Best Friends (31 page)

 

 

 

WE WERE SITTING in a coffee shop, Aury sleeping in her car seat beside me. A funny fluorescent light shone down on Sally's face. “A morass,” Sally said.

“It was better when he was gay,” I said.

Sally looked surprised, then nodded. “It was. The guys weren't so . . . predatory.” She paused. “I think Helga is a call girl.”

“Really?” I was shocked, although I knew I shouldn't be.

“What else can she make money on? And she has money.”

“Maybe her dad sends her—”

“He pays her rent, but that's it. She told me.”

“Maybe she sells drugs.”

“No,” Sally said, definitely enough that I didn't question her.

“Maybe she acts in your dad's—”

“Not unless she uses another name. I asked him.” She hesitated, ferociously stirring her tea. “Of course they all use other names. But he couldn't think of anybody matching her description. She has a lock and chain tattooed on her rear. Ben told me.”

“I guess that would show up.”

Sally smiled wearily.

“I sort of hoped you were going to light into her,” I said.

“Into Helga?”

“Uh-huh. She's such a scum.”

“You're not going to believe this, but I don't totally hate her.”

I looked up in surprise.

“She has some zip to her. She helps Ben out. Ben had some medical problems, and she got them taken care of.”

“Medical problems?”

“He had a reaction to some substance he was taking. Put his right shoulder through a window. Anyway, she got him to the emergency room immediately. Thirty-four stitches.”

“Incredible.”

“He was lucky. The plastic surgeon said the cut was near an artery. Helga took him to her dad's office to get the stitches out.”

Helga's father was a pediatrician. I tried to imagine Ben, spooky hairy-legged Ben, sitting in the waiting room. Thinking how he'd scare the mothers was almost hilarious.

“And she got him off of whatever he was taking.”

“Really?” This surprised me. Sulkily aggressive Helga did not seem like the woman who'd get someone off of anything. “How'd she do that?”

“It may be simple substitution, actually. But he's better.”

 

 

 

EXCEPT FOR HIS JOB at the video store, Ben never got out, because Sally had taken away his car. When he said he wanted to go to Nordstrom's to buy some underwear and socks, we left Aury with Sally's housekeeper and picked him up and took him. He sat in the backseat of Sally's white Volvo like a wraith. There was no conversation. We'd been driving ten minutes when Ben said he had to use the bathroom. His actual request was coarser than that, something like “I've got to shit.”

There were a couple of gas stations nearby, and I thought Sally would stop at one of them, but instead she said, brightly, “You know what? We're near Aunt Ruby's. Let's go there.”

I had no idea why she'd want to go to Aunt Ruby's and show her aunt how terrible Ben looked. “There's a gas station,” I pointed out.

Sally wrinkled her nose. “Too dirty.”

We drove maybe another ten minutes to Aunt Ruby's, as Ben started to get frantic in the backseat. We parked the car in the circular drive, in front of the jewel box of a house, and headed for the front door.

The doorbell rang in a series of tones, and then Aunt Ruby peered out at us from behind an ornately barred screen door. “Sally!” she said in surprise. “Clare! What a treat.” Her eyes, darting inquiringly to Ben, seemed smaller to me than they used to, and I realized that the face around them was simply fatter. She was indeed wearing a muumuu, blue with silver threads.

I saw Aunt Ruby's dismay the moment she recognized her nephew. “Is that little Ben?” she asked. “Ben, what's happened to you? I haven't seen you since your mother's . . . You must have lost twenty pounds.”

“We're here to visit, but first Ben needs to use the bathroom,” Sally said. “We were right nearby and thought we'd stop in.”

“Now?” Aunt Ruby said, looking at Ben. “You need to use the bathroom
now
? ”

I was thinking about the strangeness of Sally's asking for permission for her grown brother to use the bathroom, when I realized that Aunt Ruby didn't want to let us in. “But Freddie's so sick,” she was saying, “his liver disease has compromised his immune system. I'm sorry, darlings, but I can't have him exposed to people who . . . surely you understand.”

“Fine,” Sally said, making a motion with her hands like she'd hit a chord on a keyboard, “we won't disturb you or Freddie at all. Clare and I can wait out here while Ben uses your bathroom.”

Aunt Ruby's little glittering eyes grew rounder. “Freddie's very sick,” she said. “Cirrhosis, you know,” she said confidingly to me. “An awful disease.”

“Oh, shit,” Ben moaned, slumping against the wall. “I don't believe this shit, I—”

Aunt Ruby backed away from the door. “Is he all right?” she whispered loudly.

“He needs to go to the bathroom, Aunt Ruby. Just let him in your house.” Sally's voice was getting desperate. I remembered Ruby and Freddie's house. There was a guest bathroom just off the foyer. Ten feet from where we stood, there was a toilet.

The three of us stood looking at her in silence.

“Fuck it,” Ben mumbled, turning away. “I'll just go in my fucking pants.”

We were almost off the porch when Aunt Ruby rushed out the door. “I know what we can do,” she was saying. “Any port in a storm!” She gripped Ben's elbow and hustled him through a gate at the side of the house and into the backyard, leaving Sally and me gaping.

“She does look like a ship in full sail,” I said.

But Sally didn't laugh. She threw me a searing glance. “You know what she's doing?” Sally asked ferociously. “She's taking him to the gardener's bathroom!”

I laughed uncomfortably. I thought of the AIDS patient blinded by a virus, back in my residency days, whose mother had refused to wash his sheets. “Have you ever tried doing a load of wash when you can't see?” he'd demanded, craning his head this way and that, as if he were trying to meet anybody's gaze.

“Bitch,” Sally said.

“She must have some kind of phobia,” I said. “Remember how she was always wiping off her tables? And now with Freddie sick, she's decompensated.”

“What?” Sally demanded, turning toward me. “Are you saying she's mentally ill? Is that supposed to excuse her?”

“No, but—”

“Ben's her nephew. I'm her niece. We're
family.
”

I thought better of saying something soothing. I spread my hands in a helpless gesture.

“Unforgivable,” Sally said.

 

 

 

SALLY WAS AS BUSY as ever at work, and looking after Ben required lots of driving.

“Don't tell me you're still carrying packages around for him,” I said over the phone.

A pause, then a hesitant answer. “Not exactly.”

“Not exactly! What does that mean?”

“Clare, I've struggled with it, and I have to say he's happier now than I've seen him in years. He's not ecstatic, he's not bubbling, but he's normal. There are moments you'd think he was an average young man working at a video store. He likes his job, he has friends there, and his boss thinks he's functioning fine. He never misses a day. And Helga, for whatever reason, looks after him. She's an earth mother, in a way. I used to take food to the apartment he shared with those guys, and when I came back a week later, all the stuff I'd brought would be rotting in the fridge. But now everything's eaten. He gets out some, he goes walking, he swims in the pool, he watches TV. It's a relief to see him. He's been to every drug rehab facility in southern California, and what have they done for him? Now he's reasonably happy. He's peaceful. I'll do what I have to do to keep him that way.”

I understood something. “What's the substitute?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said Helga had given him a substitute drug and now he's better. What is it?”

A hesitation. “It's heroin. It's a peaceful drug, Clare,” she said into my silence. “You don't hear about people getting high on heroin and going out to shoot up a convenience store. Heroin addicts aren't killers.”

“So, are you helping him get it?”

“You know Mom's will. I'm the executrix, I control Ben's money. So indirectly, I control his buying habits. That's another good thing: I can limit his consumption.”

“What about methadone? He could get in a treatment program.”

“Methadone is maintenance. I've talked about it with Ben. He doesn't want maintenance. With heroin, you get the rush.”

“He wants the rush,” I said flatly.

“He hasn't had a lot of joy in his life, Clare.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “But Sally, he'll keep needing more and more. And remember what I do for a living now? How did a quarter of my patients get their disease? Drug abuse. It's incredibly unsafe.”

“He has a doctor, and he's been tested for AIDS several times. And I have a source for new needles for him, so he never shoots up with a used needle. And he's not having sex with males anymore. Or even with Helga, she says. Overall, I think his risk for AIDS is as low as it could be, under the circumstances.”

My ears perked up. “How do you get him needles?” I asked.

“One of the plastic surgeons I've used as an expert witness. He thinks I'm a diabetic. He gave me a prescription for insulin syringes.”

Fraud, I thought. Delivering heroin. And she's a lawyer.

“Have you stopped to think that what you're doing is illegal?” I asked.

“Clare, I don't want to be a judge anymore. I'm just a lawyer doing what I have to do to look after my family. Nobody's going to care. And even if by some wild fluke I got implicated in something and disbarred, it wouldn't be the end of the world. I'm not wedded to practicing law.”

“Sally,” I said, trying to sound humorous, “your brother does not need this much help.”

“Clare, if I could get him on chronic intravenous morphine I'd do it, because he deserves some peace.”

“You think he's that—” I hesitated, not sure what word to use. Where was one of Sally's defining adjectives when I needed it?

“He's miserable, that's what I know. He's tormented by Mom's death. I'm so angry at her. If she'd ever really thought about Ben, she wouldn't have . . .”

I was silent.

“He's my only brother,” Sally said. “There are only the three of us left.”

Sally, Sid, and Ben. “How about Aunt Ruby?” I said, but Sally cut me off with a disgusted sound. She had not been kidding about unforgivable.

“Another problem, Sally, is the drugs aren't pure. They put in sugar, novocaine, tooth powder, all sorts of things.”

Sally sighed. “Don't think I haven't thought of that. I know Ben's supplier, and he's reputable. He checks what he gets, and he's a chemist, actually, a Chinese guy who used to teach at USC. He maintains a certain quality control.”

You're loony! I should have said. You're absolutely bonkers! If I'd said it at that moment, things might have turned out differently. Sally might have listened to me, Ben might still be alive. But I didn't have the guts to say it. I didn't want Sally to cast me out, to erase me from her life the way she'd erased Aunt Ruby. I said something limp instead, like I couldn't believe what she was doing.

“I can't believe it myself half the time. But Ben's my brother, and I'm trying to be practical. And I don't actually buy the drug. I give Ben the money, and he buys it.”

“A fine distinction,” I mumbled.

“It is a distinction,” Sally agreed eagerly. “He doesn't have to use the money for drugs. Every time he buys heroin, it's his choice. He can use the money for anything. I think that's important. It gives him free will.”

“I don't think a heroin addict is overflowing with free will.”

“He's a user, Clare,” Sally corrected me. “I wouldn't call him an addict.”

Then: I could have said it then. You're insane! You're talking like a crazy person! You're asking for trouble!

But I said nothing, nothing at all.

 

 

 

I POPPED IN EARLY at Aury's day care. Aury was in her crib on her back, eyes wide open, being entertained by a circle of girls. “Where's Aury's daddy?” a girl with bulging eyes asked me.

“Her daddy?” I repeated, mouth gone dry. “Aury doesn't really—”

“Don't you know anything?” another of Aury's little tenders burst out. “Aury doesn't have a daddy. Miss Jackie said Aury doesn't have a daddy.”

“What?” screamed the girl with bulging eyes, looking at me.

 

 

 

“IT'S A CRAZY PROBLEM, Cliff. I don't even know how to explain it.” Dr. Cliff Dunswater was the head of medicine, the man who'd hired me.

“Try me.”

“Well, my old college roommate, she's my closest friend, and she's a lawyer in Los Angeles, she used to want to be a judge; anyway, she has a younger brother who . . .” On and on I went, with the whole story. It was wrong of me to tell him, but he looked at me so raptly.

He rode a bike and ran and did marathons, but there was something soft about him, some almost feminine quality. His name didn't suit him. Clifford was more apt, but he hated it. He wasn't a big man. He would smile a beseeching smile, and the skin around his eyes would crinkle, and he'd lie there and stare into my eyes.