Mrs. Independent

Chapter Seven: Truth

Chapter Seven: Truth

Josh rolls the car to a stop out front of my parents house. My relatives have cars lining the street.
I'm sure this intervention is pointless.
Rubbing my forehead, I get the diaper bag and Josh gets the car seat with Caiden in it, who is fast asleep after nursing and a diaper change.a
Josh left his car in the city and we're just going to carpool home.
I walk ahead of him and open the front door.
Everyone is in the living room and I hear a few sniffles.
Josh sets the car seat on the floor next to the couch.
"Listen," I begin.
Mom stands up and she has red eyes, which makes me stop talking
My stomach drops slightly.
If everyone has been crying, something really is wrong with my sister.
Liam isn't on his phone, he's sitting on the arm of the couch with a blank expression.
Yeah, this can't be good.
"I hate to do this to you." Mom says. "But you're the only one I know who would know for sure." She says. "And I know you're-" she hiccups. "I just need you to look at this and tell me if this is what I think it is."
She walks over to the kitchen counter and comes back with a ziploc bag.
"What?" I ask.
She holds it out to me and I take it, confused.
The bag is cloudy and it's hard to see inside, so I pull it open and look down at it.
It's a white powdery substance.
Nobody says a word.
"Where did you get this?"
"Claire's purse." Dad says . His voice is monotone.
"Why were you in her purse?" I continue.
"She left it on the counter and it was open. I saw the bag." Liam says.
"It's powdered sugar, right Katherine?" Mom asks.
She looks so desperate.
I haven't seen or touched cocaine since I was twenty two, and I feel sick to my stomach.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and put on the flashlight, dipping my finger in the powder.
It's the consistency of flour.
"Well?" Liam asks.
"The only way to know for sure is to taste it. I'm not tasting it."
"So what do we do?" Josh breaks the silence.
I grab Claire's purse from the coffee table and dumb the contents.
Razor blades, small straws, a bag of pills, marijuana...
"Is that-" my Grandmother starts.
And I don't know what comes over me, but the next thing I know I'm marching into Claire's room, and I completely lose my shit.
I throw the door open and it slams against the wall.
My hand finds the light.
"Get up." I yell at her, walking over to her and grabbing her shirt.
"What the fuckkkkk!" She groans.
I force her out of bed.
"Let go of me, Katherine! What the fuck is wrong with you?"
I drag her by the front of her shirt into the living room, shoving her towards the coffee table.
"What the fuck is this, Claire?" I yell at her. "So you're a fucking drug addict now? What? A remake of young Katherine?"
"Would you stop? It's not a big deal." She says. "So fucking dramatic."
I start picking up the straws and the razor blades and the pills and the cocaine and the weed.
"You wanna be cool and get high? Alright, let's do it together. Right now. I can show you the real way to roll a blunt."
"Stop." She says.
"I can get in contact with some of the people I used to sell to, if you wanna make some money. I'm sure I can find their phone numbers."
"Stop." She says again.
"And what's this? Adderal? Did you know taking it with cocaine can make you higher? It's way better Claire, you should try it."
"Shut up!" She yells at me.
The house falls silent. Josh's eyes are wide.
I guess nobody was expecting me to act this way.
They wanted to have a calm, loving family meeting, but they don't work.
And then I see it.
Her hands are shaking.
She wipes them on her jeans to get them to stop.
And I remember it.
And I have questions.
"What made you do it?"
"What?" She asks.
"What made you start using?"
"Nothing."
"It's not nothing. What made you start using?"
The only sound in the entire house is the clock ticking on the wall in the kitchen.
"Nothing." She says.
And I feel it. I feel it in every part of my body.
"There's something you guys need to know." I say. "Something about me. Something only two people aside from me on the planet know."
Everyone is looking at me now.
"What is it?"
I swallow the lump in my throat.
"When I was sixteen, I got an abortion."
Silence.
"Wait, what?" Mom asks. "You what? You had an abortion? At sixteen?"
"Yes."
"You're lying." She says.
Instead of responding, I turn to Claire.
"Alex had been asking me to use for weeks." I whisper. "Weeks. And I kept saying no."
She wraps her arms around herself and listens.
"And I got sick and I realized I was pregnant. I was sixteen. A kid. I panicked, I know Alex couldn't be a father. So I went to planned parenthood and I got an abortion. I cried for hours. When I went to see Alex that night, he asked me to use and I said yes, because I just didn't want to feel it." My eyes fill with tears. "I didn't want to feel the shame. I let down everyone. I let down my family. God. I killed my baby. And I just wanted to numb the pain. I told myself I was going to do it only once. I smoked a blunt and did some coke, and I told myself I would do it once, but when I got sober over time I was still sad, so the next time Alex asked, I said yes. I said it was going to be the last time, and-and-" I press my hands to the sides of my head. "And every time my hands started shaking, I just did it again and told myself I would stop. And then Alex started planting things in my head about things, convinced me God wasn't real, and he just-he just ruined me. It got to a point where I didn't even recognize myself anymore. I was graduating soon. I needed money, so I started selling to put myself through college. And I just didn't want to stop because I didn't want to be sober because I didn't want to think about anything. I didn't want to think about my baby. I didn't want to think about my family, and I definitely didn't want to think about how I had let God down. How could he forgive me for murdering something he was trying to gift me with?" I have tears streaming down my cheeks. The house is silent. "And when Alex cheated on me, I pushed his van into the lake and took off because It was about survival. I was going to come home and just still do drugs and hide it, but I went into withdrawal and I was forced into rehab, and I didn't have drugs, so my only survival mechanism was to just bury everything. Bury feelings, dreams, hopes, memories..." my chin is trembling and I'm trying not to start sobbing. "And when I got out I just hid at home until Mom made me go to the store, and I saw Alex and I knew I didn't want to do drugs anymore, but seeing him made me think of the baby, and I didn't want to think about feelings." I take a deep breath. "And I told you guys I was trying to get a fresh start, but that was a lie. I was running away."
Claire has tears.
"My job isn't built on strength. My company is a bandaid. It's my wall. It's what I used to block out emotion and dreams and hopes. And don't get me wrong, I wanted to be okay, but every time I tried to feel anything, I thought about the baby. And being around you guys made me think about drugs because I used around you guys, and then I thought about Alex, and it all just led back to the baby. And I was broken. I was broken for years."
I look at Josh. "And then I was having a bad day and walked home and ran into some pervert in the street." I let out a sad laugh. "And I held on to my independence. I cringed to it, because I knew in my heart that what pervert," I gesture wildly towards my husband, "Was going to make me feel things I didn't want to feel. And I wanted to be okay enough to make friends. I wanted to trust people. So I lied to him. About everything. I told him I was a waitress. I lied about where I lived, the car I drove...and then I went to tell him but you guys came over early for Thanksgiving and my car wouldn't start so he drove my home, but he saw me get into a cab to my real house, that huge townhouse? And he came to the door and realized I was a fucking bitch and a liar, and he left."
The house is so quiet I could hear a fucking hair hit the floor.
"And I hated everything. I wanted to be okay. I wanted to feel things and be happy but I was still the drug addict Katherine, just, without the drugs. And my heart was screaming at me to talk to him but my mind was telling me no, because feelings are dangerous. Feelings turned me into a drug addict."
Mom wipes a few tears on her cheeks but mine just keep falling.
"So I went after him. I took him to my work. I told him the truth."
"Except the abortion." He says quietly.
I look at him and nod.
"Except for the abortion. I swore to myself I would never tell anybody." I swallow. "Anyways, after I told him you guys kept insisting he liked me and it was too much for me to handle, even though I knew he did, and I knew I felt the same way, I just...I didn't want to. But I got drunk one night with his friends and Ryan and him and I told them all I got an abortion."
"Ryan knows?" Dad asks quietly.
"No." I shake my head. "Because I told everyone I was kidding and Josh was the only one who realized I wasn't kidding. So the next morning he confronted me and I was crying for the first time in years, and he tried to hug me and I started screaming and shoving him, but he wouldn't let up. He forced me to feel. And he told me-" I cut off and press my hand to my mouth, sniffling. "He told me, and I swear to God, this is where I fell in love with him. It was this moment. He told me 'it's okay to not be okay, and it's okay to have help. It's okay to be comforted and it's okay to crave comfort. We are imperfect human beings. You don't have to be okay all the time.'" I swallow. "And I stopped struggling and he was there. For hours. I cried for hours, and his body was probably numb, but he didn't complain. He was there. And I hadn't had somebody there, because nobody knew." I look down. "And from there, he became my...everything. And now we're married with a baby and my job is just a job, and he knows that I'm stubborn. I know I'm stubborn, but he knows how to get me to talk. But when he told me that I don't have to be okay all the time, I realized it's okay for me to feel bad about the abortion. It's okay to cry about it sometimes. And that, that was strength. Our marriage is strength, but my job was not strength. It was a wall."
Nobody says anything.
I grip my baby sisters shoulders.
"I don't know what made you start using." I whisper. "And whatever it is, that's your business, but you need help. You're addicted."
"I'm not-"
"Your hands are shaking." I say. "And if you do a line of coke right now, it's going to go away almost instantly. You are addicted, Claire. You need to get help. Help is a choice. Rehab got me sober, but it didn't help. I didn't get help until I accepted it. You need to go to rehab and you need to talk about it. Accept help, because I swear to you, if you don't...it's going to destroy you beyond repair."
Her eyes remain locked on mine for a couple of seconds, and then she nods.
"Okay." She says.
"Okay?"
"Okay." She nods. "I'll go to rehab."

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