Chapter 3
R emember that thing about rock bottom? Well . You’re not going to believe that somehow this day gets worse!
Buckle up, babe!
I don’t know how long I stood in the kitchen, staring into the abyss, eating flavorless chicken on autopilot, and trying to convince myself I could still stay on track, but it was long enough that the only thing that finally got me moving was a gurgling in my stomach and an unmistakable gag that had me flying to the toilet.
Even me, stoic and collected Charlie, was rendered utterly helpless and totally pathetic by this sudden bout of food poisoning.
The only noises echoing in the bathroom were my whimpers and gags.
I’ll save you the details about all that went down (and out), but after ten minutes, I didn’t think there was anything left in my system, so I sat back against the bathroom wall only to get hit by a roiling nausea that sent my head right back into the toilet.
What the hell was happening?
After another ten minutes of dry heaving, my stomach clenching painfully, I began shaking, descending into a feverish state.
My teeth chattered violently, and I was somehow both sweating and freezing.
I could hardly move, but I managed to unclutch the toilet bowl and sit up on the soft bath mat, then pulled down a dry towel, and threw it over my shoulders to stop myself from shivering.
That took another ten minutes.
As if things couldn’t get worse, once the convulsing stopped, I suddenly found myself hysterically sobbing , grasping at my cheeks in shock.
I hadn’t cried in seven years and I was terrified by the abrupt onset of it, the way I curled onto the cool tile of the bathroom and held myself like I was weak and fragile.
What exactly I was even crying about, I had no clue.
I was like a two-year-old having an uncontrollable, irrational tantrum in the middle of a Target.
The most horrifying part was that I was completely incapable of stopping. I prided myself on being masterfully in control of my emotions, or pretending they just didn’t exist.
My body started to shake, and I heard myself bawling even more, and I thought it might be nice to have a friend, or a neighbor, or even for Josh to breeze through the door and take it all back, press a warm compress to my forehead, keep the plan going, put life back in order again.
It was the type of unwieldy, out-of-control breakdown I’d sought to avoid with every single fiber of my being.
In between the panic that I may never stop crying was an unwanted ache of loneliness that seemed to howl its way through my bones. Like whatever was possessing me wasn’t just emotional, but a physical, tangible pain.
My emotions were like a dam bursting and all I wanted to do was shove them back behind the crack, seal it up, and never let them come out again. Seven years in a riskless, safe life and still I ended up here, on the bathroom floor, whimpering uncontrollably?
What the fuck?
My phone started vibrating on the counter and I crawled for it.
When I saw my little sister, Benny, FaceTiming me, all common sense drifted, because I answered it like she was a lifeline, desperate to see her, even while pathetic rivulets of tears streamed down my face.
I hated being vulnerable, and I knew I had hit a new low if I was open to Benny, of all people, seeing me like this.
She would try to fix it. That was just who she was.
“HAPPY BIRTH—” I heard Benny’s singsong voice as the video loaded and when she saw me, her mouth opened into a shocked O-shape. Who could blame her? I looked like hell.
“Hi,” I said weakly. My brown hair was plastered to my forehead, the ethereal golden brown of my eyes somehow made clearer by the tears still streaming down my cheeks.
Benny’s face seemed to shift through several different emotions at once—concern, confusion, and a tiny gleeful grin that only a little sister would deliver while their sibling was clearly dying on the bathroom floor.
By the time Benny spoke, I had somewhat collected myself and was wiping my face with the towel I had over my shoulders.
“Please tell me you look like this because you partied too hard for your thirtieth birthday and have let loose for once in your goddamned perfect life?”
I cleared my throat, held up a finger, stood up on weak legs, gurgled with mouthwash, and sat back down on the floor, careful to stay near the toilet in case something else needed to be forcefully expelled from my body.
“That is the exact opposite of why I look like this,” I croaked out.
“What happened?”
“Food poisoning.”
“No!” Benny screamed. “Oh, my God. I’m driving up there with soup. This is too sad, even for you, Char. Food poisoning on your birthday? Where’s Josh? If that man is not at CVS right now spending one hundred dollars on your well-being, I’m going to scream at him via text.”
A long silence stretched between us as I became suddenly invested in my cuticle length.
“What?” Benny finally asked, impatiently (but, somehow, in a way I found charming). She was my exact opposite. Optimistic, fun-loving, free-spirited, warm. Where I came from was still a mystery.
“Josh is gone,” I told Benny. “He broke up with me. And I lost my job. My whole life, poof, gone .” I did a little implosion movement with my hand.
“Wait,” Benny said. “Back the fuck up. Wait. You got fired and Josh broke up with you ON YOUR BIRTHDAY? I’m going to kill him. And your boss.”
“Put the sword down, Benadette,” I implored, even though my shoulders loosened with her fervent protection. “I got laid off, so not exactly fired , and Josh... Well, I don’t know. He said the pandemic changed him. He’s not happy.”
“Are you devastated? What’s going on? You seem calm.”
I stiffened, and then lied. “Of course. You know me. I’m fine.
Apart from the whole food-poisoning thing.
” I wasn’t about to tell Benny that five seconds before she called I was howling out sobs like I was having a nervous breakdown (because I was planning on ignoring that entire debacle and blaming it on the vomiting, anyway).
Food poisoning–induced hysteria or something.
“Damn, Char. You and I handle being broken up with in vastly different ways. I’m of the screaming, crying, throwing-up, listening-to-Taylor-Swift-for-hours-on-end variety. Well, actually, I guess you nailed the throwing-up part.” She laughed and I shot her an annoyed look.
Benny had always lived with her emotions on the surface.
Maybe it was because she was born into a totally different environment than I was—I didn’t have an older sister protecting me like she did.
By the time I was twelve years old, I was shielding Benny from Mom’s unpredictability, picking up babysitting jobs, and storing money away in case Mom forgot to pay the electricity or we needed groceries.
Mom wasn’t into drugs or anything. She was just flighty, an aspiring actress who never wanted a “normal” life and was still waiting on her big break.
Bills seemed... optional to her. She wasn’t a bad mom, just an infuriating one.
And for Benny and her, it was so easy to be free-spirited when you had someone (me) doing all the worrying for you.
Mom was also my opposite in almost every single way. It was kind of cliché: the hippie mom with the neurotic daughter. It could be funny, if life were a sitcom, but instead, life was a bitch.
When I grew up, I was determined to check off all the boxes my mom never bothered to check and I’d spent almost a decade trying to prove to her (and, by extension, Benny) that my way was superior. That they’d been wrong, not me.
“What are you going to do about your apartment?” Benny asked. “And work? Your work is your life.” She chuckled. “You’re going to go crazy. What are you going to do all day?”
“It all just happened,” I said, ignoring the rising sense of cold dread. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Come home,” Benny said quickly. “Stay with us! You always say no because you have to work. But you don’t have a job, so you really have no excuse this time.
At least come for a few days. Please?” Her tone was laced with that unmistakable little-sister insecurity.
She asked me to come home almost every time we talked, and I’d grown tired of her pleading.
I could hear the hesitation in her voice.
She was definitely prepared for me to turn her down.
“We’ll see in the morning,” I told Benny.
“No, that’s it. This ends now. You’re in crisis. If you don’t come here, we’ll come there, and Mom will sage your apartment and make you see her favorite psychic in Oakland.”
I nearly vomited again.
“You threatening me with my nightmare is not working in your favor.”
“I know,” Benny replied cheerily. “But, I’m forcing the prodigal daughter to finally come home by any means necessary.”
It had been seven years since I’d been back in LA.
I’d seen Benny and Mom during that time, sure, but only because they came up to San Francisco and planned around my schedule.
I could handle my mom, but only in small doses.
But now, facing the prospect of being alone in this apartment with nothing to do for however long it took to find another role in an uncertain market, I was actually considering it.
I mean, I could still job hunt from my laptop, and drive back up if I found something.
So I surprised myself by saying, “Okay.”
“EXCUSE ME!!!” Benny screamed. “Did you just say okay ?! You’re going to come? DON’T get my hopes up. You’re really coming?”
“I’ll come,” I said, thinking I must be truly desperate if I was agreeing to go back to the mayhem of our Topanga Canyon home.
“I can’t believe it. I truly cannot believe it. I am AWESTRUCK. You have struck me with awe, Char Char!”
“I’m not coming if you call me Char Char.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll sacrifice that. When will you come? Drive down tomorrow. Oh, my God, I’m going to lose my mind I’m so excited.”
“I’ll come day after tomorrow, okay? I need to recover.” And I needed a buffer day to give me time to decide to back out or not.
“Hallelujah,” Benny said. “We’ll figure everything out together. I promise. Josh is an idiot.”
“He’s really not,” I said. “Can I tell you about it when I get there? Please don’t kill him before I drive down.”
“So many rules,” she said, pouting. “Fine. I will put a hold on killing Josh for now, but no promises after I hear the full story.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
“I can’t wait,” Benny said. “I am so excited! Mom is going to flip out. Our baby is coming home!”
“Can you please calm down by the time I get there?” I asked, chuckling.
“Not a chance.”
We said our goodbyes and I started to pack.
Just one suitcase. Enough for three days, a week maximum.
It was something to do. Somewhere to go.
And it would make Benny happy. I had tomorrow to decide for sure.
If I really didn’t want to go, or more likely could not stomach the idea of going, I could say no. Benny would get over it.
After packing, I spent the rest of the night running back to the bathroom every few hours to vomit and then curl up in the fetal position, questioning my entire life.
The day I turned ten without my dad there followed by his wordless abandonment was the worst birthday ever. But this one—well, it was a real close second.
* * *
All it took was one day in my sterile apartment, alone, without any work, my stomach still cramping, pathetically dry heaving up saltine crackers to decide.
Fuck .
I was going home. Tomorrow, I’d be in LA, back to all the same people and places that had driven me out of there.
That’s when I knew for sure.
I’d resolutely and definitively hit my rock bottom.
Welcome to your damn thirties, Charlie Quinn!
Ugh.