How long does it take to hate someone?
Call me an addict, and I’ll take some more,
Smile while you try to control me now,
But you will never, ever hold me down.
Another lie. Of course they’re holding me here. I can’t leave, and Evelyn knows that.
I have nowhere else to go.
12Amelia Blue
Dr. Mackenzie walks me to the bedroom like I’m a little kid with a bedtime. “I’m downstairs if you need anything.” She shows me a button on the bedside table. “Press this and I’ll be right up. Some of my guests do their best thinking at odd hours,” she adds with a wink, as though the reason other therapists failed to fix me is because they scheduled our appointments on, say, a Wednesday afternoon, instead of meeting my every whim.
Finally alone, I pick up my phone. According to my internet searches, theRushin Rush’s Recovery is for a psychiatrist named Albert Rush. He and his wife worked as therapists outside Atlanta, then sold their practice and the home where they’d raised their son, putting everything they had into building the center here on Shelter Island. Albert Rush graduated from Duke, then received his master’s in psychology and clinical social work as well as an MD at Emory. (His wife’s credentials aren’t quite as impressive. In her bio, it says she grew up in the Northeast, moved to Atlanta to be near her husband, and got her PhD by attending community college classes at night after their son was born, her husband sparking her interest in psychology.) Albert Rush claims to be a descendant of Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and a pioneer of American addiction medicine, like he was destined for this sort of work. Even the son went into the family business eventually, earning his degree in clinical social work.
I google Benjamin Rush. He espoused the use of sober houses, embracing methods like forcible vomiting and compulsory attendance at religious services.
I search for my mother’s name next. A few weeks ago, Shocking Pink announced that they were going on tour with a new lead singer, a recent runner-up onThe Voice. Even so, they’re calling it a reunion tour. They’ll perform the songs Georgia lost all rights to because of a Byzantine recorddeal she signed before she had an agent or attorney to vet that sort of thing. It didn’t really matter in the end. Georgia only released two albums with the band before she realized she didn’t actually have to make music to be famous.
If she could come back as a ghost, Georgia would be haunting her old bandmates right now, rattling chains in their attics, possessing the dolls in their children’s bedrooms. How dare they do this, and so close to the ten-year anniversary of her death, claiming it was some kind of tribute? (The anniversary is another reason Naomi thought it was strange I wanted to come here now, but I told her it was a coincidence. That, at least, wasn’t a lie.) I imagine Georgia back home, throwing her phone across the room hard enough to break into a million pieces, crawling the walls of our bungalow in the hills, the house Dad bought with the money he made fromhisfirst record deal, the house Georgia could never have bought on her own. (And even if she could, it wouldn’t have occurred to her to do something as responsible as buy real estate or set up a trust for her daughter.) She’d be happy to see, at least, that across the internet, her fans—calling themselves the Justice for Georgia Warriors—are trying to organize a boycott of the tour.
I sigh as I scroll social media. Posts about Georgia populate my feed no matter how many times I tell the algorithm I’m not interested.
I turn to face the nightstand and stare at the little button Dr. Mackenzie showed me. If I pushed it, would she sprint to my room in her pajamas? I reach out, my fingers itching, like a child who’s been warned away from the hot stove. Almost anything seems better than getting caught in a #georgiablue whirlpool.
There have been conspiracies and rumors about my mother since before I was born and long after she died—that her marriage to my dad was a sham, that she slept around so much I can’t possibly be Scott Harris’s daughter, that Dad wrote her music, that he only killed himself to get free of her. Only the most hardcore conspiracy theorists ever questioned the manner of Georgia’s death, an accidental OD after (technically, during) yet another stint at rehab. They don’t know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a phone call, a stranger on the other end explaining that your mother checked herself out, scored drugs nearby, and never woke up.
I’m not here for more whispers and conspiracy theories. I’m nothing like the superfans who look for Easter eggs in Dad’s lyrics and in the clothes my mother wore.
But my phone continues to feed me #justiceforgeorgia, and it’s harder to ignore them than it was a few months ago, as though each post is a car crash from which I can’t make myself look away. So like Alice down the rabbit hole, I fall.
The Police Chief
His phone rings early in the morning, not even 6:00 a.m. The sound wakes his wife, sets the cat to meowing, demanding breakfast and to be let out back. Cats don’t understand that when a police chief’s phone rings at an ungodly hour, it’s because something serious has happened, something that takes precedence over mealtimes and litter boxes and traipsing through the barren winter grass, searching for moles and voles and mice to torment.
In fact, that’s why he’d wanted a cat in the first place. A creature who didn’t know about his job; who didn’t complain, as his kids did, about his long and irregular hours; who wouldn’t wrinkle its nose, as his wife did, when he came home smelling like a crime scene.
Of course, it’s not as though Shelter Island is a hotbed of crime. Last year, there were six overdoses, Narcan administered three times; the island isn’t isolated from the opioid crisis. And certainly, in summertime, godawful city drivers flood the streets with their Range Rovers and Jaguars, driving like they’re three sheets to the wind even when they’re stone-cold sober. July and August, the chief and his officers issue speeding tickets like candy; they give out more citations between Memorial Day and Labor Day than they do in all the other months of the year.
But now, early on a January morning, the streets are quiet. The chief is groggy enough that he has to ask the officer on the other end of the line to repeat himself.
“Sir, a woman—you know Clarice Bendersly, husband died six months ago?—she was out walking her dog this morning and found a body on the beach.”
The chief wipes the sleep from his eyes, sits up straight. No one describes a living, breathing person as abody.
It’s already been identified. Not officially; the officer explains that Clarice Bendersly recognized the body.
Someone from the recovery center.
When they broke ground on the recovery center, there was an uproar. People claimed the town council had been bought off, bribes paid to overcome zoning laws and building codes. The rich believe they can get away with anything if they throw enough money at it.
The people who work at the center, they may live on the island year-round, but they’re not locals any more than the summer people are. The owners opened the center here not because of some history with this island—the chief heard they’re from Georgia—but because they thought the island was an idyllic location, isolated and private, rustic but appealing.
And the patients—they’re worse than the summer people, using up the island’s sea air and sandy beaches like everything was put here for their benefit.
Just before the center opened, the owner met with local law enforcement, explaining that their patients would be on the property voluntarily, distinguishing them from the drunks and addicts the chief interacts with on the job, the sort who get sent to rehab as part of a plea deal to avoid jailtime.
