Page 6 of When People Leave

Carla

C arla had raised her daughters alone—without a husband or family to help her. She did her best with what she knew and somehow exceeded her role models.

Carla’s childhood was not a happy one. Her mother, Beverly, acted in B movies, or more accurately, C movies, although if you asked her, she’d say every role was crucial. She took any part offered, especially the ones that took her far away from Midwood, New York, and her family.

When Carla was eight, she overheard her mother telling a UPS driver that Carla was an ‘oops’ baby. “If I would’ve known more about birth control,” Beverly said, “I wouldn’t have had any children.”

Carla’s father, Mort, wasn’t much better. He’d come home after a shift at the lumber factory, grab a beer, watch any sport on television, and not speak to his wife or kids the rest of the night.

Carla’s brother, Roy, was six years older than she was.

She idolized him, even when he wasn’t nice to her.

She’d trail him everywhere, begging him to play Hide and Seek.

The last time he agreed, she realized he’d gone off to a friend’s house, leaving her crouched in the Buckthorn bush in her neighbor’s yard.

Hours later, Roy sauntered up the driveway, shaking his scraggly curls like a Labradoodle and laughing at Carla as she berated him.

When she told her parents about this, they repeated their admonitions that you can’t trust anyone, even family.

“You come into the world alone, and you can only rely on yourself. People will only disappoint you,” her parents had drilled into her since the age of three.

Even Emily, her closest friend growing up, wasn’t privy to most of the thoughts in Carla’s head. Carla didn’t share much other than that she loved chocolate mint ice cream; her favorite color was silver, and her mom was Jewish and her father Episcopalian.

Carla and Roy were raised as Jews, but her father’s last name was Christian. She loved how ironic it was when she would tell people her name was Carla Christian, but she was Jewish.

On the rare occasions when Beverly was home, she’d make popcorn and let Carla and Roy curl up on the couch with her to watch the thirty-two seconds of screen time she had on whatever show that was airing, even if it wasn’t appropriate for children their age.

Rarely did Beverly have more than one sentence before her character would run off-screen to fetch something and never come back.

Carla would tell her mother how proud she was of her, hoping to bask in the rare occasions when her mother would honor her with a smile.

Carla was often left alone as a child, so her social life mainly consisted of the characters in her favorite books. She’d pretend they were her friends and wish the adults were her parents.

Roy had a different reaction to his loneliness.

He would find friends, places, and activities that got him into trouble.

When he wasn’t home, which was most of the time, Carla would go into his room to take a whiff inside the box where Roy kept his marijuana.

The pungent, woodsy smell made her feel adventurous and scared all at the same time.

Once, Carla even pulled out his pipe and inhaled.

Suddenly panicked that she’d done drugs, she felt her throat constrict as if there were a rock stuck in her windpipe, and when she ran to get water, she slipped and fell down the stairs. She never took Roy’s pipe out again.

Carla didn’t tattle to her parents about Roy and the pot; she didn’t want him to get into more trouble than he already did.

One morning, when Carla went into Roy’s bedroom to wake him up for school, she saw tiny pink pills scattered beside his bed.

She knew they were Xanax because sometimes she had seen her mother taking them.

Carla picked the pills up as quietly as possible, put them in a plastic bag, and pushed them under his bed behind his Mad magazines.

When Carla was ten, Beverly was on set somewhere and Mort had gone to a friend’s house to play poker. Roy was babysitting Carla, and when he tucked her in bed, he gave her a long warm hug.

“You be good,” Roy said.

He’d never been that gentle with her before.

A few minutes later, she heard a car start.

She jumped out of bed and pulled her curtains back just in time to see Roy’s car backing out of the driveway.

Their block didn’t have streetlights, so Carla tried to see his taillights for as long as she could through the vast blanket of black.

Her whole body felt like it might seize up; he had left her completely alone.

She prayed that Roy would feel guilty, and she’d soon see his headlights pulling back in the driveway.

Carla watched out the window for a while, then let the corner of the drapes drop.

She didn’t care if her mother complained that their electric bill was too high, she turned on every light in the house, including all the table lamps.

As the hours passed, and Roy didn’t return, Carla got her blanket and lay on the floor to wait for him.

“What are you doing in the living room?” her mother asked, waking Carla up when she came home at four a.m.

“Waiting for Roy.” Carla yawned, which made her words slightly garbled. She stretched her arms over her head and twisted her torso from side to side. Her back hurt, and her shoulders ached. The ground was hard, not like her soft cushiony bed.

“He’s not here?” Beverly ran upstairs with Carla at her heels.

“I’m going to kill him.” Beverly stomped into her bedroom to wake up Mort. Carla followed, then thought better of it and went to her bed.

Later that morning, Beverly and Mort had coffee and waited for Roy’s return. The screen door creaked as Carla poured Honey Nut Cheerios into a bowl. A heavy, dull knock reverberated through the house.

Beverly hurled herself toward the front door. “Lose your keys again, Roy?” she barked. She pulled the front door open wide. Carla saw a policeman standing on the front step, staring down at his black uniform shoes.

“What did he do now?” Beverly asked.

“Tell him we’re not bailing him out this time,” Mort yelled from the kitchen table.

Carla came up behind Beverly.

“Uh, I’m so sorry,” the policeman said, looking up. “Your son, Roy… He, uh…”

“Out with it,” her mother snapped. “What idiotic thing did he do this time?”

“He died. We found him in his car in the parking lot of Denny’s with a shotgun.”

Beverly jerked backward knocking Carla to the floor. It was almost as if retreating into the house would reverse the news. Beverly put her hand over her mouth and ran out of the room.

Carla heard herself screaming as though it were coming from someone else. Her father came rushing in and grabbed Carla to see if she’d hurt herself. Then the policeman told him what had happened to Roy. Carla would never forget the way her father’s face aged in front of her eyes.

Beverly never got over the fact that her son committed suicide. She didn’t get out of bed for months, her eyes slowly sinking into her face and her skin turning the color of old parchment paper.

Beverly and Mort blamed each other for Roy’s death, which led to their eventual split.

Since Beverly got very little money in the divorce, she told Carla she’d have to work harder, meaning she would be home even less.

Beverly took jobs even if the cost of traveling exceeded what she got paid.

To Carla, it felt like her mother wanted to be anywhere but home with her.

Mort moved to Chicago and lived with his sister, Marcy, for a year until he became enamored with one of the women who played in Marcy’s Mah-Jong group.

“Your father is pursuing that little tramp like a rat searching for scraps in a Chinese restaurant,” Beverly told Carla. Mort married her a year later and disappeared from Carla’s life.

Carla’s days became a relentless cycle of school, laundry, food shopping, cooking, and cleaning, and every night when she went to bed, she’d hug her pillow tightly and cry. She couldn’t understand, even if things were bad, why someone would kill themselves.