The Girl in Times Square (36 page)

After the patrolman left, Lily told her mother, that was a very brave thing you did Mom, you used brave words.

Allison turned away from Lily. “Brave words are forgotten
instantly.
But I lost my foot,” she said. “I lost my foot
forever.
”

Wednesday.
Despite Allison’s brave words to the patrolman, despite Matthews’s offer to clear George of charges of abuse, in the evening her father acted like a big tired pessimist. “No, Lily, we will never cure her. She will never get better. I see that now.”

“So why are we trying so hard then?”

He said, because the most important thing is not the goal, it’s the movement, it’s the struggle.

Where did Lily hear that before?

On the road to the beach the bushes were red, creating a striking contrast against the sea and the sky. It was all breathtaking. Lily wondered why she was noticing it more this trip than last year.

And the palm trees, the palm trees. How they bend like violin bows, bending to the volcanic ash and to the setting sun.

The sun was not red, it was yellow all the way to the bottom of the ocean, and how relentlessly it squeezed itself into the horizon, between the island of Lanai and the Maui volcano on this side of Lahaina.

Lily found a rock and sat and watched the sunset, and then went into the water. The healing water. It burned her eyes that were like sandpaper, and burned her lips that had raw spots on them from the stress, and made her face all sandy. It was lovely. She wasn’t numb, she
felt.

The water was warm, and the air was warm. Lily swam, and for some reason got a haunted sense that she was seeing Maui’s
colors so vividly and feeling the water so calmingly because she was seeing them for the last time. A premonition passed through her that she would never see Maui again after she left here.

Lily didn’t like that premonition. She tried not to look at the indigo mulberry sky as she walked back in twilight.

George had made shrimp with mushrooms and onions and delicious sauce, and rice, and Lily had two helpings and then some ice cream and called her mother at the hospital. The orthopedic surgeon had not come yet and Allison said her stump was all pus. The dressings needed to be changed. Lily said it was healing—the body, broken as it was, was trying to heal it. Allison didn’t want to hear it.

The Maui prosecutor’s office called George.

“They said they got the police report and a Kim Fallone, who is the assistant DA, can see us next Monday,” George told her. “They want to know—can your mother come?”

“Can my mother come? I don’t know if my mother can come. Will she be able to use a wheelchair by then? Will she be discharged from the hospital, be dried out by then? I know nothing,” said Lily. “Besides I’m supposed to be leaving on Saturday, remember?”

George asked her to stay until Monday.
Extremely
reluctantly Lily agreed.

Maui at night has stars that pepper the sky; it almost looks fake, there are so many stars and they are so bright. But the most amazing thing, right below the orange crescent moon hanging above the ocean is the bright, lucid, large and round Jupiter. Lily has never seen anything like it in all her life and wonders if Spencer would like to see it someday, because he has probably never seen anything like it in his life either.

Thursday.
How much more of this could Lily take? Her father continued to be a downer. She will never stop drinking. This is all going to fail and we’re going to have to stay in Maui forever,
and we’re going to have to go to court, and I’ll be prosecuted and you’ll be prosecuted, and I don’t know what to do. It’s all hopeless.

Five feet away from entering Allison’s room, he said, Liliput, let’s make a deal, we will feed her, stay for about an hour, but then we’ll go, okay? He wanted to go to North Beach. He wanted a little therapy himself.

They sit there and listen to Allison rail and rant and rave and tell lies upon lies to the doctor, and even to Papi, as if he doesn’t know the truth, but from the dull-eyed look of him, who knows if he does? In front of her mother, he is just a different person, Lily thinks. He walks around, he doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know what to do, and then he wants to leave.

Her mother is telling Dr. Matthews how the drinking has only really been a problem for the last four months or so because her husband is so bad because he wants to leave this beautiful place, and because when she is stressed and frustrated she drinks to help her relax. “A glass of wine does relax me a little bit,” she says to the doctor with a little smile. The doctor nods, and says this and that.

“Doctor, can I see you outside, please?” That’s Lily.

In the corridor Lily tells him that her mother’s drinking has been out of control for many years, a decade, and it’s gotten worse in Maui, but it did not begin in Maui and it didn’t get out of control in Maui.

“Have you seen my mother’s bruises, have you seen her amputated foot? She lost a foot, for God’s sake, you think she could escalate to that level of drinking in four months?”

Back inside, the doctor says, “Mrs. Quinn, your daughter tells me that you haven’t been telling me the truth. She says you are drinking much more heavily than you say.”

The look her mother shoots her makes Lily recall those moments of her life when she felt like a non-human: like when her mother told her last year that Andrew was not talking to her because she had taken up with Spencer; like when Spencer left her.

To the doctor, Allison says, “Well, my daughter’s never seen me drink. He tells her that,” and she points to George. “She is not telling the truth, and he is not telling the truth.”

“Mrs. Quinn, why would they be lying to me?”

“Ask them,” Allison says defiantly.

“Mr. Quinn, you’ve been by your wife’s side all along. Is the drinking as bad as your daughter says?”

Papi hems and haws and then says, “I love my wife very much. I want to stay and take care of her. No matter how sick she is. I won’t go. Leaving her is tantamount to leaving a paralyzed person in the middle of the woods in the dark. I cannot do it. But it’s not as bad as my daughter says. It’s much worse than that. It’s an unimaginable nightmare.” He starts to cry and walks out of the room.

Allison is crying, too, and her expression reads, if only you didn’t butt in, Lily, none of this would be happening. A look that tells Lily that her mother is not exactly wishing for sobriety despite the lack of right-footedness.

She is now crying for morphine, saying she’s in incredible pain.

She says to Lily, leave here, leave and don’t come back.

Dr. Matthews says, “What do you want, Mrs. Quinn?”

Allison says, “I just want to be left alone. That’s all.”

“You want to be left alone so you can drink?”

“Well, no.”

“You want your husband to leave you? You want him to pack his bags and leave you? What do you mean?”

Allison doesn’t answer. She cannot look at him because she is so angry with Lily.

Dr. Matthews says, “And by the way, Mrs. Quinn, I don’t agree with your husband’s analogy. The difference between you and a paralyzed person in the woods is that you can help yourself. A paralyzed man cannot get up.”

“Look at me, I can’t get up either.”

“You can, you can choose to get help and get sober. But I understand you cannot do it on your own. There are treatment
centers here in Maui. There is a very good place, Aloha House.”

Allison shakes her head. “No, I can’t go to Aloha House.”

“Why?”

“I love my home, I want to go there.”

“So you can drink?” Dr. Matthews asks.

“No.”

The doctor says before he leaves, “I’m going to recommend that you be placed in Aloha House when you’re discharged from here.”

“Why,
why
, do you have to open your big mouth?” Allison says to Lily after he is gone.

Papi and Lily sit around her and try to talk to her. Papi says his silly things. Papi likes to talk, loves to talk, but Lily sees it all now—when it comes to Allison’s drinking, he prefers to just go to the beach. The drinking is the one thing he doesn’t want to talk about.

Lily knows they have done nothing to quell the beast inside Allison, who will say anything to get herself back home.

Papi, who is half-happy that Allison is sober, a state he has not seen her in for some time, says, Mom is right. She doesn’t have to go to Aloha House. He says, there is no liquor in our house anymore, and your mother is going to promise she won’t drink. Allison says bravely, coolly, no, no, I won’t drink. I’ve learned my lesson good and proper now. I have no foot.

George says, “I believe her.”

“Are you even kidding me? Are you
kidding
me?” Lily exclaims.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Lily, I know about these things. I’m older, wiser than you. I understand.”

This is what they mean when they say alcoholism is a family disease.

The same man, who not four days ago told the police he could not handle her, who begged Lily to come because she was a danger to herself and to him, who could not control her, could not help her, that same man suddenly thinks it’s a good idea for his wife to come home!

Lily tells him, “This is the same woman who two days after a foot amputation asked us to wheel her to a garden on the second floor so she could have four cigarettes in a row. When she returns to her bed, she’ll have some morphine. The woman who was not able to control herself at any time in the past is
suddenly
going to stop herself from drinking?”

And then a light goes on in Lily’s head. Her mother is right! George
is
the reason Allison continues to drink! Of course the addiction is hers and hers alone, but every time she gets sober for a day, for a minute, like now, she is not the only one who gets cocky—he gets cocky, too. And he says, I think this time it’s going to be okay. He says, Mommy is never going to admit she needs help, but this is a big step. I can help her get sober, I can do it.

George says in a determined voice, “We will make her sign a statement that she will not touch liquor, otherwise I will take her to the hospital myself.”

Lily stops herself from saying
Oh, sign a statement, that’s good, that’ll do it,
but barely.

How she wishes she could talk to Spencer about this, ask his advice. She can just imagine what he will say. He has no patience for this kind of nonsense.

Dr. Matthews tells Lily that her mother will not be leaving the hospital unless she is discharged into Aloha House and that he will keep her in the hospital until there is room for her there.

Happily Lily informs her parents that Allison won’t be able to leave the hospital.

Allison says, “That’s why, that’s
why
I didn’t want to come to the damn hospital. I knew this would happen. That’s why I didn’t want you to open your big mouth and say so much. You say too much, Lily. Your father, now he says little but just right, you say way too much and that’s why we’re in this mess right now.”

“Mom, are we in this mess because
I
have an amputated foot? Are we in this mess because
I
slipped and fell and hit my head on the bathtub and told the police my husband beats me? Are
we in this mess because
I
have bruises all over my body because
I
am drunk all the time?”

“That’s what I mean,” Allison said, beginning to cry. “No one needs me. I just want to die.”

I needed you, Mom, Lily thinks, turning away. I need you. Where are you?

Now Lily knows.

On the way home from the hospital, George is upset with Lily. He says she just doesn’t understand anything.

No sooner do they get home than Allison calls and says that Dr. Matthews has explained to her about not releasing her from the hospital until there is a place for her in Aloha House…but then she can leave Aloha House any time she wants!

Lily is listening.

Allison says, “So as soon as there’s a place for me at Aloha House I go there and immediately get discharged so I can be home the same day.”

“Wait, so you mean to say you’ll go to Aloha House to
fool
the doctors?”

“Just find me the number of Aloha House.”

Silence from Lily.

“Find my Yellow Pages on the floor. You found my gin bottle in the closet, find my Yellow Pages on the floor.”

“Mom, we cannot have you leave Aloha House, the whole point is that you’re supposed to want to get better.”

Allison says, “Then why should I leave the hospital? Here they are giving me morphine, they are giving me sleeping pills.”

Lily understands. “So you are trading one addiction for another? Why are you taking the morphine if you’re not in pain?”

“I’m in terrible pain. Have you seen I have no foot?”

“We sat with you for five hours today and you never moaned or complained once.”

Allison the stoic says, “So I should complain every time I have a pain?”

Then she hangs up.

Morphine. One addiction for another. Morphine dulls Allison’s desire for drink, though it doesn’t dull her desire to lie.

The lies just never stop, never. To the doctors, lies, to the police, to me, to her husband, even to herself.

Every word she utters about her drinking is a lie, and the lie is the sign. If there is one sure sign of an alcoholic it’s the lie, how much you drink, and the alibi—it’s
his
fault—and the denial—it’s not so bad—and Lily’s mother is the queen of them all. And the crown on the queen? “I can stop any time I want to.
Any
time. I just don’t want to. Why put myself through such an arbitrary test? What, just to satisfy you?”

Allison lies about her drinking to everybody who will listen and if you don’t catch her in the lie, she continues to lie, asks you to lie for her, and if you do catch her, she gets upset you are knocking her house of cards over.

But every word she utters is a lie.

The water, the palm trees, the complete absence of wind, the transparent lapping water, the Pacific. For millions of years the ocean has surged up Wailea Beach, bringing animal life, plant life, news of wars and death. Tsunamis and coral reefs, all washed into the same salt now rinsing over Lily’s face. Suddenly she becomes afraid of her own shadow in the water, thinking it’s a shark.