Naomi sniffs, and I hear the words she isn’t saying, ghosts of arguments we’ve already had.
“You agreed this was the right choice.”
“I agreed that you needed to go back into treatment. You insisted it be there.”
In fact, I refused to consider anyplace else. I felt guilty for practically blackmailing my grandmother, but it was the only way I could get her to go to the bank and secure the funds from my trust to finance my stay.
“The best care money could buy. Even Georgia said so, remember?” I say. “They must have something all those other places don’t.”
Naomi nods, not because she agrees, but because this part of the conversation is over. We’re at the airport; the tickets have been purchased, my spot secured: I’m going. She gets out of the car to hug me goodbye. “So skinny,” she says, her fingers digging into my ribs like she’s checking to make sure they’re each still there. “You packed warm clothes?”
It’s such a normal question that for a split second I believe that I’m magically leaving for college or grad school all over again. “Of course,” I promise. I spread out my arms, indicating the oversize cable-knit cardigan I’m wearing even though the average high temperature in LA in January is sixty-six degrees. (Another thing I know.)
“Are you sure you don’t want me to arrange a car to take you from the airport to Shelter Island?”
Shelter Island.The name should be comforting, but instead it makes me picture stormy waters and pursuing pirates. Things from which you seek shelter, not shelter itself.
“I don’t mind the train,” I assure her. I lift my bag over my shoulder and walk into the terminal.
Inside, I’m hit by an onslaught of smells: cheap food, cinnamon chewing gum, bare feet, anxious sweat. I hear children crying, businesspeople taking meetings on their cellphones, metal detectors beeping in protest, change being emptied from pockets. When I was little, I loved airports. Everyone at the airport, it seemed to me, was on their own private mission: checking their bags, getting through security, racing to make it to their gate on time. The people who work at airports wear uniforms with nametags fastened to their chest or on lanyards around their neck; they manage to look at once harried and bored. I used to play at distinguishing the business travelers from the vacationers, the people who are leaving home from the ones returning.
Today, when I reach the gate, I curl into a rubbery chair, circling my left wrist with the fingers of my right hand, pleased that I can do it pinkie finger to thumb, fitting like a loose bracelet. My phone buzzes with a text.
Abby, I’m getting worried.I clear the screen before I can read the rest of the message, before my heart can feel warm at the nickname Jonah gave me. (I really should block his number.)
I stand and pace. Moving burns calories, and there will be no choice but to keep (mostly) still on the plane. The next several hours of my life are literally mapped out, west to east: just under six hours to JFK, two hours on the train to Bridgehampton, followed by forty minutes in a car including ten on a ferry. It’ll be long past dusk by the time I get where I’m going. This time of year, the days are short. Shelter Island is so far east that the sun there sets nearly fifteen minutes earlier than it does in Manhattan.
When they board us, I’m the last person to take her seat. My mother used to say,Celebrities board last. We’d hold up the line with people stopping to gawk at us.Not that I’m a celebrity. No one on the plane seems to recognize me, and why should they? It’s mostly my name that’s famous, not my face. And that’s only to an ever-shrinking group of fans.
But if you’re a certain age and like a certain kind of music, you’ve heard the stories. You know (because the press said so) that I was addicted to heroin when I was born in 1996. Maybe you read the tabloid articles“reporting” that I was kept in the hospital following my birth because I was going through withdrawal. They said that CPS came and refused to release me to my parents’ care. They said my dad (Scott Harris, bass-playing Gen X god) paid off the agents who were supposed to keep me safe. They said it was disgusting that government employees would prioritize money and fame over a helpless child’s welfare, and my birth story turned into a warning tale about government corruption. Meanwhile, I was (apparently) home with my parents, and my grandmother had taken charge (Naomi moved herself in until I was six months old), so I was fed and diapered and sleep-trained and whatever else you do with infants. If I’d gone through withdrawal, I certainly didn’t know it.
When I was thirteen years old, I asked Naomi what really happened and she said the press exaggerated to sell papers, which isn’t exactly a denial. I didn’t bother asking my mother. (You know what they say:How can you tell if an addict is lying? Their lips are moving.)
The flight attendants walk the aisles to offer drinks, pretzels, stale cookies. The person sitting beside me pulls a paper bag from beneath the seat in front of him: McDonald’s. I haven’t eaten McDonald’s for years, but the smell is so familiar it’s like I’m five years old again. My seatmate rips his ketchup packets open with his teeth. I feel like sugar is entering my bloodstream through osmosis.
I root through my bag until I find a piece of gum. No minty freshness for me: I prefer watermelon, orange, strawberry, flavors made from artificial sweeteners packaged in colors that don’t exist in nature. It’s almost enough to overpower the scent of soggy french fries and overcooked meat. I chew so hard my jaw aches, trying to distract myself from the twist of hunger in my belly.
Six hours later, I watch pale winter sun glint off New York City’s skyscrapers as the plane turns east toward JFK. I close my eyes, trying to imagine Manhattan in the early nineties, Georgia traipsing down one or another city block with her bad dye job, dark roots pulled into a greasy bun. Something else I know: The expressionjonesingcomes from Great Jones Street, because it’s where dealers used to hang out. Now there are million-dollar condos on the same corners where my mother scored her first highs.
By the time I was old enough to notice, Georgia’s celebrity was fading. Still, she always found a way to keep the world paying attention. So many times, I almost told her thatIwas paying attention, but I knew there was no point. One little girl’s focus is nothing compared with the whole damn world.
For as long as I can remember, I knew that my mother was a drunk and a drug addict, too interested in her substances to spend time with her daughter, so interested that she found a way to score, time and again, even at rehab. That’s what the tabloids said, the industry insiders, her manager, even her mother. It’s what I would’ve said, too, had anyone asked me.
I squeeze my right wrist with the thumb and forefinger of my opposite hand until it feels like my bones are protesting against my grip, as if to say,Don’t you know you can’t make yourbonesshrink like you can the rest of you?
No,I want to tell my bones.I don’t know anything anymore.
2Lord Edward
I’m late to meet my sister for lunch. Each step I take through Midtown Manhattan is agony. The restaurant is only a block away, but I might as well be heading to China for all the progress I’m making.
I picture Anne waiting for me, her long brown hair coiled neatly into a bun at the nape of her neck. She’s wearing a woolen blazer over pleated trousers, a belt cinched at the waist, a tailored white blouse, no wrinkles. She studies the menu, her face placid, her expression giving nothing away. Strangers wouldn’t know how angry she is at her little brother’s tardiness, wouldn’t recognize how she works her jaw when she’s annoyed, the way her pale white skin flushes pink. She’s pretending she can’t hear the people at the adjacent table staring, whispering, gasping.
Can it really be her?
What’s she doing in the States?
Didn’t you hear they sent the brother to school here?
