Coldwater Revenge, James Ross [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

do it all, she promised. Andrew was tempted to note that she had yet to do anything, but he stalled at the possibility that this might be the missing piece, the thing that could fix whatever it was that had gone badly wrong.

But he was mistaken about that too. The daily responsibilities of motherhood made no claim on Karen. Day-long trances behind her drawing table matured into night time hallucinations. The doctors said it was a hormone imbalance, easily remedied by medication. But Karen resisted being “balanced,” and she “forgot” to take her medication. The cops and the EMT drivers became frequent visitors at the Ryan house. They had their own professional diagnosis. Psycho and stoned have a lot in common, they told Andrew. Some of their charges simply liked how it made them feel.

Karen stirred under the blanket and reached a hand to stroke her brooding husband. “Come here,” she whispered, her voice soft and come hither though the sounds of the storm had, if anything, gotten louder. Andrew slipped beneath the covers and snuggled close. Strange, he mused, that while everything else had fallen apart, this one thing still worked. No deception. No false promises. They came together like ice dancers to a music they heard instinctively. Or was he kidding himself about that, too?

“You lost weight in there,” he said. “You look good.”

“They should call it the Club Med for the Head diet,” she answered. “Institutional food and major drugs.”

“How do you feel now?”

“Scared shitless of that snake in there, thank you. I was hallucinating them so much in the bin that they had to strap me down. Most of the time it’s kind of interesting, you know? But I really thought I was going to lose my mind this time.”

Andrew looked away.

“You don’t like to hear this, do you?”

“I don’t like to hear you call it ‘interesting,’” he said wearily.

“I’m an artist, Andrew. How could I not?”

“Because your doctors have warned you a zillion times, not to find it interesting. Quote: ‘Down that path lies madness.’ Quote: ‘One time too many and you don’t come back.’”

“I can come back any time I want,” she snapped. Then, “You want to hear why they had to strap me down?” Andrew stared at her, but said nothing. “There was this long, pale slimy thing under my bed that kept trying to poke through the bottom of the mattress. It scared the living shit out of me. But you know what my doctor said it was? She said it was you, nagging at me to ‘get out of the wagon and start pulling.’I suppose she got that charming phrase from one of her chats with you. She says that you should quit acting so disappointed all the time. That you’re supposed to forgive me.”

“I do,” said her husband automatically.

Karen shook her head. “You don’t even know what you’re supposed to forgive me for.” Andrew closed his eyes and mentally perused a fat catalogue of forgivable misdeeds:

Wandering the neighborhood at 3:00 a.m. in your Victoria’s Secret nightgown, ringing doorbells at the homes of neighbors with teenage boys. Maxing-out on a half dozen credit cards I didn’t know you had. Getting shit-faced at a dinner party with my boss and passing out on your plate. Leaving our two-year old daughter alone in the house all day while you’re out driving the interstate lost in the buzz of your latest medication—or refusal to take it. The jumble of images collaged a multi-year sabbatical from the responsibilities of adult life, but they did not explain it.

“Of course I forgive you,” Andrew said.

“Bullshit.”

Karen tossed the covers aside and strode unclothed and unselfconscious toward the mini-bar. Andrew stared after her, reminded of the line from Aristotle about a pretty face being the best ambassador. Despite the abuse she had put it through, his wife had somehow managed to preserve the body of a twenty-year-old. In rare moments of frank self-examination, Andrew wondered if he would have put up with half of her crap if she hadn’t. Watching her fondle a handful of mini booze bottles, he suppressed a familiar surge of frustration. “Don’t,” he said. “You’ll just make it worse.”

“I’m just having one.”

“Is that likely?”

Karen looked at him straight and wrung the cap from the bottle with a closed fist. “We have to talk.”

Here we go, he thought. You’ve had Group and Dr. Feelgood twice a week for a year, and now you’ve just had six weeks of it straight, twice a day. The psychobabble gets more polished with every rehearsal. But your behavior keeps getting worse. And now there’s a child.

“I’m listening,” he said.

Karen smirked and then opened her throat for an exaggerated gulp. “No, you’re not. Nothing I say or do gets through to you anymore. You’re numb. You don’t feel anything, you don’t see anything, and you certainly don’t listen—unless it’s about Maggie.” Andrew’s chin floated warily toward the horizon. “See?” said his wife. “Now you’re listening.” Andrew opened his mouth to protest and she stuffed it with, “You don’t love me anymore. You know it, and so do I.”

Andrew expelled a hiss of pent-up breath and asked, as if to a child who has done her sums wrong yet again, “Then what am I doing here? How many guys do you think would stick with someone through all this?”

“Oh, you’re a rock, all right,” she said. “Pride yourself on that. But somewhere along the way, you switched girls. You’re here for her now. Not me.”

Not somewhere, he thought, and his mind unprompted screened a tape whose every sad and scary frame he knew by heart:

Arriving home from work, he found Maggie tearing through the house in a filthy diaper, screaming for a mommy who wasn’t there. He tried to calm the hysterical toddler while he phoned the familiar round of police, hospitals and doctors. Father and daughter kept vigil at the front window into the evening. The child fell asleep in his lap hours past bedtime, waking finally to the sound of