Sweet Water(9)

I get them on, and he lets me because he isn’t capable of doing it himself, and it takes everything I have.

Finn hasn’t needed me to do these things for him in so long, and the fact that he needs me to do them again is eviscerating to my soul, like he’s been reduced to a pitiful child by this event. I fear somehow I’ll never get him back.



Martin lays Finn down on my in-laws’ office couch with a wool afghan pulled up to my son’s neck, his face splotchy and red from the cold, or maybe the wool, but most likely the drugs.

The drugs. I shiver.

It still hasn’t sunk in.

A formal council is set up in my father-in-law’s den, complete with local politician (Martin’s brother), town sheriff (Martin’s cousin), and retired nurse (my mother-in-law) all seated in a stiff semicircle of wingback chairs. My father-in-law is perched at the center at his antique attorney’s desk, presiding over us. Tiffany lamps provide the only light in the room.

I can’t clearly see their faces to gauge their reactions. How much has Martin told them, and why didn’t he consult me first before calling in the dogs? I was angry enough about his texting his father in the woods, but this feels like an ambush. No one is speaking, and I’m so upset about this family affront, I can’t turn back around to face them. I also don’t want to leave Finn on the couch. He isn’t well, and I’m worried, because this isn’t the first time we’ve had a meeting like this one.

Years ago, we met to discuss an indiscretion with Livvy, who’d been involved in a car accident. The driver had threatened to sue because he said she’d distracted him, causing him to crash and break his femur. He wanted compensation for loss of work at his construction site.

“Some lowlife from Carnegie trying to take us for every dime,” William had said. “Fat chance.”

It was early in our marriage, and I was still trying to please the Ellsworths. Livvy didn’t seem to have a voice in the matter, even though I found out later that she’d been drunk and the man had just been trying to give her a ride home from the bar, and she had in fact distracted him when she’d vomited all over his lap. The circumstances that led to her face being so close to his crotch were still in question.

“They’ll have evidence of distraction. From her sick,” Mary Alice had said in embarrassment.

“No,” William had said with sternness. “They won’t.”

A meeting was called back then to discuss our course of action. If the media approached us, we all had fine-tuned answers to give. I didn’t like any of it, but I went along with it because William made it sound like our family was being taken advantage of, and he explained—“this is what happens when you are wealthy.”

Rich people problems, I thought, and then remembered I was one of them. It was the hardest transition of my life, fully acknowledging which side of the economic fence I was on, often being reminded of where I came from with comments like William’s about the rules of the wealthy and feeling inadequate because of it. I was pregnant with Spencer at the time of Livvy’s accident, and Martin swore we didn’t know about the baby at the time, but that was only because I hadn’t told him. There was no way I could leave the family circle after I found out.

“Sarah?” Martin says.

I finally turn to face the music, and everyone is staring at me like they’ve been waiting too long for a server to bring them a drink.

I look past William to the books lining rows of shelves behind him, law treatises and hardcover classics. I see a Charles Dickens novel that looks old enough to be an original, but I know for certain he hasn’t read it. When I marveled at his collection at our first meet and greet, he scoffed at me and said he didn’t really care for fiction and those books I’d been admiring were “just for decoration.” I should’ve known right then and there that I didn’t belong with these people, but I assumed the privileged didn’t have much of a need for imagination because they were already living their wildest dreams.

“Have you called a doctor?” I ask no one in particular.

William gives his wife a commanding nod, but no one answers my question.

“Martin said there would be a doctor here.” I panic.

Mary Alice rises from her chair and walks to Finn’s side. Beside him is an old-school black doctor’s bag I’ve never seen before. Mary Alice regards the bag with the curiosity of a child sifting through her first Fisher-Price medical kit. I watch as she turns on the otoscope for the ear canal and waves it around like she’s performing a laser-light show on the back of her veiny hand.

“Martin, where is the doctor?” He doesn’t answer me. Liar. There was never going to be a doctor.

I watch as Mary Alice sets down the otoscope and picks up the blood-pressure cuff, then slips Finn’s arm out from beneath the blanket, the skin there blotchy as well. After a quick pressure check and a flash of Martin’s penlight to Finn’s pupils, she proclaims, “All vital signs are good.”

“He should be in a hospital being looked over, not here.” My voice is disruptive, an annoying echo in a circle of people who’ve come here to conduct business. I don’t understand why we’re here, but at the same time, I do. This is the place we go to discuss family problems. Problems we want to make go away.

“Finn’s going to be fine. He’s just fighting whatever it is he took,” Alton says curtly. Alton Pembroke is Livvy’s only child, Martin’s first cousin, and the town sheriff, a man I gather was nearly cast out of the family for not going to college and then fully embraced once they learned how he could better serve them.