Carrie's run

CHAPTER 8

Reston, Virginia

For a week and a half, she’d managed to drag herself to work, to get dressed, to put on makeup, to pretend she gave a shit. She had stopped taking the few meds she had left from Maggie altogether. It felt like she’d fallen into a black hole, abandoned, exiled. She read reports about AQI but had to reread everything three or four times. It was impossible to concentrate.

The bastards, she thought. All this time she’d thought Saul was like the father she’d never had, or more like the wise, funny Jewish uncle everybody wished they had. And Estes. She’d thought he appreciated what she did, how hard she worked, how good she was at her job.

But even when she brought them actionable intel, they not only did nothing, they punished her. They destroyed her career. It was over, she thought, and spent more and more time in the ladies’ room at work. She had nothing. She was nothing.

She stopped going to work. She knew she needed to try to find out about the pending attack Julia had told her about, but she couldn’t make herself do anything.

Sitting on the floor in a corner of her bedroom, the apartment in Reston completely dark and silent. She hadn’t eaten in how many days? Two? Three? Some part of her brain told her, This is not you. This is the disease, but she couldn’t make herself care. What difference did it make?

She had to pee but couldn’t make herself get up to go to the bathroom. When was the last time she had gone? What did it matter? She was alone in the darkness. A failure. Like her father.

Her father.

Thanksgiving. Her freshman year at Princeton. Her sister, Maggie, was a senior at NYU in New York. She’d called Carrie to let her know she was having Thanksgiving in Connecticut with her boyfriend Todd’s family.

“Dad’s alone. You have to go, Carrie,” Maggie said.

“Why me? You need to come too. He needs us.” Thinking, It’s Thanksgiving. Maybe Mom will finally call. She was married to him all those years. Didn’t that count for something? And what about her and Maggie? What did they do wrong? If she didn’t want to call Frank, she could have at least called her or Maggie. She knew Maggie’s phone number at her apartment in Morningside Heights. And she knew Carrie was at Butler at Princeton. If she wanted to, she could have gotten hold of them. Their father, Frank, need never have known. Oh God, was her entire family crazy?

Her father called two days before Thanksgiving.

“Your sister’s not coming,” he said.

“I know, Dad. It’s her boyfriend. I think it’s getting serious, her and Todd. But I’m coming. I’ll be there Wednesday. I’m looking forward to seeing you,” she lied, thinking it was going to be deadly in that house, just the two of them.

“You don’t have to come, Caroline. I know you have things you’d rather. .” His voice trailed off.

“Dad, don’t be silly. It’s Thanksgiving. Look, you buy the turkey. I’ll be there Wednesday afternoon. I’ll cook it. I’ll do the whole thing, okay?”

“It’s all right. Maybe it’s better you don’t come,” he said.

“Dad, please! Don’t do this. I said I’ll be home. I’ll be home.”

“You were always a good girl, Carrie. Your sister too. She wasn’t as smart or as pretty as you, but a good girl too. We should have done better by you. I’m sorry.”

“Dad! Don’t talk like that. I’ll see you Wednesday.”

“I know. Good-bye, Carrie,” he said, and hung up, leaving her staring at the phone in her hand.

She thought about calling Maggie and insisting, then decided against it. Maggie was with Todd. Let it be. But he sounded strange. Like he was down. She calculated. There was a midterm on Tuesday morning, but after that, nothing as the college started to close down for the holiday. She could surprise him. Leave Tuesday right after the exam and get home by Tuesday afternoon.

That Tuesday, she caught a Greyhound bus in Mount Laurel and connected to Silver Spring. She got to Kensington in the afternoon. It was sunny and clear and cool, the leaves turning brown and red and gold. She caught the local bus and was dropped off near the small frame house she’d grown up in. It looked shabbier in the sunlight than she remembered. He hasn’t been keeping it up, she thought, unlocking the door.

A minute later, she was on the phone calling 911.

Happy Thanksgiving, Dad, she remembered thinking as she rode with him in the ambulance to the hospital.

Only now, Maggie had taken in her father, Frank, to live with her nice all-American husband and her nice all-American children, and she, Carrie, was a failure and a crazy like her father. Like him, she had nothing.

No man, no kids, no life, a total failure at work. Alone. Totally alone. Even Saul had abandoned her. She could have been on the far side of the moon, she was so alone. The exact opposite of someone like Dima. The party girl. The girl who couldn’t stand being alone, who was never without a man, although the men in her life went through the endless revolving door that passed for relationships among single women in North Beirut.

Dima was never alone. It was a clue, but to what? She had disappeared off the face of the earth.

“Maybe,” Carrie said out loud in what she realized was her first rational moment in days, “the bitch is with my mother.”