Chapter 10 Lord Edward
My care manager, Dr. Rush, does that thing most people do when they meet me: a slight tilt of the head, peering at his shoes as though there might be a scuff on them, not quite a bow, but not the complete absence of one, either.
(I realize, belatedly, that Amelia Blue did no such thing.) When Dr. Rush bends his neck, I can see the beginning of a bald spot on the top of his head; his remaining dark hair is peppered ever so slightly with gray.
Anne and my father seem to know what to do when faced with such a greeting—that is, they take it in as though it isn’t the least bit absurd but perfectly appropriate.
Now, I find myself mirroring the gesture slightly, trying to pass the movement off as a nod.
Dr. Rush at least calls me Edward, not Lord Edward.
The chef and housekeeper do the same. Anne must’ve told them to use my first name.
Or maybe it’s a rehab thing—tearing one down before they build one back up again.
That’s what happens in the movies. Though none of the places in the movies look like this.
The doctor leads me around the cottage as if he’s giving a museum tour.
The fridge is stocked with my favorite flavored water, and there’s organic crunchy peanut butter in the cabinets.
Dr. Rush name-drops brands the way some people drop the names of celebrities they slept with: Sub-Zero, Miele, Viking, deVOL.
“A British brand,” Dr. Rush adds enthusiastically about the last, as if it might make me feel more at home, though he must know that, excepting the past few months, I haven’t lived full-time in England since I was fifteen.
Still, I smile and thank him, like they picked out the kitchen cabinets with me in mind. The doctor beams.
In my apartment in Tribeca, I have similar appliances.
My mattress is a Vispring; my sheets are organic cotton; the furniture is high-end but not custom, selected from catalogs.
The first time she set foot inside, Harper pointed out that everything was brown or navy blue: brown leather couch, navy-blue bedspread, brown wooden furniture, navy-blue dining chairs.
The color scheme was the result of a lack of imagination, not intention.
Spend too much time in this apartment alone and you might forget there’s a world of color out there, Harper said.
She left her pink underwear on the bedroom floor, shiny tubes of coral lipstick on my bedside table.
She’d come home with travel magazines, ripping out pictures of the most colorful destinations, taping them to the refrigerator door.
I promised to take her to each and every one.
We’ll take each other, she said. With our own money. Not your family’s.
I don’t have my own money, I pointed out. Financial support from one’s family isn’t exactly unusual in New York City, though I don’t imagine most people were receiving quite as much support as I was.
That makes you just like every other twentysomething I know, Harper replied.
We’ll rough it. She laughed at the idea of me staying in hostels, nothing but a backpack to my name.
She was going to wend her way through the cities of Europe and the beaches of Fiji with her light, loping gait, as graceful as a cat.
Someday, when my father dies, my sister will be in charge of every cent I’m given to live on—an allowance, like a child—as well as which public events I can officially attend, in which of our properties I can reside and when, for which privilege I will pay rent from the allowance Anne determines.
The concept of my own money, my own property, has never entered into the equation.
So get a job, Harper said, as if it were easy. Go back to school.
I suppose it was easy, in as much as most people did it.
But to tell my family—impossible. They would laugh at the idea of my continuing my education when I barely made it through high school.
My father’s voice would drip with sarcasm as he asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, as though my hoping to be anything other than what they’d already decided was the punchline to a terrible joke.
We let him live in America too long, Anne would say, he’s getting ideas.
Of course, I will have a job eventually—sons and daughters like me are expected to—but it will be one the family selects, secured not by my résumé but by their connections.
One doesn’t talk about what one wants to do in my family; one does what one is told to do.
It’s been that way, literally, for centuries. Who am I to change matters?
Dr. Rush leads the way with a slow sort of amble as though he hasn’t a care in the world.
I try to match his stride, but it’s impossible for me to step with that sort of ease.
He’s slightly taller than I am (six-one; you can look it up), his legs longer.
He points to the Nest thermostat in the corridor, mine to control while I’m here.
“What if I like it really hot or really cold?”
“Then the house will be really hot or cold,” Dr. Rush answers with a smile, as though his own comfort, and that of the rest of the staff, is so much less important than mine. I should be used to that sort of thing—certainly, Anne and Dad are—but it makes me queasy.
“So tell me, Edward,” Dr. Rush says as the tour concludes in the bedroom.
(Frette sheets, he points out. Hastens mattress.) He wears thick-rimmed tortoise-shell glasses with square frames, a white button-down tucked into gray slacks, a sweater vest on top.
He looks more like a professor in a movie about some ivy-draped college than a therapist. “What can we do to make your stay more comfortable?”
I almost laugh out loud. I haven’t been comfortable in months.
“Nothing. This is excellent.” I smile politely. My back teeth ache.
“I’m so glad. Our goal is to make our guests happy.”
Guests. I’m not a guest. I’m a prisoner sent away for my crimes, and Dr. Rush knows it.
Briefly, I wonder why the tiny girl I rode in with—woman, Anne would correct—is here. Heroin, maybe. Would explain why she’s so skinny. Or perhaps depression zapped her appetite; with a name like Blue, she’s practically predestined for a mood disorder.
“I’m afraid I must ask: Did you bring any drugs, medication, or alcohol with you?”
“To rehab?” I ask, playing dumb. This is all so civilized. No stomach pumped, no pockets frisked. I wonder if they strip search the guests who aren’t members of the landed aristocracy. “Wouldn’t that kind of defeat the point?”
At my joke, Dr. Rush smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Your prescriptions were sent to the local pharmacy,” he assures me. “So there will be no interruption in your pain management.”
I clench my jaw. If there’s a more absurd phrase in the English language than pain management, I’ve never heard it.
As though pain is something to be controlled but not avoided, an unruly child that needs to be taken in hand.
Permitted to be here, but not there. Playtime from this hour until that hour.
Maybe if the people in charge of managing pain had actual experience with it, they’d see things differently.
“According to the notes your care team back home sent, you don’t need your next pill until morning, yes?”
Fuck off, Doctor, I think. You have no idea what I need.
“Yes,” I agree, ever polite.
“Then I’ll give it to you with your breakfast.” He slides his hands into his pockets, and I wonder if my pill bottles are rattling around with his keys.
In London, it’s the middle of the night. I yawn widely.
“Excuse me,” I murmur apologetically. “Jet lag.”
“You’ve had a long day,” Dr. Rush offers. “I’ll let you sleep. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
“Downstairs?” I echo. The bedroom, living room, and kitchen are on the same floor; I limped up wide wooden steps to the front door.
“Of course,” he explains. “Here at Rush’s Recovery, you’ll never be alone. During your stay, I’m available to you twenty-four seven.”
He says it like it’s a service to me, though of course it’s a service to my sister and father. They don’t want me left unsupervised.
“Good night, Edward.” Dr. Rush slides the enormous barn door to the bedroom closed behind him. I’m surprised he doesn’t lock it and pocket the key.
Four weeks. That’s how long Anne said I had to stay. Actually she said, At least four weeks. After that, we’ll see, which is code for Behave yourself for four weeks and you can go home. Act up, and we’ll add time to your sentence.
I limp across the room and rest my forehead against the cold floor-to-ceiling window. It’s too dark to see the ocean now, but I can hear the waves crashing against the sand below.
When I was ten years old, I broke my thumb playing rugby.
At thirteen, a cricket bat to the face made my nose explode with blood.
At fifteen, I broke my arm when I fell off the roof of our estate in Scotland.
If someone had asked, before last year, I’d have said I had plenty of experience with pain.
I would have been wrong.
I keep one hand on the glass to steady me as I bend down, sticking my fingers into the space between my sock and my boot. I suppose it’s not the most creative hiding place, but it’s proven itself effective.
I pop a pill in my mouth, swallow it dry, and wait for the sweet click; not oblivion but distance, as though my body were happening to someone else.
Pain is my real punishment. This place will end, eventually.
The pain won’t.