“I know, I know.” Meghan looked thoughtful. “It’s just that I want things to be how they were. You know, like last year. When life was easy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s like Bick’s a different person now. Like Harvard is changing him.”
I took a big bite of cake. “Last year,” I told her, “you didn’t have us.”
Six major things happened in October.
ONE. I went with my mom for the appointment with the new, health-insurance-accepting shrink. It was in a clinic affiliated with a hospital, and the waiting room was filled with people who looked really shattered. One woman in her fifties was rocking back and forth, muttering about some chip the aliens had put in her brain. A guy with no neck was asleep and snoring, and a nervous lady in a dirty coat was touching a potted plant and staring at it like it might speak to her.
I had an appointment for four o’clock, and we got there early and filled out some forms. Then we sat.
The only magazine was about health care. There was a plastic coffee table, and a television was blaring at top volume up in a corner. The news was on: two abducted children and a hotel fire. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be expected to maintain any semblance of decent mental health if they had to watch that stuff before every therapy appointment.
Mom and I waited.
And waited.
I read my Chemistry textbook and highlighted key concepts while she watched TV. Now and then a doctor or therapist would call out someone’s name.
Half the time, the person wasn’t there.
A fatally thin woman came in and folded herself into a corner seat. The sleeping man woke up and wandered out of the room even though no one had called his name.
“Maybe we should just go,” I whispered at 4:25. “I don’t like it here.”
“Not happening, Ruby.”
“Please, Mom. I’ve been okay for a long time.”
“You’re judging this place on appearances,” my mother snapped. “Besides, I already paid my copayment.”
“But—”
“You never have an open mind. Is it too much for me to ask you to keep an open mind?”
I slumped back down in my seat.
We waited.
And waited.
And waited.
At 5:10, my mother stood up. “Come on, Roo. We’re going.”
“What?”
“This is disgusting,” she announced, in a typical Elaine Oliver reversal-of-policy-when-it-suits-her. “The treatment here is disrespectful and we’re wasting our time.”
I grabbed my backpack.
TWO. A week later, went to see the shrink my dad’s friend Greg uses.
Doctor Acorn, or Steven, as I was supposed to call him, was thin and dry. After talking to me and my mother for forty-five minutes, and listening to her tell him that I was antisocial and didn’t seem to have friends anymore and never went anywhere and had panic attacks, he recommended that I start on Prozac and Ativan.2
“But I haven’t had a panic thing in months,” I said.
“That’s how we want to keep it,” he said. “Am I sensing some resistance here?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a good idea to get the baseline chemistry taken care of, then follow that up with the talk therapy.”
“But I’m not antisocial,” I said, turning to Mom. “I slept over at Meghan’s house three nights ago.”
“Compared to what she was before, she’s antisocial,” my mom said to Doctor Acorn. “Plus, there may be some sexual issues she wants to discuss with you. Right, Roo?”
“Mom!”
“Roo, you can be open with Steven. He’s heard it all before.”
There was no way I was going to tell Doctor Acorn about my scamming with Angelo—or anything else that was going on in my life. He was like a dried-up slice of apple, without any juice left inside, and he didn’t seem like he was listening to me so much as telling me what he thought was wrong with me.
I laid it out for my mother as soon as we left. No Doctor Acorn. No way.
“What are we going to do?” she moaned, with her head in her hands, sitting at the dinner table later that night.
“Stop making me see a shrink,” I yelled from my place on the couch.
“But it’s good for you,” my mother said.
“Mom. Vegetables are good for me. Sports activities. My job at the zoo is even good for me. But waiting for more than an hour with a bunch of madmen is not, and neither is taking drugs for problems I’m not even having.”
“Wasn’t Doctor Z good for you?” my father asked.
I didn’t answer him.
THREE. Meghan called Bick on his cell and a girl answered.
“Um, this is Meghan, is Bick around?”
And the girl said, “Oh, yeah, Meghan! I’ve heard all about you. I’m Bick’s friend Cecily.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“Hiya. Didn’t he tell you about me?”
“No.”
“The one from Maine, the one with the convertible?”
“Um, I don’t think so.”
“Bick went to get a drink—guys, do you know where Bick went?—and he left his cell on the table so I answered it. Oh my god, Holmes, you are so dead! Stop it! Oh my god, do you really go to Harvard?” Cecily was laughing, talking to some people around her, hardly even remembering she was on the phone.
Meghan hung up.
Bick didn’t call her back until the next day.
FOUR. Noel, Meghan, Nora and I were supposed to go to the movies on a Saturday night. But Meghan’s mom decided she had to stay home for dinner all of a sudden, and Nora’s brother, Gideon, surprised her family by driving down from Evergreen State College, an hour or two away, so Nora wanted to stay and see him.
I picked up Noel in the Honda. His mom wouldn’t let him drive the Vespa at night. His house was a big Victorian-style place in Madrona, and when I went inside, Mr. and Mrs. DuBoise (his mom and stepdad that he’s had for like fourteen years) were in the middle of a ginormous collaborative cooking project. The dining table was covered with vegetables chopped into tiny pieces, and Mrs. DuBoise had three open cookbooks stacked one on top of the other.
A couple of smaller DuBoises were running underfoot. Everything smelled like frying onions.
“We’re glad to meet you, Ruby.” The stepdad had a booming voice and was yelling over water running in the kitchen sink. “We’ve heard all about you.”
“I was hoping my reputation hadn’t preceded me,” I said—which sounded like a joke, but which I really meant, given the suckiness of my reputation.
“Ha, ha!” the stepdad boomed. “All good, all good, I promise.”
“Noel will be down in a minute,” his mother said, wiping her hands on her apron. “He’s doing something with hair gel.”3
“No problem.”
“Do you want a pop?”
“Nah. I’m good.”
“What movie are you seeing?”
“Singin’ in the Rain,” I answered. “At that retro film place in the U District. They’re doing an all-musical weekend, and my mom said this was the one to see.”
“You must be some girl, Ruby,” laughed his mom, “if Noel is willing to go see a musical with you.”4
“He made fun of us last week for renting The Sound of Music,” added his stepdad. “He doesn’t even like My Fair Lady. I mean, what’s not to love about My Fair Lady?”
“You mean, besides the fact that it’s completely sexist?” I asked.
“What?”
“It is. The man molds the woman into his ideal mate, changes everything about her—and she loves him for it. It completely bothers me. Shouldn’t he like her for who she is? Because by the time he realizes he loves her, he’s loving this shell of a person who has no sense of self.”