Like a Sister(7)

“The police are stopping by the office this afternoon,” she said. “We want Lena to come.”

Aunt E looked at me, and I shook my head.

“I can hear her breathing,” Tam said.

I finally spoke. “Did Desiree say anything about trying to reach me last night?”

Tam paused long enough for me to get my answer. Mel—Veronika by proxy—had responded to my and Desiree’s estrangement just as I’d predicted: not at all. “You were obviously on her mind,” she said.

At five in the morning when she was high on cocaine. And just like that I was pissed. At Tam. At myself. And, most of all, at Desiree. I gestured to Aunt E, who was reluctantly handing me the phone. It felt like a brick. “You know this was inevitable,” I said immediately, ignoring Aunt E’s look.

A pause. “I’m sorry you think that,” Tam said. “She was doing so well. We sent her to rehab earlier this year.” She had left out the word “again.”

“Guess that didn’t work. Again.”

“Lena,” Aunt E said, suddenly looking every one of her seventy-two years. “Don’t you think you’re being hard on Desiree?”

I thought I wasn’t being hard enough. Just like always. Even in death, even when she was found with cocaine, we were the ones making excuses. I handed the phone back. Aunt E waited for me to say something, then just gave up. She knew how stubborn I was. How I substituted anger and sarcasm for hurt like a teacher always calling out sick. Sighing, Aunt E spoke to Tam instead. “When’s the last time you heard from Desiree?”

“Yesterday. We wanted to see if she got the gift. I keep replaying our last conversation. She didn’t seem like herself. Was distracted. Said she wasn’t feeling well.”

Not feeling well was straight out of Desiree’s “I’m using again” playbook. It was her excuse for why she was late. For the nosebleeds. For the constant trips to the bathroom. Yet for someone who never felt great, she sure loved to stay up all night. To talk about men. To binge reality shows with “Love” in the title that I hated but watched with her anyway. To share secrets. Just not the biggest—and worst-kept—secret of all.

The first time I saw her using was at dinner right after my mom died. I can’t remember the place. I can remember the single-stall bathroom. All stark and silver, like the latest model Terminator had morphed into a sink. She’d followed me in and casually whipped out the baggie of coke like it was lip balm, offering me some as I sat with my panties wrapped around my knees. All I could do was shake my head. It was a good year before I could say anything more.

But when I did start to bring it up, the excuse was that she just wanted to have fun, not caring that a good time for her most likely meant a bad time for everyone else. Not that I was always clean and sober, but if I had to piss in a cup, you’d find only weed and enough alcohol to get me tipsy—and even then only on special occasions. And the more time we spent together, the more I began to wish she hadn’t moved on to the harder stuff. I’d once flushed an entire gram of coke down the toilet when she passed out. She just bought more with Mel’s money when she woke up.

“We didn’t notice any of the usual signs,” Tam said.

“Did any of you want to?” I said back.

“Of course.” Tam ignored my tone. When you worked with Mel Pierce you were used to being yelled at for things that weren’t your fault. His temper was as famous as his artists.

It felt like she was reading from an official statement. Knowing Mel, she probably was. His version of a midlife crisis had struck soon after Gram died. It wasn’t marked by a flashy car or a hot young wife but by a desire to finally be seen as a respected entrepreneur.

I instinctively twirled the cord between my fingers like I had as a kid. I went round and round and round as Tam kept going. “There’re a lot of unanswered questions, which is why we’re happy the police are stopping by. You should really come. It might offer you some closure. Desiree was obviously worse off than any of us imagined if she was doing heroin.”

I stopped twirling, the cord wrapped so tight around my pointer finger that it cut off all circulation. Heroin. Stuart the Star Reporter hadn’t shared that little tidbit. “They found heroin in her purse?” I said.

“They didn’t have to, Lena. There were track marks.”

I repeated that for posterity. “Track marks? They think Desiree was shooting up?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Fresh ones?”

“I believe so.”

My finger began to swell. I finally freed it. Desiree had tried almost every rich-people drug known to humankind. Weed. Coke. Molly. If a hip-hop song mentioned it, she’d sniffed it and inhaled it, chewed it and swallowed it down—with one lone exception.

Heroin.

“The police can tell you more,” Tam said.

“What time again?”

“Two.”





Three



Desiree’s death was everywhere. Trending on Twitter. Liked on Facebook. Posted on Instagram. RIP after RIP after RIP. I scrolled the comments under her last Instagram pic. It had become a virtual memorial. Heart emojis and praying hands and promises she’d be missed. Other comment sections were nowhere near as nice. The responses on The Shade Room made me hate people. Cheap “poor little rich girl” jokes and theories from people who hadn’t even known she’d existed ten minutes before yet could suddenly wax poetic on why she’d been in the Bronx, why she’d had drugs on her, why she’d been in lingerie.