Rapid Falls(13)

“I don’t want to get more teeth!” Maggie hollers, pushing out of Rick’s arms again.

“Thanks for the gift, Anna,” Rick says politely. “I need to get Maggie to the table. See you soon. Let’s go eat dinner, Mags. Noodles!”

Maggie nods gleefully, her oncoming teeth forgotten. Rick casts me a frustrated glance and an unspoken message: Get her out of here. Rick hates Anna’s drunken, unannounced arrivals, but I don’t know how to stop her from showing up, and the truth is, I’d rather she was here than anywhere else when she gets like this. I haven’t seen her since her last hospital visit. At least now I know where she is. I kick myself for letting three weeks go by without calling her. Maybe I could have caught this earlier. She smells awful, like stale vodka and unwashed hair.

“Anna, come with me.”

She stumbles, misjudging the distance between our bodies and kicking my heels as she trails me to what used to be our home office. Lately the room has become cluttered with toys and puzzles—evidence of Rick trying to entertain our daughter while finishing a freelance job. It was described as a sunroom by our Realtor; the back wall is built entirely of windows, with a glass door that opens onto the back deck. It’s a nice place to work, though I’ve used it more often to stage interventions with Anna. She and I have had many heart-to-hearts in this room, though I doubt she remembers any of them. She sits on one of the two armchairs in the corner, clumsily propping her elbows onto her knees and burying her face in her hands. I sit down beside her.

“What’s going on, Anna?”

“I can’t even buy the right present for a little kid. I’m so stupid . . . I’m a waste . . . Why do you even let me into your perfect house?” She chokes on the last words, saliva spraying the air between us. I wait, unspeaking. There’s no use engaging—I’ve learned my lesson many times over. Any words I say will inspire her to new depths of alcohol-induced self-loathing. She needs to get to the reason why she’s here without any encouragement from me.

She looks up, her eyes blurred with tears. “I saw someone today.”

I struggle to remember the name of her last boyfriend. “Shawn?” I guess.

She twists her face into a theatrical mask of misery. “No. I don’t care about Shawn. We’re through.”

“Okay.” I take a deep breath, grateful that she’s too drunk to hear my impatience.

“Someone who looked like . . . like him.” She looks at me meaningfully, dramatically emphasizing the pronoun.

My hands turn to ice as I meet her gaze and shake my head no. She knows I don’t like to talk about Jesse.

“I’m so . . . horrible.” She lets out a melancholy moan and covers her eyes again. She’s probably trying to force out more tears for effect, but it’s hard to cry when you are as drunk as Anna is. “I saw him, and for a second it just seemed like . . . it hadn’t happened. I was sixteen again. And he was still . . . alive,” Anna continues, her voice muffled.

I am angry that she is talking about him, and it makes me feel cruel, so I play dumb. “Who are you talking about?”

“You know who!” She begins to pull at her hair. The white skin on her scalp rises in painful points.

“Want a drink?”

“Sure.” She looks up at me eagerly, her eyes red. I never drink alcohol with Anna. I need to show her a model of good behavior so she can see how her life could be.

“Soda or juice?”

“Coke is fine.” I can tell she is disappointed.

I walk to the small bar fridge and grab a can. “Sounds like you’ve had a hard day, Anna. You have to make your own choices about how to get through . . . everything. Have you thought any more about rehab?”

I split the can between two glasses, one for her and one for me. As I walk over to hand it to her, she stands suddenly and clumsily presses her body against mine for an embrace. I can’t hug her back even if I wanted to, because my hands are holding the two glasses. Our foreheads collide as she pulls the back of my head forward with her hand, forcing our faces together. Her breath is awful.

“It’s all my fault, Cara. I should be dead. Not him. You’re the only person I can talk to. You’re the only one who knows what happened.”

“Stop, Anna,” I say, wiggling out of her embrace.

“I can’t. That’s the problem.” She laughs, a barking sound, and heads for the back door. “Bye.”

I can’t tell if she slams the door intentionally or out of drunken clumsiness. I walk back toward the kitchen. Later I’ll worry about whether she made it home. I’ll probably text her frantically, begging her to answer just so I know she’s alive. For now, though, I return to my handsome husband and playful daughter, feeling nothing but gratitude that she is no longer here.





CHAPTER SIX

June 1997

Right after he told me about Anna, my dad left the hospital to go home to get me some clothes. When he returned, his face was grim. I realized that he’d had to cross the bridge where Jesse’s truck had crashed through the railing. The river cut the town in half: our grocery store, library, and bank were on one side, and the schools, hospital, and church were on the other. About thirty miles upriver was Rapid Falls and then nothing but forest and white water until you hit the largest national park in the state.