Chapter 35 Lorna Is Thirty-Nine
Kristen begs lorna to let her in during the coldest part of the winter. She says she’s been living on the street and she’s finally hit rock bottom. She says she is ready to make a change. Of course Lorna lets her into her new apartment. She is her mother’s daughter after all.
In the first few weeks, Kristen behaves herself. She cleans the apartment when Lorna is at work, and she cooks dinner for Lorna when she comes home.
They watch past seasons of The Bachelor and groan and cringe at the same time, giggling like they did when they were girls, assigning superlatives to the contestants.
“Most Likely to Spew When Drinking,” Kristen anoints a tiny blond.
“Most Likely to Throw Her Friend Under a Bus,” Lorna adds for an ex–pageant queen.
Kristen talks about going to school for nursing, or dental school. “I just need to save for it.”
Lorna is so excited that Kristen may be turning her life around, that she may have a sister again, that she says, “I’ll help you pay for it.”
“Really, Lolo?” Kristen asks.
“Really,” Lorna assures her.
Kristen hugs her tight. “I could not have asked for a better sister. I love you, Lolo.”
Lorna has noticed that Kristen has some new tattoos and a scar on her arm that she says she doesn’t want to talk about, and Lorna doesn’t press her.
She doesn’t want to think of what life has been like for Kristen.
Because she’s warm and funny, and when her health comes back to her, so does her beauty.
She is the big sister Lorna had all those years ago, the one she so admired. The one she adored.
Kristen advises Lorna on her wardrobe again, helps her with her hair, even drags her to the gym.
They make a TikTok video together—Kristen teaches her the popular dance making the rounds.
They are out of sync and so bad, but it is so much fun.
They laugh hard and collapse onto the floor in fits of laughter.
“It feels so good to be like this again,” Kristen says to Lorna one night. “Remember when we used to dance for Nana and she would rate us?”
“Ten out of ten every time,” Lorna says, laughing.
But when the weather turns warm, Kristen leaves. She’s been talking to some guy and wants to “hang out” with him. Lorna doesn’t know what that means, really, but she can’t believe it’s good.
“Don’t go,” she begs Kristen. “It’s just going to happen all over again.”
Kristen laughs. “Have a little faith! It’s not going to happen again. I really like who I am when I’m sober. Do you need me to promise? I promise, I will be sober. He’s sober. This is not about that.”
She does not keep her promise. Again.
She comes back more times after that, and Lorna usually takes her in, just like Mom used to do. And Lorna hates herself for it just like she hated Mom for it. But she can’t turn her back on her sister. She asks her dad for help, but he says he is tapped out.
“Tapped out of what?” Lorna asks. He hasn’t offered emotional or financial support that she’s aware of.
“Money,” he says. “You think her jail fines and treatment stints are free? And I don’t like the idea of her around my kids.”
Lorna bristles at his characterization of his daughters as “his” kids. What does that make her and Kristen?
Lorna feels like she is on a hamster wheel.
At Deb’s suggestion, she starts another round of therapy, following up on the round she did after college.
She attends groups for families of addicts.
They talk a lot about the importance of setting firm boundaries with addicts and holding them.
“You must protect your well-being and your health,” the instructor insists.
But no one in the group can really do it, Lorna included.
She sets boundaries, and Kristen pushes past them.
Lorna lets her because she is all Kristen has.
She begins to collect Precious Moments figurines, little porcelain glimpses of lives and the people she wishes they were.
She gets a dog, Agnes, a cute rescue corgi, so she is not alone in this terrible battle with drugs.
She feels rage every time Kristen comes around, and then guilt every time she leaves.
Kristen gets odd jobs, then gets fired. She meets shady new characters, then disappears for days on end.
She always has a phone—how do so many addicts who cannot support themselves have phones?
Sometimes after Kristen has been on a bender, she will swear again she is going to stay sober, that she hates being high all the time. She forgets that at times she has said she wants to be high all the time. It doesn’t matter—she never keeps her promise. Never.
Lorna reaches her breaking point when Kristen steals money from her purse and some Precious Moments figurines.
Worse, when she leaves with the money and the figurines, she leaves the door open for Agnes to escape.
When Lorna comes home from work, she quickly pieces together what happened.
She is frantic. Hysterical, even, that she has lost Agnes.
It takes her almost thirty-six hours to track down Agnes and reunite with her.
When she does, she collapses with grief and anxiety.
Kristen never hits rock bottom, but Lorna finally does.
The next time Kristen comes around, Lorna has changed the locks and tells her she is no longer welcome. That Lorna can’t have Kristen’s chaos in her life anymore. She has set her boundary, and she is holding to it.
Kristen doesn’t believe her at first, but when she understands Lorna will not allow her to crash in her house and steal from her, she loses control.
She calls Lorna every name she can think of.
She says she hates her, she’s always hated her, and she hopes she dies.
Lorna watches her sister walk to the street with no place to go. She looks broken, but Lorna is too.
A week goes by before the police contact Lorna with their Jane Doe. Lorna calls Dad, who flies immediately to Austin. Kristen, they say, has overdosed on something that was laced with fentanyl. She is lucky, they say, that it didn’t kill her.
Kristen is not lucky. Lorna wishes she would have died, because Kristen has suffered irreversible brain damage. She is now in a residential facility in Florida.
The guilt and grief Lorna holds are unbearable.
She tries to move on. She moves to Nana’s house.
She attends more therapy, takes antidepressants, tries anything there is to soothe a hurt like this, and nothing works.
Nothing but her bomb shelter. She closes herself off and away so that her rage with life and the cards she was dealt festers until she almost loses her job.
She wishes she hadn’t run out of compassion for Kristen, but she only had so much.
She thinks only a deity could have the amount of compassion required to deal with a loved one who is a hardcore addict.
She wishes her life could be different, that she could be happy.
Happy like she and her whole family were early on, once upon a time.
They were happy, weren’t they?
Weren’t they?