The apartment smelled cloyingly of air freshener and, underneath it, that strange, acrid odor I’d smelled before on my father’s clothing. Standing in the entryway, I could see the living room, still a mess, filled with jumbled piles and clusters of things — folded-over newspapers with half-completed Sudoku puzzles, soda cans, coffee cups, rolls of paper towels, magnifying glasses. I picked one of them up and peered through it, watching dust motes falling through a shaft of light.
“Your dad’s eyes got so bad.” Rita was wringing her hands. She was a short, chunky woman with a chipmunky face and two inches of gray showing at the roots of her hair, with thick thighs and breasts that slumped against her belly. My father’s ladylove, in high-waisted jeans and bright-green plastic Crocs.
“What happened?”
More hand-wringing. “Can I bring you gals some coffee?”
“We’re fine,” I said, the same instant that Kimmie said, “Yes, please.” Five minutes later, we each had a cup of microwaved brew, and Rita was perched at the edge of a plastic-slipcovered armchair while Kimmie and I sat on the sofa facing her.
She plucked the teabag out of her mug, realized there was nowhere to put it, and dunked it back in. “You know your dad had been really sick.”
“I know my father was a drug addict.” I was done with euphemisms, done with pretending. Maybe it comforted her to think that my father had a disease instead of a weakness, but it wouldn’t comfort me anymore.
She pressed her fingers to her lips. “He fought so hard against it. So hard.”
“Just tell me,” I said. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Please,” said Kimmie.
The woman sighed and pressed her hands together. “He came back here when he finished with that place,” she began.
Kimmie touched my forearm. I forced myself to stop thinking about it. Hindsight wouldn’t fix things. He was dead now, and what I had to do was get through the funeral and clean up the mess he’d undoubtedly left behind.
“For a while he was doing okay,” Rita continued. “He’d go for walks, or to the library. He’d go to the gym, pedal that sit-down bike they have. He’d have dinner waiting when I came home from work. Simple things,” said Rita. “Chicken patties, or hamburgs. Spaghetti. Like that.” I nodded, remembering his sad attempts at omelets when I’d come for breakfast.
“The night it happened. .” She pulled in a long breath. “I went to bed at about ten, that’s what I do, because I work, you know, I need to be up real early.” I nodded. “At two or so I heard him up, rustling around. .” She gulped. “And then when I got up, I found him there, on the bathroom floor. His head. . his head was. .” More gulping followed, and a single spastic gesture with her hand. I’d find out later what she hadn’t been able to tell me, from the police photographs and the autopsy report, that my dad had died with his head in the toilet and a crack pipe in his hand. It was a detail, in all honesty, that I could have gone to my own death without knowing.
I kept my eyes on my lap, the throbbing pressure of tears filling my head. It was what I’d expected, but still, hearing it like this, out loud, in this tacky little apartment, made it real.
“I’m so sorry, Julia.” My name sounded strange in her mouth. I hadn’t been Julia since high school. But my father had called me Julia, and Julia was what I’d been when he’d discussed me with this woman. “He tried so hard. He fought it. He really did.”
I got up before she could continue. “Thank you,” I said. What did I mean by that?
When she hugged me, I could feel her soft body against mine, and I smelled her scent of stale coffee and cigarettes almost overcoming that strange chemical odor that I thought was probably
He’d smoked it all, I thought to myself. Smoked it all up. Now she was practically yelling, her hands balled into fists on the hips of her jeans, an indignant fireplug in green clown shoes. “I did the best I could. The very best I could.”
“I believe you.” I was so tired. I’d never been so exhausted in my life. All I wanted to do was be in a bed somewhere, shoes kicked off, covers pulled up to my chin. “I know you tried to help him, and it must have been very hard.” She closed her mouth, her face sagging. “Thank you,” I said, and managed to sound like I meant it.
• • •
Kimmie walked me away from the apartment building, through the fence, past the banner flapping in the wind, across the street to a park, where we sat under a tree whose leaves were tipped with gold. Fall was here. Winter was coming. I shut my eyes, imagining my life in New York City — the job I despised, the apartment that was still almost more than I could afford, the shower stall so small that the plastic shower curtain stuck to my skin if I didn’t position myself perfectly, the dirt and grit and noise. I considered the men on the subways who’d use a crowded car as an excuse to cop a quick handful of ass, and Rajit, who’d once thrown a cup of coffee at me when it was too cold. (“Keep a change of clothes,” one of his former junior analysts had told me, opening the bottom drawer of her desk to show me a skirt and top, still in dry cleaner’s plastic, that she’d learned to stow there after he’d thrown a salad, with blue cheese dressing, at her.)
I drove us back to my mother’s salon. “How was it?” my mom asked, hugging me, and I told her it went fine, knowing that she didn’t want to hear the details. Kimmie and I caught a bus home, to the neighborhood of neat little ranch houses where I’d grown up. I flipped on the television set, heated soup, buttered toast, found juice glasses, plates, and napkins, moving around like my body was made of cotton. Once, my first year at Princeton, someone had posted a picture of me, taken when I wasn’t looking, online, on a website that rated the looks of all the women in our class. I’d been furious and ashamed. My roommates hadn’t sympathized. “Jesus,” one of them had said when she thought I was sleeping, “it’s not like he said she was ugly. Or fat. It’s a compliment.” Indeed, my inbox had pinged steadily for a week, with guys emailing to introduce themselves and ask if I wanted to get together for a cup of coffee or a movie or lunch. I hadn’t been able to explain how it made me feel invaded and diminished, like there was this thing out in the world, this thing with my name and my face and a great stupid hank of blond hair, this thing that looked like me but wasn’t.
Sitting at my mother’s kitchen table, surrounded by everything I remembered — the square in front of the sink where the linoleum had worn thin, the placemats my father had bought for me and Greg at the children’s museum, the postcard of Barcelona that had been taped on the refrigerator for years — I felt that same sensation, of being there and not there, of not really being myself. I watched Kimmie. She had pulled her hair into a high ponytail, spooned her soup, and chattered to me about New York — a restaurant that made what was supposed to be the best fried chicken in the world; a musical, all in Spanish, where they gave student discounts on Wednesday nights. We washed the dishes, then I took a shower, letting the water flow over me, telling myself what to do next.
Kimmie was waiting in the bedroom, in her men’s boxer shorts and ribbed sleeveless undershirt, curled up on the bed. “Do you need anything?” she asked me.
