Chapter Four

Queasiness wakes Gaby from a fitful sleep. “Shit,” she grumbles, glancing at the clock showing four-twenty. “Shit.”

She stumbles out of bed and into the bathroom, nausea rising in her throat and bile flooding her mouth. Gaby’s head just makes it over the toilet, heaving out whatever will come. Sitting on the cold tile floor, she leans back against the bathtub exhausted. There’s nothing worse than throwing up.

Gaby grabs the bottle of Valium from the side of the sink and shakes her head to focus. Her last drink was at nine, more than seven hours ago. Blanking her mind of any consequences, she shakes two of the little white suckers out, pops them in her mouth and washes them down with water cupped in her hands. Facing the mirror, she expects to see immediate healing, only to be confronted with the same swollen-eyed reflection that has become so familiar.

Settling onto the couch in the living room, she glances at the mountain of shopping bags looming nearby, their individual logos reading like a roster of expensive stores. There was a time she could afford that kind of shopping, but not now. Lord, she thinks, I have to stop or my next date would be in court to declare bankruptcy, something she narrowly missed having to do when Unmentionables was sued. She turns and looks at the two photographs on the side table, each framing the catalysts behind her downward spiral—her ex-boyfriend, Stan, and her mother.

Stan was one of the lawyers handling her Unmentionables suit. Gaby used him as a strong legal arm to lean on in court and she used other parts of his body in the bedroom.

Her mother got it in her head that Stan was prime husband material, frequently reminding Gaby, “It’s time to settle down, now that you’re finished with that little company.”

“Mama, you make it sound as though I was selling porn instead of lingerie,” Gaby had told her.

“I call them as I see them, daughter,” was always her mother’s reply.

The night the case was settled Gaby dumped Stan, in part because her mother liked him so much. Two days later, Gaby’s mother had a heart attack and died at fifty-eight.

When Gaby flew to North Carolina for the funeral, Stan surprised her at the airport. “I love you, let me come with you,” he said. She did, and from that point on, Gaby clung to him as if her own life depended on it. They moved in together and he took control of everything. Awash in grief, she gratefully let him run her life. When her friends called, he would hang up on them, lying to Gaby that it was, “Just someone selling something.”

They even talked about marriage, but that stopped when she started seeing a shrink.

“He’s not helping you,” Stan had railed, immediately seeing the shrink as a threat. “In fact, I think he’s making you worse. You don’t need a psychiatrist. What you need is to go back to work and rejoin the living. And I hope you’re not talking to him about me!”

But what did Stan expect? He’d cut her off from everything, including her self-esteem, until all that was left was a shell of what she had once been. But Gaby gave in, partly. She ended her leave from the magazine, which kept her so busy that it was three weeks until she could get to her next shrink visit. She came home from that appointment to find that Stan had packed all his things. He told her, “I just never pictured myself with someone who needed therapy.” When the door closed behind him, a black veil dropped over her head.

Now the only man in her life was the shrink. Every Thursday she trekked from her Village apartment to his beige Eastside office. Grabbing a beige tissue and choosing the same beige chair across from the beige couch, she sunk into the soft leather as if it were a hug.

The shrink told her, “All relationships are complex. The object here is for you to understand the complexities of your relationship with your mother.”

Gaby knows it’s just psychobabble for “You’re fucked up.”

Eventually, he said, “You’ll get to visit with your sorrow and leave it behind when you’re done.”

Gaby gets up from the couch and knocks down the pictures of Stan and her mother. Splashing water on her face over the bathroom sink, she wishes she could turn away from the painful memories, but it’s no use. Once they’ve started, they keep coming. It seems that no matter how far the shrink lifts the veil, something inevitably comes along blowing it back in her face.

That morning, for example, Gaby had every intention of going to work. That is until she opened the front door to get the newspaper and there it sat—trauma in a box from her sister Millie. Just a week ago Millie left a message in her chipper voice. “I’ve been going through more of Mama’s things. Watch your mail, I sent you some stuff that I thought you would like to have.”

Good old reliable Millie.

The good daughter, who wore their mother’s apron strings like a blue ribbon award from the state fair. Gaby and Millie were two sisters who grew up in the same dogwood shaded home, only to turn out as different as can be.

That’s because Millie made their mother’s hopes her own. A year after graduating with an Interior Design degree from Meredith College, Millie married her high school sweetheart, Will Mason. Within a few years they produced two children, a son followed by a daughter, of course.

“Thank goodness one of my daughters is giving me grandbabies,” her mother liked to say, casting her younger daughter in the role of the black sheep.

“Since when did leading your own life become a crime?” Gaby groans to her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Tears stream down her face. With the effects of the Valium kicking in, she feels as though she is watching a stranger cry.

Damn that box.

Gaby knew she shouldn’t open it, but who could resist opening a package? Inside were two blankets her mother had crocheted.

“Ugly,” Gaby clucked, pulling them from the carton. Her mother had no sense of design when it came to her knitting; she bought whatever yarn was on sale regardless of the color combination. As Gaby held them near, she smelled her mother as if her Chanel #5 was woven into the neatly stitched rows.

Packages, they’ve been a part of her life forever. Camp, college and then the city, her mother loved to ship her stuff, mostly things she didn’t want.

“Thanks, Mama.” Gaby tried to muster enthusiasm for the items, knowing full well she’d be giving most of them away to her friends.

Her mother always pushed her for the desired reaction. “Which one do you like best? Is the pink too pink for you?”

“I don’t know,” Gaby told her. But that wasn’t enough of an answer for her mother. Finally Gaby had to admit, “I wasn’t needing any of it. And you know I hate pink!”

“Well, excuse me,” her mother sniffed. “I had no idea I raised such an ingrate. Honestly, Gabrielle!” She always used Gaby’s full name when she was in a snit. Handcuffed by stubbornness, Gaby wouldn’t apologize and now, since her death, she often wished she’d held her tongue from the get-go.

Sidestepping the pile of shopping bags on her way to the kitchen, Gaby kicks a stray ball of tissue paper, which skitters across the floor. She knows her inherited shopping gene has been mutating out of control. She hasn’t been to the office in weeks. Instead, when she does venture out, Gaby wanders from store to store, maxing out her credit cards. In the kitchen she passes a stack of unopened credit card bills, “Last Notice” stamped on most of them. On several occasions, she’s been on the verge of telling her shrink, but the words always get stuck. And the shopping continues.

“Why can’t he just read my mind and save me the trouble?” she gripes, retrieving a frozen eye mask from the freezer. Gaby crawls back to the sofa, hoping it will remedy her swollen lids. She flinches as the cold mask shocks her skin.

The defrosting eye mask sends moisture dripping down the sides of her face and into her ears, a familiar feeling.

One year ago she was on top, with her own company, guys galore and Mama. Now she is just a weepy girl without a mother.

It’s got to get better soon. That’s what everyone says.

Gaby pulls one of the crotchet blankets up to her chin, wondering, when the fuck is soon?