Last Train to Babylon (2 page)

Friday, October 10, 2014. 3:53
A.M.

I
T FEELS LIKE
someone scraped out my sinuses and poured Clorox up my nose. Everything is damp and warm, and my temples pound against the empty, sterile feeling inside my head. The window is open, and I can hear the rain clicking against the metal screen. I can smell it, too—rain, antiseptic, and latex. I guess this is what it smells like when you wake up in a hospital.

My eyes open for just a second then fall back shut. I blink twice and I can't tell if my contacts are still in. Everything is blurry except for the white walls and a metal bedpan hovering next to my face.

A woman clears her throat near the door.

“Hi there.” The voice hits me, and it's like everything inside my head aches again. “How are you feeling, Aubrey?”

The sound bounces off the hollow walls of my skull, and I have to squint across the room to see her. She offers a small wave and stands up.

“My name is Laura.” Her voice is slow, and she enunciates every word. She steps toward my bedside, like she expects me to shake her hand, but there's an IV shooting clear, cold fluid through my veins, so I couldn't move even if I did feel the need to be polite.

“Hi?” I say. My voice cracks. She wears a pale green sweater and jeans. Her hair falls into blond ringlets around her face, and bounces off her shoulders as she moves toward me. Maybe it's just the hair, but she has this spring in her step that makes her seem inappropriately chipper. I already don't like her.

At first I think she's not much older than I am, maybe late twenties, very early thirties—but when she speaks, her voice has this slow, sensible tone, the kind that only comes when you're hovering somewhere around forty.

“You're at the hospital, Aubrey,” she says. I don't like how she keeps saying my name, like it's supposed to make me feel more at ease. “I work here. I'm a social worker—or a therapist.” There's a brief moment of silence, and she takes another step toward me. “But I like ‘therapist' better. Sounds less official.” I think she smiles, but I still can't see very well.

“I know where I am,” I say. She sits back down in a metal chair by the door. “But why am I here?”

“Do you remember what happened last night?” She's holding a clipboard on her lap.

I want to tell her no. I want to say,
No, Laura. I obviously don't remember what happened tonight or else I wouldn't be asking, would I?
But instead, I stay quiet, squeeze my eyes shut and try to force out some sliver of memory. I take a breath and close my eyes again. It's not much, but pieces of the night start to come back to me like shards of glass—a snapshot, a sound, a smell. Broken pieces, but nothing I can really hold on to.

I remember O'Reilly's—walking in, and then I see Eric Robbins in his mint-green tie, spinning his bottle of Bud on the bar. I think I see Adam coming at me, and the air feels thick and opaque, coming down around me, but then it's just rain. It's just rain, smoke, windshield wipers, and hot whiskey breath splattered over my bare lap.

But I don't tell Laura any of this.

“Nothing,” I say. “I don't remember anything. I'm sorry.”

“That's okay,” she says. “Don't be sorry.” She scoots a few feet closer. The metal chair screeches against the tile floor. I wince.

I still can't figure out how the hell I ended up here, so I play dumb and wait for her to fill me in. I wonder for a second if maybe I've killed someone, crashed my car, run over a small child. But I think I'd be handcuffed to the bed if that were the case. At least that's what happens on
Law & Order.

And then panic sweeps through me, and I think maybe I did something desperate. Maybe I threw myself down over the railroad tracks, or something awful and cliché like that. But I dismiss the thought almost as swiftly as it comes, and the panic quiets inside me. I'm way too practical to inconvenience a trainful of people, most of whom I'm probably acquainted with in one way or another.

That's the thing about Long Island. You can't even jump in front of a train without knowing at least ten people on board.

I want to know why I'm here. Well, part of me does. Part of me just wants to bury my face into the starchy pillow and forget I ever came back to this twisted shit hole of a town. But Laura just smiles, all smug, like she's waiting for me to ask—like it's all part of the process.

“Are my parents here?” I ask. I'm dreading having to face Karen, but half expecting her to be out in the hallway as we speak, pressing her ear up against the thick wooden door, waiting for her cue. It's also possible that no one called her. I'm twenty-three and I think there's got to be some sort of patient confidentiality law, something that says I'm allowed to fuck up once and no one will call my mother. But I'm not really sure how this whole hospital thing works. Despite my questionable choices over the past five years, this is a first.

“Your mother was here, but she went home for the night,” Laura says. “She thought it would be best that we have a chance to speak in private before she sees you.”

Of course she would think that. I reach up and rub the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. Karen is a school shrink herself—technically a guidance counselor, but whatever, same thing. She knows how it works; whether you're an eighth-grade wrist cutter, all torn up over cyberbullying and bulimia, or you're like me—a seemingly well-adjusted twentysomething in the midst of a bender/a breakdown/whatever-is-happening-but-I'm-too-afraid-to-ask. I'm sorry, but nobody, thirteen or twenty-three, wants to divulge her deepest, darkest secrets to her mother. Mothers only complicate things with their messy emotions.

Karen also happens to be a middle-school cheerleading coach, and her attempts at emotional guidance are always accompanied by way too much pep and hurrah! for my taste.

But Karen is smarter than I give her credit for. She knows I'll never talk to her, really talk to her. I've never been the type to open up and cry on her shoulder. Not like my brothers. They were always the weepy, whiny, cuddly type. Real mama's boys. But the gene for basic human compassion seems to have been lost on me—or at least that's what Karen quips when I pull away from a hug or avert eye contact during a serious conversation. She knows I'm way more likely to confide in some random therapist lurking in my hospital room—strictly business.

My head feels fuzzy, and my eyes start to cloud over again. “I was wearing contacts,” I say, too low, as I start to think that maybe they've rolled to the back of my head or dissolved, just dissolved into my eyes. She stares at me, totally unconcerned. There's an arrogant silence between us, so I start to speak again, even though I can feel her judging, assessing, taking mental notes on my mental state. “I'm not supposed to sleep with my contacts . . .” I say. My voice trails off, and there's a sort of tingling in my chest—tingling but heavy. Like my body could either float off or sink like a stone at any moment. She's still watching me, and the tingling starts to spread up through my throat. I don't know what this feeling is but I don't like it. For a second I think it's whatever drug they're pumping into me, maybe even a bad hangover. I'm trying to find words; I'm trying to think of anything to say—anything that makes me sound less like a patient and more like normal-calm-casual Aubrey.

I start to rub at my eyes and sit up in the bed, tugging at the IV. “How long have I been here?”

Laura smiles, like her facial expressions have any impact on my level of calmness right now. “Don't worry about your contacts,” she says. But I am worried, and the fact that she's telling me how to feel loses her some serious points.

The rain pounds harder against the metal screen.

For the first time, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. My hair is a mess—a complete shit show—tangled and frizzed out in every direction. My lips are swollen and cracked, and all I can think is that I've got a little bit of a
Girl, Interrupted
thing going on. I can't quite pull off hot and crazy like Angelina, but I'm close. Pretty fucking close.

A slow, impish grin starts to slide across my face.

“What's so funny?” Laura says, with a confused smile, an attempt, I think, to mirror my amusement, like she's waiting for the punch line.

“Nothing,” I say. “I just—I just look the part is all.”

“What part?” She gets all serious again. She's a tough crowd, this one. I'm trying to read her. And I know she thinks she's reading me. I'm ninety percent sure I know what she's thinking and I'm seventy-five percent sure that she's wrong.

“I'm not crazy,” I say. I don't mean to say it out loud. But it sort of just slides off my tongue.

“No one's saying that you are.”

“Then why am I here?” I can feel my voice start to shake, so I stop with the questions and start to twist the bed sheet in my hands.

“You had a lot of alcohol in your system,” she says, resting her clipboard on her lap again.

I wait for her to continue—to get into the details. To tell me how bad I fucked up. But she just stares at me. Like this should be enough to take in. And it still doesn't answer any questions. Of course I had
a lot of alcohol
in my system. I usually have
a lot of alcohol
in my system, but that's never been enough to land me in a hospital with a social worker camped out at the foot of my bed.

“Do you remember what upset you tonight, Aubrey?”

I shrug, and I hate that she says my name at the end of the question, like I'm not the only other person in the room.

Why so cryptic, Laura?
I want to say.
Why can't you just say it?

“Were you upset about Rachel? Losing a friend can be extremely traumatic. Your mom told me the funeral was today.”

And here it is. I should have known this was coming. Of course my mother would share this key piece of information. I should have planned for it.
Well played, Laura. Well played.

“She wasn't my friend. We haven't spoken in years.” I lie. It's all I can say. I think it's enough. I think she even believes it—at least for now. Laura just smiles and leans back in her chair.

For some reason, I think of Adam again, but push the thought down almost as quickly as it comes. I've learned to compartmentalize, over the years. Rachel or Adam, I don't have the energy or space in my head right now to handle Rachel
and
Adam, so I slouch back down into the bed and close my eyes.

“What's upsetting you, Aubrey?” She says my name again, and I want to say,
I don't know, Laura. I don't know what's upsetting me, Laura, but it's not Adam, and it's definitely not Rachel,
but I don't say that. Because if I claim to know what's not upsetting me, then I must know what is, and I'm just not ready to go there yet. I don't even know this woman, so I'll spare her all the gory details.

She offers a sympathetic shrug and says, “Maybe that's enough for tonight.”

Five days earlier. Sunday, October 5, 2014.

I'
M STILL IN
my gym clothes when I get the call from Karen. Danny had left ten minutes before to get coffee and bagels.

“Aubrey?” My mother's voice is shaky and slow with sympathy that I cannot be bothered to emulate.

“Yeah,” I say, standing in front of the bathroom mirror. It's where I take most of my calls. It's the only private room in the apartment.

“Are you all right?”

“Yup.”

“You haven't said anything.”

“What's there to say?”

“She was your best friend.”

“She was not my best friend.”

We both breathe on the line. I hear my mother's brain churning, desperate to evoke some sort of emotion from me.

“Well, I hope you decide to come home. It's the right thing,” she says. I take a deep breath and blow hard into the phone. It is the right thing. I know that. It's obviously the right thing. But since when has the right thing been a thing with Rachel? I can practically hear my mother shaking her head on the other side of the line, wondering, pleading where she went wrong with her cold, hard little girl.

“Aubrey,” she starts again, and I take another obnoxiously loud breath so that she knows I'm reaching my limit. “Fine,” she says. “But let me know what you decide. I've been using your room as an office.”

I know she never sees students outside of school property, and she's most likely just using my room as some sort of filing cabinet—a safe space to sort through her notes and referrals; but I still have this disturbing vision of pimply thirteen-year-old boys parading in and out of my childhood bedroom before going home and jerking off to the memory of my unmade bed and white wicker furniture.

“We'll see,” I say.

“Okay. I love you.” She holds her breath, no doubt waiting for a response, even though I haven't said it back in years. I hang up the phone and place it down on the edge of the sink. I try to push Rachel out of my mind, but I can feel my curiosity bubbling up. Did she really want to die? Did she leave a note?

I consider my own collection of suicide notes. I've compiled them over the years: five different drafts, which comes out to roughly one a year. I won't get all pathetic about it. I promised myself a long time ago—well, five years ago—that I'd never be
that
girl. Five years, five finished suicide notes. Five also happens to be my favorite number—but that's unrelated. And after five years of my crafting the perfect good-bye letter, Rachel is the one to go and do it. I guess it's sort of funny, but that's only if you care enough to analyze it, really mull it over, and I don't have that kind of time.

Sometimes, when I'm alone, I'll write one out—a thoughtful and methodical process that requires my best handwriting, the kind saved for birthday cards and job applications. I write out the whole tired story—at least what I want people to take from it. Then, realizing I forgot some crucial detail or some subtle, accusatory remark, I crumple the paper into a ball, tear off a fresh page from my monogrammed stationery, and start over.

I keep them all in a neat little folder, tucked away in my top desk drawer, just in case.

I pull my hair out of its bun, run my fingers through, and stare at myself in the mirror. My hair is still damp and knotty from the gym, but I don't feel like showering yet. I rub the soft side of my fist over a white spot on the glass. I should probably Windex; I can barely see my face through the murky streaks of toothpaste and hair spray. I make a mental note to pick up a bottle at Duane Reade this afternoon. I add it to the list:
Windex, paper towels, toilet paper.
It's my job to restock the paper goods and cleaning supplies, and I always mean to do it, but sometimes I just forget; and it doesn't cross my mind until I get a passive-aggressive Snap Chat from Danny of the empty roll while he's taking a shit.

But now I remember to get to the store. And I realize it's not exactly the time for shopping lists, considering I just found out my best friend—ex-best friend—is dead, but I can't think of anything else I could be doing right now.

I widen my eyes, lean in close, and blink three times, just to be sure. Nothing. I'm completely dry. I figured as much. I can't even remember the last time I cried anyway.

Typical.
What a typical way for Rachel to go. I hold my thumb under the leaky faucet, letting the droplets catch in the corner of my fingernail and notice that the dark red nail polish has started to chip.

I try to imagine her doing it, counting out the pills. She probably only took six or seven, just enough to make it seem legit, but not quite enough to kill her right away. That would be such a Rachel thing to do, too—threaten suicide, and then revel in the attention.
Poor Rachel. Fragile Rachel. How can we all be there for Rachel?

Too bad no one cared enough to stop her.

My BlackBerry balances on the edge of the sink, and I can see the voice-mail alert still blinking up at me.

Rachel had called late Friday, the night before she did it. I was out with college friends at some hipster bar in Williamsburg. I don't do Brooklyn—I rarely leave the Upper East Side—so I was already in a pissy mood, and the thought of speaking to Rachel was an even bigger buzzkill. I didn't answer. I haven't since that day at the diner, but nobody knows about that. This was the only time she'd left a message. Now the tiny envelope on the screen taunts me:
Do it. Do it, girl. Press me. Hold me to your ear. Let me tell you a secret.

My phone still teeters on the sink's ceramic ledge, and I think about plugging the drain, turning on the faucet, and casually nudging it into a pool of hot water. I close my eyes and start to count to three, imagining the BlackBerry sinking, drowning the last remains of Rachel Burns.

One.
I breathe in through my nose.

It's not like I could have known she'd actually do it.

Two.

It's not like I could have really done anything about it.

Three.

It's not my problem anymore.

I try to remember the name of the nail polish as the water rolls off my fingertips and pools above the drain.

She'd always been weaker than me. She was bossy, definitely bossy. But she was weak. I know that for sure now.

I rub my fist over the mirror again. It squeaks against the glass, which fogs up even more. I'm trying to ignore the throbbing pain on my left hipbone. My tattoo burns, like a fresh wound, beneath my gym pants, but I know the pain isn't really there. I know it's in my head. It's all just in my head. So I focus on trying to wipe the streaks off the mirror instead.

I think they call them phantom pains.

We got them together, matching. Rachel had just turned eighteen, and I'd used my fake ID. I let her choose the design, but I'm sure I wouldn't have had a say in it anyway. She called it a
heartigram,
but I never knew if that was the actual term or just something she made up on the spot. She was always doing that sort of thing, making shit up and then calling me out on not keeping up with her lingo:
God, Aub. You're such a dumb ass. Everyone knows what a heartigram is.

I can feel where she branded me. The letters
R
and
A
are tangled and twisted together into a black heart. It pulsates beneath my stretchy pants. It
has
to be in my head. I've thought about getting it removed. I hide it as best I can, but there have still been too many times, too many guys, and just enough skin for me to have to explain the meaning behind the mysterious
heartigram
etched into my left hipbone. This had been especially true in college—and early on, before Danny. I stopped explaining the heartigram, and it always played out the exact same way.

It would start with a make-out session against the walls of some musty basement bar with a random frat boy on a Friday night. I was careful at this point. I'd had my fair share of hookups, but I was always in control. At last call, we'd fumble outside, usually into the sleet, snow, or rain; I'd have no clue where my friends went, but never really cared. I'd learned not to rely on people in these situations.

So we'd hop in a cab—the guy would always be way drunker than me, drooling over my tits all the way back to the dorms—and we'd go back to my room, always my bed. Never his. My shirt would come off, and then he'd spy the sharp black ink peeking out from my unbuttoned jeans.

Him: Cool tat.

Me: Thanks.

Him: What's it mean?

Me: Nothing.

Him: Who's R.A.? Hope it's not another dude!

And then thinking he was totally original, a real romancer in the sack, he'd prop himself up on his elbow, get all coy and smiley, lean in, and kiss me real slow.

They'd be gone before anything else could happen. I'd usually just fake a sudden bout of the spins, jump up, and run to the bathroom. I'd retch over the bowl, flush a few times to make it believable, and then politely ask them to leave. Worked every time.

The ink has faded over the past five years, but I'm still reminded every time I go to the bathroom, every time I undress, every time I stand naked in front of a fucking mirror. And now Rachel is dead, and all I'm left with is a
heartigram.

I can't decide if I'm jealous. No, “jealous” is not the word. But a part of me resents the fact that she beat me to it. Suicide is no longer an option for me. It would just come off as tacky and melodramatic. I can hear everyone back home now:
She just couldn't live with the guilt; maybe she couldn't go on without her; I heard it was a pact.

I'd rather not be eternally associated with Rachel if I can help it.

I leave the bathroom and plop down on the couch to wait for Danny. I sit cross-legged and stare at my fingernails some more. It's all I can do to stay in the moment.

I've been seeing him for three years—a tall Irish boy from somewhere outside of Albany—and I have never mentioned Rachel to him, or what she did to me. I've never mentioned much before my college years—especially from those last few months before high school graduation.

I met Danny in college. We were both sophomores. I'd seen him around campus for a year or so, and thought nothing of him. He'd seemed kind of douche-y actually—a typical frat boy, always with a Mets hat, and he may or may not have been on the rugby team. He had one of those ubiquitous faces that could easily be mistaken for literally anyone else with a light brown buzz cut and a polo.

We got together in the most anticlimactic, unromantic way possible. It was a frat party; he filled my red Solo cup with warm keg beer. We talked for maybe ten minutes about, well, warm keg beer, and he Facebook-messaged me the next day. That was back when I actually had Facebook. We were dating three weeks later. I had mono, and he was nice to me—that about sums up our entire relationship. He offered to give up his Friday night and came over with the first season of
Lost
and dining-hall frozen yogurt. So I felt like I sort of owed him my time, once I got healthy again and all. I never did get into
Lost,
though, which has always been the main issue in our relationship. Something he's never really gotten over.

“How can you feel
nothing
for these characters?
For the island
?
” he'd ask, his voice prickly with pure distrust.

That should have been his first clue.

Two and a half weeks after my mono outbreak, I was back on my feet, drenching my spleen once again with copious amounts of vodka–Red Bulls. And then we had fun, Danny and me.

We still have an easy relationship. He pays the rent—well, his parents do, at least while he's finishing up law school—and we hardly ever fight. He's nice enough; pretty good-looking, too. My only complaint is that he still insists on having sex with his socks on.

But in my top desk drawer, tucked away beneath my folder of suicide notes, are three carefully composed drafts of a breakup letter.

I hear his keys fumbling in the door. I sit up straight and try to act natural. He walks in, balancing the tray of coffee on his forearm, and I'm still not sure if I'll bother telling him about the call. But halfway through breakfast, I pull out the insides of my bagel and I tell him, without any sign of emotion, how she's dead, how she probably killed herself.

He stands up to hug me. “It's fine,” I say, pressing my palms out in front of me. “We weren't close.” He looks at me kind of funny and sits back down on the edge of the couch. “I don't even think I'm going home for the funeral,” I say. “I don't want to anyway. It's just going to be miserable.” This wasn't entirely true. I decided moments before that I'd at least go home for the week, if only to appease Karen and not look like a total asshole. I still wasn't sure about the funeral. That part was true.

“Do what you have to do,” he says. He cocks his eyebrow and bites down into his sesame-seed bagel.

“What?” I put my own bagel on the coffee table and stare him down. He shrugs. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing,” he says. He's doing that thing where he shakes his head and sort of smiles, but only because he doesn't want to ruffle me up. But after a moment of silence, he at least attempts to say what he means, through a mouthful of bagel and cream cheese. It's gross, and I want to tell him to keep his mouth shut when he chews, but instead I just wait for him to finish his thought. It's always better to just get it over with. “I just think you should probably go, is all.” He won't look me in the eye. Instead, he stares intently at the bagel in his hands and chews with unnecessary focus. “It's the right thing to do.”