Crooked Little Lies (3 page)

He wasn’t the addict, he said. Why should he? Or else he said he had too much work.

Both things were true.

He wasn’t an addict. But she didn’t feel like one, either. It wasn’t as if she’d gone looking to get high like some reckless party girl. She hadn’t willfully chosen to take drugs any more than she’d chosen to fall from the bell tower of the old church they’d been deconstructing. She’d cracked herself up to a point nearly beyond repair, collapsing her lungs and smashing her pelvis. There’d been internal bleeding. All of that in addition to slamming her brain against the walls of her skull. Once she stabilized and began the long road to recovery, she’d suffered bouts of pain so excruciating that at times not even the doctor-prescribed OxyContin could touch it.

It was only recently that she’d been able to look back and take comfort and a degree of satisfaction from how far she’d come in the twenty-two months since the accident. At first, she’d been unable to speak properly or do simple things like tie her shoes. She’d finally learned to walk again, but she was warned she would always need a walker. When she tossed that contraption out the door, the doctors and her physical therapist said she’d use a cane the rest of her life. She’d proven them all wrong. She’d recovered her speech and her motor skills. Everyone had been in awe of her willingness to work. They said she was lucky. Like Margaret, they believed she was brave. They didn’t know about the narcotics she took by the handful, the ones she got on the sly. How had she learned the ways?

Her memory of that time was so hazy, even she didn’t know, not really. One day, she’d been an ordinary wife and mother, a businesswoman, someone who walked the straight and narrow, and the next, she’d been swallowing dope like candy. It scared her, thinking how easily she’d become hooked. But the worst part for her was the mortification that came from knowing she had been stoned, doped to the max in front of her children and others, their friends and neighbors. She’d made a spectacle of herself.

Done to Jeff what his father had done. Made a mockery of him. Made him look like a fool by association. Coach Wilder, the Wildman, had been known for his explosive temper and outrageous antics both on and off the collegiate football field. It might have been easier growing up if Jeff could have out-and-out hated his dad, but they’d been trapped together by their mutual love of football, the impossible dream of the Wildman’s expectation that Jeff would go pro, and Jeff’s struggle to fulfill it. Maybe if he’d lacked talent, if the scouts hadn’t come wooing, if the media hadn’t made such a thing of it—Wilder and his Wild Old Man. The jokes, rendered in headline format, had gone on through four years of high school and three years of college. It wasn’t until Jeff’s junior year, when he sustained a gruesome hit to his knee, tearing every ligament, that his career ended, and the press, along with the Wildman, gave up. Without football, Jeff nearly ceased to exist in his dad’s mind. Jeff was still battling feelings of failure and abandonment when Lauren met him. In their early days together, when they were falling in love, he’d credited her with restoring his confidence and the will to find a way other than football to achieve success in his life, which in his mind then had been the same as proving himself to his dad.

But even that had faded now, Lauren thought, with age, with the onset of the Wildman’s Alzheimer’s. Jeff had eventually come to view the injury as a mixed blessing. It had ended his football career, but at least the notoriety had ended, too.

Until now.

Now he had his druggie wife’s antics to deal with, to excuse and explain—to live over.

She’d made him the object of gossip and whispered speculation, made them outcasts, and the reality of what she’d done to him and to their children was the thinnest of blades slipped between her ribs. No matter which way she turned, it hurt. And in one small, frightened corner of her mind, she was still waiting for the day when he would act on the ultimatum he’d given her months earlier, that she get off dope or he would be forced to take Drew and Kenzie and leave her. She had been so angry at him, and at Tara when she took his side. The two of them had aligned themselves against her. For her own good, they said. Out of love, they said. You won’t stop yourself, so we’re doing it for you, they said. Dope or your kids: you choose. It had infuriated her all the more because, down deep, she knew they were right and it shamed her. She honestly didn’t know if she would have stopped without their interference, their threats.

It haunted her now, that they might still be plotting to take her children and toss her into an institution. It was ridiculous; she knew it was. Yet she was afraid. She doubted them, and she was aggravated by them, and resentful, and sorry for them and herself, and she didn’t know what to do about any of it. And that was the hardest part.

Lauren was dozing when Tara called her back, worried for her, asking what she could do, and when her sister said, “Remember the little bed tray Mama used when we were sick, the blue one she painted the bouquet of daisies on?” Lauren’s heart constricted; she felt the burn of tears. She guessed it was the pain making her weak, and the affection in Tara’s voice, her obvious concern. How could she doubt Tara’s allegiance, her own sister?

Lauren said, “She brought us chicken soup with those little alphabet noodles.”

“And cups of shaved ice flavored with grape juice when we had strep throat.”

“I still miss her sometimes, TeeRee, so much.”

“I know. Me, too.”

“I thought Jeff would cancel.”

“Well, we really need to get this done, you know?”

“But he seems so—”

“So what?”

“I know he doesn’t tell me everything.”

“He doesn’t want you to worry.”

“But why can’t he see that not knowing only makes me worry more?”

The note of vexation was there in the beat of silence before Tara spoke, before she said, “You have to stop doing this to yourself.”

Lauren groaned. “Please don’t lecture me, TeeRee.”

“But we’ve been over this. You make this stuff up in your head, that Jeff’s conspiring against you, that he’s going to divorce you and take the kids away, and it’s so not true. The man has done everything he can to get you well. He’s killing himself, working, trying to keep you guys solvent.”

“I know,” Lauren said, although she wondered sometimes if, in part, killing himself wasn’t a ploy, a way to make himself look like a good guy, a heroic guy, one who was keeping it together in spite of his loony wife. Or maybe the long hours were a way to avoid her. She’d thought that, too.

“Look, this isn’t you doing this. It’s your brain. It gets ideas, bad ones, and runs away with you.” Love mixed with exasperation shone in Tara’s voice. She’d given the speech before, so many times they were both tired of it.

Tara had sat in on a few of Lauren’s sessions with Dr. Bettinger. She knew the potential for aftereffects in the wake of Lauren’s head injury—everything from hallucinations to bouts of paranoia, extreme fatigue, emotional outbursts, even the onset of psychosis—as well as Lauren. Tara had heard Bettinger say some or all of whatever symptoms Lauren might endure would go away, eventually. Or not. Who knew? Not Bettinger. The neurologist only said not to expect recovery to unfold in a straight line, that it was often two steps forward and three back. He cautioned Lauren might never mend in a way that would make her seem entirely familiar to herself or to her family. He repeatedly told her she was lucky, that others with a less traumatic injury than hers were disabled for life.

He had said she hadn’t made it easier, getting hooked on Oxy.

Lauren sat up, closing her eyes when her head swam. “I really think I should be there. I mean if you all are so determined to get this done—”

“No,” Tara said. “Jeff’s right. Think of it as a little mini vacation and rest.”

“You talked to him?”

“Texted.”

“Huh.” Lauren picked at the coverlet. Was it the post-addiction paranoia that made her think Tara and Jeff seemed to be in touch with one another more than they had been before the accident? Or was that thought, when it blinked off and on in her brain, the product of real intuition, one she should pay attention to?

“He said you got groceries.”

“I did, everything except wine.”

“We can pick that up at Scarlett’s.” Tara named the country store that carried everything from duck liver pâté to cowboy boots.

“Maybe you should skip it.”

“The wine? Why?”

“Well, because drinking around Greg . . . It might be hard for him to not join in.”

“Why shouldn’t he? You drink wine sometimes. What is up with you two, anyway?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” But Lauren did know very well, and she wished she hadn’t mentioned Greg now. She wished she had bitten off her tongue instead.

“It’s just lately you’ve been acting as if you think he’s dangerous or something. Why? What’s changed between you two? You had such a mutual-admiration thing going.”

“Have you asked him?”

“He acted like you, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. But I know better.”

There was a lot Lauren could have said. The trouble was she didn’t know if she had the right. She bit her lip.

“It can’t be because he used drugs. I mean you knew that. We all knew it. He’s always been up front about it.”

Lauren’s mind seized on this. “Well, still, it’s hard for me to feel comfortable about my little sister dating a guy who was on heroin.”

“All right, but honestly—and don’t get mad when I say this, but you used drugs. They may have started out as prescription, but is that really better? So I don’t see how you can judge him.”

“Oh, Tee, you know me better than that. I do admire Greg. He’s like a—a mentor, you know?” It was true, a fact that only served to complicate Lauren’s sense of the situation, of the danger Tara might be in from Greg, the very same Greg who’d been there when Lauren crossed the line and went from using to abusing OxyContin. Greg had recognized what was happening before anyone had, least of all Lauren herself. He’d understood in the way only another addict could how it had happened; he knew the hell it was to quit and what it cost Lauren every day to stay away from it. She deeply appreciated him for his support, his kindness and acceptance. But there were other things, aspects of his character, that bothered her, and some of these went beyond the disturbing piece of Greg’s history, the thing she knew about him now that she was forced to keep from Tara.

Because telling would violate the privacy that 12-step members relied on when they shared their stories at meetings. But what of Tara’s right to know? What about her safety? What about Lauren’s obligation to Tara? What if Greg slipped and went back on heroin? It had happened before, and by his own admission, he became a different person, a kind of monster. Someone without remorse or conscience.

She would kill him, Lauren thought, if he ever did anything to harm her sister.

“It’s not personal.” She said the only true thing she could.

“Then what?”

“You should be careful, that’s all.”

“Well, it isn’t as if we’re together a lot these days, anyway, I’m working so much overtime. I’m too tired to be fun. But I don’t want to talk about that, either.” Her job, Tara meant. The one with no particular future.

You could quit, Lauren wanted to say. You could be anything you want to be; there’s still time. She could have said that, too. But it was useless to remind Tara of how she’d gotten to the place where she was, serving as an executive assistant to a public relations manager in the oil-field industry. The thing was, Tara should be the manager. She should have her own company. She was smart and articulate, outgoing and vivacious. She loved people. She had planned to go to college, had talked of earning a degree in public relations or in marketing, and she would have—if she hadn’t gotten pregnant and married right out of high school. Lauren never liked reminding Tara of that, but there were times when she did it anyway, although today wasn’t one of them. She only said she wished Tara were happier.

“What about the message you left me earlier?” Tara scooted past it. “The kid you saw walking on the feeder road. Did something happen to him?”

“Almost,” Lauren said. “I came really close to hitting him, so close it scared me. Do you know who I’m talking about? Have you seen him? Out walking, I mean?”

“All the time, and it’s a wonder to me that someone hasn’t knocked him in the head or run over him.”

“I stopped and talked to him.”

“What? Are you crazy? He could be a maniac, for all you know.”

“He isn’t. No way. His name is Bo.” Lauren went on, describing him, the determination in his step, his single-minded focus. She mentioned Bo’s sister, Annie Beauchamp, and his dog, Freckles. “A psycho wouldn’t name his dog Freckles,” she said.

“Well, he might just to fool you.”

“I don’t think he’s violent.” Lauren paused, remembering. “I couldn’t drive by him this time, you know? It’s what people do. We drive by anything and anyone who gives off the least whiff of trouble.”

“Yes, but sometimes
certain
people—and I’m not naming names here, okay? But certain people take offense if you interfere.”

Lauren smoothed her hand over the duvet cover. Tara was alluding to the time when her family, and Margaret, and Greg, whom she’d scarcely known at the time—had conducted the intervention, when they’d told her how badly she was hurting herself and hurting them. Lauren had accused them of treating her like a child. It still galled her, the way they’d acted, the way she’d behaved—shrieking at them like a madwoman. She cringed every time she recalled the scene, one more on the infamous list of scenes that her children had witnessed. “I thought about that,” she said now, “how much I resented it when you confronted me. I probably should have left Bo alone.”

“It’s hard to know the right thing to do,” Tara said.

Lauren thought how often, after they lost their parents, she’d tried to guide Tara, telling her what to do, how to live, whom to date, blah-blah, only to watch her go off and do the very thing she’d been warned against. But you couldn’t stop people from making mistakes, not even when you loved them, not even when they were your own flesh and blood and you’d shared everything, including the air you breathed, from childhood forward. She and Tara had slept in beds pulled so close together they could have held hands, and if one of them got scared, they climbed into the other one’s bed.