And then, like a stubborn hook finally catching the latch, the rest of the memory fell into place.
Stephanie turned to Raquel. “This is a terrible drug. How do we stop it?”
“What do you mean? You’re feeling it? How do you feel?”
Stephanie shook her head. “I can’t. You have to stop it. How do we stop it?”
“It’s supposed to feel good. It doesn’t feel good?”
“You’re repeating yourself,” Stephanie said. A horrible clarity was coming over her, mixed with overbearing anxiety, anxiety whose cause was at first obscured but then became plain. There was something, she realized now, that she had worked hard to avoid, but now that the drug had rapidly cleared all the stupid shit that had distracted her up to this point, that thing had come forward, it had center stage, it had the microphone, it was asking her, what did Robbie see? And it kept asking her and asking her, what did Robbie see, what did Robbie see, what did Robbie see? And she was forced to imagine that thing that Robbie must have seen: her mother’s neck in a noose, her mother’s body stretching toward the floor, her mother possibly struggling at the last minute, possibly changing her mind, as so many suicide victims — she had read — were known to do. And what the funeral home had done to fix her mother’s neck and face was a kind of dark sorcery she didn’t want to think about. And what poor Robbie had witnessed, she didn’t want to think about, and why he had gone to the barn in the first place, she didn’t want to think about, and how close he had gotten, she didn’t want to think about, and if he had looked at her face, she didn’t want to think about.
“Please, please, you have to stop this drug.” Stephanie took Raquel’s hands, as if to keep her on the sofa. “You must know a way. What if I throw up?”
“You can’t, it’s in your blood,” Raquel said. “Come on, let’s dance, you’ll feel better.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not affecting me in the right way. I’m having a bad reaction. Maybe I’m overdosing. Maybe I’m getting brain damage. Have you ever heard of anyone having this reaction?”
Raquel shook her head. Her expression reminded Stephanie of a babysitter she’d once had, who’d watched the boys when Robbie was potty-training and didn’t know what to do when Robbie couldn’t make it to the bathroom. She almost began to tell Raquel about this babysitter, but the clear part of her mind told her to stay focused on the task at hand, which was to get the drug out of her system.
“I think I need to go to a doctor,” Stephanie said. “Or I need to talk to a psychiatrist. Do you know any psychiatrists?”
“Stephanie, chill out, you’re not supposed to be this anxious.”
“I know. That’s why something is obviously wrong, I’m having the wrong reaction. I feel like I’m falling inside, like I’m losing my mind. Why did you think this would be a good idea? Why did you think this would be fun? This is the worst night of my life. It’s worse than the night my mother died.”
Raquel stood up. “I’m getting Gabe. He’ll calm you down, okay? He has a good vibe.”
“Did you just say vibe? You never say things like vibe. You’re nervous, I can tell you’re nervous. Just be honest with me, am I going to die of this? Oh my God, what a stupid way to die.”
“Stay there!” Raquel commanded. “I’m getting Gabe.”
Stephanie obeyed. She stared at the dancers in front of her, who shook their bodies happily, ironically, self-consciously, and occasionally gracefully, oblivious to her agony. The music, a hazy melody with an unsteady beat (they were a sloppy band), could not distract her. Her thoughts were so loud, so unquiet, so insistent. She sipped her drink, and it tasted like her life ten minutes ago, a faraway place that she’d lost forever, a place where she was in control of her mood, where her fears didn’t have a death grip on her thoughts.
She had to get out of this basement. She was so tired of parties in basements.
She found the back stairs, and it bothered her that they were carpeted. They felt soggy, somehow. Upstairs was the ballroom, or what passed for a ballroom in a reclaimed fraternity house. The large room was shoddily grand with scuffed parquet floors, high ceilings, tall windows, a large defunct fireplace, and a bar. Stephanie felt a breeze coming through one of the windows. The music was now a vague hum beneath her. She settled down a little. She watched the people at the bar, lining up to receive red plastic cups of beer and cheap liquor. She remembered Mitchell saying that alcohol is a known poison. Why hadn’t her mother taken poison? Why not pills? Wasn’t that the nicer way? The feminine way? The way that could be perceived as an accident?
Gabe and Raquel had followed her upstairs. They looked like cartoons of themselves, Gabe with his sproingy blond curls and Raquel with her big eyes exaggerated into place by heavy eyeliner.
“Hey, Stephanie, what’s going on?” Gabe rubbed her arms and shoulders. “Calm down, girl.”
“Why did she have to do it that way? It was like she wanted everyone to know. But I knew. I knew!” Stephanie pointed to herself.
“Knew what?” Gabe asked.
“I knew how bad she was feeling and I didn’t do anything!” Stephanie felt like crying but she couldn’t.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Gabe said.
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“I know, but I know you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Of course you didn’t, you’re a good person,” Raquel said.
“Good people can do bad things!” Stephanie was struck by Gabe’s sweetness and Raquel’s callowness. They weren’t going to be able to help her tonight. She felt no resentment toward either of them. She couldn’t; it would be like resenting Robbie and Bryan for not writing back to her postcards.
The sadness was coming back, overwhelming her. It was thinking about her brothers that did it. She thought of Bryan, praying to some made-up father in the sky. And then she thought of Robbie wandering around town, going from pay phone to pay phone, calling her when who he really wanted to call was their mother. This drug was too much, it brought on too much, and that was why people like Gabe and Raquel liked it, because they loved this feeling of too much, because they didn’t know what too much was really like. She had to get away from them. She had to get away from these too-much people.
She took off running, exiting the ballroom through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows and jumping out onto the front lawn. Some people heading into the party cheered on her apparently high spirits and she thought of the cross-country meet she had gone to after waking up in Laird Kemp’s empty house. She had been wearing the same cloth Mary Jane shoes. She could feel the evening dew seeping through to her bare feet the same way it had that morning. Thinking of Laird brought a glimmer of happier feelings. Not sexual feelings, though. The drug made her detached from that part of herself, which was strange because she thought ecstasy meant wanting to touch soft objects and dance and stare into other people’s eyes and be romantic. She didn’t want to touch anything. That was why running was good; your feet barely touched the ground when you ran, you got to be airborne.