Tell Me Something Real Read online

  Most victims who survive shark attacks describe a similar experience: When the monster’s powerful jaws, filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth, clamp down on a leg, an arm, even a torso, they don’t feel pain. The shock is that unimaginable, that overpowering, that the body blocks out the sensation of being eaten alive. As I listen to Dad repeat the story, I understand that depth of shock, the sensation of being torn in half, yet too numb to feel it.

  Marie sits silent and still. I wait for Adrienne to cry or scream, to storm out and slam a door, but she remains in her spot, crammed next to Marie and me.

  “What about Lupe?” Adrienne asks. “Didn’t she suspect something? She always talked to the doctors.”

  I know what Adrienne is asking: Didn’t Lupe love us enough to protect us? Unlike Dad, she was there every day, monitoring Mom’s health, every infusion, every pill. She always called us mijas with such affection. We were in her care as much as Mom. She doted on us more than any other patient.

  Dad runs a hand through his hair and struggles with his words. “Lupe never worked for the clinic. She worked for your mother.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Adrienne says. “She worked harder than anyone else there.”

  Dad looks at her softly. “That’s because she was there to take care of you and your mother. That’s all she did. She was a private nurse.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Adrienne says.

  Dad reaches into his briefcase and withdraws a book of traveler’s checks. “Flip through this.”

  Months of checks made out to Guadalupe Ortiz. Five hundred pesos a month to perpetuate Mom’s lies.

  Marie, curled up between us, puts her head in my lap. I stroke her hair and wipe the tears from her cheeks. She lifts her head when she speaks. “Lupe lied too?”

  Dad rises from the chair and kisses Marie on the forehead, whispering something only she can hear, before taking a seat on the floor. When we were younger, we sat in the same positions as he read us books, bedtime stories, and, later, chapters from his own childhood favorites, The Hobbit and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

  “Your mother had . . . how should I say this? . . . had an unusual arrangement with the clinic. Apparently, this happens a lot with Americans. We pay a lot to be there and that gives us more power. Americans come with their own staff and ideas, and the clinic accommodates them. The doctors supervise treatment in a different way. They’re not accountable to insurance companies, and the Laetrile ban makes it difficult for American doctors to work with the clinics. And then there’s the language barrier. I never would have guessed that your mom would exploit that to her benefit.”

  “What benefit? Mom poisoning herself? That’s a hell of a benefit,” Adrienne says.

  Dad doesn’t look up; he stares at the file, his eyes on the prescription pad and traveler’s checks. He straightens his spine. “I keep trying to figure out when things changed. There must have been a trigger. Something must have made her do this. She was happy in college. She was so good at nursing that she talked about doing something more, even medical school. She threw parties. She had friends. She wasn’t moody like she was with us.”

  I raise my fingers to my face, feeling my puffy eyes. “You never said anything about her moods.”

  “She could be hard on you girls. She could be hard on me. After she lost the baby—”

  He snaps his head up, suddenly hyperalert. Before Adrienne, Mom miscarried. It wasn’t a secret. She always spent the anniversary alone. Dad took the day off work, shepherding us to and from school, taking us to dinner at our favorite Old Town restaurant, La Sirenita. Mom’s heartache was what Adrienne called our “hooky day.”

  “Oh my God,” he says, covering his face with his hands. “Maybe it never happened. The miscarriage. Maybe she lied about the pregnancy.” He cries until his nose runs, drying his tears with his sleeve. As I listen, it feels like time is moving more slowly, as though my mind knows this conversation will be one I replay again and again.

  “I wasn’t at the hospital when she miscarried,” Dad says at last. “I was at work. I never talked to a doctor. Your mom told me about it. Just her. I think this has been going on for twenty years.”

  “And you never noticed? I can’t fucking believe this.” Adrienne is so angry that she sounds calm.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe this either. I’m so sorry.”

  Adrienne stares at him, ignoring his tears and explanations and apologies. “You should have gone to the clinic with her—not us. You should have bought a Spanish dictionary. You never stood up to her.”

  He taps his fingers on the table. “You mother has never done anything she didn’t want to do. This was on her terms. All of it. I wish I’d known—” He stops midsentence and rubs his eyes. “But you’re right, Adrienne. Things could have been different. I should have taken control of her treatment, but you know your mom. She always had an explanation for everything. I relied on her for information. I shouldn’t have. I know I should have been more involved.”

  “You never stand up to anything, Dad. Not to your fucking boss. Not to Mom. You could have stopped all of this if you’d tried.”

  Dad gives her a flabbergasted look, wincing at her words. Slowly, he shakes his head. “I don’t think anything could have stopped her.” Before Adrienne answers, he flips through the folder until he finds what he’s looking for. He traces the words with his finger, following each sentence before he hands it to Adrienne.

  It is in English, written in Mom’s elegant cursive, a list of medications and combinations. She calculated the side effects, how much the drugs would make her sick. She wrote it all out. If she took a certain amount, she’d vomit. Another amount, she’d pass out. And the last damning line: the combination that would kill her. Her suicide. She was prepared to die for her lie.

  My mind pictures the scene. Mom in bed. Me coming in to check on her, cupping pills or a glass of milk—whatever she needed. I would have discovered her body, rigid and cold and blue. I would have screamed. I would have called Dad or Barb. I would have shielded Marie, and even Adrienne. She would have done this to all of us, but I feel the betrayal the most deeply. She would have done this to me.

  Adrienne bolts off the couch and walks over to the shelves lining the wall. Mom’s altar, her photos and vacation souvenirs. She’s going to hurl something fragile across the room, something made of crystal or porcelain, something precious and breakable. She lifts the giant conch shell and raises it to her ear before setting it down with too much force. Her hand travels to the Venetian glass, sunbursts of color, and grabs a vase. When it hits the wall, I feel like the whole world shatters. Marie screams.

  “Shhh,” I coo, pulling her closer. I don’t tell her everything will be okay. No more lies.

  Dad stands. “Adrienne, don’t you dare do that again.”

  “Or what? What are you going to do, Dad?”

  “Please sit down, honey.”

  Marie climbs into my lap. I wrap my arms around her, holding her as tight as possible, wishing away the pain, absorbing her tears.

  “I’m here,” I say. “I’m right here.”

  Marie hides her face and chants something about Mom and God, over and over again, half sob, half song.

  “Adrienne,” Dad says, his voice strained and hoarse, “we’re in this together. I’m your father. I promise I’ll take care of you.”

  She looks at him with such venom. “Oh sure, because you’ve done such a spectacular job so far. Let’s see, you let your crazy wife fake cancer. You let her drag us down to that hellhole so-called ‘clinic,’ and then you tell us she’s dying. Father-of-the-year award. Great job, Dad. You should be proud.”

  “I spent the day in court, Adrienne. I didn’t want to hurt you any more than she already had. I had to make arrangements. I had to listen to the psychiatrist and the lawyer.” He looks each of us in the eye. “I never meant to lie to you. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was trying to protect you.”
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  “Well, you sure as hell failed,” Adrienne says.

  “That’s enough,” he says. “I know your mom isn’t here to explain herself. You have every right to be angry with her and with me. But you have to calm down and listen. This is terrible, but you must believe me that I did everything I could. I did all of this for you.”

  “Bullshit!” Adrienne yells.

  A shadow of anger passes over Dad’s face before his eyes fill with tears. “I hope you’ll come to see my side of things.”

  Marie squeezes me tightly, her face against my shoulder, whispering, “Mom, I want Mom.”

  “No, you don’t,” Adrienne snaps.

  But Marie nods fiercely. “She’s not going to die. She’s still with us.”

  “You don’t understand, Marie.” Adrienne sits next to us and runs her fingers through Marie’s hair.

  “Yes, I do. I understand all of this.” Marie points to Dad, who looks too hurt to speak. “And Dad really didn’t mean to hurt us,” she says, with tears streaming down her face.

  I can’t sit on the couch any longer, so I ease Marie into Adrienne’s lap and charge into the dining room. Like a dog, I circle the room before sitting at the piano. I pick up a framed photo, a snapshot, taken at the clinic. In the picture, Adrienne, Marie, and I lean against a wall, standing in birth order. Adrienne has bougainvillea in her hair. Her hair is almost white in the sun. I am wearing my favorite sundress. Marie looks tiny and hopeful.

  Suddenly, I feel as though I’m there again. Sitting in the backseat of Mom’s car, resting against the door. I remember the wind and the view of the ocean. I shake away the memory and flip over the frame to pull the photo free. I place it on top of my sheet music and begin to play. The thump of the keys calms my nerves. I allow my body to absorb the sound, every cell filling with the music. The piano buries my heart deeper into my chest. It relaxes my muscles, but can’t erase my pain and grief.

  I try to focus on the music. The Chopin nocturne I hadn’t mastered when I said good-bye to Caleb. Since then, I’ve played it dozens of times. The notes are delicate, climbing and descending the scales. Just when the melody sounds too sweet, the music takes a turn toward the dark and complex. Sometimes when I’m this close to the music, I feel as though I become the instrument. Skin and blood and muscle are exchanged for wood and metal. My bones become as fine as the keys, my teeth rattle with every note.

  I have nothing left but the music, the cool keys. My fingertips grace the ivory, reminding me that my body was made for this. Not for illness and lies and betrayal. But for touch.

  PART THREE: Prognosis

  Ten

  Tears flow as soon as my head hits the pillow. My fourth night in a row without solid sleep. I’ve taken to waking Dad in the middle of the night, asking questions that I can’t bear to ask in daylight. I feel entitled to share my insomnia.

  I sneak into their room. Dad sleeps in the center of the bed, alone, like he never shared it with Mom. He wakes in a snap. I sit on the edge of the mattress and swing my restless feet, forcing him to stay awake. The clock reads 3:57 a.m. “Tell me again,” I say, as insistent as a three-year-old demanding another bedtime story. “Tell me how you found out.”

  He repeats the details, always the same. I hurl questions like an amateur darts player, some far-flung, some bull’s-eye. At first, I can’t shake the mechanics of the lies. I learned from the master, Agatha Christie, and make lists on inconsequential scraps of paper, the backs of receipts and junk mail envelopes:

  Why didn’t anyone notice that there weren’t records from the clinic?

  How could Dad go all that time without meeting her doctor?

  Why did the pharmacy allow her to fill prescriptions of a dangerous combination of medications?

  How could any of the clinic doctors let her take such high dosages of Laetrile?

  His answers don’t sound forced or scripted, and his helpless smile is just that—helpless. He looks like a man who barely survives the day, and yet I wake him night after night, not to be cruel, but to survive the darkness.

  I want to look into Dad’s face and believe him. I never doubt his love, but I doubt his words, the pauses in between. I hold my breath when he speaks, waiting for some terrible news, another brutal discovery.

  “Did you suspect?” I ask. “How long did you know?”

  He rolls over and lifts his head. “You know I didn’t. If Barb hadn’t found out, I think we’d still be living in that hell.”

  We’re still living in hell, just a different kind. Cancer attacks white blood cells. Lies attack everything. Wreckage all the same.

  After a silent moment, he asks, “Did you? You spent more time at the clinic. I know that wasn’t fair—I should have been there. Did you ever see something that didn’t feel right?”

  Right or wrong, I feel like it always comes back to me. “A natural caretaker,” she used to say, implying that I’m the obvious choice, with Marie too young and Adrienne too volatile. My mind flashes back to her dosage list, that sheet of paper with lethal numbers scattered across the page, her suicide note. I gather the quilt in my hand and squeeze as hard as I can.

  I shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “Think,” he says.

  “I thought it was her moods. Sometimes I’d check on her in the infusion room and she would be with Lupe . . .” I still can’t get over Lupe, whose deceit came with a price tag. I close my eyes for a second. “Sometimes they’d be laughing. Mom would have the IV, but she seemed almost happy. It was so weird to hear her laugh because she didn’t laugh at home anymore. Not like she used to. But she did with Lupe. Do you think she was laughing at us?” I swallow hard.

  “Oh God, no. Vanessa, it’s not like that. What she did was horrible. It’s the worst thing she could do to us, but she didn’t do it to hurt you. I’m sure of that. Maybe she did it because of me. She wanted my attention. She wanted everyone’s attention. You were the casualty—not the reason.”

  “We weren’t enough for her.” I want to scream like Adrienne, but all I do is whisper in the damn dark.

  Dad tosses the quilt aside and climbs across the bed. With him right next to me, I can see the lines across his forehead, deepening by the day. I don’t look away, even when furious tears fill my eyes.

  He covers his face with his hands, quick, like he doesn’t want me to see his expression. But I do. The same expression he wore when he first told me about Mom. He looks like someone pushed him from the top of a high rise, forty stories up, the last step before a deadly freefall. “Nothing was enough for her. She’s mentally ill. There’s something wrong with her. Not you. Not your sisters.” Dad drops his hands. His face is a portrait of uncensored pain.

  My head fills with memories of her protruding cheekbones, her raspy voice. “When you see her, does she say why she did it?”

  He shakes his head. “She’s still sick from the Laetrile, and they have her on a few new drugs. She’s not very coherent right now. I want answers too. I’m going to keep visiting until I get them.”

  “But we could have done something, right?” I ask. “Couldn’t you have done something to stop her?”

  He looks surprised by my tone, sharp and blaming, yet not venomous like Adrienne’s. Without hesitation, he nods. “I’m going to do everything in my power now. Absolutely everything. I won’t let her do more damage.”

  “Where are you going in the morning?” I ask.

  “To see the lawyer. There might be some other legal avenues to take. Since we couldn’t get a restraining order, we may have to be more aggressive.”

  My back stiffens. “What do you mean by ‘aggressive’?”

  “We’re looking at other hospitals. This isn’t something you need to worry about. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

  I try my best to meet his eyes in the dark. “We don’t know what you do all day. You’re just gone. I want to come with you.”

  He lets out an exasperated sigh, and when he speaks, he sounds exhausted. “Y
ou can’t come. I’ve told you what I do. I talk to her doctors. I talk to the lawyer. I see your mother. That’s all. I’m not keeping anything from you, Vanessa. The reality is that nothing about our situation is simple. Your mom did a hell of a job turning our lives upside down. There’s a lot to manage.”

  “There was a lot to manage before, but we were the ones stuck doing it.”

  When he drapes his arm across my shoulder, I shake it off. I don’t know what I want. I need him, but everything hurts so much, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t find comfort in anything. Maybe I never will.

  “I know your mother isn’t here and you’re angry. You have every right to be. I screwed up, but I am not the one who did this. I’m not your mom. I’m on your side, and I’m doing the best I can.”

  The plea in his voice sounds like minor keys, the piano notes that catch in my chest, the ones that bring emotion to a piece. Quiet and powerful.

  “I know,” I say.

  The curtains gape open, just enough for the moonlight to illuminate his profile. It’s strange how I always searched for a resemblance to Mom, a trace of her beauty, but never to him. I inherited a feminine version of his nose. How come I never noticed before?

  He says my name when I slide off the bed. “I love you girls more than anything.”

  “I know. Go back to sleep,” I say before closing the door.

  He’s gone when I wake up.

  Grief fills every corner of the house. The dining room holds too many memories. When I sit at the bench, fingers poised on the keys, all I think of is Mom in her usual seat at the table, pushing her plate away, complaining of a lack of appetite. Throwing our labor, cooking and grocery shopping, into the trash. My chest tightens with anger. I abandon Handel, the last piece in Mrs. Albright’s folder.

  I never thought I’d wish for Mom’s death, but it would be so much more straightforward. Clearly defined. True/false rather than multiple choice.