When You Go Away Read online

  She only meant to leave for a little while. A drive to let the balloon deflate enough so that she could breathe. She got into the used car--a Honda Accord--that she'd bought when she’d sold the Land Rover and started the engine. She had to get away fast. The balloon now pressed against her throat, a hard pinch like a tracheotomy. If she didn't drive quickly, the explosion would burst from her, and she could hurt someone. So she sped out of the apartment complex parking lot and into the street, turning and stopping, turning and stopping until she was on the freeway heading where? To her house? Yes, her house, where she was supposed to be living. Why wasn't she there? Why was she in those rooms with the boxes and the crying and the mess? The balloon inched into her throat, and she tried to swallow, sweat on her upper lip. Because of Graham. Because he couldn't stand the baby. Because he'd already exploded and destroyed everything, all of them in tiny pieces.

  Ryan had disappeared already. Who knew where Carly would go? And the baby? The baby cried and cried and cried. She was sick. Always sick, holes in her throat and in her stomach, her body curled like a pretzel. The baby was going to die but then didn't die, and Peri didn't want it to be because of her. That's why she was here, in the car, driving home.

  If only her mother were here. Peri needed her mother now, felt her arms, the way they used to hold her. Janice would have fixed it all, made Graham stay, kept the explosion from happening, kept the baby well, better, healthy. Her mother would have held the baby, kept her from crying and crying and crying. Peri swallowed again, the air hot in her lungs.

  She parked the car on the street across from her house. But it wasn't her house any more. It was a different color and there was a new deck and new tiles on the roof. She wanted to get out of the car and complain, tell them to put it back the old way because she was here now and ready to live there again. Didn't they know she would be back? And then a woman's face was peering in the window.

  "Peri! Oh, Peri! I'm so glad to see you. Why haven't you called?"

  From a long distance, the real self inside herself found words and pulled them out through her mouth. "Oh, Melinda. Hi. It's been such a strain getting the kids situated. I promise I will."

  Melinda turned to look at Peri’s house that wasn't her house. "Can you believe what they've done? I was saying to Tom just last night that it’s the worst color. But they’re planning to do a lot of landscaping. Trees out front and all."

  This woman was once her neighbor, her friend, but she was not the same, as fake a friend as this house was. Peri looked down, not wanting to stare into the woman's eyes and let her see the crying and blood and shattered glass she was running away from. "I just thought I'd take a quick peek. I've really got to get back."

  "How is Brooke? Leon Magnoli actually found our number and called us. He's desperate to see her."

  Peri was silent, trying to forget the other life, Leon with his toys, the way the baby could make sounds with him, squeal in happiness. There was the life before that too, when Graham was there and they were happy, before . . . before the doctors told them the horrible names that defined the curve in the baby's spine, the reason for her sad, crooked face.

  Putting her hand on the door, Melinda leaned toward her. Peri smelled her Beautiful perfume, saw the short expensive cut of her hair. "You've lost so much weight, Peri. I mean, well, you look fabulous."

  She missed her flesh, felt her skeleton against the back of the seat, her bones a bowl filled with the air she couldn't breathe.

  "Well, I'll call Leon. And I'll call you, too." Peri felt her fingers find the car keys. "My love to Tom. And tell the girls at the swim club hello."

  "But, Peri! I need your number. Can't you at least come inside?"

  Peri lurched away, gunning the engine, feeling the pressure under her foot. She needed a long drive; she needed to get away from here, too, because she might destroy everything when she blew up, her real house and the fake house and the kids and all the people, every one.

  

  When she merged onto Highway 99, the air slipped pencil thin into her lungs. Peri clutched the steering wheel, concentrating on the column of air, watching the road, her eyes watering. She was still dangerous, still ready to explode, so she pressed on the gas. She wasn't far enough away.

  By the time she reached Turlock, her hunger was like an angry rat scratching at her belly, and she took the Monte Vista exit. There had to be a place to eat that was safe, where she wouldn't do any damage.

  At the fast food place, the scary clown face in front of her, white and round and smiling, she spoke into the drive-thru microphone, scared to let anything but the smallest of sounds out of lungs. The tinny voice asked her over and over, "What? Ma'am? Could you say that again?"

  "A hamburger. A shake."

  "What kind?"

  "Chocolate."

  "What?"

  "Chocolate."

  "That'll be four twenty-five at the window," and then when the person inside thought the machine was off, Peri heard, "What a whacko."

  She paid for her food and pulled into a space at in the parking lot, hunching down in her seat and eating the hamburger, the meat greasy and delicious. Licking her fingers, she wished she'd ordered one more, two more, but then she started sipping her shake. The liquid was thick and creamy, but she thought of the baby and her syringe and her powdery formula, the only thing she could eat because otherwise, she aspirated food into her lungs. That's what always happened, and the last time at the hospital, the doctors had cut into her throat and slid in a plug so she could breathe with a machine because she was getting worse and worse, her voice softer, her face more still, every muscle clamping down. Every day, Peri filled her baby up with the white fluid, chalky protein and amino acids. There was nothing beautiful about that, nothing tasty, nothing to celebrate, and she felt the chocolate on her tongue, the thick, frozen, viscous drink, and she opened the car door and threw up everything, the hamburger, the pickles, the bun, the shake. I'm just like the baby, she thought, wiping her mouth. I can't eat.

  A woman walking by with a baby--a normal baby, a normal baby--in a stroller made a huge half circle around the car, holding her other child, a toddler, close to her and moving quickly, looking at Peri from the corner of her eye, like someone might look at something dangerous, a bomb or a knife. Peri started the car and merged into traffic, heading back toward the highway. Despite throwing up, the rat in her stomach was in a corner cleaning its paws, and she got back on 99, heading south.

  That night at the Motel 6 in Azusa, she paced the room, the TV on to Entertainment Tonight, that woman with the shiny perfect legs talking and talking. She should call home, talk to Carly and Ryan, but if she picked up the phone, something bad would happen, the poison in her voice strong enough to go through telephone wires. The baby was still crying because she could hear her, even 300 miles away. Clamping her hands on her ears, she walked faster, and then remembered the Xanax her doctor had prescribed her two years ago.

  "These will help you relax. Don't worry about it," her doctor had said. "You of all people need to relax, Peri. You have too much on your shoulders." But she hadn't taken anything, needing to be awake in case something went wrong, and it always did, especially in the middle of the night. The baby's breaths slowed, jerked, stopped, started. Fevers bloomed at night like crimson flowers on her neck and face. How could she rest? Then there were the regular feedings and the medicine and the baths, all like clockwork. It was up to her. All of it.

  But that didn't matter now. It was smart to calm down; the heat inside her would simmer. Finding her purse, she dug through until she found the brown plastic bottle, opening it and sliding two white pills onto her palm. That would do it. She looked for a syringe to use, but no!, the drugs were for her. Her drugs, not the baby's. She didn't have to mash it up and dilute it and suck it into the syringe and press it into her own stomach to appease the hungry rats. It was just her, Peri, and she swallowed the pills without water and lay on the bed, closing her eyes against the sound of
her child in her hospital bed so many miles away.

  

  In her dream, her father Carl was on the porch of their Berkeley house, finishing a martini and folding up the San Francisco Chronicle. He was dressed in his work clothes—a white button-down shirt, a smooth silk tie, his suit jacket hanging on the back of his chair, his real estate agent smile in his pocket. She could almost see the reflection of the buildings he sold and leased and rented in the reflection of his silver cufflinks. Peri was only seven, and she saw that he wasn’t just home from work—he was packed and ready to go.

  "Why are you going?"

  "I tried to follow the advice. Can’t do it." He looked at her over his martini glass. "That's all I can say."

  "What did I do?"

  "We can't talk about it here."

  Peri crawled to him and pulled on his leg. "I'll be good. Don't leave us. I'll do whatever you say."

  But in the dream he ignored her, pushing her off his leg as he stood, and grabbed his packed bag.

  "If you can find me, I'll let you know."

  She could still feel his pant's fabric in her hands, and she looked up and it wasn't her father--it was Graham. But then whoever it was turned down the path and was gone, and Peri was flat on the floor of the porch because for some reason her legs didn't work. She was sucking in shallow air, imagining his car on the highway, twisting and turning in a puzzle she would never solve.

  

  "Housekeeping."

  Peri opened her eyes, her heart pounding. The baby? Had she been fed? Did the kids get to school? Was there any formula left? What was her temperature? She had to take it now. She sat up, rubbing her face.

  "Housekeeping."

  As she looked around the room, the night before came back to her, the drive, the pills. It was almost ten o'clock. She'd been asleep since eight o'clock the night before. "No. I'm still here. I'll--I'll be checked out soon," she said, pulling the covers from her naked body, seeing as if for the first time how thin her legs were, more like Carly's than how she remembered her own. She stood up, her breath going down into the top of her lungs, the pressure somewhere at her breastbone. Maybe she wasn't so dangerous now. Maybe she should go back home.

  She turned on the bathroom light and almost let out a gasp at the sight of her face in the mirror, wanting to flick off the light immediately. But something held her still, made her look. She was as awful on the outside as she was on the inside, all her horrid thoughts taking away flesh and color, leaving huge black circles under her eyes, pushing her cheekbones above the sunken face under them, her lips pale and dry. Her collarbones looked like something she and her brother Noel might have held between them while making a wish, and each of her ribs were articulated, as clearly visible as if she was the skeleton in a biology classroom. Her breasts were two flat, round tan dots hanging over her bones, and it seemed as if her pubic hair had been erased, the hair thin and washed out, almost like she was a girl again. Nothing left said she was a woman. There was not one reminder of the babies she'd born and fed and held.

  She was the monster she felt inside, the terrible person who had destroyed her marriage, her children, their lives, all of them. Peri sank to the floor, the harsh tang of Clorox in her eyes. Everything had disappeared. It was all Graham's fault, all of this, the evil inside her, the baby's ragged breathing, Ryan rushing past her in a swoosh of marijuana smoke, the look on Carly's face in the mornings when she asked, "Are you getting up today?" If Graham hadn't left, none of this would have happened, and he didn't care, he didn't know.

  Leaning up on her elbows, the tile hard on her skin, she wiped her eyes. She was going to find him. That's where she had been going all along. She was going to drive to Phoenix and tell him everything, tell that woman he married the whole long story, let her know what her husband did to the baby. Peri was sure Graham hadn't told her why he wouldn't buy the wheelchair and van. Peri would sit down with this woman and ask her why Graham hadn’t sent alimony, enough empty months that she’d finally decided to sell house so she wouldn’t be dependent on him for anything. She would tell her about the hours at home with the baby, her gnarled body, her tiny face, and then she would show that woman how the baby breathed at night, the terrible stillness of how she stayed alive.

  THREE

  Carly sat in the living room, folded laundry surrounding her, Brooke's clothes in nice neat white squares, hers and Ryan's in looser, more colorful piles. Carly faced the front door as she worked, and when someone walked up the concrete stairs, the noise a pound, boom, pound as the steps echoes through the building, her heart thudded with the hope her mother was back. She'd stop folding and watch as shadow feet passed by the door. Each time, though, she caught her breath, thought, please, please, please. But the feet kept on moving to some other door, to some other family. Someone else’s mom or dad.

  When she was done folding the laundry, Carly made herself stand up and walk back into her mom and Brooke's room, and again she tried to conjure something, Brooke's fever down, gone, her sister's skin back to its normal pasty pale white. Each time she'd checked on her sister during the day, Carly had closed her eyes, hoping for this very thing, but each time instead, Brooke's fever was up, 100.4, 100.9, 101.3, the skin under her diaper boiling. Finally around four, Brooke had dug through her mother's medicine cabinet and found the baby Tylenol, reading the bottle and measuring enough into the syringe. Brooke hadn't even noticed her pushing the medicine into the peg, and for a couple of hours, Brooke seemed better. And with the cool washcloths Carly put on her forehead, Brooke almost seemed normal. But then, her temperature began creeping up, her skin hot and red. Carly searched her sister's body for an explanation. There was none, just those strange round red patches. Her peg was fine, no red streaks, no hardness. Only her breath seemed different, deeper, full of something wet and sticky.

  Carly was soothing Brooke when Ryan pushed into the house, throwing his backpack on the floor with a thud. Leaving the washcloth on Brooke's forehead, she went into the kitchen, where Ryan stood looking into the empty refrigerator.

  "There isn't a fucking thing to eat around here." He closed the door and leaned against the counter, avoiding her eyes. "Did she call?"

  "It's Brooke. She's sick, Ryan. I don't know what to do."

  "Like I do?"

  "We've--we've got to call someone. We've got to call Grandma Mackenzie. Maybe Dad."

  Ryan rolled his eyes. "Yeah. He'll care. He'll come racing up here from Phoenix any second now."

  "She's sick. She's really sick. Worse than the time you gave her that chocolate syrup." The sentence stuck hard in her throat. She could have brought up another illness, but she didn't. She needed him to see everything. He'd given Brooke a taste of chocolate syrup when she was two, and she'd thrown up all her formula, breathing in some of the barf and getting really sick. Carly could still remember the way their dad had looked at Ryan, his eyes hard and small, his finger pointing to the middle of Ryan’s chest.

  Ryan bit his lip and stared at the yellowed linoleum. "What’s wrong with her?"

  "A fever. I can't get it to go away."

  "Shit. Shit!"

  "Come and check her."

  "I'm supposed to kick it with Quinn. I've gotta go." He started to walk past her, but Carly grabbed his arm hard, feeling how he'd changed, his arm not skinny any more but more like her dad's, or at least what her dad's used to feel like.

  "Please. I--I can't do it. I can't do it anymore."

  He clenched his fist, his muscles moving under her fingers, and then he relaxed into the brother she remembered from long ago, the one who used to play foot war with her on the couch. They used to name their feet Graham and Peri, their feet fighting out the marriage, as if one contest could answer the question of why they were all unhappy.

  "Fine. Whatever. Okay. Let's go check."

  They walked together into the room, the smell of Brooke's hot skin--lotion, formula, peroxide--reaching them before they made it to the door. "Fuck." Ryan pushed a
head. He sat down by her bed and lifted the washcloth. "She's on fire."

  "I gave her some Tylenol. In the peg."

  "It's not working now. Where's the thermometer?"

  Carly handed it to him, and he stared at it. "How do you use this thing?"

  "Here." Carly grabbed it and moved in front of him, placing it in Brooke's ear. She didn't want to look. She didn't want to see, but then it beeped and she had to, for Brooke. "One hundred and three."

  "That's not that bad. Can't it like get higher before . . .?”

  "Before what, Ryan? She like totally dies?"

  "What's the highest it can go?"

  "I don't know. Like 106 or something. But your brain fries."

  They were both silent, staring down at Brooke, her skin and hair almost matching. Outside, cars drove in and out of the parking lot, and Carly wondered if one of them might be their mother's. Peri would come home, bringing medicine and doctors and lots of money. "There is that pink shit in the refrigerator," Ryan said. "It's still there. Almost half a bottle or something."

  "I don't know. I think we should call 911."

  Ryan shook his head. "Mom. She'll be like in total shit."

  "I know. But she's not here. She--she left us. And Brooke is bad now. I can't do it anymore."

  "I say we give her the medicine. You can do it. In the peg."

  "No. I've been doing stuff all day. What if the medicine's old? We can't wait any more. She might stop breathing all together. She . . . " Her sister moaned, and Carly stopped talking. Brooke was listening to them, even in the burn of her fever.

  "But if we call 911, they'll wonder where Mom is. And she'll be screwed. We can't call Grandma Mackenzie either. Or Grandpa," Ryan said, whispering now.

  "I don't even have their numbers. I looked today all over the apartment. Mom took them."