Adelaide
We get into the car and head to the restaurant to meet Daniel and Juliet. Macy has not let go of my hand the entire ride, and I noticed she turned to her nasty habit of biting the sleeve of her sweatshirt for comfort.
When I reach towards her to pull it out of her lips, she takes my hand and kisses it instead. "Sorry, I'm just really nervous."
I reach to rub her cheek. "I know Mays, let's just get there and hear what she has to say." She nods and gets quiet again.
The moment we pull into the parking lot, she takes a long, deep breath before getting out of the Jeep and reconnecting our hands. As soon as we walk into the restaurant, we notice them and proceed to their table.
Daniel stands to his feet and embraces Macy and I. Julia smiles at me from the corner of the booth and extends her hand for a friendly shake. Macy gives me a strange glance before shaking her head awkwardly.
"Hi, I'm Juliet... You know that already... I'm sorry," Juliet rambles nervously, drawing her hand back. I scoot into the booth first so that I can be in front of Macy's mother. Macy took a seat next to me. As soon as I notice her leg fidgeting under the table, I place my palm against her thigh to settle her nerves.
After sitting down, we order, and then slowly ease into the conversation. Juliet described what she'd been up to for all these years, and Macy, who had been reluctant to speak at first, eventually chimes in.
"So you don't remember anything?" Her head is lowered as she fidgets with my fingers under the table.
Juliet shakes her head. "I... in the beginning, everything was a blur. I remember waking up in a hospital handcuffed to a bed. Funny huh? I didn't try to kill anyone but myself, and they had me handcuffed."
"Because you were a danger to yourself," Macy says under her breath, and I grabbed her hand, squeezing it.
"Yeah... I heard and understood all too well when the craving came back in the hospital. Macy, I may not remember what happened before that, but I'm sorry I never came back."
"Yeah, why is that?"
"Macy..." I look at her, pleading with my eyes for her to not make a scene in public.
"What? I'm curious... Four years later. how come you remember Daniel but not me?"
"I didn't remember Daniel. He noticed me in the center and told me about my previous life."
Macy releases my hand and wipes her face. She continues to shake, and her withdrawal symptoms return.
"You are lying!"
"I'm not honey. Just calm down and let me explain." Macy looks towards the front door, but she doesn't bolt just yet. Juliet interprets this as her invitation to proceed. "The overdose did enough damage to my brain to make me forget all that had happened before it. The doctors informed me they didn't know when or if I would ever be able to recover my memories. All they said was that I had a daughter and that you had been taken by child protection services. They told me you saw everything...
...I looked around the hospital room that day, not knowing what went wrong but thinking that if I could have taken my own life, it might have been better for my daughter. I wanted you to be safe, to not have to ever see something like that again. I didn't feel like it was safe for me to be around you, so I decided to seek treatment. The memories never returned, but my addiction did, so I stayed there. When Daniel arrived, I had only been clean for four months. I had no contact with the outside world, and I was failing in my attempts to recover at every step of the way.
I relapsed regularly. It was as if there was a void in my heart and head from what my life had been like prior to the rehab center. When Daniel came around and showed me a picture of you, it was as if everything snapped into place. Macy sweetheart, I've been clean for 10 months now because that void in my heart, has now been filled. I got clean to find you again."
Macy keeps her gaze fixed on the front door, processing every word her mother just said. When the waiter returns with our food, I reach out for my girlfriend's hand once again. She pushes it away this time and turns back to the table to eat. The rest of lunch is spent chit-chatting about Macy and my senior year and the start of college. They ask about us getting together and moving in together. Mays doesn't say much, and when she does, it's only one or two words to appear engaged in the conversation, but I can tell she's mentally checked out.
Lunch is almost finished, and Daniel glances at Juliet as if they're keeping something from us, and he nudges her to tell us. "What is it?" I ask
They look back and forth at each other, then towards us. Daniel nods at her. "We actually wanted to talk to Macy... because we have news." Macy stiffens but keeps quiet. "We are pregnant," she says, smiling.
Macy clenches her hand, and as she registers what she just heard, I see pure rage like a fire in her eyes, "What do you mean?" she asks.
".... Macy, you're going to be a big sister."
"No!" She says pretty loudly.
"What do you mean no?" Daniel asks.
She wipes her mouth and stands up. "No. Just no. Too much is going on in one day."
"Yes, I am aware. I apologize."
"No, Juliet... you don't get to apologize. You overdosed and abandoned me. You may have had the luxury of erasing the dreadful memories, but I did not. The naive 14-year-old who walked in on her mother while shooting herself with a heroin-laced needle did not have that luxury. You don't get to forget everything and then return four years later to say you two mysteriously found your way back to each other and are now pregnant. Did you forget what your previous pregnancy did to you?" She begins to exhale heavily and slams her hands against the table. "Daniel, you're a jerk! And Juliet, fuck you. You're not my mother at all! My mother died from being too weak to care about me four years ago. I will not be a part of this. You two can ruin the life of another child for your personal gain, but leave me out of it."
As people stare at her, she snatches my keys and storms out of the restaurant. I look at Juliet and Daniel. "Why...? Why would you do this to her? She went without a mother for years. She turned to drugs because of you two. And now what, you asked her here to tell her you are replacing her, on your first time seeing her in years, after everyone thought you were dead."
"We aren't replacing her Adelaide," Daniel says.
"The hell you aren't. Her own mother doesn't even recognize her, and now she's going to raise another child as if she doesn't already have one. Shame on you both."
I turn and rush out the door to pursue Macy, but when I get there, my Jeep is nowhere to be seen. I take out my phone and dial Mom's phone number.
***
"Where do you think she'd be," mom asked. For a moment, I pause to consider the possibilities. My thoughts wander to the possibility of her tracking down her old drug dealer, but where would they meet? Maybe she went to her childhood home, but that's unlikely. I become agitated and begin slamming my hands against the dashboard. "Adelaide, calm down, just think," she says, still driving. "What is somewhere that means something to her?"
"I don't know mom, her drug dealer's place."
She shakes her head, "Addy think. A house that she's ever mentioned, a dock, a park, the beach. Think baby."
I cut her off. "Wait... the park. When we were kids, you used to take us to the park by the old condo. It's where I gave her the charm bracelet on valentine's day, and where she gave it back for Christmas. Maybe... I'm not sure though, mom." She nods her head and turns to head that way.
As she pulls up, I see the Jeep and Macy sitting on the swings with a bag on her lap, a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in another. I jump out of the car and run to her.
"Macy!" She looks up to me, her eyes red from crying, then looks back at the bag. She drags the cigarette down to its last breath and flicks it away, then grabs a cloth from the bag on her lap. She clenches it tight and drinks some of the beer.
"Macy, what is that? And where did you get the beer and cigarette." She doesn't answer, and I walk closer to her. I look behind the swing, and there's a dug-up hole on the ground behind her.
"Why?" She asks. "Why did she have to be alive! Why couldn't she have just stayed fucking dead! I was fine without her!" Tears start streaming down her face again.
"Why doesn't she remember me? Why does she want to have another baby? She couldn't even take care of me. How can she take care of another child?"
Macy's voice echoes throughout the park, and she adjusts the cloth in her hands. This time I see it's a bunch of pills. I try to step closer to her, but she gets off the swing and starts walking. "Macy, give me the pills."
She keeps walking, ignoring me. "Why Addy? Does she not love me? Why did it take her this long to come back? Why does she look so perfect and happy now, like she never did drugs! Like she never tried to kill herself in front of me! Like I meant nothing to her! WHY!"
She continues to scream, waving the glass bottle around, and my mom comes up behind me to try and help diffuse the situation. "Macy, just come here, please. We can talk about this at home," Mom tries. Macy looks up to her water dripping down her cheeks.
"I just want this to end," she says calmly, bringing the cloth to her mouth and downing all the pills with the beer.
"Noooo" we both scream. Mom grabs the bottle out of her hand, and I tackle her to the ground to try and force the pills out.
"Macy, spit them out!" I yell, squeezing her cheeks and pushing my fingers into her mouth. Seeing how many came out, I know she swallowed at least half of the pills.
"Mom, call 911!" I pull Macy up to me, attempting to stick my fingers down her throat, but she kicks me off and crawls away. "Stop Macy. Please just spit them out."
"I'm sorry Adelaide..." Sweat drips down her brow, and she starts walking backward unsteadily. "You heard her. She relapsed repeatedly. This is just my destiny. Statistics have been saying it since the beginning."
"That's not true, Macy."
"It is... I can't handle..." She starts coughing and clutching her chest. My mother approaches her while still on the phone, but she pushes her away. "I can't handle the pressure... I'll just go back to doing drugs. Juliet fixed the hole in her heart so she could recover for good, but her coming back didn't fix the hole in my heart. It just grew even wider." Her eyes begin to drift back, and her breathing becomes more rapid. As she becomes limp, my mother and I get to her in time before she hits the ground.
I open her eyes with my finger and notice her pupils contracting.
I start shoving my finger down her throat to get her to throw them up. She starts gagging but does not vomit. "Come on baby girl, don't do this to me. Macy, puke them out! You promised! Dammit Macy, you fucking promised me!" she starts convulsing under me, and I start screaming.
"Mom, help me turn her over!" I hear the sirens of the ambulance and cop car pulling up. The EMTs come running towards us.
"What did she take?" They ask, and I yell that I don't know. I point to the cloth on the ground, and they look at the white pills. "Get the Narcan," one of them yelled.
They rush over to Macy and pull a nasal syringe out, placing it to her nose and administering the liquid. They lift her onto a gurney, and I fall back onto the ground, watching them take her away. I cry into my knees as I hear the sirens disappear in the background. "You weren't supposed to break the promise."