LEXIE
Luke asks me to come in for a family therapy session with Annie. I pack my SUV, loading it with diapers and wipes and bottles and formula and pacifiers and every other thing I can think of, then Daisy and I set off on the journey toward her mother.
She’s unsettled on the way, and I stop four times before we even reach the highway. I give her a pacifier. I adjust her seat belt in case it’s uncomfortable. I even dangle a brightly colored toy from the straps above her, thinking it might distract her. Nothing works. And a squawking infant in the back seat is much more unsettling than I had anticipated, so I quickly become frustrated.
“Come on, Daisy Nell,” I groan, when she starts grizzling for a fifth time. “I thought babies were supposed to sleep in cars! Don’t you want to see your momma?”
The sound of my voice—frustrated though the tone may be—seems to console her a little, and a thought strikes me. I start to sing, and she falls silent.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
Do you know how loved you are?
In the morning.
In the night.
I’ll love you with all my might.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star...
It’s amazing how that song takes me all the way back to when Annie came home from the hospital as a baby. It’s one of my very first memories—standing in the doorway to her bedroom, watching as Mom fed her and then sung that song as she laid her onto the cot. I remember the soft lamplight and the look of sheer adoration on Mom’s face, and how jealous I felt of Annie. I also know that I used to sing that very song to Annie once we moved to the community, and so I try to take myself back to those memories. On a scientific level, I find it fascinating that it is so much harder for me to recollect details from that period than it is to remember my happier, early childhood memories.
My voice trails off, and Daisy stirs and then bellows, so I start again. And then again, and again, until I’ve sung the same damned, maddening verse the entire hour it takes me to get to the rehab clinic. Even once she’s fallen silent, I don’t want to stop in case she cries again, so I just keep singing.
When we pull into the parking lot at the rehab clinic, I finally stop the song. Daisy doesn’t stir, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I clip her car seat into the stroller and push it carefully into the rehab center.
Last time I came, I ran to Annie. This time she runs toward me, but she ignores me altogether. Instead, she crowds over the car seat and reaches to touch her sleeping daughter’s face with visibly trembling hands. Annie doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t even cry—she simply stares, as if she’s completely awed by her daughter. I let her stand there until the minutes start to stretch, and then I touch her back gently and ask, “Are we meeting Luke somewhere?”
Annie shakes herself as if I’ve startled her, but then she takes the handles of the stroller from me. I’m delighted to see her take the initiative, but I’m somehow offended at the same time. Suddenly I start to worry that perhaps I’m getting a bit too caught up in this whole playing-Daisy’s-mother game, and does that mean I’m getting too attached? I follow Annie to a table, where she sets the stroller close to her and rocks it gently as she raises her gaze to mine. I smile at her, but she simply stares at me. I can’t read her either—is she upset?
“Annie?” I prompt gently, and she looks back to the baby. “Luke said he wanted to speak to us together. Are we supposed to meet him somewhere?”
“Not yet,” Annie says. She leans down and rests her head against the stroller’s sun visor, staring at the baby. “Let’s just take a few minutes alone. You need to bring her here more often. I need to be reminded why I have to make this work.”
“Annie, I thought we agreed you’d meet with Lexie and Daisy in my office.” Luke approaches us, and I rise and shake his hand.
“Hello, Luke.”
“Welcome back, Alexis. There’s been some confusion. Annie? Weren’t you coming straight in to see me?”
“I just want to see my baby for a minute without supervision,” Annie says flatly. She tries to stare him down, and I feel a shiver of fear run through me. I know that look on her face, the narrowing of her eyes and the pinch of her lips as she presses them together. That look has never preceded anything good.
“Maybe we can come in to you in a few minutes?” I suggest to Luke hesitantly, but he ignores me—his gaze is on Annie.
“I agreed to this visit on the condition that we conduct a family therapy session at the same time. Annie, you simply cannot change our agreement now. I’ll give you some time alone with Lexie and the baby at the end, after we talk. Okay?”
Annie’s hands are balled in fists. I can see the part of her that just wants to be with her baby, battling against the part that wants to counter Luke’s authority. She stares at the baby, motionless, and I don’t know what to do. I want to help her. I need to help her. Just as I open my mouth to suggest again that Luke give us a few minutes, Annie rises sharply and walks off, pushing the stroller in front of her. I stand, too, but Luke gently touches my upper arm.
“Let me handle this. She needs you to let me handle this. Got it?”
It’s my turn to stare down an internal battle. I keep glancing at Annie and the rapidly disappearing stroller, then at Luke, who is determined—staring at me with the question lingering in his eyes.
“Okay,” I say eventually, and then I walk quickly after my sister into his office.
* * *
“I like to start these sessions by touching base with our feelings,” Luke says. “I’ll go first. Today, I’m feeling frustrated because I had an agreement with you, Annie. I thought I’d been generous in allowing this visit in order to win your trust, but the first thing you did was to go against the terms we’d discussed. Your turn.”
“I’m feeling pissed off because I’m an adult woman and a mother and I shouldn’t have to give in to your blackmail in order to see my daughter,” Annie says flatly.
They both look at me. I stare between them blankly.
“Uh—I don’t know?”
“There’s no right answer,” Luke says patiently, and I adjust my skirt and glance around the room while I try to think of something to say.
“Just say what you’re feeling so we can get this over and done with,” Annie says sharply. She’s looking at the floor, but I can see from the way she’s holding herself that she’s a tinderbox of anger just waiting to explode. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her eyebrows are knitted and her lips are still in that tight, furious line.
“I’m feeling scared,” I whisper. Annie’s eyebrows momentarily dip as she ponders this, and then she looks at me.
“Go on,” Luke prompts, and I clear my throat and admit, “I can see that Annie is on edge. I know how much she has to lose. I’m scared.”
“Are you scared for Annie, or for yourself?” Luke asks.
“Or for Daisy?” Annie says, and I look at the sleeping baby, then back to her mother.
“For you. Only for you.”
“I can handle myself,” Annie whispers to me, and Luke leans forward in his chair and rests his elbows on his knees as he prompts me, “How does that make you feel, Lexie? When Annie says she can handle herself?”
“It’s not a ‘how’ I feel, it’s a ‘what’ I feel. I want to argue with her, and point out to her how wrong she is. If she could handle herself, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“Put some emotions to it, Lexie. We want to talk about the feelings now, not the action they inspire.”
“Can I take this one?” Annie interrupts, and I look at her in surprise. Luke nods silently, and Annie stares at me as she says, “You’re feeling frustrated. Because you think that I need you to baby me, and I don’t want to let you right now.”
“I’m frustrated,” I concede. “But not because you won’t let me ‘baby you.’ I’m frustrated because we might end up in a situation where I’ll have to baby you.”
“How would you feel, Lexie? If you had a newborn and you had to agree to humiliating therapy sessions just to get five minutes alone with her?”
“If I was in your situation, I’d be embarrassed and angry,” I agree. “But I’d be angry at myself, not the people who were trying to help me.”
“He isn’t trying to help me right now,” Annie hisses, and her face reddens. “He’s trying to control me. Don’t you see that?”
“He’s trying to get you to a place where you can give yourself over to the process and get clean.”
“We don’t use the word clean in here, Lexie,” Luke interrupts me. “We use the word sober.” When I frown at him, he explains gently, “What’s the opposite of clean?”
“Dirty,” Annie snaps, and she stands. “Which is what I am—a dirty, filthy junkie. Fuck this and fuck both of you.”
She’s raised her voice, and Daisy stirs. I watch as Annie’s expression shifts from fury to horror in an instant. I see the guilt as it rises in her eyes, and then she glances helplessly toward me. I rise, too, and extend a hand toward her hesitantly.
“You aren’t dirty,” I say desperately. “Please don’t say that, Annie. I shouldn’t have said clean—it’s just a throwaway word—I won’t use it anymore. Please sit down and let’s do this. Please. Then I’ll stay and you can have some time with Daisy. She’s going to need a bottle soon and a diaper change and then she loves to cuddle and play. So, please, Annie—please—I know it’s hard but I promise it will be worth it.”
By the time I finish speaking, my voice is breaking and there are tears in my eyes. Annie looks back to the baby, then she slowly, carefully lowers herself back into her seat and looks to Luke.
“Go on then,” she prompts him pointedly. “Shrink me.”
* * *
In the next hour, I see firsthand what Luke is up against. He asks a question, Annie deflects it. He tries again, she responds with sarcasm. He tries again, she shuts down. It’s not just the big, deep questions that she responds to this way—it’s even the simple ones, like how she’s feeling about her progress at the center, or what her plans are for the next week, or how she felt at the whole-community meeting that she dragged herself to this morning.
I’m not sure what he hoped to achieve by having me here. I’m only making things worse, because as I watch Annie block all of Luke’s attempts to get her to open up, I interject again and again, imploring her to drop the attitude or to just try—and every time I do, Luke patiently asks me to save my comments for engaging in the session myself, rather than trying to facilitate it. Right on cue when the hour is up, Daisy starts to cry. Luke asks for a few minutes alone with Annie, so I take the baby to a small kitchenette and prepare her formula.
Then I take the bottle back to Luke’s office so that Annie can feed her daughter.
“If you’re comfortable with this, Lexie, perhaps Annie could take Daisy into the dining hall to feed her, so you and I can chat alone?” Luke asks. Annie immediately stiffens.
“Why wouldn’t she be comfortable with it?” she snaps, and Luke shrugs.
“Lexie is Daisy’s legal guardian at the moment.”
“I’m her mother.”
“Of course I’m comfortable,” I say hastily, and I push the stroller toward Annie and point to the bottle. “She will probably only drink half of that, and then if you sit her up for a while so she can burp...”
“Fine.”
Annie pushes Daisy from the room, and Luke quietly closes the door behind her.
“That was actually a very productive session,” he says as he returns to his desk. I stare at him in disbelief.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Let me tell you what some of our other therapy sessions have looked like. Annie sits and stares out the window. Annie writes in her journal but refuses to look at me. Annie throws insults at me and tries to hook me personally. Annie just doesn’t show up. Annie shows up, but turns her chair to face the other way.”
My heart sinks.
“So, we’re doomed, then?” I whisper, and he shakes his head.
“None of this is atypical with court-mandated patients. Sobriety isn’t actually something a court can force onto a person.”
“What’s the plan from here?”
“I didn’t ask you to stay back to talk about the plan. I wanted to ask you how you felt about what just happened, and to check in with how you’re coping.”
“I found that session to be frustrating and bewildering, but I’m coping just fine.”
“You and your sister have a very special bond, don’t you?”
“We do.”
“What’s the best outcome from all of this for you, Alexis?”
“Annie graduates your program and is well again.”
“Be more specific. What does that look like?”
“She...” I hesitate. “She can resume life the way it was before the addiction. She can write, get a job, have a healthy relationship. Get a house. Care for Daisy.”
“What about your relationship with her, Lexie? What would that look like?”
“We’d be friends again,” I whisper, then out of nowhere, I’m crying and I can’t stop myself.
“How long has it been since you and Annie were friends? Your relationship seems almost parental to me.”
“Well—yes. It has been, but not always. When she lived with me, I got glimpses of friendship all the time. My best memories of her were when she’d write some brilliant little vignette and she’d let me read it, and then we could talk about it like two scholars... I’d comment on how great the premise was, she’d tell me about something she was trying to achieve...or she’d write a poem, and there’d be this incredible depth to it, and she’d explain it to me and I’d be in awe of her mind and the way she could just see something magnificent in the ordinariness of life. Or we’d go out for coffee on a Saturday morning and we’d talk about politics, or the weather—or some cute guy sitting near us or what boots we wanted to buy for the winter. She probably doesn’t even remember those moments, but...” I choke on a sob and admit, “I’m living for them. I grieve them. I miss the Annie that I shared those things with. She’s still in there—behind the wall the substance abuse has put between us. And I’d give anything to get her back.”
“Sometimes to draw something out of a person, we have to approach them differently. Do you know how you were approaching Annie in those moments of friendship, Lexie?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Our parents see a very different side of us than our friends do.” Luke shrugs. “I know you’ve needed to parent Annie, and after watching you two interact today and speaking to you over the last few weeks, I think it’s become a habit to you. Do you know what I’d like to suggest? Try being her friend.”
I stare at Luke, and I try to figure out how I could implement his advice. What is the difference between my parenting Annie, and being her friend?
Then it hits me: the difference is responsibility. A friend can offer support, even advice...but a friendship is a two-way street, and friends hold none of the responsibility for each other’s actions. Being Annie’s friend means letting go of my ownership of her outcomes.
“I’ll try,” I whisper, and Luke gives me a satisfied nod.
* * *
I find Annie in the dining hall, sitting in a corner. She’s angled the stroller in front of herself, so that it creates a barrier from the rest of the room. She has Daisy resting on the table, but she’s supporting her head and shoulders with her palms.
Annie is talking to her daughter quietly. She’s smiling, but her face is wet with tears. I don’t want to intrude, so I hang back, standing in the doorway of the office wing. After a while, Annie notices me and motions for me to join them.
“See what I’m up against with him?” she says as soon as I sit down, and the bubble of joy I’ve floated on as I watched her with her baby deflates in an instant.
“Have you written any poetry since you came here?” I ask Annie, and her stare is incredulous.
“I’ve been kind of busy.”
“I miss your poetry. I miss those stories you used to write.”
She looks back to Daisy.
“Maybe I could write something for her,” she says after a while.
“Did you love writing, Annie?”
“You know I did.”
“Why did you stop?”
“It seemed pointless. No one wants to hear what someone like me has to say.”
“I do.”
Annie swallows.
“I’m writing this journal for Luke. It has...it has everything in it. All about me.” She glances at me. “Maybe you could read it someday.”
“Are you going to let Luke read it, too?”
“I don’t know. I’m scared to.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid that...loads of things. I’m afraid that he’ll pity me. I’m afraid that he’ll use it to control me. At the moment, all of the things in that journal are mine. They are my secrets, my perspective on the world—I have nothing left but that.”
Daisy burps suddenly—the sound surprisingly loud for such a tiny person. Annie and I laugh together, our gazes locking, our faces fixed in smiles. The moment is perfect, and I’m still smiling when I say, “I need to buy some new boots. When you’re out of here, do you want to come shopping with me? I have no idea what kind to get. We could go get lunch or a coffee after and talk, like we used to.”
Annie looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind, then she starts to laugh again.
“Sure, Lexie. In two months’ time, at the start of spring when I finally get out of this shithole, we’ll go buy you some nice warm boots that you won’t wear until next winter.”
* * *
I’m feeling positive after the visit to rehab, and Annie calls every night over the next week. They are brief calls, but they are also calm and uneventful—she calls only to inquire about Daisy’s welfare. I ring Mom to update her, and when she asks me if I think Annie is going to make it this time, I’m not lying when I say yes.
* * *
All of this makes it a complete shock when Luke calls a week later to tell me that Annie has walked out. He tells me that right at dawn, she packed up all of her belongings and she walked out the front doors.
He called when I was dressing Daisy, but I answered anyway because I saw it was him. Now I’m standing frozen in my bedroom, with Daisy wearing only a diaper and the bottom half of her romper. Everything within me grinds to a halt, and I’m holding the phone with one hand and Daisy with the other, and I can’t form a single coherent thought.
It’s funny how every single thing in your life can shatter with a single decision; and not a decision I had any control over. Everything is suddenly broken, and there is nothing I can do to fix it.
I unfreeze, and then I’m racing—my thoughts and my heart rate and my emotions. I’m panicking and terrified, and I’m sick from the news—nauseous, literally—waves of rolling anxiety that start at my head and work their way down to my toes and it’s all I can do to hold on to Daisy and the phone and stay upright. I’m violently shaking by the time I steer myself to the bed and sit on the edge.
“The staff tried to stop her,” Luke says now. “She was determined to go.” I’m listening to him, but although the phone is at my ear and the volume is fine, it feels like he’s calling me from very far away. Still, I hear the apology and the regret in his tone. It is no consolation that Daisy’s rehabilitation counselor sounds upset about this, no salve to my wound that he obviously had high hopes for her, too, because I understand what this means. This is the end of Luke’s journey with Annie, and once again, the entirety of her mess is about to fall on me.
This feels a lot like the time I tried to call Annie and realized her phone had been disconnected, and then I called her office and was shocked to find out she lost her job. It feels a lot like having the ground giving way beneath my feet yet again. I should be used to this sinking sensation. I shake myself and bring Daisy down from my shoulder into the crook of my elbow, and I pull a blanket out of her bassinet and cover her with it so she doesn’t get cold. And then, once I’m sure Daisy is completely fine, I press through the shock and find the cognizance to ask, “Did something happen?”
“She went to a group therapy session yesterday for the first time. I thought that was a positive step. I honestly have no idea, Alexis. But as you’ll understand, I’ve had to report her absence to the courts.”
“Do you know what happens now?” I croak.
“I think you’d better ask a lawyer that question. I’m so sorry,” Luke says. The conversation is wrapping up, but I don’t want to get off the phone. Once I hang up, I’ll have to figure out what to do next, and I’m still too shocked to make plans. Still, I can’t think of a way to prolong the call and Luke closes the conversation with platitudes. “I really thought we could help her. I hope that somehow, this is the start of a new chapter for your sister.”
When I hang up, I walk around the house in some kind of shocked daze, carrying my half-dressed niece beneath her blanket. I stare out the window, over the guesthouse and the backyard. I straighten the cushions on the sofa and I turn the television on and off several times before I realize that I’m caught in a loop.
Annie has left the rehab clinic. Annie is going to be arrested.
At this thought, I finally shake myself out of my daze and call Bernie. After I explain the situation, her take on things is grim.
“They’ll issue a warrant for her arrest. Like I told you in the hospital, if she’d gone through with the mandated treatment she might have been able to avoid the chemical endangerment charge—but there’s no chance of that now. If and when she surfaces—they’ll probably take her straight into custody and I doubt she’d get bail.”
“Surely there’s something we can do. Surely.” I guess I’m up to the bargaining step of the grief process, because I’m already talking money. “I don’t care what it costs. Are there other lawyers we could bring in? Specialists, maybe.” At Bernie’s silence, I up the volume on my plea. “Bernie, there has to be something we can do.”
“We’ve done what we can do Alexis, I’m so sorry.” Bernie sighs gently. “Annie had a second chance, and when she walked out of that rehab clinic, she blew it.”
She blew it. I’m sick again as I let myself consider what this means. There are no loopholes, no more second chances to make good. Annie is at the end of the road, and the next step in her journey is inevitably jail.
I’m still holding Daisy, but she starts to cry, and I realize I’m crushing her against my chest. I force my locked muscles to soften around her, and stare down at her perfect little face. What does this mean for Daisy? Nothing, in a practical sense today—I’ll still finish dressing her eventually, give her the bottle when she cries for it, change her diapers.
But this means everything for this little girl longer term. Her entire world has just been rocked, and she doesn’t even know it yet.
“Lexie, I have court soon, so I have to go. Is there anything else I can do for you at this point?” Bernie says very carefully.
“What do I tell her? If she contacts me?”
“If she contacts you, tell her to turn herself in immediately. And the second you hang up the phone, call me. There’s probably not a lot we can do, but if she does it quickly, we can say that it was a wild impulse and she’s very regretful and desperate to try again.”
Now I’m on autopilot—pretending I’m functioning because I can’t yet think through all of the implications of this development. When I try to cast myself forward, to make a plan for how I’ll deal with all of the ways this can play out, my mind just...stops. It’s too much. It’s too final. So I don’t think, and I don’t plan—instead, I tend to Daisy and I put a roast on for dinner for Sam and I don’t even call him to tell him what’s happened because I’m not yet ready to hear his sympathy or face his questions about what next?
This means that when he walks in the door at 6:00 p.m., Sam is smiling and he’s chatting about his day. I nod and sometimes I smile but now I’ve avoided it for so long and I don’t know how to tell him. It’s only when we sit down to dinner that he says, “Honey, you look so pale. Are you okay?”
I tilt my head at him, and I feel like I’m trying to reach him through a pea-soup-thick fog of shock. How do I say the words?
“Lex?” Sam is on his feet, and he approaches me and crouches beside me. His gaze searches mine. “Did something happen?”
“Annie,” I say, and I turn to him and I say through numb lips, “Annie left.”
And the walls all crash down around me, and if I really ever was a “fixer” and a “coper,” then maybe I’m not anything at all now, because things are broken so badly that I can’t do a single thing to sort out this mess.