Calamity

“Well. Whatever. You want your precious little Pilly Billies?”

A smile rose on her face and faded. “That’s Brendan’s. For sillies.”

For sillies. She hadn’t said that in years. That used to be what they said anytime either one of them did something unintentionally ridiculous or stupid and the other merely stared in disbelief. He’d put the milk in the pantry and the cereal box in the fridge without realizing and then her stare would clue him in. “For sillies,” he’d say and they’d start cracking up.

Was old Chloe, the woman he had fallen in love with, straining to be free? Were the drugs helping or hurting?

Ellis had the unequivocal answer to that one: All addictions impede our ability to experience empowerment.

“I’ll get you your pills,” he said, “but first I want you to listen to me.”

She chuckled to herself. “For sillies.”

“No, not for sillies anymore.” He hesitated. He had either to take the step forward and suffer the pain or retreat and try again later. “I’ve been somewhere tonight. Seen some things that have really helped.”

“Dr. Pilly Billie.”

“No. God.”

She considered this, as best she could in her state, and then burst out laughing.

He knew this was going to be difficult, knew his anger was liable to come back in full gale-force wind strength, but he hadn’t expected it would get so difficult so quickly. “Stop it,” he said.

Her laughter rolled out of her like the maniacal hiccuping laughs of a clown. In between bursts of laughter, she repeated, “ … saw God … oh, Jesus … good one, Anthony …” He could have taken the laughter (she was drugged, after all), but it was those stupid little editorializing comments that gnawed at him with the speed and veracity of piranhas.

“Shut up!” He punched the headboard and it vibrated against the wall.

Her laughter died quickly and she stared at him with wide, red-stained eyes. The dark crescents beneath her eyes made it seem like she hadn’t slept for days. Oh, the irony. She could play a zombie in one of those Living Dead movies without any makeup. If she wanted to be dead so badly, why didn’t she just overdose on her precious little pills? That would solve everything.

A new voice, one that hadn’t spoken in months, struggled to break through the angry chatter burning his brain. You don’t mean that, the voice said. This is the woman in front of whom you got naked and performed jumping jacks because she wanted to watch your “little soldier” jump, too. This is the woman who, on your wedding day during your first dance, whispered in your ear that she now knew what heaven was like. This is the woman with whom you had four children. This is the woman you love.

The voice stayed his next move for a moment but only a moment. That voice could tweak his heart whenever it wished, but sometimes it said the wrong things. It never should have mentioned the children. Four born, only two left. The woman he loved had died with those children, and this drug-addicted slop was all that remained.

He leaned toward her face. She backed up but only slightly. He wouldn’t hit her; he had never done anything physically abusive before, not even punched a wall. (Times are changing.) “I did see God, Chloe, and I don’t care if you believe me or not, but the one thing you will not do is laugh at me. Understand?”

She nodded.

“We’ve suffered more in the last few months than most people do their entire lives. But that is no excuse for destroying yourself. Whether it’s God or just Common Sense, you need to stop taking your damned little pills. You need to get yourself together and go back to being the mother and wife you were once. You need to get out of this bed and start living again.”

He was keeping his anger in check. Barely. Ellis had warned him against being too blunt with the message. Anthony needed to persuade her of her own volition, not scare her into submission. She was already scared and frightened people couldn’t be empowered. He gripped the edge of the mattress while he spoke and was now squeezing it so hard that his hands were cramping. She wasn’t ignoring him, as he figured she would, or mocking him with her famous rolling eyes, as she was fond of employing; she was staring back at him blankly, a deer caught in headlights, too dumb to know what to do.

“I should take you to a rehab,” he said. “I should but I won’t so long as you agree to my terms. First: you will be weaned off your pills over the next twenty-four hours. Second: you will get up at a reasonable time in the morning, shower, dress, and go about the daily business of living. Third: you will be a mother to Brendan and Tyler again. Brendan, especially, needs both of his parents now, needs them strong and clear-headed. Fourth: you will get up right now, shower, and have something to eat. I will tell all of this to Stephanie or she can watch me drag you to a rehab. What’ll it be?”

She opened her mouth and clucked. He couldn’t tell if the tongue flick was a turrets-like side effect of her cocktail of drugs or an insulting verbal middle-finger. He waited for her to say something. Her eyes rolled from his to the door where the dresser was blocking an escape route. When her eyes lolled back to his, her expression had changed. The blank stare had given way to something harder, meaner.

“I hope you hurt your back moving the dresser.”

“Chloe, please—”

“I want my fucking pills.”

“No.”

“Fuck you. I gave birth to those kids. I am allowed to do this. I am suffering more than you could ever imagine. You’re so full of shit you can’t even tell. I don’t give a shit if you did see God. Who cares? You see Him again, tell Him I said, ‘Fuck off!’ You can take all your pathetic self- help shit and shove it. Now, get me my pills or I’ll get them myself.”

For a moment, Anthony was as dumb-struck as Chloe must have been only minutes ago. Then all her words and, more importantly, her tone, kicked him into action.

He slapped her across the face. Her head whipped to the side with such a quick jerk that he thought he might have snapped her neck. He expected that old voice to come back but it didn’t. It might never speak again.

She turned back to him and her red eyes were overflowing with raging blood, the white parts almost completely gone. The slap had burst more capillaries in her eyes. “Get the fuck out of my way.” She shoved him hard, one hand against his face, the other on his chest. The hit surprised him and he slipped off the edge of the bed, slumped to the floor. She scrambled off the bed and tried to climb over him. He grabbed her ankle and she lost her balance and crashed to the floor at the entrance to the bathroom. Her head bounced off the wood saddle bridging the carpet of the bedroom with the tile of the bathroom.

Anthony got to his knees quickly to brace himself for a return attack. He was conscious to turn his lower half away from her feet, but she did not get up; she stayed on the floor and cried. She grabbed either side of her head and sobbed in large, heaving belts. Words squeezed in among her cries but he couldn’t decipher them. He used to be able to understand her to the point of interpreting her grunts. No longer. She was someone else now, a parasite living in his bed.

He stepped over her and into the bathroom. Her pills were in the medicine cabinet and she had many bottles but he wasn’t prepared for just how many. Brown plastic bottles with white safety caps and white labels explaining how often the enclosed pills should be taken occupied the full length of the top two shelves. The bottles varied in size, some tall and thin, others short and wide. They had alien names: Effexor, Desyrel, Celexa, Parnate, Nardil, Tofranil, Elavil, Pamelor. We are the Desyrels from the planet Pamelor here to spread the good word of our god Nardil.

“You want your pills, your fucking drugs?” He grabbed a bottle—Sinequan—ripped the cap off, and threw the pills at her. They bounced off her body and onto the carpet. He grabbed another bottle, opened it. “What about these?” Large, green horse pills ricocheted off her face, rolled back toward him on the tile. “Still don’t like those? Try them all!” With both hands, he grabbed as many bottles as he could and in one sweeping gesture flung them down on his wife.

She sobbed harder and louder, though her cries had grown weak. Someone was knocking at the bedroom door, frantically knocking. Stephanie. “What’s going on? Anthony, please open the door. I’ll call the cops!”

“Go ahead!” he shouted. “They can drag my wife to rehab.”