Forbidden: A Standalone (45 page)

I had no recollection of asking to be at Westonwood. It must have seemed like the best option at the time, or the best way to get to Warren. My stoned self was far braver than my sober self. Time would tell if she was any smarter.

The option to switch out did have its appeal. Starting clean and participating, as she said, could be very productive, yet it felt like running away. I had business to attend to here.

“Is Jonathan still here? I don’t have to avoid him, do I?” I tried to sound non-threatening, but I’d somehow poked her, because she smiled again.

“No. He’s been asking for you.”

I dotted the last i on the last form and pushed it back to her. “Great. Thank you.”

“The MD is going to look at you in an hour so we can review your medications.”

“I’ll be ready,” I said.

I left the office fully-charged, the exact opposite of angry. I didn’t forget Warren for a second, nor did I forget what my brother needed from me, but I felt as if I was in Westonwood for my own good, and I could make something of it.

fiona

W
estonwood hadn’t changed. I had. Through the lens of my time outside, most of which was spent without drugs or sex, Westonwood seemed more hopeful a place, sunnier, brighter. I walked the halls looking for Jonathan and talked to a few people I’d seen before, but I didn’t get a sense of where he could be during the free hour.

It wasn’t until the lunch break was nearly over, and I was sitting on a bench by the basketball courts, that I saw him loping toward an errant ball. He saw me, scooped up the ball, and dribbled toward me. Had he gotten taller? He looked as if he’d crested six feet in his weeks at Westonwood, and though he was as graceful as ever, he treated his limbs like new attachments. I swelled with protective warmth.

“I knew you’d be back,” he said, throwing himself into the seat next to me as if he were indestructible.

“Nice, you had such faith in me.”

“You didn’t look ready when you left.” He spun the ball on his finger, whipping it around until the black lines blurred.

“How was your hangover the other day?”

He popped the ball up and caught it. “How did you know?”

“You called me. Presumably on Warren’s phone?”

He neither confirmed nor denied any of it. He flicked the surface of the ball, making an echoey pinging sound. “What did I say?”

“You asked for money.”

He shook his head and spun the ball on his finger again. My brother was brilliant but an avoider of things that made him uncomfortable. Eventually, he’d probably avoid me altogether. Might as well get on with it.

“You know who I saw last week?” I asked. “Mindy and Baby.”

He kept spinning the ball. No reaction.

“They asked about you.”

“Say hi for me if you get out.”

“Jon?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t stop with the ball.

I wanted to shove it down his throat. Instead I just clapped it between my palms and held it. “They had a lot to say about you.”

He looked at me for the first time. “What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know what your relationship with Rachel was, or if it involved you fucking other people. Or if you’re a cheat or what. I don’t know. But nothing you do is private.”

“I’m not a cheat.”

“Good. Hold on to that. I heard them talking about stuff I didn’t even want to envision.”

He shrugged. It wasn’t a denial that he’d fucked half of Hollywood, but it wasn’t an admission. That was fine with me.

“It’s not easy being whatever it is we are,” I said. “And we hang out in our own circles so we don’t have to explain ourselves. Like why we never fly commercial or why we don't… whatever… cook a meal because why should we? But look at Margie. She’s almost normal. I think she’s got it right. She’s, like, in the world, you know?”

“Yeah, well, old money fucks old money. Sometimes it fucks new money. There’s a reason for that shit.”

Rachel hadn’t had much in the way of money, and in his adolescent mind, staying away from the likes of her equaled staying away from middle-class girls.

“Warren fucks Baby. How about that for a reason to stay away from them?”

He twisted his face until he looked as if he was wearing a blender.

“I know,” I said. “It’s fucking gross. She told me as much. I have no idea how consensual it is, but she flipped it off. And they have a younger brother, so I don’t even want to know.”

“I’m going to be sick.”

“You did fuck her, didn’t you?”

He put the ball on his knees and put his forehead to it. “I thought we had problems.”

“We do. But I think you should avoid him. I don’t want that brand of crazy rubbing off.”

“I can’t believe you’d even suggest that shit.”

“He’s fucking crazy. No more booze. Don’t take anything from him. When you called me… I know rohypnol when I hear it.”

“Man”—he leaned back—“I don’t even remember any of that. Woke up in a padded room.”

“Did anything hurt?”

He looked at me with those emerald-green eyes, the sounds of inmates playing basketball behind him. I should have paused before asking or maybe couched the question.

“Such as?” he asked.

“Anything unexpected.”

“My arms from trying to get out of the straps.”

We stared at each other for a second. Then two.

“Why?” he asked softly.

“Because Warren made that call, I was able to get someone here to put you in solitary. You’re welcome. Stay away from him.”

“What did he do to you?”

He’d find out soon enough when he got out and the news was the news. But all was silent in Westonwood, and I had to continue to protect Jonathan the same way I protected Deacon. But I couldn’t say nothing.

The bell rang. It was time to get to our business.

“It doesn’t matter.” I stood. “He’s not an appropriate friend. That’s all.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

I snapped the ball away. “I’ll leave that to Margie.”

I threw it at a hoop, missed by a mile, and took off for the main building.

elliot

I
 watched her talk to her brother on the side of the basketball courts and felt the connection between us. The rope had heft and drag, as if it was as real as the nose on my face. I was done denying it.

So what to do about my work?

Frances had been very clear about her suspicions. Her conversation had almost been a warning salvo that I had to make choices, and they’d have consequences.

How long could I tread water and do both at the same time? The rules were clear. A therapist could see a patient two years after the therapy ended. I had no chance of waiting that long. And with Fiona’s public persona, I had even less chance of keeping it a secret for two years.

The bell rang. My session would be here in seconds. A young woman with profound feelings of isolation was going to sit across from me, and she needed my full attention. On the basketball court, Fiona took a shot at the hoop and missed before she trotted into the building I watched from.

“I’m sorry I’m asking for something again,” I said softly to no one and the only one who mattered. “I love my work. I don’t want to lose it. I’m not trying to be transactional. I need some help figuring this out.”

No answer. At least not in the form of the clouds parting and a bearded guy telling me to get my shit together, deal with the consequences, and trust him.

“I trust you,” I said, and I meant it.

I took a breath and let the worry go so I could do the job I loved.

fiona

I
 put my Westonwood blues back on. The doctor had run through his examination quickly, focusing on the blood work and sparing me another pelvic. He was bald but for a few strands on top of his head, and his hands were bulbous and creased. He asked for a rundown of what he’d find, and I gave him the list without apology. I wasn’t defiant or brazen. I wasn’t contrite either. I didn’t owe him an apology. I owed him a list of the drugs I’d taken in the past week. When I told him what I remembered of Jack’s description of the tar, he looked at me over the top of his glasses.

“Ricin?”

I shrugged. “It was loud. It was
ricinus something.
He might as well have been speaking another language.”

“He was.” The doc made a note and left the nurse to finish.

She took blood, my temperature, checked my reflexes. The arm band squeezed so tight to get my pressure, I thought blood would never circulate through to my fingers again. The doctor had come back to listen to my heartbeat and left me to get dressed.

I thought I’d gotten through to Jonathan. Nothing like grossing someone out to make a point. I’d have to remember that. Of course, Warren still had one over on my brother, and he would try to make my brother pay for it.

I didn’t know what to do about that.

The nurse directed me to the doc’s office. It was richly painted in greens and cranberries, like a year-round Christmas theme. I threw myself into the upholstered chair, leaving the wooden one in front of his desk empty.

“All right, well…” He cleared his throat. “Most of this will take some time to get back, but we did a quick run on a couple of things. You’ve been sexually active?”

“Yes.”
Duh
.

He looked at me over his glasses. “You’re pregnant.”

He could have shocked me more. Like if he’d said I was growing a furry tail or a penis. Or if he’d said I was actually the love child of Whoopi Goldberg and Bruce Lee.

“I have an IUD. Those are, like, one hundred percent effective.”

“No,” he said. “You don’t.”

“What?”

He held up a piece of typed paper with a signature on the bottom. My signature. “We checked you when you came in the first time. Weeks ago. The IUD had passed its expiry date, and we removed it.”

“What? How did I not feel that?”

“You were medicated. It doesn’t hurt to remove anyway.”

“Was I stoned when I signed this?” I snapped the paper away from him.

“No. You signed the next day.”

I’d signed off on understanding this the first time I was released, an hour before I got into Deacon’s car. Well, crap. Crap crap crap. I’d always been careful. I’d never had to have an emergency D&C. Never took a morning-after pill. Never missed a period.

“Wait. Doesn’t it take weeks for the tests to know?”

“Blood tests can detect pregnancy days after conception.”

What the hell was I supposed to do?

And what had I done to my body in the past week?

“Is it okay?” I asked. “I smoked. And there was that thing I took last night—”

“Two nights ago.”

“I don’t even know what it was. Did I hurt it?”

And did it matter?

And whose was it?

“We won’t know until you get a CVS at twelve weeks. The meds you’re on aren’t contraindicated, but I’m lowering your dose.”

Jesus Christ. I didn’t know who the father was.

Another item on the list of things that may or may not matter.

“Would you like to discuss your options?” the doctor asked.

How long had I been staring at that paper?

“No,” I said. “Not right now.” I didn’t think I could discuss options until I’d absorbed what had happened.

“All right. If you want to use the phone to tell your family, I’m sure it’s allowed.”

I walked down the hall, crossing the cafeteria. I saw Warren sitting next to the ping-pong table before I saw Jonathan hitting the ball back over the net to someone I didn’t know. Warren made eye contact with me, his expression flat and charmless as if he never felt a thing about anything. Then he smiled, and I realized I’d seen his true self in that unguarded second. Just emotional emptiness he had to fill every single minute of every single day.

Jonathan’s back was to me. He dropped his paddle and shook his opponent’s hand. Warren and I were still bound by our stare, his vacant smile, the breakneck swirl of guilt and shame over a bean of a baby. I wondered if he could see inside me, but I knew he couldn’t. I was having feelings, hot and cold, up and down, a broken narrative of thoughts spitting out waves of anger, joy, confusion, helplessness. He’d never had an emotion. Not about anything. He couldn’t see mine. He craved my feelings, fed on them, was so curious about them he’d rape me to create them.

I hadn’t chosen what to do about the baby, but when I walked away from the cafeteria, it wasn’t because I was afraid for myself. I had another person to protect.

fiona

I
 skipped dinner. Skipped rec time. Skipped talking. Skipped thinking. Went to group session in the afternoon because it would be noticed if I didn’t, and my feet hurt from standing by the window.

I couldn’t get a space on one of the Herman Miller chairs, so I sat next to another girl who had her hands in her lap. She bounced her knees as if they were fully gassed-up pistons. I didn’t want to talk to her or the four people across from us. They had ennui, depression, a case of the existential blues. Too much tickle and not enough slap.

And guiding us through all of this was Brazilian blowout. Dr. Deanna.

“Yesterday, we talked about Quentin’s last night out before he came here, and his feelings of—”

Good times.

Could I eat the organic, locally grown, handmade crackers? Was starch bad? Was there too much salt? Was I even keeping this thing? Never mind who the father was, how was I qualified to be a mother?

“We’ve had some very productive discussions, so—”

Did I have to tell the father? Would I tell both of them? Neither? Would I just get rid of it and smile happily at Elliot and pretend I didn’t have cause to see Deacon ever again?

“But first, I wanted to make sure we all know—”

And then what?

And why?

“Would you like to introduce yourself to—”

Did I have something better to do?

Was I broke? Orphaned? Sick?

Did I have nothing at all to offer a baby?

“I have something to offer,” I said to myself but loudly enough that Deanna thought I was speaking to her.

“Go on,” she said.

Six sets of over-privileged eyes stared at me in varying shades of curiosity and distrust. I hadn’t wanted to speak. I was just going to say hello and go back to my room to brood. But they expected something from me now, and it wasn’t to feed their egos or entertain them but to help them.