A Clean Slate. Laura Caldwell

do we talk about?”

      We’d reached the elevators. Laney hit the button for the twelfth floor. “You know—Dee, your mom, Bartley Brothers. We talked about Ben a lot, of course. You kept saying that now that he’d broken up with you, you were never going to have your first kid before you were thirty-five. And you talked about how much you loved your town house.”

      “I did love that place. So why did I sell it?”

      “That’s what I’ve been asking you. You made a chunk of cash on it, but you weren’t really hurting for money. You just kept saying that if you weren’t going to live there with Ben, you weren’t going to live there at all.”

      I scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”

      Laney stared at me for a second. “Exactly. You really don’t remember any of this, do you?”

      I shook my head. “So what about you?” I said. “What’s been going on with you? I can’t remember that, either.”

      “Well, we haven’t talked about that much.”

      “Why?” And then I realized. “Oh, I’m such a horrible friend! I’m so sorry. You’ve been coming over here, listening to my woes, and we haven’t spent any time on you, is that it?”

      Laney shrugged. “You needed me.”

      “Well, of course, but that’s not an excuse.”

      “Sure it is. Seriously, it was nice to be needed. It’s no big deal that we didn’t talk about me that much.”

      “It is a big deal.” I followed her out of the elevator. “I’m really sorry.”

      “You’d do the same for me.”

      “Still—”

      Laney put her hand on my shoulder and stared into my eyes. “You’ve been bad, Kell. I mean really, really depressed. It’s been a little scary, if you want to know the truth.”

      Just those words felt scary to me. Generally, I can handle the crap that life dishes out. I’d seen my mom go through a million brief relationships and fall apart with each one, so I’d found my own way to hold it together. Even after Dee died, when I was the saddest and angriest I’d been in my whole life, I was still able to work, to go out with Laney for margaritas and talk about it. I was able to keep going.

      Laney gave me a reassuring smile. “Do you have your key?”

      I stuck my hands in my pockets and pulled out a few bills, a lip balm and a small key ring. Hanging from the ring were three keys, along with the little sombrero key chain that I got during a trip to Tijuana, and the silver pendant with the Bartley Brothers logo that the bank had given as a Christmas present last year. I made myself focus on the keys. One was my mailbox key—or rather, what I’d thought was my mailbox key this morning. The second was a small one for my gym locker, and then there was a third. It was a gold key with a fat, square head, and it seemed like it was glinting malevolently at me under the fluorescent lights of the hallway.

      Laney pointed at it. “That’s the one.”

      

      “Oh my God,” I said.

      The place was a disaster. I don’t mean the structure of the apartment itself. The white walls were unmarred, and there was a large bedroom, an equally large living room with a street view, and a European-style kitchen with new appliances. But there was stuff everywhere, as if a tropical storm had blown through the place. My clothes were strewn over the bed, the couch, the dresser. Wads of Kleenex overflowed from the wastebaskets, and old mugs with crusty tea bags sat on the nightstand and coffee table. A ton of pictures I’d taken of Ben were on my dresser, as if it was a shrine to him.

      “Christ,” I said. “It’s a train wreck.”

      Laney nodded but stayed quiet.

      I looked down at my feet and saw my favorite smoke-gray sweater crumpled next to the couch. “How could I do this to cashmere?” I said, picking it up.

      I recognized most of the other stuff, too—my furniture, my clothes, my sage-green duvet on the bed and framed photos that I’d taken of Laney, my mom and Dee. But nothing else about the apartment seemed like mine.

      “I must have been really down,” I said as we stood in the middle of the living room, surveying the damage.

      It’s a known fact to Laney and me that whenever I feel crazy or out of control, my cleaning skills completely leave me. You can always tell the state of my life by the state of my apartment. I’d just never seen any of my places that bad before.

      “That’s an understatement,” Laney said simply.

      We walked through the place again, and this time I tried to take in more than the filth. I noticed a new phone in the kitchen, a white model that matched the appliances, with a plastic-covered panel that listed the names of people who were on speed dial. I’d written only three names there—Ben, Laney, Ellen.

      “Who’s Ellen?” I asked.

      Laney took a seat on one of the stools that looked into the kitchen. “Ellen Geiger.”

      I blinked a few times. “Why is Ellen Geiger on my speed dial?”

      Ellen Geiger was a psychiatrist I saw briefly after Dee died. I thought she was nice enough, a good person to talk to, and she had helped me sort out a few things. But I remember I felt I was coming out of my mourning, that I could deal with the pain and anger on my own, so after a while I just stopped going.

      “You keep Ellen Geiger in business,” Laney said.

      Too frightened to ask what she meant, I went about opening the cabinets. My nice set of pots and pans looked dusty and unused, my refrigerator and freezer nearly empty except for a loaf of bread that was starting to green around the edges and a tub of chocolate chip ice cream with severe freezer burn. I opened the cabinet next to the fridge, and there, in front of an old bag of pretzels and a few cans of tuna, were four brown plastic bottles. Prescription bottles. I picked up the first three, reading the medications noted on the white labels—Wellbutrin, Prozac, another Wellbutrin.

      I looked at Laney. “Antidepressants?”

      She nodded. “You’ve been trying a few of them.”

      “And?”

      “They don’t work so well.”

      I turned back to the cupboard and looked at the fourth one. The label stated that it was for pain, and it bore bold orange warnings about taking it only with food. It had been prescribed by Dr. Markup, the general practitioner whom both Laney and I had seen for years.

      “Pain relievers?” I asked Laney.

      “You’ve been getting these nasty headaches. Migraines, I guess.”

      This was all so confusing—this apartment that didn’t seem like mine, the depression and headaches I didn’t remember. I felt completely removed from the life I’d supposedly been leading. Maybe if I heard more about it…Maybe I needed to hear more.

      I sat on the counter facing Laney. “Okay, tell me.”

      “I did. You’ve been down.”

      “No, I mean give me the whole chronology—how it went, when it started, you know.”

      She grimaced and shifted on the stool. “Well, there’s no doubt that it started on your birthday. You were all giddy that morning. You called me from work to say that you were looking good, feeling good and ready for your dinner with Ben. Then an hour later, you called again from your cell phone, and I could barely understand a word you were saying.”

      “I was crying?” I tried to jump-start some memory.

      “No, you were raging. You know how you get sometimes?”

      I nodded. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but I had an occasional flaring temper that