Fed Up - By Jessica Conant-Park & Susan Conant Page 0,20
there kept insisting that I must have taken too many prescription pills. Like I was mixing uppers with downers instead of producing a TV show!” She breathed out heavily. “Sorry. I’m just strung out.” She turned around and yelled, “And not strung out in a drug-related way!”
“So,” I said slowly, “I guess we’re ready to go?”
“Yes. Where’s Nelson? Nelson!” Robin barked.
“At your service.” Nelson’s tone was so cheerful and his expression so smug that the shine radiating from his damp face and scalp made him appear to be glowing with happiness.
“You need to drive us back to the house so Chloe can get her car. Chloe, maybe you can clean up the kitchen?”
Maybe you can, I wanted to say. Instead, having completed a full year of social work school, I said brightly, “Yes, we’ll all pitch in. Robin, what a great idea!”
SEVEN
SO much for the benefits of a full year of social work school. During the drive back to Leo and Francie’s house, Robin increasingly complained about her exhaustion, and by the time Nelson pulled the TV van into the driveway, she’d managed to weasel out of doing her share of the cleanup while simultaneously arousing my sympathy for Leo.
“We don’t want Leo coming home to that mess,” she’d said.
“For all we know, he’s there now,” I’d replied. “And if he isn’t, the house is probably locked up.” I’d negotiated the agreement that if we found Leo at home, we’d ask whether he wanted help in cleaning up. If not, Josh and I would leave. If Leo wanted our help or if the house was empty and unlocked, we’d stay. It was more or less a bet that I lost. When we got there, the back door was open, and there was no sign of Leo. My only piece of luck was that Robin insisted that Nelson had to drive her home, so at least he wasn’t hanging around filming while Josh and I cleared up the remains of the fatal dinner. I did the dishes while Josh threw out food, took out the trash, and packed up the cooking equipment that belonged to him. Neither of us, however, was valiant enough to don a pair of gloves and scrub the bathroom, which remained a revolting reminder of tonight’s tragedy. I just couldn’t stomach going back in there. When Leo returned, he’d just have to use another bathroom. Where was Leo, anyway? Someone had said that he’d ridden in the ambulance that had transported Francie—or Francie’s body—to the hospital. I hadn’t seen him there. Shouldn’t he be home by now? Maybe he simply couldn’t bear to return home without his wife?
I drove us back to my condo in Brighton. It was a one-bedroom on the third and top floor of what had originally been a large one-family house. My unit had a big bedroom, a small living room, a cramped kitchen, and a tiny bathroom, but I’d never before been so happy to be in the safety of my own little home. Josh made another trip down to the car to bring up the cooking equipment he had so excitedly used only hours earlier, and I put on water for tea. I wasn’t much of a tea drinker, and neither was Josh, but I felt chilled and weak, and the idea of tea felt comforting.
Josh returned, placed a cardboard box and his knife bag in a corner of my living room, and collapsed onto the couch. He ran both hands through his hair and held them there, disbelief plastered across his face. “This cannot have happened. This cannot have happened,” he kept repeating. He looked up at me with concern. “God, how are you doing, Chloe?”
I put the cups of tea on the coffee table, sat down next to him, and moved in close when he put his arm around me. He wrapped his other arm around me, squeezed me against him, and rubbed the back of my head. “Not very well,” I said in a broken voice as I started to cry. “Oh, Josh,” I managed, “I was with her when she died. She couldn’t breathe right. And she was lying in her own . . . filth! She must have been in so much pain.” I sat up and wiped my eyes. “I can’t imagine what killed her. It must be the same thing that made everybody sick, right? I mean, the odds of the two being unrelated are . . . negligible. Zero.”