I didn’t know if Blythe was especially perceptive or if my tone of voice had been too revealing. “These kids are encased in stone. Every week I chip away but make almost no progress. I can’t find a fissure to use to crack them open.”
“I never thought much about this before, but what’s going to happen when I have to work with a patient who has this problem? Has my problem?”
“You’ll be that much more sensitive and compassionate.”
She laughed. “Compassion is hardly my issue.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself. You’ve only been seeing patients for a few months. You’re going to learn how to deal with all these feelings you have. I promise. That’s why we’re working with each other.”
She looked at me the way Dulcie used to and maybe would again when she was older-when she reached Blythe’s age.
We all need someone whom we believe has the answers and whom we can trust to help us. But when that person disappears from our lives, we feel every shift in the wind as a threat-we become one of the lost girls. It had happened to me when my mother had died. Blythe was one, too; I knew the signs. At some point in her life, Blythe’s anchor had disappeared. We needed to talk about it in a session, not in the back of a steamy cab.
The taxi stopped at a light at Eighty-seventh Street. I’d be getting out at the next block. I reached into my bag, opened my wallet, pulled out a ten dollar bill and handed it to Blythe. “Take this.”
“No, I can pay.”
“There’s no reason for you to pick this up. It’s a business expense. I’m on my way to a session.” I forced the bill into her hand. The light changed. The driver pulled up to the middle of the next block. I put my hand on the door handle and then turned to Blythe.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Really, it’s not a big deal. I had to come Uptown, anyway.”
“No, I didn’t mean the cab. I meant what you said about me being okay. You always make me feel so much better. Like everything will work out.”
She smiled. That wide-open smile. It pulled me in again.
I stood on the corner in the falling snow. Flakes landed on my hair and my cheeks. A fat one settled on my bottom lip. While I watched the taxi pull away, Blythe turned around and waved at me, and for a moment I felt it, too-that maybe everything that was wrong really could be fixed.
Thirty-Nine
“I was online but just goofing around. I wasn’t surfing. I wasn’t watching them…” Barry started and then stopped. He rubbed a spot on his left arm almost to the point of obsession.
We had a rule in the group, only one rule: if any of the kids watched porn or engaged in it, they’d come clean. They wouldn’t get dissed or lectured; no one’s parents would be told, but they had to be up front with me and with the rest of the group. And since the group was the only thing standing between them and expulsion or suspension, they were pretty good about it.
I waited, keeping my eyes on Barry’s, keeping my body language neutral.
“But a bud IM’d me and told me that these two chicks were going at it and acting all weird and I clicked over to check it out. I didn’t get what he’d meant by acting weird. I thought they were doing something kinky.”
“How long did you watch it?” I asked.
He looked down at the floor. “Not long. I got sort of sick.”
“Sick?”
“Like I was gonna throw up, you know?” He was embarrassed.
“Do you know why?”
“They were in pain. It was awful, you could tell.”
I wanted to find a way to make him realize he was connecting to what he’d seen-understanding it was happening to two real women-instead of the detachment he’d felt with all the women he’d been watching online the past two years.
“How could you tell they were really sick?”
“They just weren’t acting. I don’t know. You could just tell.”
“You kept watching it?” Jodi asked. “That’s disgusting. How long?”
He shrugged.
“Did you do anything?” she asked.
“Like what? Jerk off?”
“No. Like call the fucking police or something.”
He shook his head.
I waited for one of the other kids to get involved.
“You watched the whole thing?” Ellen asked. Unlike Jodi, she wasn’t angry, she was incredulous.
“Yeah.”
“You think that the one girl tried to kill the other one?” Ellen was playing with the button on her jacket, twisting it around and around.
“Come on,” Amanda said. “That’s so lame.”
No one said anything. I waited. Watched her face. Felt the pain from across the room. Why was it so hard for her to talk about this?
“Why is it lame to wonder that?” I finally asked.
“They wouldn’t hurt each other.” Amanda’s voice was low; I had to strain to hear her. “They were friends.”
She seemed so sure. And so pained.
“Amanda, did you see those two girls on Saturday night?”
She shook her head.
“Have you seen other girls like them?”
She didn’t answer.
Who had she seen? When had she seen them? How was I going to help her feel comfortable enough to share whatever she was struggling with?
A few seconds went by.
“When you watch women online, what do you think they’re thinking? What do you think those two women were feeling before they got sick?” I asked.
“Nothing. They’re being hot. They’re ho’s. That’s all,” Paul volunteered, and then shrugged.
I watched Amanda flinch.
“Do you ever really think about it, Paul?”
“About what? What they are feeling?”
I nodded.
“Shit, I don’t know.”
“Try now. Let’s all try. First thing that comes to your mind-what do you think they are feeling?”
“They probably dig all that attention.” Paul smirked. “They-”
“Maybe it was suicide,” Amanda said in a very low voice. She was interrupting but didn’t seem to be aware of it. She hadn’t looked up when she said it but had kept her eyes on her shoes-suede boots with thick rubber soles. Most of the girls wore them. My daughter wore them. They were the accessory du jour in Manhattan schools.
Timothy quickly looked over at her, a concerned look in his eyes.
“What makes you think so?” I asked.
“Because you get to a point where the only way you can come out on the other side is to die.”
The tone and timbre of her voice alerted me that her stress level was high. All the kids sensed something was happening and waited. I needed to keep her talking. “Amanda, do you ever feel like that? Like you need to come out on the other side?”
She shrugged.
I leaned forward. “What do you do when you feel like that?”
“I guess I do art stuff.”
I nodded. “Me, too. When I feel like that, I sculpt. I know how it works. It helps, doesn’t it?”
She was watching me-so much going unsaid, so much I couldn’t read in her eyes, and so much I needed to say to reach her. “Yeah. Sort of.”
“Amanda, what could have happened to the girls online that would have been so bad that they would have wanted to kill themselves?”
“Just because they were getting paid doesn’t mean it was only about that. At first they probably liked knowing guys were watching. Like Barry said. They probably did like the attention.” She wasn’t looking at me anymore, or at anyone in the room. Her eyes were still on her boots.
“And then?” I asked, encouraging.
Everyone was still riveted, waiting. She had galvanized the group.
“It was what they did, right? They were pros. The ultimate Venus fantasy that every guy is stuck on, and they knew it. Two chicks. Going at it…putting on a show. But it wasn’t…” Her voice shook as she went on. Her eyes were still cast downward, but her hands had curled into fists in her lap. “They probably didn’t get off on it at first. Didn’t even think about it. But then all that touching. All that touching each other, all soft and caring and naked like that…”