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Excerpt - Part One, Chapter Two

Pulp (non) Fiction

Chapter Two: Clean Up

Dawn
Good Friday, 1986
Kansas City, Missouri

The two ER doctors are barely out of the waiting room before I rush for the nearest pay phone to call Dr. Joe at home.  Never mind that it's obscenely early in the morning.  I know Dr. Joe won't mind. 

“Hello?” he answers sleepily. 

I say, "Joe, it’s Monica." 

No last name needed.  He knows who I am. 

Then I add, "Steve's in the hospital and the doctors won't let me see him."

"I'll be right there."  He doesn't even ask what happened. 

Why an up-and-coming doctor like Joe so readily gives up his warm bed without hesitation for me has to do with my married name.  Steve is the grandson of Rocco Sarli, and Rocco is one of those Horatio Alger success stories that America is so famous for. 

Rocco arrived in Kansas City, the land of meat and potatoes, as just another poor Italian immigrant, taking up residence on the city's north side, the Italian district.  It didn’t take Rocco long to figure out he wasn’t the only man in his neighborhood hungry for the foods of their homeland.  That’s when Rocco, along with Thomas Basile, the father of Rocco's future wife Nicolena, Peter Vagnino and a few other Italian pals, founded the Kansas City Macaroni and Importing Company. 

By 1917 the company had gained a nationwide reputation for its pasta.  In 1920 Rocco's company merged with another pasta firm out of Denver.  This new company took the name of the Denver firm: American Beauty.  They emblazoned their packaging with a single red rose, for Rocco’s daughter, Rose.

The company ticked along through the Great Depression but boomed after WWII when all those WWII vets who'd served in Italy and tasted the heaven that is spaghetti returned home wanting pasta on their tables.  After Rocco died, his widow Nicolena performed the merger of all mergers: she married Peter Vagnino, one of the firm’s partners.  Nicolena said she did it to protect Rocco’s business for his only son Ralph, Steve's dad.  She told me part of the marriage/merger deal was that Ralph would become the company's president and CEO when he came of age.  And that’s exactly what happened.

By 1969 American Beauty was the sole pasta supplier to the U.S. Military.  It's also the company that put the ABCs in Campbell's Alphabet Soup.  Then, in 1979, Ralph sold his father's company to the Little Dough-Boy.  That’s right, Pillsbury.  The sale included a fifty million dollar stock exchange. 

Thank heavens for Nicolena!  Because of her foresight the Sarlis still held a majority share of American Beauty.  That meant that the five Sarlis, Nicolena, Rose, Ralph and his two children, took home fifty-one percent of both the purchase price and the stock exchange.  That nice little chunk of change made Steve’s family, already more than comfortable, bona fide rich people. 

Well, not all of the Sarlis, at least not immediately.  Ralph convinced both of his kids to tie up their portions of these new riches in trusts that won't expire until 1991, the year of Steve's and my fifteenth wedding anniversary.  Gold diggers need not apply here.

That doesn't mean Steve and I are poor.  We live off the interest from the trust which we get as a monthly stipend.  That more than covers our bills, leaving plenty for us to stay as high as we want as often as we want, which right now is pretty often.  We even have the fluidity to make loans to cash-strapped drug dealers. 

Money is indeed a very interesting tool.

About a half an hour later Dr. Joe walks into the waiting room.  Even this early in the morning he looks good, tall, dark-haired and very doctor-ish in that confidence-inspiring sort of way.  I like him.  I really like that his ethics keep him from mentioning to Steve’s family how many times he's seen us at the local university Methadone clinic where he volunteers.

Hey, we're not the only Heroin addicts in town who turn to Methadone when Heroin's scarce.

“What’s going on, Monica?” Dr. Joe asks as he joins me.

“Steve overdosed,” I say, only to again dog paddle in a sea of shame.  A year.  A full fucking year of being clean and now here we are again.  “The doctors won’t let me in to see him.  They think I beat him up.”

Dr. Joe looks startled.  “You?  No way.”

I’m glad someone is certain I’m not the sort of person who would ever beat my husband.  Inject him with Heroin, any time.  Beat him, never. 

“Come on,” he says, taking my arm. 

Together, we blast through those fucking double doors, going straight into the ICU.  As Dr. Joe pages through Steve’s chart and listens to the nurse tell him that Steve should be moving out of ICU later today, I drift to my sleeping husband’s bedside. 

I stare at Steve, stunned.  He looks like he's gone through a windshield.  Both his eyes are blackened.  Blue and yellow coloring dribbles down his face, over his jaw line and down his neck.  His hospital gown gapes and I can see bruises on his chest. 

I again hear the awful ka-thump of his head against tread.  My stomach turns as I look at the damage Monk and I did to my precious Steve.

There are tiny cuts at the edges of his eyes.  At first I can’t imagine what caused these until I glance at my hand.  I'm wearing a large, square ring made of gold and turquoise.  When I hold my hand up to the side of his face the cuts are a perfect match to the edges of the ring. 

Fuck!  No wonder they thought I'd beat him. 

Monica Sarli, in the dealer's bedroom, with a lead pipe.  Does that make me the winner of this game?  I’m not sure any more, but I know I still have one move left to make.

My high is just a memory now.  Without Heroin to blunt my shame, the thought of breaking the news to Steve's family that we're using again is more than I can face.  Telling the truth just isn’t on my list of things to do this morning.

Dr. Joe joins me at Steve’s bedside.  “He’s actually doing quite well, considering what happened to him.”  There’s no hint of judgment in his voice when there ought to be. 

Like I said, money really is an interesting and effective tool.  I look up at Dr. Joe.  "You have to call Ralph and Mary Helen for me and tell them what's happened.  I just can't do it, not just now," I add, softening what is for all intents and purposes a command.

Joe responds just as I expect.  "Be happy to," he says with a smile.

That's it!  I am the champion! 

"Thanks," I reply in truly heart-felt relief.  I'm a fucking coward and I know it.  "Joe, I'm going to get a room and sleep for a while.  I'll be back in a few hours."

“I’ll let the nurse know.  You won’t have any problems when you come back,” he assures me.

I retreat to the hospital parking lot and drive Ralph's Lincoln to the hotel across the street where I check in.  Once in my room I take care of the one thing that definitely is on my list: I call Monk and let him know that Steve is still alive.

“I’m so glad, Monica,” Monk practically coos with delight.

As well he should.  A good customer has been saved to use again another day.

With that item checked off my list, it’s time to take another tiny snort of Heroin.  I deserve it.  It's been a hell of a night. 

In a minute I’m buzzing again.  I don’t even consider going to bed, although I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.  Sleeping would end my high and that would be a shame.  Instead, I use the hotel's complementary soaps to clean up and bide my time until nine.  I’m going shopping.  Not just anywhere.  I’m going shopping at the Plaza.

I love the Plaza.  It was built in the early days of the twentieth century by J. C. Nichols, who took one look at his first automobile and understood that cars were not only here to stay, but they would change the face of American daily life.  With that in mind he designed a complex of stores to accommodate this new mode of transportation. 

That's right. J. C. built the first shopping mall.  Back then what he designed was an open air shopping mall, which of course was superseded by indoor malls, which go out of fashion to be replaced by . . . open air shopping malls.  What goes around comes around.

To me, shopping at the Plaza is like taking a trip to Europe.  That's because J.C. modeled his mall after Seville, Spain.  Water trickles in tiled fountains.  Statuary decorates corners.  All the stores' facades are tiled and covered in stucco.

So as soon as the clock chimes nine, I’m strolling along walks that ooze Old World elegance.  Store by store, I buy the essentials: toothbrush, hairbrush, undies and such. 

I truly, truly am a fucking coward.  Everything I just bought I already have.  It’s just that it’s in my suitcase at my in-laws' house. 

I’m back at the hotel by noon, just in time to get Dr. Joe's call. 

“Monica, Steve's been moved to a private room and he’s conscious,” Joe tells me. 

I rush back across the street where I find Steve in his new hospital room.  He’s sitting up in bed.  An IV tube runs into his arm.  Underneath his awful bruising he looks haggard and drawn.

I don’t mind, because what he looks like to me is alive.  I smile at him.  “Hey.  You look like death warmed over.”

“Hey,” he replies, smiling back, “I am death warmed over.”

We laugh then my laughter dissolves into tears.  I collapse to sit on the side of his bed.  "I almost lost you," I tell Steve, my head bowed as I stare at my clasped hands.  "Then the doctors wouldn't let me see you this morning.  They thought I hurt you.  When I couldn’t get to you I thought I'd die.  I don't know what I'd do if you had. . ."

I can't bear to finish the sentence because I hate thinking about Steve dying.  But that doesn't mean I’m not thinking about it.  I can’t stop myself, especially after last night.  Not even my denial is strong enough to keep me from seeing just how completely our world is falling apart. 

Steve and I are both dying.  We’re killing ourselves one high at a time, just like Bette Fleishman at Amity warned me would happen.

Amity is a therapeutic community located in Tucson, Arizona and run by two of the toughest bitches to ever graduate from Charles Dederich’s charm school otherwise known as Synanon.  I committed Steve and me there after Menningers told us they didn’t know how to help us; we were the first Crack addicts they’d ever seen.  While we were there Bette, Naya Arbiter and Rod Mullen put us through the wringer.  They separated us, subjecting us to endless group therapy sessions, some of which lasted for days, and demanding that we participate in their daily grind of chores.  These included everything from ditch-digging to giving lessons in table etiquette to recovering convict-junkies.

I should never have called Bette after we ran away from Amity.  I should have just left our things there.  Instead, last June I picked up Ralph’s phone and dialed Amity’s number and gave her the chance to hex us. 

“You’ll die, Monica,” she warned me last June.  “If you and Steve use again, you’ll instantly go back to the level you were using at when you were at your worst and it will get worse from there.  Use and I guarantee you’ll both die.”

I didn’t believe her because Steve and I were never using Crack Cocaine again. 

It wasn’t Heroin that put us in Amity, it was Crack.  Crack isn’t like any other drug I’ve ever tried.  Once addicted to Crack, and almost everyone who tries it is immediately addicted, it’s instantly the most important thing in your life.  The problem is that Crack’s amazing high is followed by a horrendous low filled with complete desolation which you can only escape by smoking more Crack.  Not even Speedballing—following Crack with Heroin to even out the high—mitigated the despair.

When Crack appeared on the scene, it turned once civilized junkies into madmen.  I saw addicts try to kill each other over a grain, or crawl across filthy shooting gallery carpeting, picking up bits of lint in the hope it might be a crumb.  At my worst, I was sucking on my pipe every ten to fifteen minutes.  Bathing was optional and eating a waste of time. 

So, if I fucking wasn’t going back to Crack, then there was no reason that Steve and I couldn’t use Heroin now and then.  Recreationally, as it were.  Just on the weekends.

Somehow, last night didn’t much feel like recreation.

Steve leans his head against my arm.  His hand closes over mine.  "I promise, babe, we'll never be separated again," he says, doing his best to soothe me.  "I love you." 

That only makes my eyes leak again.  He twines his fingers between mine and I relax against him.  We sit quietly, just feeling each other.  In that moment I’m more in love with him than I’ve ever been. 

"So tell me, what the fuck did you and Monk do to me?" Steve demands gently.  “Look at my face.  What did you do to me?”

I press even closer to him, not wanting to see his reaction to what I have to tell him.  “First, I tried to revive you by slapping you, but it didn’t work.  Monk wouldn’t call 911 until you were outside, so we had to drag you down the stairs.  You went down on your face.”

I can feel him flinch against my back.  “Shit.  I think I’m glad I was out.”  Then he gives another flinch.  “Oh, fuck!  What did you do with my dad's car?"

"In the hotel parking garage," I reply, looking at him from over my shoulder.

We stare at each other for a long moment.  I can see it in Steve’s eyes.  He’s no more excited than I am about confronting his father.

Just then his nurse bustles in.  She's a chatty, friendly thing.  When I mention I'm staying in the hotel across the street, she says not to waste my money.  Within minutes she's ordered another hospital bed for Steve's room so I can stay with my husband.  What a difference this is from the suspicious doctors earlier this morning and all the more reason to give thanks to Dr. Joe. 

Two hospital beds shoved together aren't quite the same size as a queen, but it's not space I crave.  I snuggle up to Steve, loving the weight of his arm over my shoulders and basking in his promise that we'll be together forever.  This is how Ralph and Mary Helen find us later that afternoon, spooned together, watching T.V. 

Mary Helen enters and comes to a stop near the door to Steve’s bathroom.  She’s tall, slender and attractive.  As always when she out, she’s dressed in her about-town wear.  Today it’s a spotless, perfectly creased pantsuit, no doubt purchased from Harzfeld, an iconic women's store based in Kansas City.  Not a single fair hair is out of place.  In every way she epitomizes country club casual; she and Ralph are members of the Indian Hills Country Club in Mission Hills.

Mary Helen is very much a product of a generation fanatical about keeping family secrets.

Although her upbringing was pretty tragic—her father committed suicide when she was young—she’d never consider talking to anyone about it.  Shed a tear?  Never!  As far as Mary Helen is concerned, emotions are only acceptable when kept under tight lock and key.

The only time she lets up on the reins is when she’s drinking, whether at their country club or at home.  Her favorite time of the day is cocktail hour, which at the Sarlis starts precisely at five.  Thus at exactly four forty-five, Mary Helen, dressed for the evening in heels and a skirt, descends into her family room.  She opens the louvered bar doors and retrieves her ice bucket.  Her heels tick purposefully as she crosses her kitchen floor to the refrigerator.  The freezer door creaks as it opens.  She retrieves her ice cube trays.  With a resounding crack the trays give up their frozen bounty as the cubes clatter into the ice bucket.  

Tick, tick, tick.  Mary Helen returns to her bar, places two ice cubes into a fine Waterford Crystal highball glass.  Scotch follows, carefully measured in a sterling silver jigger.  Her jigger is one of her prized possessions and no tarnish is ever allowed to dim the best part of Mary Helen's day.

If Ralph is home, she serves him first.  If he hasn't yet arrived, she pours herself her first drink then retreats to the smaller chair in the family room, the one placed where she can look out the bay window at the driveway.  Sipping, she sits there, waiting for Ralph.

Once Ralph is home, the liquor flows.  And flows.  That jigger is hard at work until late in the evening, well after dinner is over. 

Drinking takes the edge off what it costs Mary Helen to be Mrs. Ralph Sarli.  Mary Helen is a WASP married to a first generation Italian man.  Did she know when she married Ralph the sort of expectations he’d have of his wife?  There's sex of course, but what about the way he expects her to satisfy his needs before he considers satisfying any of hers?  That is, if he even considers her needs.  He expects to get everything he wants the moment he asks for it.  She must never question or challenge anything he wants; she’s just supposed to deliver. 

And, of course, she must put up with his mother. 

God knows, that wasn’t easy.  Nicolena told me before she died that she never liked her daughter-in-law.  Like the rest of us in the family couldn’t tell?  We could all see that nothing Mary Helen did ever pleased Nicolena.  I don’t think it was personal.  I think it was a clash of cultures.  Mary Helen was too WASPy for an Old Country Italian woman, and Nicolena was too Old Country for Mary Helen to accept.  Also, Nicolena told me she faulted Mary Helen for encouraging Ralph to drink too much. 

Ralph Sarli follows his wife into Steve's hospital room.  He's short, balding and stout, his features much softer than Steve’s.  Steve’s the spitting image of Rocco, which made him Nicolena's favorite.  
Ralph may be small and on the dumpy side but he carries himself like the captain of industry he is.  He’s also dressed as if he's on his way to their club, wearing a blazer over a pressed shirt and creased twill pants.  Maybe that’s where they’re off to after this visit.  They eat dinner there a few nights a week.  Much of the rest of the week they take their evening meals at local restaurants.  Mary Helen is Ralph’s bartender, not his chef.

For a moment, Ralph and Mary Helen just stand and stare at us.  I wait for the recriminations, the yelling and tears.  There's nothing but silence.

At last, Ralph steps closer to the bed, squaring his shoulders.  He fixes a smile onto his lips and his eyes fill with resolve.  He’s preparing himself to again do battle on behalf of his screw-up son.  
Saving Steve is Ralph’s hobby, because on the whole, saving Steve doesn’t usually require much more of Ralph than writing checks.  These he signs with a flourish and his deep, everlasting love for Steve.  He’s written checks to pay off Steve’s numerous DUIs, to replace the cars Steve's wrecked, and to fund our stabs at rehab—twice at Menningers and our abortive year at Amity. 

Ralph loves his role as the family problem solver, the patriarch, the captain who rescues his passengers just before the ship runs up against the rocks.  He thrives on crisis and loves drama.  That’s good, because wherever Steve is there’s drama, usually tragedy.  The first of Steve’s tragedies that required serious intervention on Ralph’s part occurred when he was fourteen and fell in love with a Jewish girl.  Both families demanded they end the relationship.  The result for Steve was what his psychiatrist diagnosed as a nervous breakdown.  The cure?  Electro-shock therapy. 

The treatment destroyed most of Steve's memories of his early life.  It also set the seeds for Steve’s eventual drug addiction.  While at the clinic he was dosed with Ritalin during the day to keep him awake and Thorazine at night to make him sleep.  But it was Sodium Pentothal—Truth Serum—that Steve remembers most fondly from that time.  He got it by IV prior to each of his shock treatments.  If I were to ask Steve right now about those treatments, he’d get a dreamy expression on his face then tell me how warm and relaxing it felt when the Truth Serum flooded his body and how calm he felt in its grip. 

Steve fell in love with drugs right there.  Of course, he needed them after that because from there on in the failures piled up.  First, Steve failed to graduate from high school.  Determined to please his father, he got his GED and tried his hand at community college in Mesa, Arizona.  He returned to Kansas City a year later, having attended very few classes although he did manage to contract a combined case of syphilis and gonorrhea so severe that doctors warned me and Steve never to have children because of it.

We only recently discovered why school was so hard for Steve: he’s hopelessly dyslexic and he has ADD.  That gives him the attention span of a gnat and the reading capability of a fifth grader.  The doctor who diagnosed his condition said he wasn’t surprised by Steve’s drug use.  Apparently people with Steve’s level of disability either become drug addicts or commit suicide.

What Steve does have in spades is his sweet nature and a bucketload of charm.  He has his big, bold mannerisms and a tendency to be a bit loud-mouthed.  These traits served him well at American Beauty where he worked as a salesman until after the sale to Pillsbury.  His new Doughboy bosses weren’t as tolerant as Ralph of his frequent, drugged-out absences. 

The time Steve got busted for selling Cocaine was right up Ralph’s alley.  He jumped into rescue mode, hiring the best lawyer in Missouri and nearly getting himself busted for threatening a policeman’s job after the cop suggested Steve was guilty of trafficking (he was).

Oh yeah, Steve is the perfect child for a man who loves to fix really complicated things.

Now, Ralph takes his precious son's hand.  His fingers don’t flinch away from the thickened and discolored veins that mark his son’s wrist. 

How can Ralph ignore them?  Maybe he doesn’t know what they mean.  Then again, maybe he does.  Maybe Ralph ignores Steve’s tracks because to acknowledge them is to be reminded of his own failure to produce a normal son, or his continuing failure to turn his fuck up kid into the son he always wanted, a son who could follow him into the presidency of American Beauty.

As Ralph hovers I watch Steve shrink in front of my eyes.  In an instant a helpless and incapable little boy replaces the man who is my husband. 

"Are you alright?" Ralph asks gently.

"I'm fine, Dad," Steve says, all the life gone from his voice.  He sounds like what he knows he is: the kid who could never, will never, live up to his beloved father’s expectations.

"I guess you are," Ralph replies, his lips trembling a little as he smiles.  "Joe says he'll release you tomorrow."

"I guess so."  Steve gives a shrug.  He knows his role in this play.  He's the screw-up. 

I glance at Mary Helen.  She’s still standing where she stopped.  As near as I can tell, she hasn't moved a muscle.  She’s watching her husband and son.  Her face could be carved of stone. 
Ralph gives Steve's hand a squeeze and steps back from the bed.  As he turns to look at me, his entire manner shifts.  He’s no longer the doting father, but the competent executive addressing one of his managers.  "You two are coming to our house for Easter dinner, aren't you?"  His tone makes the family gathering sound more like a trip to the gas chamber than a celebratory meal.  That he asks this of me and not Steve speaks to my role in the family.  In me, Ralph found the ally he needed and wanted in his battle to save Steve from himself.  I’m Ralph’s clean-up gal, just like Dr. Joe was my clean-up guy this morning. 

Mary Helen shakes off her granite to make a sharp sound of disapproval.  "What about his bruises?" she asks.  "How are we going to explain his bruises to Aunt Rose?"

Aunt Rose, Ralph's sister, is Italian, childless and a widow.  That's three strikes against her as far as her second generation Italian family is concerned.  They treat her like a naive child.  Like having children increases someone’s intelligence?  Never mind that Aunt Rose has been an integral part of American Beauty from her early childhood.  When it comes to family problems, i.e. us, Rose supposedly doesn't have a clue.

Right.  Like Steve and I haven't rifled through her medicine chest when we visited her house, looking for prescription drugs to steal?

Ralph frowns and looks at me.  "What do you think?" he asks.  Ralph counts on me to make sure Steve looks good, especially to Ralph’s family and friends.  It’s all about appearances, not about substance.  Part of my job is to plausibly excuse or explain away anything untoward Steve might have done.

As for Steve, he’s not part of this conversation, so he says nothing, only stares sulkily at his blanket-covered feet.  He knows his role.  He's the screw-up.  He's not responsible for himself or anything he does.   

All of a sudden I wonder why the fuck I'd been so afraid to call him this morning.  Steve nearly dying from a drug overdose hasn't changed anything.  Ralph needs to keep rescuing Steve, because the minute he stops he’ll have to confront the fact that he can’t save his son.  He never could.  The only one who can is Steve and Steve’s not trying.  As for Mary Helen, she simply can't afford to care anymore.  It hurts too much. 

They're as addicted to their denial as Steve and I are to Heroin.

Shaking off my surprise, I step into the job Ralph has made mine and do what I always do: I cover up.  "Tell Aunt Rose that someone ran a red light at the Plaza and hit us, and that Steve went through the windshield."

I glance at Steve and find he’s watching me, a small smile lifting his lips.  I can tell he remembers the last time we used this excuse.  It was after Steve had been pistol-whipped at Big Bill's, a then-favorite shooting gallery of ours.  The junkie who attacked us was high on Ritalin, of all things, and wanted Steve's expensive watch. 

If Ralph remembers having heard this excuse before, it doesn't show.  Why would it?  Steve’s had so many accidents and DUIs that nothing specific can possibly remain. 

He nods.  "That'll work," he says almost happily.  "So, I'll see you both tomorrow at dinner, then."

Before Ralph turns away, I dig into my purse and pull out the keys to the Lincoln and offer them to him.  Ralph waves them away.  "You keep the car.  You'll need it to get home tomorrow."

With that, all is forgiven.  I give my in-laws hugs and kisses.  They both tell me that they love me.  And I know they do.  Who else would do so much for me, except someone who loves me?  I tell them that I love them, too, and I mean it.  They've been more loving and better to me than my own parents.  At least they try, something my alcoholic mom and dad can’t bring themselves to do, either for me or themselves.

Now that we’re all again ignoring the elephant in the room, Ralph dotes a little more on Steve then they leave.  They’re hardly out the door when Steve looks at me.  His expression is carefully blank, which tells me Ralph’s visit has stressed him out.  Putting some distance between us and his father’s suffocating love for him is the reason Steve moved us to Tempe. 

"Have you got that Dope with you?" 

I give Steve the eye.  What does he think?  That I left it in the hotel for the maid to find and steal?  “Of course I do.  It's in my purse.”

“Get it out,” he says, already cleaning the spoon from his lunch tray.

I pull out the packet, but hesitate before handing it to him.  "Steve, promise me you’ll be careful this time.   This stuff’s so strong.”

He grins at me, his eyes practically twinkling as he turns on the charm.  “Oh, babe.  Don’t worry.  I’ll be careful this time.” 

I hesitate for another instant, then hand him the packet and clean syringe.  He goes into the bathroom, IV pole and all, and fixes.  When he rejoins me in our makeshift bed, we turn on the T.V. and go back to snuggling. 

As hard as I try I can’t get comfortable.  Bette's words echo over and over in my ears.  "You will both die."