking, and when, and how much.” I half paid attention as he explained the process of getting my dad situated—what to pack, whom to call—as I tried to figure out how I would actually get my father to Eastwood. Could I leave Ellie with my mother while I drove my father there? What if he got confused, or even violent, or refused to get in my car, or refused to get out of it when he saw where we were? Maybe I’d wait for Dave to make the trip from Philadelphia and have him come along. That would work. I thanked the doctor, got off the phone, closed the study door quietly . . . but before I went downstairs, I detoured into the bathroom that had been mine when I was a girl. The seat was up, the hand towels were askew, and something white—toothpaste, I hoped—was crusted on the cold-water handle at the sink. I ignored it all, shoved my hand deep into my bag, retrieved my Altoids tin, and piled two, then four, then six pills into my mouth.

TEN

Maybe my dad had been belligerent in the morning, but by the time the cops departed, all the fight had gone out of him. He sat quietly in front of the television with a glass of juice and a plate of cheese and crackers while I went upstairs to start packing. “Mom, you want to help?” I asked, pulling a suitcase out of the guest-room closet. There was only silence from downstairs.

No matter. I began emptying the drawers, consulting the packing list Dave had e-mailed. Undershirts and underwear, jeans and khakis, pullover tops (“We find our clients do best in familiar, comfortable clothing without clasps, zippers, buttons, or buckles,” the list read). I packed up his phone and its charger, wondering if he’d need it. I added a stack of books, biographies of Winston Churchill and FDR, a copy of Wolf Hall, which I knew he’d read and loved. Toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, soap . . . I put in everything I thought he’d need. When I heard Dave arrive, I went downstairs and found my mom next to my father on the couch. I knelt down and took one of her hands between both of mine.

“Dave and I are going to take Daddy to Eastwood. You can wait here with Ellie, and we’ll be back as soon as he’s settled.” I put my arm around her, feeling like someone had just handed me a script, and I was reading the lines and playing the part of the Good Daughter. “Try not to worry. They’ll take good care of Daddy. He’s going to be safe.”

She didn’t answer, but I felt her body shaking. After a minute, she bent forward, briefly resting her body against mine. Her lips were pressed together, her tiny hands clenched in fists. She rocked, and rocked, and I heard a faint whistling noise coming from between her pursed lips, a wretched, keening sound.

The side of her face was already swelling—she’d bounced into the dresser when my dad had pushed her that morning. I found an ice pack in the freezer, wrapped it in a dish towel, then pressed it against her cheek, and murmured nonsense: Don’t worry and He’ll be fine and even He’s going to a better place. Dave was the one who got my father into the backseat and the suitcase into the trunk. He drove, and I cried, and my father sat, silently, with his seat belt on and his hands folded neatly in his lap.

Three hours later, he was relatively settled in a double room, with a framed picture of my mom on his nightstand and his favorite afghan draped across the bed and a social worker, whose job was to help him transition through his first few days, introducing him to his temporary roommate. Today is SUNDAY, read a whiteboard on the door. The next meal is DINNER. We are having ROAST TURKEY, SWEET POTATOES, and SALAD. After dinner, you can watch “SISTER ACT” in the Media Room, or play HEARTS in the Recreation Room. Tomorrow morning is ART THERAPY at nine a.m.

I looked at the board, then looked away, as Dave, maybe guessing at what I was feeling, took my hand. “It’s the right thing to do,” he told me, and I nodded, feeling hollow and sad.

Back at my parents’ house, Ellie and my mother were where I’d left them, on the sofa, with the TV switched from CNBC to Nickelodeon and a cheese sandwich, missing two bites, in front of them.

“I made SANDWIDGES,” Ellie announced.

“I can tell.” The sandwich was decorated with no fewer than six frilly toothpicks, and there was a neat pile of gherkins, Ellie’s preferred pickle, beside it.

“Come on, Mom,” I said, and took my mother’s cool, slack hands. Then I raised my voice, trying for cheer. “Hey, Ellie, guess what? Grandma’s going to be visiting with us for a while!”

“Yay!” said Ellie. Wordlessly, soundlessly, my mother got to her feet and climbed the stairs, with Ellie and I trailing behind her. For a minute, she stood in front of the unmade bed, with one pillow still bearing the impression of my dad’s head. Then, as I watched, she took the pillow in her arms and hugged it.

“I love him so much,” she said. She wasn’t crying, and that was scarier, even, than the keening she’d been doing before. Her voice was quiet and matter-of-fact, and she shook off my hand when I tried to touch her shoulder. “You have no idea . . . How will I live without him?”

“You’ll still see him,” I said, trying to sound encouraging and hold back my own tears. “He needs you.” I paused. “I need you,” I added, trying not to notice how strange those words sounded. Had I ever told my mother I needed her? Had it ever been true? “And Ellie needs her grandmother.”

We packed a bag for her, with what I guessed was a week’s worth of clothes, and loaded another bag with her cosmetics, her blow-dryer and curling iron, the pots and bottles and canisters of sprays and gels and powders she used every day. While I zipped up the bags, I explained to her that Eastwood was convenient to both of us. I told her that I’d visited a number of places (true, if online visits counted) and had settled on this one as the best of the bunch. I described the attractive facilities, the comfortable room, the doctors on staff, and the trips Dad could take. On the drive back to Haverford, she sat in silence with her hands folded in her lap, watching the trees flash past, as if she were a corpse that no one had gotten around to burying yet.

“Why isn’t Grandma TALKING?” Ellie demanded from her booster.

Before I could answer, my mother said, “Grandma is sad,” in a rusty, tear-clogged voice. I waited for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, Ellie said, “Sometimes I am sad, too.”

“Everyone gets sad sometimes,” I said, and left it at that. I was thinking, of course, of my pills. Instead of lifting me out of the misery of the moment, they had left me there, shaky and wired and miserable, thinking, If I just take one more or Maybe if I took two. Since I’d gotten the call at the Shake Shack, I had swallowed . . . how many? I didn’t want to think about it. I was afraid the number might have entered double digits . . . and even I knew that was way, way too many.

I’ll cut back, I promised myself as I swung the car into my driveway. Now that my father was somewhere safe, now that things weren’t quite so crazy with work, I could start tapering off. But, as the days went by, as the media furor over the vibrator-in-every-purse remark died down and my dad settled in to the routines of Eastwood, the tapering never began. I would start each day with the best of intentions. Then Ellie would have a tantrum after she realized we’d run out of her preferred breakfast cereal, or I would find my mother slumped at the kitchen table, still in her bathrobe, waiting, along with my five-year-old, to be fed, and I’d have to coax her to eat a few bites, to put on her clothes, to please get in the car because if you don’t, we’re going to be late for Daddy’s appointment with the gerontologist, and I would think, Tomorrow. I’ll start cutting back tomorrow. I just need to get through today.

• • •

When she wasn’t at Eastwood visiting my dad, my mom spent her days in the guest room, with the door shut, doing what, I didn’t know. When Ellie came home she’d emerge—pale and quiet, but at least upright and clothed—and the two of them would spend the afternoon together. My mom was teaching Ellie to play Hearts, a game she and my father used to play together on the beach. She was also teaching Ellie how to apply makeup—which didn’t thrill me, but it wasn’t a battle I was going to fight. From my computer, behind the bedroom door, I’d brace myself for shrieks of “NO,” and “DON’T WANT TO,” and, inevitably, “YOU ARE MURDERING ME WITH THE COMB!” But Ellie rarely complained. After dinner, I’d find them cuddled together in the oversized armchair slipcovered in toile, a relic of my single-girl apartment, flipping through Vogue, discussing whether or not a dress’s neckline flattered the model who wore it.

One morning, after shuttling yet another thousand dollars from my secret checking account to the account I’d set up at Penny Lane, I started adding up what all the pills had cost me. I stopped when I hit ten thousand dollars, feeling dizzy, feeling terrified. The truth was, I had probably spent much more than that, and I was equally sure that if I tried to stop, cold turkey, I’d get sick. Already I’d noticed that if I went more than four or five hours between doses, I would start sweating. My skin would break out in goose bumps; my stomach would twist with nausea. I’d feel dizzy and weak, panicked and desperate until I had my hands on whatever tin or bottle I was using, until the pills were in my mouth, under my tongue, being crunched into nothingness.

Just for now, I told myself. Just until my parents’ house sells, just until I figure out what to do about my mom, just until my father settles in. Another six weeks—two months, tops. Then I’d do it. I’d figure out how many pills I was taking each day, and cut down by a few every day, slowly, gently, until I was back to zero. I’d have a long-postponed confrontation with Dave. I’d ask the questions that scared me the most: Are you in or are you out? Do you love me? Can we work on this? Is there anything left to save? Whatever he told me, whatever answers he gave, I would work with them. I would be the woman I knew I could be: good at my job, a good mother to my daughter, a good wife, if Dave still wanted me. Just not right now. For now, I needed the pills.

ELEVEN

“How’s your dad?”

I sighed, taking a seat at Janet’s kitchen counter, next to a stack of catalogs and what appeared to be a half-assembled diorama of a Colonial kitchen. It was three-fifteen on a balmy, sweetly scented May afternoon, and I’d just arrived at her house, half a mile from my own, with perfectly pruned rosebushes lining the walkway from the street to the front door. We’d passed the living room and the den, both decorator-perfect, and ended up in the kitchen, where Janet was thawing a pot of beef stew on the stove and had the wineglasses out on the counter.

“Half a glass,” I said, as she started to pour from a lovely bottle of Malbec. We’d already agreed that I would fetch the kids from Enrichment, the after-school program that Stonefield: A Learning Community offered between the hours of three and six for working parents. I would, therefore, drink responsibly. Of course, Janet had no idea that I’d helped myself to a handful of my dad’s Vicodin in the car, and that there were more pills in my purse and in my pocket.

“And thanks for asking. My dad’s adjusting.” Sipping my wine, I told Janet about how, the day after his arrival, my father had switched from silent to belligerent, throwing things and shouting at the attendants to show him another room, that he’d reserved a suite, goddamnit, and if there wasn’t a suite he at least wanted a better view. As best I could figure, he thought he was in a hotel, on a business trip. He’d unpacked, hanging his shirts and pants in the closet, and if he’d noticed the lack of ties and jackets, or that the only shoes I’d sent with him were sneakers, he hadn’t said anything. Eastwood had assigned seating at mealtimes, and his case manager, a young woman named Nancy Yanoff, reported that my father was eating and seemed to be enjoying the company of the other residents at his table. Meanwhile, I was scrambling to get my parents’ house on the market, to finish filling out the thick sheaf of forms the long-term care required, and to figure out a long-term plan for my mom.

God bless narcotics. The pills gave me the energy and confidence to get through the day. They lulled me to sleep at night. They made it possible for me to have an uncomfortable conversation with my husband about how long my mom could stay. Dave was still being generous, still speaking to me kindly, but I sensed that his patience had a limit, and that in a month or two I’d find myself approaching it.

For now, though, he’d moved his belongings back to the master bedroom. I’d hastily ordered a dresser, two bedside tables, lamps, and an area rug for the guest room that had previously contained only a bed. Most nights I’d fall asleep before Dave did. Sometimes, if he woke me up with the bathroom light, I’d take my book and go to Ellie’s bedroom, lying beside my daughter in the queen-sized bed we’d been smart to purchase, telling her that Daddy was snoring again when she woke up and was surprised to see she had company. “But all things considered, it’s not too bad,” I told my friend.

Janet looked at me sidewise, skepticism all over her face. “How is it going with Little Ronnie?”

“Okay, here’s the shocker. She’s actually functioning. She helps take care of Ellie in the afternoons.” It was true that my mother still had the annoying habit of wandering down to the kitchen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the expectation that someone (not her) would put a hot, balanced meal on the table, and clean up afterward. She would leave her dirty clothes piled in the hamper with the unspoken assumption that they would be washed and put away, and she would announce that she had an appointment here or there instead of requesting a ride . . . but she was spending a few hours each day with Ellie. “And Ellie’s actually calmed down a little. I think, in a weird way, she feels responsible for her grandmother.”

Janet nodded, sipped her wine, and said, “Maybe I could rent your mother. My three need to get the memo that they’re responsible for more than just wiping themselves.” She made a face, flashing her crooked teeth. “And one of the boys isn’t even doing that so well. I don’t know which one—I buy them identical undies, and it’s not really the kind of thing you want to, you know, investigate thoroughly . . .”

I smiled, imagining my friend with a pair of lab tweezers and a fingerprinting kit, gingerly tugging a pair of skidmarked Transformers underpants out of an inside-out pair of little boy’s jeans.

“And did I tell you that Maya is now a vegan? And the boys won’t eat vegan food—which I can’t really blame them for—so I’m now cooking two meals a night? What happened?” she asked. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes narrowed, ponytail askew. “I mean, really. I was Phi Beta Kappa. I was most likely to succeed. I billed more hours than any other associate my first three years out of law school. And now I spend my days driving my kids to hockey practice and swim club and choir rehearsal, and my afternoons making lasagna with tofu cheese, and my nights folding their underwear and checking their homework and spraying the insides of hockey skates with Lysol. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

She poured wine almost to the top of her glass and took a healthy swallow. “Do you know what I think when I wake up in the morning?” Without waiting for an answer, she said, “I count how many hours there are until I can have a glass of wine. There’s something wrong with me, if that’s all I’m looking forward to. If I have this . . .”—she gestured, hands spread to indicate the room, the house, the neighborhood—“this life, these kids, this house, this husband, and I love him, I swear I do, but most days the only thing that’s giving me any pleasure, the only thing I’m looking forward to at all is my goddamn glass of wine. That’s a problem, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and started reflexively straightening the stack of catalogs on the counter. Pottery Barn. J.Crew. L.L.Bean. Lands’ End. Ballard Designs. Garnet Hill. Saks. Nordstrom. Restoration Hardware. Sundance. All the same ones I got and kept in a basket in the powder room, to leaf through late at night. If Janet was counting the hours until her five o’clock drink, I was in way worse shape than she was. I wasn’t waiting until five anymore. Or even noon. My days began with pills—I would wake up sad and shaky and overwhelmed and I’d need a little pop of something just to get out of bed—and I kept a steady dose of opiates in my bloodstream all day long. More and more, my mind returned to that quiz in the doctor’s office, and I found myself wondering: What would happen if I tried to cut back and I couldn’t?

You can stop, my mind said soothingly. But you don’t have to. Not right now. Which sounded good . . . except what if I couldn’t? What if I was really and truly addicted, just like the actresses in the tabloids, or the homeless people I avoided while they begged at the intersections and on the sidewalks of Center City? What if that was me? Late at night, with Dave snoring away and Ellie and my mother asleep down the hall, I’d lie awake, the bitterness of the pills still on my tongue and my laptop making the tops of my thighs sweat, Googling rehabs, reading articles about drugs and alcohol, taking quizzes and reading blogs and newspaper stories about mommies who drank and celebrities who’d ended up addicted to painkillers or Xanax. With my Oxy or Percocet still pulsing in my head, I would point and click my way down the tunnel as midnight slipped into the small hours of the morning.

“I think you’re a great mother,” I told Janet. “You’re doing an amazing job. And you know this isn’t going to last. You’ll blink and they’ll be in college.”

“College,” she repeated. She lifted her glass and seemed surprised to find it almost empty. “I was going to have this big life. Barry and I were supposed to have adventures. I was going to be a prosecutor, then a judge, and then maybe I’d teach law. I used to dream about that. And now . . .” Her lips curled, her face twisting into an expression of deep disgust. “Allison, I’m a housewife. When I go online, I’m researching cereal coupons, or trying to figure out if my kid’s ADHD medicine is going to interact with his asthma stuff. The last thing I read for pleasure was Wonder, which was great but was written for ten-year-olds, and the only reason I even read that was because it was lying around the living room because Maya had to read it for school. I have all these clothes . . .”

As discreetly as I could, I snuck a look at the clock on my phone, wondering if my mail had been delivered yet and if the pills I’d ordered from Penny Lane had arrived. They came in regular Express Mail envelopes, but I couldn’t risk Dave’s intercepting one of them. I didn’t want the first real conversation we had in forever to be about why I was illegally purchasing prescription medication on the Internet.

I slipped my hand into my pocket, touching my tin. At this point, I could guess just by its weight how many pills it contained. Ten, I estimated. Surely ten pills would last me until tomorrow, if they had to? Maybe I could excuse myself, tell Janet I had to make a call, and see if one of my doctors would phone in another prescription, just to tide me over.

“All these clothes,” she repeated. “Skirts and suits and jackets. High heels. All that stuff, just hanging there.”

“You’ll wear them again,” I told her. I knew Janet’s plan had been to start working part-time the previous fall, when the boys started kindergarten. But then Conor had gotten his ADHD diagnosis, and Janet had spent what felt like an entire year at some doctor’s or therapist’s office every day after school. As soon as Conor had been stabilized with the right combination of medicine and tutoring and a psychologist to teach him cognitive behavioral strategies for managing his disorder (translation: how to keep from screaming and throwing things when he got frustrated), Dylan had started acting out, getting in fights at school, yelling at his teachers, hiding in the bathroom when recess was over. This, of course, meant therapy for him, too. Somewhere in there, Maya had stopped speaking to her mother. When Janet had described her attempts to give Maya the “your changing body” talk, and how Maya had literally thrown the helpful Care & Keeping of You book into the hallway so hard it had left a dent in the paint, Barry and I had laughed, Barry so hard there were tears glistening in his beard, but I could tell that Janet was heartbroken at her daughter’s silent treatment.

“Five years from now you’ll be running the attorney general’s office, and you’ll be too important to take my calls,” I told her.

“Ha.” It was a very bleak “Ha.” I wanted to reassure her that we’d get through this time, that in three or five or eight years things would come around right and we would find ourselves again the smart, vital women we’d once been . . . but who was I to talk?

“OMG,” Janet said, looking at the clock. Somehow, it was five-thirty. “Are you okay to drive? Are you sure?”

“I’m good.” I’d had only a single glass of wine. At least, as far as she knew.

“Want me to come with you?”

“That’s okay. I’ll have the boys back here by six-fifteen.”

She nodded. Then she hugged me, with her wineglass still in her hand. “You’re my best friend,” she said, and, briefly, rested her head on my shoulder. I gave her a squeeze, located my purse, got behind the wheel, and pulled out of Janet’s driveway. My heart lurched as I heard a car honking and the word “ASSHOLE!” float down the street. Shit, I thought, realizing how close I’d come to backing into the side of someone’s BMW. Oh, well. The other car had probably been speeding. I hoped Janet hadn’t seen it as I put the car in drive and proceeded toward Stonefield, coming to a full stop at each stop sign, keeping assiduously to the speed limit. Where had that BMW even come from?

I pulled up at a red light, with my eyelids feeling as heavy as if someone had coated them with wet sand. I kept my foot on the brake and let my eyes slip shut, feeling the warmth of the pills surging through my veins, that intoxicating sense of everything being right with the universe. My head swung forward. I could feel my hair against my cheeks . . .

Someone behind me was honking. I bolted upright, opening my eyes. “Jesus, cool your jets!” I hit the gas and was jerked backward as my car leapt through the intersection. Why was everyone in such a goddamn rush? What happened to manners? I squinted into the rearview mirror, trying to make out the face behind the wheel of the car that had honked, wondering if it was anyone I knew . . . and then, in an instant, the sign for Stonefield was looming up on my right. I stomped on the brakes, hit the turn signal, and heard the squeal of rubber on the road as I made the turn, cutting off the car in my right-hand lane. My heart thudded as I hit the brakes. There were two cars in front of me, and I could see Janet’s twins waiting, in their baseball caps and matching backpacks, along with Eloise, in the Lilly Pulitzer sundress she’d picked out herself. I put the car in park, grabbed the key fob, and hopped out of my seat. The heel of my shoe must have caught on the floor mat, because instead of the graceful exit I’d planned on, I tripped and went down hard on the pavement, landing on my hands and knees.

“Ow!” I yelled. My palms were stinging, dotted with beads of blood, and my pants were torn at the knee. I wondered if anyone had seen me. I looked around, swallowing hard as I spotted Mrs. Dale, one of the teachers in Ellie’s class, standing at the curb with a clipboard in her hand. Just my luck. Miss Reckord, the other teacher, was a sweet-faced, dumpling-shaped twenty-five-year-old with rosy cheeks and a whispery voice. The little boys all nursed crushes on her, and the girls fought to sit on her lap at story time, where they could finger her dangly earrings. Mrs. Dale was a different story. Thin-lipped, broad-shouldered, and flat-chested, with hair the color and consistency of a Brillo pad and skin as pale as yogurt, Mrs. Dale—who had, as far as I knew, no first name that was ever used by anyone in the Stonefield community—had been bringing five-year-olds to heel for more than thirty years. Mrs. Dale was not impressed with your special little snowflake. She did not believe in affirmations or unearned compliments to boost a kid’s self-esteem, or the unspoken Stonefield philosophy that every child was a winner. She believed in children keeping their hands to themselves, not running in the hallways, and coloring inside the lines. She took zero shit off of anyone, and she never, ever smiled.

I waved at her, surreptitiously sliding my bleeding palms into my pockets. “Sorry I’m late! Come on, everyone!” I opened the rear passenger side door, scooping Eloise up by her armpits and hoisting her into her seat.

Mrs. Dale was watching me. “Did you get my messages about the board meeting?”

Oof. I’d gotten several calls from the school over the past few days—maybe even the past few weeks—but I’d hit “Ignore” and let them go straight to voicemail. I was busy. I was tired. I had a job, unlike half the mothers of kids in Ellie’s class. Why didn’t the school ever call them?

“Sorry. I’ve been running around like crazy. New project . . .”

“MOMMY, I’m BLOODY!” Eloise shrieked. I looked at her and, sure enough, my bloody palm had left a red smear on her pink-and-green dress.

Mrs. Dale stepped closer. “Mrs. Weiss? Are you all right?”

“What? Oh, yeah. Just ripped my pants, no big deal. I’m such a klutz. Don’t ever stand near me in a Zumba class.” I followed her gaze down to my palms. Blushing, I grabbed a baby wipe from the box in the backseat and cleaned my hands, then fumbled with the buckle of the seat belt, tugging it hard against Ellie’s chest.

“Ow, Mommy, that HURTS!”

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. I could feel it now, the pills and the wine, surging through me with each heartbeat, singing their imperative: Sleep. Now. I finally clicked the buckle shut. “We’ll be at Janet’s in ten minutes. I’ll give you a Despicable Me Band-Aid.”

“I HATE Despicable Me!”

“Sure you do,” I muttered. She’d loved it last week. “Dylan? Conor? You guys okay?” The boys nodded. One of them had a handheld video game. The other had an iPod, with the buds stuck in his ears. I pulled the rear door shut, turned, and felt Mrs. Dale’s hand close around my hand. Around my key fob.

“Why don’t you come in and have a cup of coffee?”

“Oh, that’s so nice of you, but I really . . . I have to . . . Janet’s got dinner on the table, and Ellie’s going to freak out if I don’t get her cleaned up.”

“We can wash her dress in the nurse’s office. We’ve got Band-Aids there, and snacks if the boys are hungry.”

“That’s very kind.” I could hear my pulse thumping in my ears. “But I really have to get these guys going.”

Mrs. Dale’s hand stayed in place. “Have you been drinking?” she asked, stepping close, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring, like she was trying to smell my breath.

I stiffened, feeling the flesh of my back break out in goose bumps, almost swooning in terror. Busted. I was busted. I’d get arrested. I’d lose my license. Dave would find out. Everyone would know.

I pulled myself up straight, trying to look and sound as sober as I could. “Janet and I had a glass of wine, but that was over an hour ago. I’m fine. Really. I swear.” I said it firmly, trying to look and sound respectable and sober, hoping that Mrs. Dale would be mindful that I was, for all intents and purposes, her employer. I smoothed my hair and tried to ignore my torn pants and my bloody palms, and project a look of serenity and competence.

Mrs. Dale appeared to be unmoved. “Mrs. Weiss, I think you need to come inside.”

“I’m fine.” I yanked at the keys, pulling them out of her hand so hard that I stumbled backward, almost falling on the sidewalk.

“Listen to me.” Her voice was the commanding, imperious one I’d heard on the playground, a tone that could get a few dozen unruly kindergartners to snap to attention. “As a teacher, I am a mandated reporter. If I believe that children are in danger, I have to call the Department of—”

“What are you talking about?” My voice was almost a shout. I widened my eyes to show how completely ridiculous she was being. “You think the children are in danger?” The soft comfort of the pills was gone, vanished, evaporated, as if it had never been there. My body was on high alert, heart pounding, adrenaline whipping through my bloodstream, and I could hear my voice getting higher and louder. “I had one glass of wine.” Never mind the pills I’d taken beforehand. “One. Glass. I’m fine.”

“I don’t know what you’ve had, but I can’t let you drive with children in your car.” She put a hand—a patronizing hand—between my shoulder blades. “Come inside. Sit down. Have coffee.”

Now there were three cars behind mine. I recognized Tracy Kelly, and Quinn Gamer, and a man I didn’t know, and all of them were staring. Quinn had her phone in her hand, busily texting, probably telling someone—her husband, a friend—exactly what was going on; Allison Weiss, Mrs. Vibrator in Every Purse, had shown up at Stonefield wasted.

“Mommy?”

I looked inside the car, where Ellie was buckled into her booster seat, with her thumb hooked into her mouth. Ellie hadn’t sucked her thumb since she was three. “Why is everybody YELLING?”

“Okay,” I said, and opened my hand. The key fob slid out from my sweaty fingers and fell onto the sidewalk with a clink. “Okay.”

TWELVE

Mrs. Dale got the kids out of the car and drove it to the teachers’ lot. She left me in her classroom, then disappeared with Ellie and the boys. I hoped she was taking them back to the Enrichment room, giving them treats, letting them play with the newest toys. I took a seat at one of the munchkin-sized desks and pulled out my phone. Janet answered on the third ring.

“Allison?”

“Hey!” I said, trying to sound upbeat and untroubled, even though fingers of cold sweat were tracing the curve of my spine and I’d noticed my hands shaking as I’d punched in her number. “Just letting you know that I’m running a little late. The traffic was a mess,” I lied, knowing that Janet would believe me. “Sit tight. I’ll have them home as soon as I can.”

“Take your time,” she said.

We hung up, and I rummaged through my purse for a bottle of water. I sipped it, looking longingly at my tin, knowing how stupid it would be to take a pill now, now of all times. My heart was still beating so hard I could feel my temples pounding, and I could feel more sweat collecting there, beading above my upper lip. Then I thought, In for a penny, in for a pound. The pills were my normal. They’d help me calm down. They would get me through this. And if they did, I promised God and Ellie and whatever forces or spirits might have been listening, I would stop. I would.

I slid two blue pills under my tongue just as Mrs. Dale came into the room, carrying a steaming WORLD’S BEST TEACHER mug and packets of sugar and Cremora and Sweet ’N Low.

“Thanks,” I said. I dumped fake cream and sugar into the cup and sipped. Mrs. Dale sat at her desk and loaded folders into a tan leather satchel. I waited for the lecture to begin. When it didn’t, I started talking.

“Listen. I appreciate what you did out there. I understand that it’s your job. But, like I told you, I had one glass of wine, this afternoon with Janet Mallory. You can call her if you don’t believe me.”

She looked at me steadily. “Were you taking anything else?”

That’s when I glimpsed my loophole. My way out. The light at the end of the tunnel, shining glorious and gold. “Oh my God,” I whispered, widening my eyes, letting my jaw go slack, doing everything but slapping my forehead. “My back went out over the weekend, and I’m taking . . . God, what’s it called? A muscle relaxer, and a painkiller. I totally forgot I’m not supposed to drink with them.” I hung my head, my expression of shame entirely unfeigned. “Oh my God, what is wrong with me?”

Maybe I imagined it, but I thought Mrs. Dale’s expression softened. So I kept going. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t believe I didn’t double-check.” I swallowed hard. The enormity of the situation—the trouble I could be in, the fact that I could have hurt children, mine and someone else’s, or hit someone else, some stranger on the road—was covering me like a skin of ice, freezing my feet, my knees, my belly. If she reported this, I could lose my daughter. If Dave found out that I was driving under the influence . . . I shook my head, unwilling to even think about it. I couldn’t let myself go there. Containment. Containment was the name of the game. “You were absolutely right to not let me drive. I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again.”

Mrs. Dale’s expression was unreadable. Was she buying any of this? I couldn’t tell.

“You were taking painkillers?” she finally asked. I started nodding almost before the last syllable was out of her mouth.

“That’s right. And a muscle relaxant. My back . . .”

She looked at me for another long moment. “When my niece had a C-section,” she finally said, “they gave her Percocet. Her doctor kept prescribing them for almost six months after she’d given birth, and when he cut her off, she found another doctor, a pain specialist, to write her prescriptions for Vicodin and OxyContin.”

I tried not to flinch. Vicodin and Oxy. My favorites, my nearest and dearest . . . and, at that very moment, I wanted about a dozen of each. I wanted not to be there, not to have been seen by the ladies in the carpool lane, who were probably already spreading the word, not to be in that classroom that smelled like little-kid sweat and banana bread, being lectured by some old battle-ax who probably had no idea what it was like, trying to raise kids and hold a job and run a household these days.

“She took those pills for years. I believe that we all got used to it when Vicki didn’t seem quite right, or when she was tired all the time. We’d ask her about what she was taking, and she’d say it was no big deal, and because she had prescriptions, because she was under a doctor’s care, none of us worried. We didn’t know she was borrowing pills from her friends when her prescriptions ran out, or buying them from someone she met at the gym . . . or that she’d gotten a prescription for Xanax and was trading those for her neighbor’s painkillers.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“What happened was, she died,” Mrs. Dale said. In the quiet, empty classroom, I heard myself gasp. “On the death certificate it said respiratory failure, but she had taken about five times more pills than she should have, and she had a few glasses of wine on top of it, and she went to sleep and she didn’t wake up.” She looked at me, unflinching. “Her little girl found her. It was a school morning, and my niece’s husband was in the shower, and Brianna went into the bedroom and tapped her mom’s shoulder.” I sat there, frozen, my body prickling with goose pimples, my eyes and nose stinging with unshed tears. I could picture it—a woman about my age, in a nightgown, on her back in bed, underneath the covers. The sound of running water from the bathroom, the billow of steam and the smell of soap, and a little girl in Ariel pajamas shaking the woman’s shoulder gently, then more insistently, not noticing the stiff, unyielding texture of the flesh, or how cold it was, saying Mommy, Mommy, wake up! And in my head, the little girl was Ellie.

I swallowed hard. Oh, God. What was I going to do? I had to stop, that was clear. But what if I couldn’t? Mrs. Dale was looking at me. I wanted to explain, to tell her how this had happened, how stressful my life was, between my job and my parents and my husband and his work wife and Ellie, and how sometimes I didn’t like being a mother much at all—how I liked the concept, but the reality of it was killing me. I couldn’t take the tears and tantrums and endless Monopoly games, the way Ellie would wander down the stairs half a dozen times after she’d been put to bed, requesting a glass of water, a story, her night-light turned on, her night-light turned off, how she’d bang on the door when I was in the shower, or even on the toilet, just trying to pee or put in a tampon, until I was ready to scream, to grab her by her little shoulders and shake her, shouting, Just stay in bed, please! Just leave me alone and give me five minutes of peace!

“Brianna was four,” said Mrs. Dale.

“Four,” I repeated. I imagined Ellie going to move-up day with only her daddy in the audience to cheer as she crossed over the bridge to first grade. I thought about her getting her period with no one to tell her what to do . . . or, worse, some bimbo of a stepmother who’d regard my daughter as competition. Her bat mitzvah . . . her first date . . . senior prom . . . college acceptance letters. All without a mother to encourage her and console her, to love her, no matter what.

I dropped my head. No more, I thought. I can’t do this anymore. And right on the heels of that thought came, inevitably, another: I need them. I couldn’t imagine leaving Ellie to face life without a mother . . . but I also couldn’t imagine facing my life without a chemical buffer between me and Dave, me and my mother, me and the Internet, me and my feelings. How could I survive without that sweet river of calm wending its way through my body, easing me, untying knots from the soles of my feet to the top of my head? How could I make it through a day without knowing I had that reliable comfort waiting at the finish line?

I gave my head a little shake. This was stupid. So I had let things get a little out of hand. So I’d come to school a little loopy. Nobody had gotten hurt, right? And I wasn’t going to die. I wasn’t. I wasn’t taking that much, and it was prescription medication, not heroin I was buying on the streets. It wasn’t like I was some cracked-out junkie . . . or like I’d end up dead in bed with a mouthful of puke and a little girl to find me. I was smarter than that.

Except, a little voice inside me whispered, wasn’t Mrs. Dale’s niece on the same stuff as you? And you’re buying extra, and you’re not taking it as prescribed. Not even close. I told the voice to shut up, but it persisted. Instead of taking one every four hours, you’re taking four every one hour . . .. and you’re drinking on top of that.

You need help.

No, I don’t.

This can’t go on.

I’m doing fine!

“I’m fine,” I muttered, half to Mrs. Dale and half to myself . . . but, even as I said it, I could imagine a little girl shaking her mother’s shoulder. Her mother’s cold, stiff, dead shoulder.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” said Mrs. Dale. “But I know what this looks like. And I know it can happen to anyone. The nicest people. The smartest people. My niece was so beautiful. You’d never look at her and think that she was a drug addict. She was just taking what the doctors gave her. Right until she died.”

“I appreciate what you’re saying, but that’s not me. I don’t have a problem.” Never mind the surveys I’d taken, the questionnaires I’d filled out, the increasing number of pills I needed to get through the day. Never mind the promises—not before nine, not before noon, not while I’m working, not when I’m with Eloise—that I’d broken, one after another, every day, stretching back for months. “I don’t. I just made a mistake today, and you were right to take my keys, and I swear, I swear on my daughter’s life, that it’ll never happen again.” I took a gulp of lukewarm coffee and forced myself to ask, “Are you going to report me?”

After an interminable pause, Mrs. Dale shook her head.

“Thank you. I’m sorry. I promise . . . I swear to you,” I repeated, “this will never happen again.”

She gazed at me, and her eyes, behind her bifocals, looked kind. “There’s no shame in asking for help if you need it,” she said . . . and then she walked out, leaving me alone with my coffee, and my keys.

I waited until she was out the door before I shoved my hand in my purse and touched the Altoids tin, then the prescription bottles, one, two, three, four. I had pills halfway to my mouth before something inside me, the little voice of reason, rose up and demanded, What the FUCK are you doing?

I put the pills back. I put the cap on the bottle. I put the bottle in my purse, and laid my head on top of my folded arms . . . and then, alone in the empty classroom, I started to cry.

THIRTEEN

The next morning, I didn’t take a single pill. I dropped Ellie off at school, treated myself to an extra-hot latte with a double shot of espresso, and then drove to Center City, pulled on oversized sunglasses and a baseball cap and slipped through the side door of the church on Pine Street I’d found online the night before. In the basement, about twenty people, most of them men, sat in folding metal chairs. Tattered posters were thumbtacked to the walls. One read “The Twelve Steps” and the other “The Twelve Traditions.” In the front of the room was a wooden desk with two more folding chairs behind it and a sculpture of the letters AA carved out of wood on top, along with a battered-looking three-ring binder and a basket. I pulled my baseball cap low, flipped my collar up, and took the seat closest to the door. The chairs began to fill, until there were almost fifty people in the room.

I looked around, dividing the attendees into categories: Aged Homeless (lots of layers of dirty clothes, and not many teeth) and Young Punks (pale, white, wormy Eminem clones in obscene T-shirts and with multiple piercings). There were old guys in Phillies jackets you’d pass on the street without a second look, and a single woman in a business suit with gold hoop earrings and leather pumps that I knew couldn’t have cost less than five hundred dollars, but it was mostly a collection of people who looked nothing like me.

“This seat taken?” asked a young man—maybe a teenager—in a blue T-shirt. When I shook my head, he sat down, swiped at his nose, and gave the pimple on his chin a squeeze. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said back. He had a ring through his nose that made me think of Ferdinand the bull; Ferdinand, who didn’t want to fight, just sit and sniff the flowers. I glanced at my phone—five minutes until this thing kicked off—and continued my appraisal. The crowd was mostly made up of men, but in the back of the room I spotted two more women, both in their fifties or sixties, looking like, as Dave’s frat buddy Dan might have said, they’d been ridden hard and put away wet. One of them had unnaturally blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail that went uncomfortably with her weathered face. The other was a brunette with gaudy earrings and a phlegmy cough. The blonde wore sweatpants, the brunette, a pair of high-waisted jeans and a mock turtleneck, à la Jennifer Aniston, circa Friends, season one. To pass the time, I made up jobs for them. The blonde was a cashier at a gas station; the brunette waited tables at a diner. Not a hipster diner with Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap and a legitimate chef using artisanal ingredients in the kitchen, either, but a grungy place somewhere in Northeast Philadelphia, where the mashed potatoes came from a box, where truckers and cabdrivers and construction workers came to eat meatloaf and play Patsy Cline on the jukebox.

“First time?”

Oh, joy. Ferdinand was making conversation. I hoped a curt nod would appease him. It did not.

“You court-stipulated?”

I didn’t know what that meant. “Excuse me?” I asked, and then yawned. For the past twenty minutes, I hadn’t been able to stop yawning. My nose was running, and my eyes were watery. Allergies, I figured. Also, I felt like I was jumping out of my skin. My toes wanted to tap; my legs wanted to bounce and kick; my torso wanted to squirm. It was all I could do to hold still.

“Didja get, like, a DUI or something?”

“Oh, no. No, nothing like that.” Were all the people at this meeting here just because a judge told them they had to be?

He gave me a grin. When he smiled I saw that, in spite of the ring in his nose and the spiderweb tattooed on his neck, he was still more boy than man. Not too long ago, he’d been climbing off a school bus every afternoon, and dressing up on Halloween. Someone had kissed him when he’d fallen down, had put silver dollars under his pillow in exchange for his baby teeth, had signed his report cards and attended his parent-teacher conferences, had worried when he’d stayed out late, lying awake in the dark, waiting for the sound of his key in the front door.

An elderly man in a plaid shirt and khaki pants with a large bandage on one cheek took a seat behind the desk and rapped his knuckles on the table. “Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Tom, and I’m an alcoholic.” At least, that was what I suspected he said. Between the way he mumbled and his thick-as-taffy Philadelphia accent, I caught maybe every third syllable.

“Hi, Tom!” the room chorused, their voices cheery, as if being an alcoholic was something awesome to celebrate.

“This is an open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Anyone who wishes to attend may do so. The only requirement for membership in AA is a desire to stop drinking. I’ve asked a friend to read ‘How It Works.’ ”

As Tom’s friend, a rotund white-bearded man who’d introduced himself by saying “I’m Glen, and I don’t drink alcohol,” droned through both sides of a laminated piece of paper—something about half-measures availing us nothing, something else about suggested steps as a program of recovery—I began plotting my escape. Aside from the business-suit woman, who was probably completing a degree in therapy or social work and observing this as part of her coursework, there was no one in the room I could imagine even having a conversation with.

“Many of us exclaimed, ‘What an order! I can’t go through with it,’ ” Glen read. I shrugged my purse onto my shoulder. Who talked like that? No one I knew. “Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. We claim spiritual progress, rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas. One, That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.”

Not me, I thought. Except for that little slipup the day before, I was managing my own life just fine. Not to mention my daughter’s life, my husband’s life, and my parents’ lives.

“Two,” Glen continued. “That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.”

Wrong again. I could do this myself. I just hadn’t tried. I would cut back on my own. Eighteen pills today, then sixteen pills tomorrow, and fourteen by the weekend, and ten a day by Monday . . .

“Three: That God could and would if He were sought.” Everyone in the room joined in, chanting those last words: could and would if He were sought. At which point, I realized that I had wandered into a cult. Why hadn’t anyone told me that AA was some strange turn-it-over-to-God deal? I thought it was a self-help thing, where you got together with other drunks and druggies and figured out how to solve your problem. Shows what I knew.

“Any anniversaries?” Tom asked from behind the desk, looking around the room. “Anyone here counting days?”

A young man in a blue sweatshirt and dirty work boots raised his hand. “I’m Greg, and I’m an alcoholic and an addict.”

“Hi, Greg!” chorused the room.

“Today I got thirty days.”

The room burst into applause. “And,” Greg said on his way up to the front of the room, where Tom gave him a bear hug and what looked like a poker chip, “my parole officer says if I stay clean for ninety and I pass all my piss tests, that bitch has gotta let me see my kid.”

Awesome, I thought, as the room clapped for this charming sentiment. Greg has a kid. Greg has a parole officer. Greg just called his kid’s mother a bitch. Suddenly I needed to leave with an urgency that approached my desperate need for a pill first thing in the morning. I sidled over toward the coffee urn, thinking that I’d stay there until the group’s attention was occupied, then make a break for it. Meanwhile, I pretended to be interested in the dog-eared posters framed behind smeary glass: KEEP IT SIMPLE. ONE DAY AT A TIME. THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD.

I don’t belong here, I thought. These people aren’t like me. I’m not as bad as they are; not even close. I can figure this out on my own.

“This is a speaker meeting,” said Tom. “I’ve asked one of my sponsees, Tyler, to speak.” He pointed to his left, where a man who was maybe twenty-one, with skin the color of skim milk past its sell-by date, sat slumped in a thin, discolored T-shirt, jeans, and battered sneakers.

“Hey,” he said, managing to pull himself upright. “I’m Tyler, and I’m an alcoholic and an addict.”

“Hey, Tyler!”

Tyler hocked back snot and scratched his forearm. “Yeah, so. Um. Tom here’s my sponsor. He’s a real good guy. And he said I gotta come to a meeting and speak, so here I am. I’ve got . . . what is it? Fifty-seven days today.”

The room applauded, with people calling out “Congratulations!” and “Way to go!” and “Keep coming back!” Tyler ducked his head modestly and delivered the next part of his speech directly into his sternum.

“I know I’m s’posed to be sharing my experience, strength, and hope, but I’m mostly gonna be sharing hope, because . . .” He gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “I don’t really have much experience with this whole not-using thing.”

With that, Tyler launched into his tale. Mom was an alcoholic, Dad was a heroin addict. They’d leave him alone in the house for days at a time while they were “out partyin’.” Tyler had his first drink at eleven, stealing a pint of his grandfather’s vodka and drinking the whole thing. “And, from then on, I guess it was just one big party.” I dumped powdered creamer into a styrofoam cup and listened. “I’d drink vodka before school, sneak a few beers during lunch, smoke a joint in the parking lot before I came home. And that was ninth grade.” By tenth grade he was smoking meth; by the time he was expelled in the eleventh grade, he was sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to hitchhike to Kensington, where he’d started to shoot heroin. Finally, his parents performed an intervention. No word on whether they’d cleaned up their own acts or were just sober enough to notice that their son was in trouble.

“They said I had to move out or go to rehab. This was after I, uh, stole my mom’s engagement ring and pawned it, ’cause I was all strung out, you know, and I, like, needed to score, and I didn’t care what it took. Didn’t care who I hurt. That was me when I was using.”

As quietly as I could, I tossed my coffee cup into the trash can and slipped out the door. This isn’t for me, I thought. I didn’t do meth, I didn’t shoot heroin, and God knows I never stole anything from anyone. I didn’t even smoke!

I walked briskly back to my car. Anyone who saw me would think I was a regular stay-at-home mom on her way to pick up some essential, forgotten ingredient—a dozen eggs, a cup of sugar—before her kids came home from school. Which I was, I decided. I wasn’t an addict, like the people in that room. I was a working mother under an inordinate amount of stress due to her job, her marriage, and a father in crisis; a woman who had, quite naturally, turned to an available remedy to help her manage her days.

“I’m fine,” I said. And then, to prove it, I bought a dozen eggs and a bag of brown sugar at the grocery store, and had fresh chocolate-chip cookies waiting when Eloise came home.

FOURTEEN

“Mommy!”

I blinked, rolling onto my side, running through my own internal whiteboard. Today is TUESDAY. It is five-fifteen. The next meal is DINNER, and you’d better start cooking. I heard, then saw, the doorknob of my bedroom turning back and forth.

“Mommy’s resting!” I called, and closed my eyes again. I’d been working flat out from five in the morning until it was time to take Ellie to school, and then from the moment I’d gotten back home until one. I’d decided to take a nap, and, after three blue Oxys failed to do the trick, I’d chewed up two more, then shut my eyes, and it was like I’d been punched hard in the head. I hadn’t just fallen asleep, I thought, trying to get my legs moving. I’d been knocked out, plunged into unconsciousness.

My phone was blinking. There were three new e-mails and a pair of texts from Sarah. CALL ME BACK, read the memo line. R U okay? read the second. U sounded weird.

Oh, God. I had no memory of speaking to Sarah. What had I said? What had I done? Panic surged through me. I pushed myself out of bed, pressed the phone to my ear, dialed Sarah’s number, and hurried to the bathroom so I could pee and talk at the same time.

I got her voicemail. “Hey, Sarah, it’s Allison. Um. Sorry if I sounded a little out of it.” I wiped and flushed, feeling frantic and sick and disgusted with myself, wondering how to gracefully ask what I’d said. “Call me back—I’m fine now!”

I opened the bedroom door and almost bumped into my mother. As always, she had her face on—foundation and eyeliner and a gooey lipgloss pout. A studded black leather belt showed off her tinier-than-ever waist, and her French manicure looked just-that-afternoon fresh, but her expression was worried as she twisted her hands and looked me over. “Allison, are you okay?” she asked.

“Fine!” I edged past her, down the stairs. Had I remembered to defrost the chicken? Was there a vegetable I could cook to go with it? And—oh, God—had I said something to my mother after I’d taken all that Oxy?

“You seem . . .” She followed me down the stairs, impressively managing to keep pace with my half trot, even though I was barefoot and she was in heels. “You seem like you’re not doing well.”

“I’m okay!” I pulled a box of rice out of the pantry, along with a can of hearts of palm. The chicken was still half-frozen in the fridge. I put it in the microwave. “Really. Just, you know, lots of stuff with work . . . and I’m worried about Daddy.” Normally, changing the subject to my father would be enough to start the waterworks, but my mother was looking at me with an unfamiliar intensity, narrowing her eyes as she studied my face.

“You know,” she said, “if you needed to take a break . . . if you and Dave wanted to go away somewhere, I’d be happy to stay with Ellie.”

I blinked. Was this my mother? My mother, who could barely take care of herself?

“That’s really generous of you. But I’m fine. Like I said, just a little overwhelmed right now.” My mind was running on its typical three tracks. There was dinner to be prepared. There was work to be considered—I’d filed my blog post, but I still had to throw some red meat to the commenters, whom I’d been neglecting. And, as always, there were the pills to count, and count again. Did I have enough? Were there more on the way? Had I sent money to my Penny Lane account?

I shook my head. Ellie and my mother both watched me as I cracked eggs, shook breadcrumbs into a bowl, set the table, and preheated the oven.

“Ellie, let’s go play cards,” said my mom. They filed into the living room.

Everything’s cool, I told myself, vowing to apologize to Sarah in person and to be more present—or at least more awake—for Ellie. I am fine.

I heard the garage door creaking upward. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Ellie chanted, sprinting toward the door. I wasn’t expecting Dave for dinner. Hadn’t he told me that he had some dinner thing to go to, some bash one of the big unions was throwing that he needed to attend? Or had that been the night before?

“Ellie, help me set the table,” I called. I could hear Dave’s low voice mixing with Ellie’s bright chatter, and then the two of them came into the kitchen with Ellie’s feet balanced on Dave’s shoes, clutching his hands and giggling as he walked.

“How was your day?” he asked.

“Fine! Busy!” I bent to check on the chicken.

“Mommy was sleeping,” Ellie announced.

“Mommy was tired,” I said, feeling grateful that Dave couldn’t see my face. I hadn’t told him about my run-in with Mrs. Dale. Ellie hadn’t, either. At least not yet. I knew better than to tell her not to say anything—that, of course, would guarantee that she’d go running to Dave with the whole story, about how Mommy fell down and Mommy got her dress all bloody and Mommy got put in a time-out by a teacher. My hope was that her typical five-year-old attention span would save me, and that events from the other day would be, to Ellie, as distant as things that had happened years ago.

“Do you know Mommy snores when she sleeps?” Ellie inquired.

“I do not!” I was smiling so hard that my cheeks ached as I cracked ice cubes into a pitcher, then gave the hearts of palm a squeeze of lime juice, a drizzle of olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt.

“You do too. And you DROOL. There was a whole PUDDLE underneath your face.”

“Tough day at the office,” I said, and turned to get the milk out of the refrigerator. When I shut the refrigerator door, Dave and my mother were looking at each other.

“What?” I said. Neither adult answered.

“What?” I said again, trying to sound happy, trying to look happy, trying to pretend I hadn’t spent the past five hours passed out in a puddle of my own saliva.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” my mother finally ventured.

“I’m all right,” I said. Smile still in place, voice still untroubled. Dinner in the oven. Blog post filed. At least, I thought I’d filed it. I would cut Ellie’s chicken, then I’d run upstairs just to double-check. And have another pill. “Everything’s good.”

My mom and Dave exchanged a look. “Hey, Ellie, how about you and Grandma go out for sushi so Mommy and Daddy can talk,” Dave said.

“Sushi, sushi!” chanted Ellie, grabbing my mother’s hand and towing her toward the door.

“Do you need a ride?” I asked.

“We’ll get a cab!” called my mother. The door swung shut behind them.

“Let’s sit down in the dining room,” Dave said. I felt my knees start to quiver as I followed him there. The dining room was low on my list of priorities, which meant the only furniture in it was the table and six cheap IKEA chairs. The walls were bare, covered in an unattractive greenish-blue wallpaper that I’d planned on removing as soon as I had the time and then the money.

“What is it?” I said, trying to sound casual and unconcerned.

“Sit down,” Dave said.

I curled my fingers around the back of a chair. “Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

He sighed. Typical Dave. He could never come right out and say something. There had to be a few moments of prefatory sighing and throat-clearing first. “You and I need to talk.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, buying time. The news began to register in my body. My chest felt heavy, and my knees had that airy, trembly feeling. Was he going to ask me for a divorce? My heart stopped beating as Dave reached into his work bag and pulled out a FedEx envelope. From Penny Lane. Shit, I thought. Oh, shit, shit, shit.

“What is this?” He hadn’t opened it. And the return address probably said something banal about Computer Parts or eBay Services. Maybe there was a chance I could talk my way out of this.

“It’s a SIM card for my cell phone.” I widened my eyes. “Terrifying, I know.”

“You’re telling me that if I open this envelope I’m not going to find drugs?”

My heart was thudding so hard I was surprised Dave couldn’t hear it. “Oh, Jesus, Dave. What are you, McGruff the Crime Dog? You think I’m”—I curled my fingers into sarcastic air quotes, rolling my eyes at the very notion—“doing drugs?”

He lifted the envelope and shook it. I braced myself for the sound of rattling, praying that the package had come from one of the vendors who was liberal with the bubble wrap. No rattle. Thank you, God. But Dave wasn’t giving up.

“Why don’t you open the envelope and show me what’s inside.”

Maybe it was the smug look on his face, or the accusation in his tone. Whatever it was, it infuriated me. “Because I don’t fucking have to!” I yelled. “Because I didn’t sign up to play show and tell! Because you’re my husband, not Inspector Javert!”

A wave of dizziness swept from the base of my spine to the crown of my head. There was a ringing in my ears, a high-pitched chime. My mouth was dry. My palms were icy. I wanted a pill. I needed a pill. Just the thought of them, crunching between my teeth, that familiar bitterness flooding my mouth, helped me relax the tiniest bit.

Dave continued to stare at me. I thought about that day at Stonefield, and how, a few hours ago, I’d called Sarah but had no idea what I’d said. I thought about the money I was spending, the naps I was taking, the sleepless nights, my racing heart. This needs to stop, said a voice in my head. It can be over right now. This can be the end.

“I don’t—” I blurted. I made myself shut my mouth, take a seat, look him straight in the eye when I spoke. “Okay. I will tell you the truth. I have been buying stuff online. But it’s prescription medication. You know I’ve got herniated discs.”

Dave reached into his work bag. From the inside pocket he pulled out a Ziploc bag full of empty prescription bottles. He reached in again and pulled out a sheaf of papers. I squinted until I could see what they were—printouts from Penny Lane, detailing every purchase I’d made.

Closing my eyes, I turned my face toward the wall.

“I called Janet last night,” Dave said into the silence. “I told her I was worried about you. I asked if she’d seen anything alarming—if you were late dropping Ellie off, or picking her up.”

“I have never been late,” I said. That, at least, was pretty much the truth.

“And then,” he continued doggedly, “I called the school.”

Oh, shit. “Dave . . .”

“Mrs. Dale called me back. She said you seemed like you were—the word she used was ‘impaired’—when you came to get the kids a few days ago. She said you told her you were drinking. That you’d had a glass of wine with a prescription medication, and you’d forgotten that you weren’t supposed to.”

I tried to interrupt. “Dave, listen . . .”

“You were going to drive drunk with Ellie in the car!” He started yelling, his face red, a vein throbbing in the center of his forehead, tears in his eyes. “What if she died? What if you died? What the fuck is the matter with you?”

I started to cry. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t like having a husband who won’t even talk to me anymore. Maybe I’m sick of being the one who does everything around here.”

He glared at me, unmoved by my tears. “Don’t make this my fault, Allison.”

“You don’t know.” My voice cracked on the last word. “You have no idea what it’s like. Dealing with Ellie. Dealing with my parents. My work . . .”

“Maybe not,” he said coolly. “Maybe I don’t know. But I think there are people in the world who manage to do all of those things without becoming drug addicts.”

“I am not a drug addict!” And fuck that bitch Mrs. Dale for ratting me out. I mentally tore up the check I’d been planning to send to the Annual Giving campaign. I’d take myself shopping instead. “Okay. Obviously I shouldn’t have been drinking on top of the medication. I was tired, and I made a mistake. I’m not perfect.”

“You aren’t yourself. I don’t know any other way to say it. And everyone’s noticed. Me, your mom, Ellie . . .” He reached across the table, but I pulled my hand away before he could touch me. “If you want to get some help, I’ll support you as best I can.”

My laugh was high and shrill. “Help? What, like rehab? You think I need to go to rehab? You think I’m Lindsay Lohan now?”

“I don’t know what you need. But I know you’re taking more of those pills than you should be. I’m worried about you . . . and, quite frankly, I’m worried about you taking care of Ellie.”

I thought I’d been scared before, that day at Stonefield, when Mrs. Dale hadn’t let me drive. I was wrong. That wasn’t anything. This was real fear. This was true terror. And the best defense was a good offense. My father used to say that all the time. I drew myself up straight, grateful that I was wearing makeup, that I’d washed my hair that morning, that my clothes were clean. “Are you suggesting that I’m an unfit mother?”

Dave shook his head. “I’m saying that I’m worried about you, and I’m worried about Ellie when she’s with you. You need to take this seriously, Allison. People die from what you’re doing.”

“Okay! So fine! I’ll quit!” I made a show of extracting a bottle of Vicodin from my purse, uncapping it, and pouring the pills down the drain. I had a small secret stash, of course—a mints tin stuffed in my purse, a dozen Oxys in the bottom of my tampon box, a few Percocet in the glove compartment.

I turned on my heel and made what might have been a grand exit if my hip hadn’t caught the side of the table. I stumbled, and would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed the wall. Dave was right behind me, holding my gaze, glaring at me, with no trace of goodwill or humor or love in his expression.

“I don’t want to have to spy on you,” he said. “But I will do whatever I have to do to keep Ellie safe.”

“Ellie,” I said, with all the dignity I could muster, “is perfectly safe. I would never, ever do anything to put her at risk.” Except, of course, the thing I’d done a few days ago.

“If you want help, I am here for you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Great. See if you can send me to the place the guy from Friends went. They have Pilates.”

“Allison.”

“I promise,” I roared, before he could get off another adult-sounding, well-meaning warning. “I promise I promise I promise.” And I kept my promise all the way up the stairs, down the hall, and into the bathroom, where I fished pills out of the tampon box where I’d hidden them, and swallowed them, one, two, three.

FIFTEEN

I was too upset to sleep that night. I sat in the living room with my laptop, pounding out a blog post called “Husbands Just Don’t Understand,” while Ronnie slept in the guest bedroom and Dave snored away down the hall. I burned through work I’d been putting off, spending ninety minutes engaging with the comments section and coming up with story ideas for one of the magazines that had been e-mailing in the wake of my “vibrator in every purse” comment. Every time I felt my brain edging toward the words Dave knows what I’ve been doing or I’m going to lose my family or even just I want to stop and I can’t, I would march myself into the bathroom and take another pill. By six a.m., I was wild-eyed, smelling of acrid sweat, feeling both sluggish and frantic. And, somehow, the unthinkable had happened. I was out of pills.

“Can you take Ellie to school?” I rasped through the bathroom door. Rats’ teeth of panic were nibbling at my heart. Dave sounded disgustingly collected.

“Sure. No problem.”

I went to the computer and logged on to Penny Lane, to make sure I hadn’t placed an order and then forgotten about it. No. There was only the stuff that Dave had intercepted. Prior to that was an order for sixty pills that had arrived two days ago, and every last one of them was gone. I stared at the screen, feeling my jaw drop as I did the math. Thirty pills in less than a day and a half? That couldn’t be right. Except I could remember the package arriving, and how fast I’d gotten the envelope open and transferred the pills into my mints tin, how before I’d even gotten inside the house I had four of those babies inside me.

“Fuck,” I whispered. I went to the bedroom and began to go through my usual hiding places: my tampon box, the second drawer of my bedside table, the zippered pockets inside the different purses I’d used that month. There was nothing. I couldn’t even find a piece of a broken pill to tide me over. Everything was gone.

I sat down on the bed, heart thumping, palms and temples greasy with cold sweat. I picked up my phone and scrolled through the names of my doctors. Called her last week . . .. called him on Monday . . .. haven’t called her in so long she’ll probably ask questions about why I need painkillers now.

Think, I told myself fiercely as I heard the garage door open and the car pull out of the driveway. Maybe there was stuff left in my father’s medicine cabinet . . . except I knew that there wasn’t. I’d cleared it all out before the Realtor had come for a final walkthrough. Did my mom have anything? And did I want to risk trying to get her out of the house so I could check?

Forty minutes after Dave’s departure, still in my pajama bottoms and the Wonder Woman T-shirt I’d worn while I worked, I sat on the examination table of a strip-mall clinic where a cab had dropped me off, talking to a doctor with a heavy accent and bags under his eyes.

“You hurt the back when?”

“Two years ago.” I was shivering, sweating, and having a hard time keeping my legs still. My knees wanted to kick, my feet wanted to tap, my body itched all over, and my fingers wanted to dig into my skin and start clawing. Withdrawal, I thought bleakly. A loop of every movie I’d ever seen in which a junkie kicked his or her habit had set itself on “repeat” in my mind. I was terrified of the agony I suspected was awaiting me . . . and I was furious at myself, furious that I’d let this happen, not stayed on top of what I had and what I needed. All those weeks—months, even—of promising myself I’d cut back, just not today, when in fact my use had increased and increased, my tolerance building until I needed four, or five, or even six little blue OxyContin to feel the transporting euphoria that a single Vicodin had once given me . . . and now here I was with nothing.

“You take how much of the painkiller?”

“I don’t know. A lot. Maybe ten pills a day,” I lied.

“Of the thirty milligrams?”

“Yes.” Ten was a good day, and Oxys weren’t the only thing I was taking, but never mind. He’d give me something—I didn’t even care what. Then I’d get on top of this. I’d slow my roll, start being prudent. No more pills first thing in the morning, no more pills in the middle of the night. Three or four days—a week, tops—and I’d have this under control.

“Every day, you take them?”

I nodded, launching into the story I’d already told the intake nurse. “And, like I said, I’m going to see my regular doctor, only she’s out sick, and I’m leaving for vacation this afternoon, and if you could just give me maybe ten pills, just so I can get through the plane trip . . .”

He leaned back against the exam room’s sink, taking me in. His name was Dr. Desgupta, and his eyes, behind heavy brown plastic frames, were not unkind.

“Every day, you’re taking these pills,” he said again.

I bent my head and prayed. Please, God, just let him give me enough to get through the day and I’ll stop, I’ll get help, I’ll do something, I swear I will.

“And is it because the back hurts? Or is it because you need them, because you are getting sick without them?”

I didn’t answer. I wrapped my arms around myself and concentrated, as hard as I could, on not throwing up. “Sick,” I finally said. “I’ve never tried to stop, and I think . . . I mean, I’m not feeling so great already.”

“There is medication. Suboxone.” I lifted my head. “An opiate agonist-antagonist. It blocks your receptors, so you can’t take the heroin, or the Vicodin, or the OxyContin. Whatever narcotic you were taking. But it gives you some opiate, too. Not enough so you get, you know, the high, but enough that you feel okay.”

I nodded. This sounded like an acceptable solution. I could take this Suboxone stuff and stop hurting, and then take a day to sort myself out. I’d get more pills, either online or from doctors, enough so that this would never happen again. I would contact a lawyer, and a child psychologist, which Ellie would undoubtedly require. I would taper myself off the pills, maybe try more of those meetings, or get myself a therapist, or start running again. But all I wanted, at that moment, was something to take, something to swallow or smoke or snort. Something that would ease my panic, slow my heartbeat, let me feel okay again.

“Here.” Dr. Desgupta had finally pulled out his prescription pad. “I will write for seven days. The medicine is a film; you dissolve it under your tongue.” He ripped off the page. I snatched it out of his hand. “How long ago was last dose of OxyContin?”

I tried to remember what time it had been when I’d chewed up the last of my pills, and tried not to remember licking the inside of the jewelry box where I’d found the final two Vicodin. If you were ever wondering whether you had a problem or not, the taste of jewelry-box felt was answer enough. “Four in the morning?”

He looked at the clock, calculating. He had big brown eyes, a bald head with a few strands of black hair carefully arranged on top, and a soft, accented voice. “Take first one at noon. You should be started in the withdrawal by then. Feeling like you have the flu. Sweaty, hands shaking . . . you feel like that, you take first one.”

“Thank you,” I said faintly, and was up and out of the chair, the prescription in one hand and my cell phone in the other, before he could tell me goodbye.

• • •

I could remember the rest of the day only in snatches. I remembered my cab ride from the doc-in-a-box to the drive-through lane of the pharmacy. The flu, the doctor had told me . . . except this was to the flu like a pack of rabid pit bulls was to a Chihuahua. I was running with foul-smelling sweat and shaking so hard that my teeth were chattering. My skin was covered in goose pimples; whatever I’d eaten the day before churned unhappily in my belly. I remembered the pharmacist telling me that the medicine wasn’t covered by my insurance without prior approval, and insisting, over and over, that I didn’t care, that it didn’t matter, that I’d pay out of pocket and worry about reimbursement later.

Back at home, I speed-read the instructions, then tore open one of the packets and let the yellow film dissolve into sour slime under my tongue. I locked the bedroom door and lay on my bed, where I endured six hours of the worst hell I could imagine. My entire body twitched and burned. My legs kicked and flailed uncontrollably. I couldn’t hold still, couldn’t get comfortable. My skin felt like it was host to hundreds of thousands of fiery ants wearing boots made of poison-tipped needles. I scratched and clawed, but I couldn’t make them go away. The first time I threw up, I made it to the toilet, and, from there, I managed to send my mother and Dave a text explaining that I was sick and that, between the two of them, they’d have to handle Ellie and her obligations. The second time, I made it to the sink. The third time, I couldn’t even make it out of bed. I was freezing cold, so I’d tried to get under the covers, but the kicking—kicking! I was actually kicking!—had disarranged everything, had loosened the fitted sheets and the mattress cover. I writhed on the bed, trying to moan into the pillow, praying that the Suboxone would start its work, that I’d feel better, that Ellie wouldn’t see or hear this.

My mother knocked at the door. “Allison? Allison, are you okay?”

“Flu,” I called back, in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. I’d gotten myself wrapped in a blanket and was sitting, hunched over and moaning, in the old glider chair I’d used to nurse Ellie. I was burning up, my hair glued to my cheeks in matted clumps, making high, whining noises. I moaned and rocked, moaned and rocked, as the minutes dragged by. At six o’clock I couldn’t stand it any longer. I found the phone, crawled into bed, and managed to dial the clinic and tell the receptionist that it was an emergency and that I needed Dr. Desgupta.

“Yes, hello?” he answered.

I told him my name. My voice was a high, wavering whisper. I didn’t sound like myself; I sounded like Ellie when she woke up sick in the middle of the night. “There’s something wrong . . . I’m really sick . . .”

“You are having the nausea and the diarrhea?”

“Yes,” I whispered. I was crying, on top of everything else. “I’m cold . . . I can’t stop shaking . . . everything hurts . . . I feel like I’m going to die . . .”

“Twenty-four hours,” he said calmly. “The Suboxone is kicking the opiates off your receptors. But in a day or two you will be well again.”

A day or two? I wasn’t sure I could take another twenty minutes of this agony. “I can’t do this,” I said. My voice was sounding less like human conversation than like a cat’s yowl. “Please, you have to help me . . . I think I need to go to a hospital . . .”

“I am thinking,” the doctor said calmly, “that maybe you need to be in a rehab bed.” He trilled the “r” of “rehab,” making it sound like something wonderful and exotic.

“No rehab,” I said. “I’m not an addict. Please. I’m not. I’m just really, really sick.”

“You go to one of these places, they will help you,” he explained. “There is no need to stay for the twenty-eight days unless you like. But you need to be watched until you are well.”

Rehab. I started crying even harder, because I suspected that he was right. Maybe I didn’t need rehab, but I needed to be somewhere with nurses and doctors and medicine and machines. The pain was intolerable. I could barely speak; I couldn’t keep my legs still. I actually wanted to die. Death would be an improvement over this.

The doorknob turned. Shaking and sick, I felt the weight of Ellie’s body as she crawled beside me. “Mommy?” she whispered. With her tiny hands she patted my hair, then my forehead. “Mommy, do you need true love’s kiss?”

I made some noise, thinking that I’d never hated myself as much as I did at that moment. Then my mother was there. “Oh my God.” Somehow, she kept her voice calm as she said, “Ellie, go to your room. Let me help your mommy.”

I opened my eye. “Mom.” She bent down and hugged me hard. I whispered Dr. Desgupta’s name, then handed her the phone, and shut my eyes again as I heard her say, “Yes, I’m Allison Weiss’s mother, and she’s very, very ill.”

Curled on my side, I rocked and rocked. Faintly, as if I were listening through a paper tube, I could hear my mother’s voice, her questions and answers. Opiate addiction . . .. Suboxone . . .. Precipitated withdrawal . . .. Which facility would you recommend?

“No rehab!” I moaned, and grabbed at my mother’s sleeve.

“Yes, rehab,” she said, and pulled herself away. She wasn’t falling apart or weeping. There were no snail tracks of mascara on her cheeks, no trembling hands or whimpered complaints about how she could not go on. It was funny, I thought. All it took for my mother to actually be a mother was a little withdrawal. “You’re sick, honey. You’re sick, but I’m going to help you get better.”

I shut my eyes. Later I remembered voices in the bedroom, a stethoscope against my chest, my mother’s voice, then Dave’s, reciting from the Penny Lane invoice a list of what I’d been taking, how many, and for how long. We see a lot of this, someone—a paramedic—had said. More than you’d expect. Happens to the nicest people. The nicest people, I thought. That was me. Then they lifted me onto a gurney, and I felt the sting of a needle in my arm, and when I opened my eyes again I was in a hospital bed, feeling as if every bone in my body had been smashed, then clumsily reset.

“Where am I? What happened?” I whispered. Dave stood there in a Blind Melon T-shirt and jeans, looking at me. I hurt all over. My body felt like a skinned knee, flayed and bloody, like a single, stinging nerve ending . . . and I was more ashamed than I had ever been in my life. I couldn’t deal with this. Not now. Not until someone gave me something for the pain.

“You’re in the hospital. You had something called precipitated withdrawal.” Dave had come to the doorway, but had not taken a single step inside the room, like he’d committed to stopping by, but not staying, at a party whose guests he had no interest in knowing. “It’s what happens when you’ve been taking lots of opiates for a long time, and then something kicks them off your system.”

“FYI, it’s not a lot of fun,” I whispered. Dave didn’t smile.

“There’re two days left of school.” Dave was doing his reasonable, just-the-facts thing, the one I recognized from telephone conversations with his editor. “Your mom and I can manage Ellie. Then she can do day camp at Stonefield.”

“My mom can barely manage herself,” I said.

“You need to go somewhere,” he said.

“You mean rehab.” Dave did not deny it. “Look,” I said, into the silence. “Obviously, buying pills online was a bad idea. I know I was taking way more than I should have. I’m under a lot of stress. I’ve been making some bad decisions. But look, it’s been . . .” I looked around for a clock, then took my best guess. “What, twenty-four hours since I had anything, right?” Without waiting for him to confirm, I plowed on. “So I should be fine. Maybe I just need some rest. Fluids. Then I can come home, and I’ll be okay. I just won’t take any more pills.”

Could I do it? I wondered, even as I made my case. Maybe, twenty-four hours later, I’d be physically free, but I knew that if I was home alone I’d be on the computer or the phone, getting more.

You’re an addict.

No I’m not.

You can’t stop.

Yes I can.

And in that moment, in that bed, what I’d done, what I’d let myself become, hit me hard. I had endangered my daughter. Janet’s boys. Myself. Even though no one had gotten hurt—yet, my mind whispered; no one has gotten hurt yet—the truth was that if I kept going this way, Ellie might grow up with an absence far worse than what I endured. She would have the same hole in her heart that I had, the same questions that tormented me—why wasn’t I good enough for my own mother to love?

“It’s just twenty-eight days,” Dave said.

“What about my dad?” I managed. “What about Ellie?”

“Your father’s in a safe place. Your mom can take care of herself, and I can take care of Eloise.”

“And what if I don’t go?”

Dave didn’t answer. He just looked at me steadily. “I hope you’ll do the right thing,” he finally said. “Because I need to do whatever it takes to make sure that Ellie is safe.”

Panic was blooming inside me, pushing the air out of my lungs, as I sorted out what that could mean. I imagined Dave moving out, and taking Ellie with him. I pictured my husband in his good navy blue suit, standing in front of a judge, all the evidence—the envelopes from Penny Lane, bank statements and receipts, copies of all the prescriptions I’d accumulated from all the different doctors. Your honor, my wife is not capable of caring for a small child. Or, worse, what if I came home from the hospital and found that the locks had been changed?

“Allison. Be reasonable.” His voice was as gentle as it had been on the phone the day we’d moved my dad to Eastwood. “Is this how you want to live your life? Is this the kind of mom you want to be?”

I opened my mouth to tell him, once again, that things were all right, that they were almost entirely okay; that yes, obviously, there’d been some slips, that things had gotten out of hand, but they were by no means completely off the rails or—what was the word they kept using in that meeting?—unmanageable. My life was not unmanageable. I could manage it just fine.

But before I could say that, I thought about how I’d been spending my days. Waking up in the morning, my very first thoughts were not of my daughter or my husband, not of my job or my friends or my plans for the day, but of how many pills I had left, and whether it was enough, and how I was going to get more. The time I spent chasing them, the energy, the money, the mental resources . . . and the truth was, at that point I was barely feeling the euphoria they’d once provided. A year ago, one or two Vicodin could make me feel great. These days, four or five Oxys—the medicine they gave to cancer patients, for God’s sake, cancer patients who were dying—were barely enough to get me feeling normal. Was this how I wanted to live?

But how could I leave? How could I walk away from everything—my home, my work, my father, my daughter? There was no way. I could just go home and fix this on my own. I could do better. I could get it under control, cut back, be more reasonable. Except, even as I began to outline a plan in my head, I was suspecting a different truth. My “off” switch was broken, possibly forever. Having just one pill felt about as likely as taking just one breath.

I looked up at my husband. “I suppose you’ve already found a place to ship me?”

He nodded. “It’s in New Jersey. It’s very highly rated. And my insurance will pay for twenty-eight days.”

Twenty-eight days, I thought. I could do anything for twenty-eight days.

“Okay,” I said quietly, thinking, This has to end somehow, somewhere, and maybe this is as good an ending as any. “Okay.”