The Fall of Lisa Bellow
Susan Perabo
For my mom and dad
PART ONE
1
Sometimes in the morning, while she waited for her brother to get out of the bathroom, Meredith Oliver would stand in front of her bureau mirror, lock eyes with her reflection, and say, “This is me. This is really me. Right now. This is me. This is my real life. This is me.”
She would say these things to herself because she liked the moment when she suddenly became uncertain that those things she was saying were in fact true, liked the way it made her feel unmoored, the hole of doubt that opened up inside her, and the wind that blew through that hole. It was a physical sensation, as real as cresting the first incline of a roller coaster, the momentum shift from ascending to descending. It was, Meredith had decided, precisely like sucking on a giant, whole-body Mentho-Lyptus cough drop, the way it cleared her out, head to toe. And she liked equally—not more and not less, because it was just the same sensation backward—the moment she became re-certain that those things were true—this is me, this is really me—when the hole closed, and the anchor caught, and she could smell the eggs her father was scrambling downstairs.
Meredith had been doing the mirror thing for as long as she could remember, on mornings both ordinary (today, for instance) and memorable (first days of school, birthdays, etc). Sometimes she went months without doing it, and then she’d resume for no reason she could name, and she did not think of it as a game or a habit or a meditation, but only her mirror thing. But even during those times when she called on it most, she didn’t do it every day. She didn’t want the trick to wear out. She suspected that if she overused it, it would lose its magic.
This morning the shower roared to life, the pipes humming with heat. This was encouraging, despite the fact that it would delay her from using the bathroom herself. Since Evan’s injury, Meredith could read his mood, predict how the day would go, by how much of his morning bathroom routine was completed. Because the bathroom was situated between their two bedrooms, the entire routine could easily be monitored by sound alone. Some days were pill-only days, the creak of the medicine cabinet opening, the rattle of the bottle, two seconds of running water—just long enough for him to gather a handful to wash down the pill, no cup required—the creak of the cabinet closing, followed by . . . silence. No brushing of teeth, no shower, no shave. On those days he might just go back to bed, and then there would be a half hour of sitcom-worthy upstairs/downstairs, first her mother up and down, then her father up and down, then her mother again, the anxiety rising with every trip, a variety of knocks (the breakfast-is-waiting, the tender-but-firm, the we-know-you-can-hear-us), an assortment of appeals (“Evan, sweetie . . .” “Hey, pal . . .” “Getting late, kiddo . . .” “Evan, I’m serious . . .”). Often this was still happening when Meredith left the house to walk to school, her brother already tardy (the high school started a half hour earlier than the middle school), her parents playing out precisely the same scene they’d played out on the last pill-only day. But thankfully, Meredith thought, the pill-only days were now fewer and further between. Now most days were at least pill-and-toothbrush days, and after one round of upstairs/downstairs Evan would appear at the kitchen table, unshaven but otherwise only marginally disheveled, his good eye flitting toward the clock every few minutes, sometimes a few lame jokes or minor complaints about the weather or the consistency of his eggs.
Meredith suspected that he got up now more often than not because he’d decided, maybe even subconsciously, that school was a better place for him to pass the day than home. Everywhere he spent any time at all—home, school, gym, hospital—was a delicate balance of distraction versus reminder, but at least at school the distractions were constant and diverse, a barrage coming at such a rapid-fire pace that sometimes he probably forgot for seconds or minutes about what had happened.
This day, Wednesday, there was brushing and showering and even the on-and-off water of a shave, which suggested not only a sulky resignation to, but perhaps actual interest in, the day, something he was looking forward to. Maybe it was the sunshine blazing through the bedroom windows. Maybe there was a party this weekend. Maybe there was a girl he wanted to talk to. Maybe his headache was just a dull pulse, an echo of pain more than the pain itself.
She didn’t blame him for going back to bed some mornings, or for his sulky resignation. She was not selfish enough to think him selfish. She liked to believe she was the only person in the world who truly understood him, so she was cautious not to judge, but just to observe. Carefully observe. The bathroom routine. The state of his bedroom. The hours spent on homework versus the hours spent on television versus the hours lying on his bed petting the tolerant cat. The tentative, jerky drives around the block. The rattle of pills tumbling out of the green bottle. The video games, some of which he could play, but most of which made his headaches worse. Smaller details: the part of his hair, reaching for his fork and missing it by half an inch, the angle of his iPhone, the thwack of the little rubber basketball as it bounced off the side of the mini backboard that hung over his closet door. And the thing he did with the tree by the front porch, touching the tip of a single branch with the tip of his finger. For the last couple of months he’d done this every time he left the house, and sometimes she saw him standing out there after school, doing it when he thought no one was watching.
He wore glasses now, mostly for protection of the now priceless right eye but also to obscure the view of the damage on the left. Ironically, neither lens of his black-framed glasses required any actual correction—the left lens was simply darkened, the right lens was simply glass.