“My drawings aren’t your magic bullet,” I say abruptly. “Don’t pin your hopes on an angry girl with a paintbrush.”
Tessie, 1995
Thursday. Only two days after our last meeting.
The doctor cut the Tuesday session short by twenty minutes, shortly after my outburst. He called twenty-four hours later to reschedule. I don’t know whether he was angry about me bringing up his daughter, or just unprepared to hear it. If I’ve learned anything about psychiatrists in the last year, it’s that they don’t like surprises from the guests. They want to be the one to scatter the path of stale bread crumbs, even if it leads into a dense forest where you can’t see at all.
“Good morning, Tessa.” Formal. “You caught me off guard the other day. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to handle it. For you, or me.”
“I almost didn’t come back today. Or ever.” Not really true. For the first time in months, I feel like I own a small shred of power. I blow the bangs out of my eyes. Lydia took me to the mall for a new haircut yesterday. Cut, cut, cut, I insisted. I could almost hear my hair fall, soft and sad, to the floor. I wanted to change myself. Look more like a boy. My best friend appraised me critically when it was over. Informed me that I achieved the opposite. Short hair made me prettier, she said. Emphasized my small straight nose that I should thank the Lord Jesus for every day. Drew my eyes out like flying saucers in a big Texas sky. Lydia was practicing her similes for the SAT. She’d announced the very first time we linked arms in second grade that she was going to Princeton. I thought Princeton was a small town filled with eligible princes.
I think the doctor is pacing. Traveling the room. Oscar is not alerting me. He’s sleepy, maybe because he got his shots an hour ago. My latest worry is that Daddy considers Oscar a first step to a Seeing Eye dog, and faithful, untrained Oscar will be sent away.
“I’m not surprised you feel that way.” His voice is behind me. “I should have been straight from the beginning. About my daughter. Even though she has nothing to do with why I took your case.” His second lie. “It was a very long time ago.”
It bothers me, his voice bouncing at me from different places, a game of dodge ball in the dark.
I count two seconds before his chair creaks gently. Not a heavy man, not a skinny one. “Did your father tell you about my daughter?”
“No.”
“Did you… overhear something, then?” His question is almost timid. Like something an insecure normal person would ask. But this is pretty uncharted territory for him, I guess.
“I overhear things all the time,” I evade. “I guess my other senses are super-enlightened now.” This last part is not actually true at all. All my senses have gone haywire. Granny’s recipe for fried green beans with bacon dressing tastes like soggy cigarettes; my sweet little brother’s voice is like Aunt Hilda’s fake red fingernails scraping glass. I suddenly cry along to country music, which I always secretly thought was for dumb people.
I’m not telling this doctor any of that yet. Let him think I’m suddenly hyperaware. I’m not about to rat out Lydia, who has read me every word of every story on Terrell Darcy Goodwin and the Black-Eyed Susan investigation that she can get her hands on. Researched every shrink who has tried to tunnel into my brain.
All I know is that when I am lying on Lydia’s pink down comforter, with Alanis Morissette moaning, and my best friend reading animatedly from her stack of library printouts… those are the minutes and hours that I feel the safest. Lydia is the only one who still treats me exactly the same.
She’s relying on some innate seventeen-year-old certainty that I might die if I live in a silent cocoon, curled up and fragile. That handling me with care is not going to make me better.
For some reason, I think this doctor might be the second person to understand. He lost a daughter. He’s got to be a close personal friend with pain. I hold out hope for that.
Tessa, present day
I snap off one more picture with my iPhone. Three images in all. I should have done it five days ago, before their stems bowed and their eyes stared dejectedly at the ground.
I’ve told only Angie the whole story, I think. Now she’s dead.
I am not fooled by the fainting Susans under my windowsill. I know that each of the thirty-four eyes hoards enough seeds to carpet my whole yard, come spring. I slide on my gardening gloves and pick up the can of herbicide I’ve retrieved from the garage. I wonder whether he likes to watch this part of the process. I’ve learned that poison is the best method. Not since I was seventeen have I torn up the Susans by their roots.
A breeze flutters, scattering the spray. I taste it, bitter and metallic.
If I don’t hurry, I’m going to be late to pick up Charlie. I smother on one last cancerous coat. I strip off my gloves, leave them with the spray can, run to grab the keys off the kitchen counter, hop in the Jeep, and drive the ten minutes to the freshman gym. Home of the Fighting Colts. Chattering, texting girls stream onto the sidewalk, in ponytails and obscenely tight mandatory red gym shorts that mothers should officially complain about but don’t.
The backseat door pops open, startling me, like it does every time. “Hi, Mom.” Charlie tosses in a blue Nike duffle that always holds smelly surprises and a backpack of books that lands like a chunk of concrete. She jumps in and slams the door.
Smooth, angelic face. Sexy legs. Tight muscles not mature enough to fight back. Innocent, and not. I don’t want to be aware of these things, but I’ve trained myself to see her as he might.
“My laptop sucks,” she says.
“How was school? Practice?”
“I’m starved. Really, Mom. I couldn’t print my homework last night. I had to use your computer.”
This beautiful girl, the love of my life, the one I missed all day long, is already firing up my nerves.
“McDonald’s?” I ask.
“Surrrrre.”
I’ve stopped feeling guilty about the after-practice drive-through runs. It doesn’t keep my daughter from devouring a healthy full-course dinner two hours later. Charlie eats at least four times a day and remains a tall, slender rail. She has my old runner’s appetite and red hair and her father’s mood-changing eyes. Purplish is happy; gray is tired. Black is thoroughly pissed off.
Not for the first time, I wish that Charlie’s father weren’t thousands of miles away on an Army base in Afghanistan. I wish he weren’t just a serious fling fifteen years ago that went awry a month before I realized I was pregnant. Not that Charlie seems to care a whit that we never married. Lt. Col. Lucas Cox sends money like clockwork and stays in constant touch. I think a Skype session with Charlie is on tap for tonight.
“We will talk about the computer later, OK?”
No answer. She’s texting, I’m sure. I pull out from the curb and decide to let her decompress from the eight fluorescent-lighted hours she has spent constructing triangular prisms and deconstructing Charlotte Brontë. After Charlie abandoned Jane Eyre on the couch last night for Facebook, I noticed that the heroine gazing off the cover was sporting a new mustache and devil horns. She’s so whiny, Charlie whined this morning, while stuffing her mouth with bacon.
A few minutes later, we roll up to the drive-through.
“What do you want?” I ask her.
“Uhhhh.”
“Charlie, stop with the phone. You need to order.”
“OK.” Cheerful. “I would like a Big Mac, and a MacBook Pro.”
“Very funny.”
Truth is, I love this about her-the cocky sense of humor and confidence, her ability to make me laugh out loud when I don’t want to. I wait until I think Charlie is about halfway through her Big Mac to start The Conversation. In the Jeep, just us, there is always more of a chance my words will end up in her brain.