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Carly’s death threw me into a fitful sleep that night. After tossing and turning for hours, I finally got up for good at nine o’clock.
I fished some garbage bags and empty boxes out of the coat closet and entered Carly’s bedroom, figuring the onus of sorting through her stuff fell on me. I planned to go through her room until noon or thereabouts. Noon struck me as a decent hour to resume calling people with news of her death. I could make good progress getting through the remainder of her contact list before work, but didn’t need to worry about waking up anyone with a late-night job like my own. And, fortunately, Jan had left me a voicemail yesterday outlining the funeral and vigil details to pass on to anyone interested.
I started with the dresser, tossing the assorted underwear, bras, and socks from the top two drawers into a garbage bag. Pajamas occupied the next drawer. I dumped the frayed items into the bag and the newer pieces into a box for donations, starting to feel optimistic about this task. I couldn’t help but think I might get through Carly’s room quicker than expected.
But before I could proceed to the next drawer, my hand brushed against something hard at the bottom of this one. My pulse quickened when I pulled out the item and saw I was holding a leather-bound journal. Had Carly written anything inside to explain why she’d turned to drugs?
Holding my breath, I turned the cover back. Carly’s handwriting filled the pages. I read the first entry, dated October 14, 2012.
I took one of those home pregnancy tests today and, guess what, it came back positive! I was really scared at first. I mean, I’m not married, don’t even have a steady boyfriend, and never planned on this happening. But as the day progressed, I found myself getting excited about this new life growing inside me. I decided to finally start using this journal that someone—I can’t even remember who—gave me a few years ago for my birthday. I’m going to document everything that happens during this pregnancy. I’ve already noticed a few changes, which is what led me to take the test in the first place.
I flipped through the rest of the journal, my curiosity piquing. Carly had written entries fairly regularly from October 2012 through March 2013, all centered around the baby or her prenatal care. Her last entry was dated March 16, the day before she died.
My fingers tightened around the book. Holding proof of her dedication to her child made my whole body feel heavy. I didn’t know whether Carly’s tragic end or her baby’s unawareness of how much she’d wanted it depressed me more.
I took a deep breath and read the second entry, dated October 18.
I visited a clinic called Options today. Only two doctors work there, and I talked with the one named Patrick. He was so nice and understanding. He said the clinic helps unwed, low-income mothers like me. He went over my options (hence their name, I guess), and calmed me down when I started to freak out over everything. Dr. Patrick said if I wanted to keep my baby, they would help with prenatal care. He also said they had many families looking to adopt. I didn’t commit to any decision, but I already know I’ll never give up this baby.
He said I’m already ten weeks pregnant. I can’t believe this baby has been growing for so long inside my body without me even knowing. All this time I thought I had the flu, but it turns out I have a baby instead! I already love her so much. Did I mention I’m convinced it’s a girl?
I set the journal down, deciding to make the Options clinic my first call for today. If they didn’t already know about Carly’s death, maybe I could reach them before she missed her next appointment and they found out some other, impersonal way.
A knock at the front door tore my attention away. I stood up to answer it.
Helen, the downstairs neighbor, flashed me a bright smile when I swung the door open. She must have been at least seventy years old, yet her teeth were still perfect and white. I didn’t see how they could be anything but dentures.
“Hello, Megan.” She held up a prescription bottle. “I could use your help opening this.”
“Sure.” I took the bottle from her and twisted off the cap.
“I never have gotten the hang of these childproof lids,” Helen said, reclaiming her pills. “Seems like they’re geriatric proof too.”
She laughed, so I did too, guessing that was what Carly would have done. Carly had forged a bond with Helen over the years, maybe due to her lacking relationship with her own mother.
My stomach churned over the prospect of informing Helen of Carly’s death. She might feel as if a daughter had died.
I gestured toward the living room. “Helen, would you like to come in for a while?”
Her eyebrows crept up her forehead, sending a spear of guilt through my heart. Maybe I should have made the effort to warm up to Helen over the years too.
“Why, certainly, dear,” she said. “I would like that.” She shuffled into the living room and seated herself on the couch.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I asked. I immediately regretted the offer. In terms of beverages, the cabinet contained cheap microwave coffee, and the refrigerator held approximately seven bottles of wine and an open half-gallon of milk that belonged to Carly and could very well be spoiled.
Helen’s face lit up. “I’d love a gin and tonic.”
I blinked, taken aback by her request. I started mentally inventorying the cabinets, but she chuckled and waved her hand in front of her before I found a single required ingredient.
“Never mind,” she said. “I can whip up one myself when I get back downstairs.” She eyed Carly’s open bedroom door. “Is Carly home?”
My heart clenched. “Helen,” I said, sitting on the sofa across from her, “I have some bad news.”
“What’s that, dear?” She set her hands in her lap and looked at me.
I glanced at the pill bottle still in her hand, tempted to ask if she could spare one. If they helped her heart, maybe taking one myself would help to ease the difficulty of this announcement.
I laced my fingers together. “Carly died over the weekend.”
Helen gasped, her unoccupied hand fluttering to her chest. “Oh, my. Was it an accident?”
“Kind of,” I said, figuring Carly hadn’t intended to overdose.
Helen tsked and shook her head. “Is that why her suitor left here yesterday looking so agitated?”
I racked my brain in search of who she could be talking about, but my mind came up blank. “Suitor?”
“Yes, that young man who stopped by yesterday.” She picked at a couch cushion. “Forgive me for being too nosy. Sometimes I can’t help but notice the goings-on of the building. I don’t mean to pry.”
“Oh, no,” I assured her. “It’s not a problem.”
Although, now I had to question what Helen actually did in her free time. She rarely left her apartment. Maybe she camped out by her front window, peeking between the blinds to watch the parade of men marching through our unit as boyfriends came and went. And, given the shoddy construction of the building, I didn’t doubt she could just perch underneath the appropriate room and listen in on our conversations or, worse, “goings-on.” Our apartment probably provided her with more entertainment than any television programs currently on air.
“So, the young man,” Helen reminded me. “How is he handling the news?”
I jerked back to attention. She must be talking about Mike. Other than the police, he was my only visitor yesterday. “He was pretty upset.”
She nodded, her lips pursed. “Yes, such a shame to lose someone you love. Especially when you’re so young.”
“Well, he’s actually my boyfriend,” I admitted, even though boyfriend wasn’t the correct term. It sounded more appropriate than calling him a casual lay. “Though apparently he knew Carly too.”
Helen’s eyes widened. I could see her mentally filing away my involvement in this perceived love affair so she could review it against all her memories of the past few weeks—only now with the added twist of a threesome.
I sat up straight, my heart beating faster. Maybe I could learn more about Mike and Carly’s relationship from Helen. If they were involved, she must have gotten wind of it during one of her spying sessions.
“Did he visit Carly often?” I asked. I leaned back and began inspecting the sofa for imaginary lint, as if her response didn’t concern me any more than wayward dust.
“I suppose.” She stiffened. “But he obviously came here to visit you. In fact, I can quite easily picture you with that young man. He seems like a fitting suitor.”
I frowned, wondering whether suitors made booty calls, or dribbled wine from upturned bottles into their eyes when desperate for a drink, or fooled around with their girlfriends’ roommates, for that matter.
She released a clipped laugh. “And here I thought he was seeing Carly. But what do I know? I’m often mistaken.”
“Hmm.” I wasn’t convinced she was mistaken this time.
“Yes, now that I’m putting the puzzle together I can see it quite clearly,” Helen went on, sounding desperate to overcompensate for her earlier faux pas. “You and the young man make a very nice couple. I gather you’ve shared many titillating conversations together.”
“We have had many conversations,” I conceded, deliberately omitting the titillating bit. Mike could barely string together two sentences without either uttering a sexual reference or naming an alcoholic beverage.
On second thought, maybe I should be insulted by Helen’s comment. If she had any idea what Mike and I talked about, she couldn’t have a high opinion of me if she thought I found our discussions titillating.
But Helen wouldn’t know about Mike’s conversational ineptitude from spying on us through the windows, I reminded myself. Neither could she have picked up on my ambivalent feelings toward him. It would never occur to her that I viewed our involvement as a temporary fling. Women of her generation courted suitors. They didn’t romp with fleeting boy toys.
“The ability to communicate well is the hallmark of a good relationship,” Helen said. “I’m sure you and this young man have many happy years ahead of you.”
Her eyes darted toward the door, leading me to believe she wanted to escape before she could inadvertently divulge another secret relationship. Perhaps she feared she would expose my ex-boyfriend with the penchant for marijuana as Carly’s secret drug supplier.
I surveyed Helen with new interest. Maybe her snooping could help answer the question of Carly’s drug use. If a drug dealer had visited during my absences, Helen might have noticed. Barring that, she still might have observed Carly behaving in a way suggestive of substance abuse.
I cleared my throat. “Helen, would you say Carly had a drug problem?”
She pressed a finger to her dry lips and stared at Carly’s open bedroom door for a moment before shaking her head. “No, she never struck me as that type.” She leaned forward, her ears rotating toward me like a cat’s. “Why, was she a closet addict? I watched a talk-show program on the very subject the other day. Some people become very adept at keeping their addictions secret even from spouses. One guest spent two months in a live-in rehab facility while the whole time her husband and children believed she’d traveled to China for business.”
She peered at me, one eyebrow arched as if she anticipated my imminent confession that Carly had been squirreled away in a detox center for years, deceiving us all by visiting the apartment when granted privileges off campus.
“Crack baby!” she shouted, dropping her pill bottle on the floor.
“I’m sorry?” I stammered, her outburst nearly causing me to wet myself.
“Crack baby.” Helen smoothed out her dress. “It took me a moment to recall the term. Did you know they have detox programs for newborns?”
I retrieved the pill bottle, brushed a few runaway pills into it, and handed it back to her as my heart returned to a more normal rate. “No, I wasn’t aware of that.”
She accepted the bottle and slipped it into her dress pocket, freeing her hands to gesture while she continued. “Some newborns emerge from the birth canal already addicted to drugs. It’s fascinating, really, how they treat these infants. Naturally, they aren’t in need of talk therapy so the detoxification process isn’t nearly as complicated. Some of them are put on this drug, phyllo-something, or maybe I have that confused with the Greek pastry. Anyhow, the babies need a dim nursery and lots of human contact . . .”
Helen’s coloring had improved significantly since we’d started on this topic. Talk of babies, crack babies specifically, or foreign pastries had evidently jump-started her circulation. Unfortunately, I wasn’t convinced that was a good thing. I hoped her overstimulation didn’t cause her to drop dead in my living room.
While watching Helen for heart-attack symptoms, my mind spun back to Carly. I had difficulty reconciling the excited journal entries with that of her strung out on a hospital gurney, pushing out a wailing crack baby. Could she have transitioned from thrilled mother-to-be to overwhelmed young woman in just five months? I’d only read two journal entries, so they might become more morose in nature. Despite how upbeat she’d pretended to be around me, the later entries could reveal her true thoughts of feeling trapped by this baby. Maybe she’d turned to drugs as a way of handling her more recent feelings of despair.
“How sad,” I blurted out.
Helen abruptly stopped talking, and I realized I’d interrupted her. She folded her hands in her lap. “Yes, it’s a shame really.”
I gathered she was still talking about crack babies, not specifically about Carly or her baby, and decided to elaborate on how we’d gotten started on this subject in the first place. I didn’t want her leaving thinking the worst about Carly. “The police said Carly died from a drug overdose, but nobody I’ve told believes it. I certainly have my doubts.”
She nodded. “The police are sometimes mistaken.”
“They haven’t performed an autopsy yet, so I guess we’ll know for sure once that’s done.”
“Autopsies can be wrong too.”
I wondered if she spoke from experience, or knew this from a talk-show episode she’d watched.
As if reading my mind, Helen glanced at the clock. “My shows start soon, so I ought to get going.” She stood up and smoothed down her dress. “Thank you for your help with the bottle.”
I followed her to the door. “Anytime. I’m just sorry Carly’s not here to help too. I mean, not that I mind helping you.”
“I know what you mean, dear. She was a delightful girl.” Helen stepped onto the landing, then turned around and patted my hand. Her skin felt surprisingly smooth and soft despite its dry and wrinkled appearance. “Please don’t dwell too much on the police’s drug theory until you know for sure what happened. Too often people cause themselves unnecessary grief based on one piece of bad information or a misunderstanding that blows out of proportion. I see it all the time on my shows.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
Helen smiled at me one last time before gripping the handrail and working her way downstairs. I didn’t duck back into my apartment until I saw her reach the bottom without falling.
Deciding now would be a good time to inform the Options clinic of Carly’s demise, I plucked her iPhone off the coffee table and browsed through the contact list. I had to scroll for what felt like hours before locating the entry. She’d filed it under the doctor’s name: Patrick (Options).
“Options,” said the man who answered.
“Hi, I’m Carly’s roommate. You might know her as Caroline Fisher. She was a client there.”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss our patients,” he said.
“Oh, I’m not asking you to discuss her,” I assured him. “Look, can I talk to Patrick? He was her doctor.”
“This is Dr. Patrick speaking.”
“Oh.” I was surprised the doctor himself would answer. Apparently Carly had programmed his direct line into her phone. Or maybe the two-doctor clinic didn’t have enough patients to warrant a full-time receptionist. “Anyway, Carly Fisher died a few days ago, and I wanted to let you know.”
I tapped my foot, waiting for him to acknowledge my statement, but he didn’t say anything.
“Did you hear me?” I repeated. “Carly died.”
“I heard you.”
“Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss our patients.”
A flash of irritation pierced my chest. “You can’t even tell me whether she was a patient?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss our patients.”
He was starting to sound like a broken record. I quelled my annoyance and reminded myself that the clinic’s discretion should be laudable given the field they were in. Maybe he thought I was a tabloid reporter digging up dirt for some doctors-tell-all story, or maybe he’d simply experienced one too many breach-of-confidentiality lawsuits.
I opened my mouth to thank Patrick for his time, but he’d already hung up. I gaped at the lost connection for a few seconds, letting my ire simmer down so I wouldn’t be tempted to hurl the iPhone across the room.
At least I could take comfort from knowing that I’d fulfilled my obligation to the Options clinic and would never need to talk to Patrick again.
