5
Flambé: The process of cooking off alcohol that’s been added to a hot pan by a burst of flames.
The flame goes out when the alcohol has burned off.
2000
January is a black hole from which not a single memory can escape.
Queenie stares up at the ceiling thinking the first coherent thoughts since her Christmas promise to Julian.
The one she broke on New Year’s Eve.
He doesn’t know; no nine-year-old should be aware just how badly his mother fucked up.
Again.
But Osvaldo does, and that’s just as bad.
Worse.
Julian will forgive her, in that sweet way of little boys enamored of their mothers, even distant, distracted ones.
Maybe especially those.
Osvaldo, in the vindictive ways of husbands wronged, will not.
“You’re awake.”
The nurse—or so Queenie assumes—is smiling way too brightly, given the circumstances.
“Can I get you anything?”
“The key?”
Queenie lifts one shackled wrist holding her down, trying hard not to panic.
Not to remember.
The locked doors.
The small spaces.
The punishment for being a kid in households that don’t want you, only the money the system supplies.
“I’m very sorry, but I can’t do that.”
The nurse checks the drip line, Queenie’s blood pressure, the pulse ox.
Writes on her chart.
“There’s an officer outside your room.
We might ask her if it’s okay.”
“Might we?”
Queenie smiles, saccharine sweet.
“How about we do that? Thanks so much.”
A little brightness leaches from the nurse’s smile.
She nods and leaves Queenie alone.
In her private room.
In a hospital not the local kind, but the obviously expensive kind.
Where someone—probably Osvaldo—has had her taken instead.
Queenie wishes she could remember.
Any of it.
As much as she wishes she could forget the panic worming through her pounding skull.
“Ms. Benuzzi?”
The officer stepping into the room isn’t young.
She isn’t old.
Queenie met dozens of her kind when she was a kid getting passed around.
The I’ve-seen-it-all kind of tough, hardened beyond the ability to bend.
“Balcazar.
Ms.
Balcazar. Thanks.”
“Mr.
Balcazar made it clear that here, you’re Benuzzi.”
The officer nods.
“Tabloids, you know?”
Queenie knows.
Of course.
In protecting her reputation, Osvaldo protects his own.
This dance they do. It never seems to end. “Can we just take this off?”
She lifts her hand.
“I’m not going anywhere.
I assume the security here is tight.”
The officer approaches, pulling keys dangling from her belt.
“Only cuffed you to keep you from getting out of bed on your own.
Nothing’s broken or anything, but the docs said not to let you get up without someone standing by.”
Rubbing her freed wrist, the panic subsides enough to attempt sitting up.
Mistake.
The pain displaces memory.
Her back. The room blurs and her head swims. “I’m not under arrest?”
“For?”
“Whatever landed me here.”
“Last I checked, falling down two flights of stairs isn’t an arrestable offense.”
Queenie tries again to sit.
Her back screams.
The officer helps without being asked.
“Why are you stationed outside my door?”
“Just an added precaution.
Those tabloids, remember? No one wants the publicity, especially your networks.”
Ah.
“My producers hired you.”
“For your own protection.”
“And Osvaldo?”
“Mr.
Balcazar was here when you arrived.
To oversee your admission.”
“And how long ago was that?”
A slight intake of breath.
An even slighter shake of her head.
“Two, no, three days.”
“And that means I have twenty-five days left, yes?”
“Twenty-seven,”
the officer corrects.
“This is a thirty-day program.”
Twenty-eight.
Thirty.
It doesn’t matter.
Rehab isn’t for her benefit; it’s for everyone else in her life.
Those who need a break from worrying.
About her.
About ratings.
About tabloids clamoring to get stories and photos concerning celebrities falling down two flights of stairs, high on said celebrity’s drug of choice; tabloids that absolutely adore the rehab tales.
The contrition.
The redemption.
Queenie will try to remember to thank her producers, and even Osvaldo.
Maybe, just this once, she’ll get through it without all the press.
Maybe, just this once, rehab will actually rehabilitate her.
Because she wants to be rehabilitated.
She always does, after a crash like this one.
After twenty-eight or thirty days clean, she leaves whatever facility Osvaldo has found to take her, feeling like a new Queenie B.
Or the old one.
The younger one.
The Queenie B who earned a James Beard award at the age of twenty-six; who owns restaurants boasting three Michelin Stars apiece.
The woman who hosts two shows—one on the Food Network, and one on PBS—bearing her name, shows that got her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She wants to be that woman again, not just for herself or her networks.
Certainly not for Osvaldo.
She wants to be that Queenie B for Julian.
Maybe, if rehab finally sticks, she can make up for not being that woman while she carried him in her womb.
For not being the mother he deserves.
For not wanting him in the first place.
“Are we ready for something to eat?”
The nurse again, her brightness back in place.
“Just a little something?”
It will be disgusting.
The food, no matter how expensive the “spa,”
is always bland.
As if salt and garlic are yet another substance to be avoided at all costs.
Behave.
Stick to the protocol.
Get out of here with an A for effort.
Swallowing the venom that would singe the poor girl’s gently curved, concerned eyebrows off, Queenie tells her, “That’d be great. Thanks.”