The Water Keeper(55)
I’d had a feeling this was coming. Just not at this moment. “Yes.”
“Remember my pharmacist?”
“Yes.”
“Over the months, he let me buy on credit. Every three weeks, I’d go through the drive-through, wave, and he just added it to my bill. I told myself I’d do that just until I got my feet back under me. But I’d shredded some ligaments and my pain was high and I needed more than my doctor would prescribe. So one day I said something to him, and he told me he could get me as much as I wanted but the price was a lot higher. And since he was the middleman, he couldn’t do anything about that. So the price went from six dollars per pill to sixty dollars per pill, and at this point I’m eating them like Skittles and trying to pay the rent.
“Before I knew it I owed twenty thousand. The interest alone was more than I could service, and his dealer was putting pressure on him. But for months I kept buying. Kept medicating. Kept lying.” She made imaginary quotation marks with her fingers. “Just until I get back on my feet. Or my foot.” She shook her head. “I was never getting on my feet. That train had left the station.
“To make matters worse, he got transferred and my sweet deal with the pharmacy got noticed, not to mention my bill. Now I owe a lot of money to two people. The pharmacy and the dealer. Neither of which I could pay. The pharmacy passed me off to a collection agency who started calling nonstop and talking about garnishing my wages, and I’m thinking I’m going to lose my studio. And all this time he kept supplying me and never asked me for anything. I mean physical. He was a real gentleman when other guys wouldn’t have been. He showed up for his lessons and left the bottle and the payment for his lesson on the counter when he left. Always cash. He was a good bit younger than me, but then he invited me to this get-together with some friends, and when he saw Angel’s picture on my desk, he asked if she might like to go. I thought, Why not? He was successful, kind, pretty good dancer. Hadn’t laid a hand on me. Maybe he had nice friends. What could it hurt?”
She paused as the memory returned. “Pretty soon we were doing dinner, bowling, whatever. Angel would tag along. He was ten or twelve years older than her, and they became friendly but it wasn’t like a dating thing. It was more like he became an uncle. Least that’s what I told myself. Angel’s always had a thing for older men, but I didn’t worry too much about him. He was a standup guy. Never laid a hand on me or her. It seemed natural when he started inviting her to parties. He was just including her in a good time. I could tell she was growing to like him, but he looked out for her. She met a lot of his friends. There was always a party. And how could I tell her to lay off the drugs when . . .
“Anyway, he told her about this boat trip he’d been planning for years. He had this rich buddy who had this boat, and they were inviting whoever wanted to come with them. An Endless Summer sort of thing. Spend three months in the islands. Scuba. Sun. Sail. Bahamas. Cuba. Wherever the wind blew. I thought it sounded like a great adventure, and I certainly couldn’t afford to pay for her to do anything like that.
“They kept hanging out, but then some strange things started to happen. Like she had a personality transplant or something. I couldn’t seem to find my daughter. I mean, there was somebody who looked like her living in my house, but her heart was someplace else. Half the time Angel was screaming at me and it was almost as if something had turned her against me. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was telling her to be careful and she was accusing me of being a helicopter mom. Then we had a fight ’cause I was getting cold feet about her boat trip and she’d made plans to go and these new friends were expecting her—and then the next week, without explanation, this guy, he just canceled my bill. All of it. Zero. Problem disappeared. With both his dealer and the pharmacy. Told me he had several friends who were in the same boat, and this wealthy friend of his didn’t want any of the parents of the kids on his boat to worry about their kids while they were gone—that somebody had done him a favor one time and he just ‘took care of it.’ Called it ‘debt forgiveness.’”
“How much?”
“Not quite forty.”
Her hand was trembling. I let her talk. “And if I’m being honest . . .” A moment passed. “I knew when he came to me and said he’d canceled my bill that it was payment. Payment for Angel and the summer and the boat trip.”
She whispered, “I sold her.” She waited a second, then said it again. Punishing herself even more. “I sold my own daughter.” She was quiet for several minutes before she continued. “Can you believe a mother would do that? That I’m so demented and desperate that I’d sell my own daughter to pay my drug bill?”
I lay on my back and put my arm around her while she sobbed on my chest. After several minutes, she sat up cross-legged. She wiped her face and turned to me. “Is there a special place in hell for people like me?”
I turned on a light. “Tell me how you hurt your ankle.”
She looked surprised. “I was getting in my car at the grocery store. Sitting in the driver’s seat, one leg sort of hanging out the door while I set the bags on the passenger seat. A lady’s cart got away from her, slammed into my door, and the door closed hard on my ankle. It swelled up like a cantaloupe.”
“And when did this guy come to your studio for lessons?”