* * *
I go to stay with Lile and Libby the next day. I need to be near Lile—he’s the closest thing left to my daddy. My mom willingly hands me over, she knows she can’t mother me right now, and with three young boys, Lib is an expert in mothering. She met Lile in college at LSU and he couldn’t have dreamed her better, springy chestnut hair and root-beer brown eyes like Jack’s. She makes him laugh harder than I’ve ever heard him, and she gave him a trio of sports-obsessed sons. She didn’t grow up with much, but though she learned to love on little, she learned to love well.
When she hears that I’m coming to stay she gives Little Lile’s room a hasty feminine makeover. There’s a floral comforter on the bed when I arrive and a vacation-scented candle called Aloha Orchid that’s been burning for hours to get rid of the peewee-football smell. Even though the whole family are raving mad fans and it pains her to do so, she untacks his LSU posters because she knows I’m too fragile to fall asleep with fifteen cartoon tiger mascots watching me.
There’s a newly formed village of framed photos on the dresser across from the bed, one of Jack lifting the veil from my face at our wedding, another of the nieces and nephews at Christmas, and my favorite, a rumpled old picture of my family at Perdido Key in the ’80s. I’m about ten, my skin is the color of pralines, and I have long spindly foal legs. My daddy is supposed to be smiling at the camera but he’s smiling at me instead. I move it over to sit right next to me by the bed. Daddy. I wonder what he would think of me now.
Lile is harder on me than Libby is. He’s straightforward and makes sure that every word he says to me sinks in. He makes me get out of bed every day, hands me a towel and points me toward the shower. He calls Jack on the phone and tries to fix my marriage, when he sees that I’m alone in it. He steps up without hesitation as a brother, husband, father, and friend. He makes doctor’s appointments and forces me to come and eat dinner at the knotty pine table. Their youngest, four-year-old Parks, sits beside me, and Lile fathers both of us through the simplest things.
“Ruthie, try the black-eyed peas. Parks, drink your milk.”
“Ru, look at me when I’m talking to you. Parks, go wash your hands.”
It’s humiliating and necessary. I don’t have anywhere else to go.
In a week, the color they got at the beach has drained from their faces. I can see them aging by the hour and it kills me. The shame is killing me.
* * *
The days are hard but the nights, the nights are fucking terrible. They’re purgatorial. At 7:30 p.m. Libby puts Parks and Rhodes down to sleep. She reads them a story about a blue truck, holds them long enough to drink in the smell of toothpaste and little boy, and turns out the light. A few hours later, Lile starts to nod off watching ESPN highlights and stumbles off to bed, where Libby waits with her nose in a magazine. It isn’t a sudden departure but it always feels that way. I’m alone. Everything is dark, everything is quiet, the floorboards stop creaking, the faucets stop running. I am all that’s left in the world, pitiful, wounded, awake.
Lile sets an alarm for 1 a.m. to check on me. Even though I see him there standing over the couch and talking, I can’t speak. I don’t even remember how. I just lie there, big white eyes peeled open and pointed at a television that isn’t even on. He pats my hand and I watch him grieve me. It’s like I’m already gone.
I did this to you. I let you down. I’m so sorry. I can never say it, but it blows by in my swirl of thoughts every thirty seconds. He’s always been so proud of me, but now he can’t even trust me to survive a night on the couch.
I make my way to Little Lile’s room and crawl underneath the covers by 2 a.m. I read my daddy’s Bible. I pray, I go through the motions of Christianity and wait for salvation. Then, I notice the old purple Tiger clock on the dresser, tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
The countdown begins. My blood goes through me in surges; every vein is choked, then released. Hot, roiling adrenaline shrinks my lungs into a pair of tiny brown raisins and I can’t breathe. I try to get comfortable but there is no comfort—the red ants are always there under my skin and in my belly, marching up and down. I kick and flail and Libby’s nice flowered blanket falls on the floor. I scratch at myself, at imaginary, nervous itches I invent. I take my clothes off and hug the pillows into my chest. Another Ambien, I take just one more and I wonder why it isn’t working, why none of it ever works. I’m a failure, I’m a cripple, I’m a burden. How did I get here?
Then the shame that chases me during the day closes its mouth around my neck and speaks to me.
Look at yourself, it says. What a waste of breath! Your daddy is so ashamed.
My eyes shut and I beg for something beautiful. I think about Laura Treppendahl.
Laura, Laura, Laura.
It’s very late when I begin to feel her with me. I keep my eyes closed, put my hands on my chest, and make a little extra space for her. I can see her dewy angel skin and her big eyes and her skinny shoulders that always shake like maracas when she laughs. I think about how kind she was and how sad I am that she’s dead. She would be doing good in the world; no amount of pain could contain her joy. No amount of pain could sour her heart or cool her devotion.
She should be here, not me.
She should be here, not me.
She should be here, not me.
I repeat it obsessively in my head. It never stops.
Around 3 a.m., I try my daddy’s Bible again. It’s still filled with the scrambled teeny words I can’t make any sense of. There’s a billowing under my ribs and I beg again for something beautiful, something that will save me. I see my daddy.
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.
If God is so good, why did he take you? Why did he take Laura? Why did he spill such ugliness over his masterwork? Why did he leave me here to suck the life out of everyone I love? I’m so ashamed, so irreparable. How do I find my way?
I can see my daddy plowing the garden. I can smell the hot manure and feel the steam rising off Amos the mule. There’s a pink 6 a.m. sun behind them as they go up and down. He’s smiling at me, so big, the only way he knew how. He speaks to me without words.
“Don’t you see it? Look at the sky.”
The exhaustion sets in and he fades off somewhere. I try singing “Give Me Jesus” in my head but I can’t remember the words. The room is quiet and the red ants march faster now; my body is angry and weary from so many sleepless nights. The scrape of English muffins flying out of the toaster comes and my eyes are still wide open. Lile knocks.
“Ru, get up, come have some breakfast with us.”
And I go through the motions again.
* * *
I see Dr. Wyatt on a Tuesday. It’s after six in the evening and I’ve been in Baton Rouge for ten days. Dr. Wyatt specializes in pain management and her waitlist is eight months long. Someone who lives one street over from Lile and Libby does her billing and calls in a favor, so she stays later than normal just to see me. The office is freezing. I haven’t slept in three weeks and I’m shaking, all nerves and Freon. Libby’s right beside me. I can tell that I’m hurting her, rubbing her arm so hard it could catch on fire, but she doesn’t say anything; she just pats my hand and shushes me. Lile is on the other side of the room, bouncing his heels up and down.