Jennifer Weiner - All Fall Down: A Novel

I spat the pill out into my hand, then flushed it down the toilet. I put the pills back in the bottles. I put the bottles back in the cabinet. I sprayed about half a bottle’s worth of air freshener, in case it turned out Mrs. Hank had a suspicious mind.

Outside the door, Ellie was standing with her hands in her pockets, pale-faced, in her pretty party dress, the one we’d picked out online the month before, with her sitting on my lap and me scrolling through the pages, still struggling with her “th” sound, her little finger pointing, “I will have lis one, and lat one, and lis one,” and me saying, “No, honey, just pick your favorite,” and her turning to me, eyes brimming, saying, “But they are ALL OF THEM MY FAVORITE.”

I bent down and lifted her in my arms.

“Do you need to take a nap now?” she asked. “I will be quiet.”

If anyone ever asked me what it felt like the instant my heart broke, I would tell them how I felt, hearing that.

“No. No nap. I’m okay.” And I was. At least physically. Sure, I wanted the pills so bad that I was shaking. I could still taste that delectable bitterness in the back of my throat, could already feel the phantom calm and comfort as my shoulders unclenched and my heartbeat slowed, but I could get through it, minute by minute, second by second, if I had to. Even though I suspected I would remember that bliss, and crave it, for the rest of my life.

I took Ellie downstairs to play with Hank. Dave was in the kitchen, talking about the Eagles’ dubious fortunes with Mr. Hank. “Honey, can I talk to you for a minute?”

I took him by the forearm, walked him out to the driveway, and told him the truth, watching my words register on his face—his wrinkled forehead, his mouth slowly falling open. “You did what?” Before I could start to explain my talent-show exit strategy again, he said, “No. You know what? Never mind.” His hand was on his phone. I turned away, my eyes brimming. I wanted to ask if I got any credit for honesty, if it meant anything to him that I’d told the truth, however belatedly . . . but, before I could ask, he was connected to Meadowcrest.

“Yes . . . no, I don’t know who I need to speak with . . . I thought my wife had a day pass, but now she’s telling me she didn’t . . . Allison W. . . . Yes, I’ll hold.”

While he was holding, I went back into the Hanks’ house. Ellie was engrossed in a game of Wii bowling. “I’ll be home soon,” I whispered. She barely spared me a hug. Mrs. Hank—Danielle—was in the kitchen. “Thanks for taking her,” I said. “I wonder if you could be extra nice to her for the next little while . . .”

“Are you going away again?” Danielle asked. She wasn’t my friend, but, at that moment, I wished she was.

“Yes. I actually . . .” I’m going back to rehab, I almost said. It was right there, the words lined up all in a row, but I wasn’t sure if that was oversharing, or asking for sympathy where I didn’t deserve any. “A work thing,” I finally concluded.

“Well, don’t worry. Your mother’s a rock star. And Ellie is always welcome here.”

I thanked her. Dave was already behind the wheel when I got back outside. “Are they letting me come back?” I whispered.

He backed out of the driveway. “At first someone named Michelle wanted me to call a facility in Mississippi that treats dual-diagnosis patients. That’s when you’re an addict with mental illness.”

I gave a mirthless giggle. “Does Michelle know I’m Jewish? I might be crazy, but there’s no way I’m going to Mississippi.”

“Eventually, they said you could come back. No guarantees about staying. Someone named Nicholas is going to be waiting for you.”

Nicholas. I shut my eyes. Then I made myself open them again. “Do you want to talk about . . . anything?”

I could see his knuckles, tight on the wheel, the jut of his jaw as he ground his back teeth. “Honestly? Right now, no. I don’t.” We drove for a minute, me sitting there clutching my purse handles hard, Dave’s face set, until he burst out, “When are you going to stop lying?”

“Now,” I said immediately. “I’m done with . . . with that. With all of it. I don’t want to be that kind of person. Or that kind of mom, or that kind of wife.”

Dave said nothing. I didn’t expect a response. I’d been honest, but, of course, what else would a liar say, except I’m done with lying and I’m done with using and I don’t want to be that way anymore? It was classic I-got-busted talk . . . and part of accepting life on life’s terms, the way they told us we had to, meant living with the knowledge that maybe he’d never be able to trust me again.

I sat in silence, the way I had during my first trip to Meadowcrest. Dave pulled up in front of the main building and sat there, the car in park, the engine still running. I’d had half an hour to think of what to say, but all I could manage was “Thank you for the ride.” I got out of the car, walked past the nice-desk receptionist, back beyond the RESIDENTS ONLY PAST THIS POINT sign, to the shabby hallway with its smell of cafeteria food and disinfectant. I left my purse in my empty bedroom, looped my nametag around my neck, and took the women’s path to Nicholas’s office, where, as promised, he was waiting for me.

“Allison W.,” he said. His voice was so kind.

I sat in front of his desk and bent my head. Then I said the words I’d already said, in Group and Share and the AA meetings, where I’d sat off to the side and scribbled lyrics in my notebook. “I think I’m really in trouble,” I whispered. “I think I’m an addict. I need help.”

“Okay,” he said. His hand on my shoulder was gentle. “The good news is, you’ve come to the right place.”

“How about these clementines?” The clerk at the Whole Foods on South Street—a white guy of maybe twenty with mild blue eyes, a wide, untroubled brow, and dreadlocks down to his waist—gave me a gentle, Namaste kind of smile. He spoke softly and slowly, with great deliberation. It was maddening. This guy wouldn’t have lasted a day in the suburbs, but in Center City, where the Whole Foods was next to a yoga studio, infuriating slowness was the rule. “Should we leave them in the box? Or take them out of the box and put the fruit in a bag?”

“Fruit in a bag, please.” I was only buying a dozen things—a turkey breast to grill for dinner, the miniature oranges that Ellie loved in her school lunches, a twenty-dollar maple-scented candle that was way too expensive but that I’d found impossible to resist—but I could already tell that I was going to be checking out for a while. Use it as a chance to practice patience, Bernice’s voice said in my head. When I’d left Meadowcrest, I’d joined Bernice’s outpatient group, and her voice had taken up residence in my brain. I tried not to sigh, and actually managed a smile as the clerk first rummaged in his drawer, then patted down his pockets, and finally called over a manager, who called over a second manager, who located a pair of scissors to snip through the netting.

“Oh, dear. It looks like a few of these are moldy,” said the clerk as the miniature oranges tumbled from their wooden crate into a plastic bag.

“Mommy, I do not want MOLDY CLEMENTINES,” Ellie announced.

“Do you want to get another box?” the clerk asked. Behind me, the woman with the Phil&Teds stroller and the black woolen peacoat gave a small but audible groan. Send her peace. That wasn’t Bernice; that was the voice of my new yoga instructor, Loyal. Peace, I thought. Old Allison would have scoffed at the dopey sayings, at the idea that the checkout line at the supermarket offered a chance to practice anything at all (not to mention at the notion of someone named Loyal). New Allison took advice wherever she could get it—at meetings, from magazines, from Oprah’s Super Soul Sundays, and from Celestial Seasonings tea bags.

“That’s okay,” I told the clerk. “How about just separate out the moldy ones? You can toss those, and we’ll take the good ones home.”

He looked at me, concern furrowing his brow. “Are you sure? You can just go get another box. It’s no trouble at all.”

“It’s fine.”

“Ooookay.” Clearly, it might have been fine for me, but it was deeply troubling for him. “Now, how about the turkey? Would you like that in a separate bag?”

“Please.” I held up the shopping bags I’d brought. The clerk blinked, like he’d never seen or imagined such a thing.

“So . . . use that one?”

“Oh my God,” murmured the woman in the peacoat. Ellie, meanwhile, had crouched down, the better to inspect the beeswax lip balms.

“Mommy, is this MAKEUP?”

“Kind of. Not exactly.”

“Well, can I HAVE it?”

“No, honey, we have stuff like that at home. You can use what we’ve got. We’ll shop the closet!”

“But that will have your SPITTY STUFF ALL OVER IT!”

I squatted down, feeling my body protest. My hips creaked; my back twinged. I’d done an hour of hot yoga that morning and had a run planned for tomorrow. How’d you do it? they asked in AA and NA meetings, when you went up front to collect your chip—for your first twenty-four hours of sobriety, then for thirty days, sixty days, ninety days, six months, nine months, a year, and on from there. One day at a time was the rote answer, the line you had to say, but each time I’d collected a chip I’d made sure to say that exercise was part of my recovery. It was a chance to get completely out of my head, forty minutes when all I could do was take the next step, find the next pose, manage the next inhalation. No matter how crappy or sad I felt, how locked in my own head, in my own unhappy run of thoughts, I would force myself up and out of bed, into the clothes I’d laid out the night before, and I would make myself go through my paces like I was swallowing a dose of some noxious medicine that I knew it was critical to get down.