The Merciful Scar

by Rebecca St. James

  “Sure,” I said.

  Wes ran his palms along the tops of his thighs, clad in jeans that looked like he’d been wearing them for three days. And nights. “I understand why you don’t want to talk to me, but isn’t that what got us here in the first place?”

  Smack him! Smack him right now!

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  He abandoned the thighs and rubbed his hands against each other. His jeans now bore long damp strips of sweat. “Do you know how long I’ve been frustrated because you won’t talk to me about what you’re thinking? All that time you wanted me to propose to you, but you never told me. It was that kind of thing that—”

  “Sent you straight into Isabel’s arms?”

  Atta girl, Kirsten. Again, this time with feeling.

  I knew I sounded like a dial tone but it was that or start yanking on my earlobe.

  “I was trying to tell you Sunday night when you threw me out,” Wes said.

  Wait—did I miss that?

  “Isabel and I ran into each other at Joe’s one night and we just started talking about stuff.”

  Now you’re stuff? Punch him in the face!

  “You mean me.”

  “We both love you and neither one of us could figure you out—”

  “Stop, please.” I was halfway out of the chair. “This was a mistake. I can’t listen to this.”

  Shucks. Just when it was getting good.

  Wes’s face tightened. “I’m not leaving this time until you hear me out. I think you—I think we owe each other that.”

  You don’t owe him jack!

  “I don’t see what difference it’s going to make,” I said.

  “Maybe it doesn’t make a difference to you, but it does to me, okay?”

  And your point is?

  I might actually have echoed the Nudnik if guilt weren’t lapping at my insides. Guilt that wasn’t attached to anything, but guilt nevertheless.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m listening.”

  Wes slid closer to the edge of the chair. Even though I moved back I could smell his breath, stale as yesterday’s coffee, and the faint odor of sweat on his T-shirt. Three years together and I’d never smelled anything on him but Downy and SweeTarts.

  Yeah, somebody hose this guy down. Orderly?

  “Okay, so, Izzy and I started talking more and more and both of us came to the conclusion that you’re just, I don’t know, stable, and we’re not. I thought maybe you didn’t need to talk things through the way I do. The way we both did.”

  “You and Isabel.”

  “Don’t say it like that. It wasn’t like we planned what happened. We both needed somebody to talk to, and one thing just led to another.”

  He stared down at his hands.

  Now he stops giving details.

  I didn’t want details. But I did want to know what happened that night—Saturday night—when Isabel’s crisis brought our whole world in on itself.

  “Did she give you an ultimatum?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Did she say you had to choose between her and me? Is that why she called you Saturday night?”

  “No! Izzy would never do that. She knows I love you.”

  “This isn’t making any sense.”

  Wes gripped my arms with hot, damp hands. I raised my shoulders to my ears and he let go, but he stayed close to my face, eyes digging into mine, edgy breath nearly taking mine away.

  “I can’t tell you why she called me. I promised her I wouldn’t and I can’t break that promise.”

  “But you could break a promise to me. A big promise.”

  “And I’ll hate that I did that for the rest of my life. But this promise—it would hurt too many people if I broke it. I can’t.”

  “So it matters more if it would hurt Isabel than—”

  “It would hurt you too. You have to trust me on this.”

  And what I have to do is throw up.

  “Trust you?” I said. “Really?”

  “Okay, maybe I can’t ask you to. But at least believe me: if you hadn’t seen me kiss her good-bye, I would have come in the house and asked you to marry me and we would’ve worked it out somehow.”

  “And you and Isabel would have always had your little secret.”

  “It was over.” Wes’s voice rose and cracked. “We took care of that. We took care of everything. You never. Had. To know.”

  Just so we’re clear: it was your fault you saw him exchanging saliva with your best friend?

  “But I do know,” I whispered. “And I’m always going to know.”

  That seemed like a perfectly reasonable response to me, but Wes threw himself back into the chair with his hands over his face. When he uncovered it, he was licking his lips, over and over, as if they, too, were covered in sandpaper.

  “Is that what it is with you?” he said. “That you can’t ever let anything go?” He lurched forward again. “See, I always thought you were a rock. But you’re more like a locked-up box, aren’t you?”

  He was so close to the truth I almost nodded. But something besides understanding was churning in his eyes. I kept my head still.

  “This,” he said, nodding toward my bandaged hand. “This wasn’t just about me, was it? A lot of people break up and they don’t try to kill themselves over it. You didn’t do this just because of me; I was just the tip of the iceberg. There’s your father and your mother and your—”

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” I said. The ice in my voice froze him for the moment I needed. “I didn’t try to kill myself, and you know it, because you were there. All I wanted to do was cut myself, just a little bit, so I could relieve some of the pressure. I didn’t want to die. I still don’t.”

  Wes’s face twisted. “You wanted to cut yourself? You’re a cutter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t—no, I don’t buy that.”

  Oh, show him and get this over with.

  Watching his face, I slid the neckline of the Penney’s top down over my shoulder just enough to reveal three delicately wrought lines. The upper lip on that mouth I’d kissed a thousand times curled to his nose, and the eyes that had danced me into joy more times than that hardened into stones. It was no longer Wes I was looking at. It was the picture of revulsion.

  Yeah, I’m not thinking that relationship was gonna work anyway. He’s about to hurl over three scars. You’d have had to call 911 if he’d ever seen you naked.

  Oddly, Wes was nodding. “See, I was right. This wasn’t just about me. It wasn’t my stuff that made you do that. This whole thing predates me.”

  I didn’t need the Nudnik for the poke that jabbed me in the throat. He hadn’t come here for me. He had come here for him. It was all about Wes—and it always had been.

  Slowly I lifted my hand and moved my fingers to my earlobe. “Did you come here to hear me say you’re not responsible for me being here?” I said. “Okay, here you go: it’s not your fault. Okay? You can leave here with a clean conscience.” I gave my lobe a tug. “And please do.”

  Roman was there before Wes could even stand up. He didn’t put a hand on Wes—much to the Nudnik’s disappointment—but there was none of his usual charm as he said, “Time’s up, dude. I think you’ve given her all the help she needs from you.”

  I stayed in the chair with my back to the door as their tennis shoes squealed across the linoleum. When I heard the locks drop into place one by one by one, I pulled out my cell phone and called David Dowling. My voice mail said: “I want to go with Sister Frankie. Can you set that up for me?”

  Share this chapter with your friends!

  Let everything bad escape and take the pain with it so you can come back to life. #TheMercifulScar

  Chapter

  FOUR

  Ofcourse there was more to signing up with Sister Frankie than waiting out front until a cab showed up to take me to her. In addition to all the hospital red tape involved, including the removal of my stitches, David said
she wanted to come down and meet and that she’d be there by two. When Roman came to get me, saying he was going to start charging me extra for escort service, I already had my meager possessions packed in the J.C. Penney shopping bag.

  “Should I take this with me to the cell?” I said.

  “Cell. I like it. I’m gonna start calling it that.” Roman shrugged. “Bring it if you want, but you’re not going to the cell. This is an outside meeting.”

  “Outside as in not in the building?”

  “Don’t get too excited. We’re talkin’ fenced-in patio.”

  Still, I should have been ecstatic. I hadn’t breathed fresh air since Sunday afternoon.

  Yeah, you’re starting to look like the creature Gollum.

  But as confining as the hospital walls were, they also separated me from everything I could do nothing about. Even my mother, who had only paid two more short—

  Nanosecond goes beyond short—

  —visits. When I told her I wanted to go with Sister Frankie’s program, she’d pursed her lips like a drawstring bag and said, “I wish I’d never told you it didn’t matter whom you talked to. These people are not professionals, Kirsten.” My only response to that was to ask her again to honor her promise not to tell my father about any of this. At least her hatred of him trumped everything else.

  The patio was a small area off the first floor, not far from the emergency room. Cacti in terra-cotta pots and a statue of St. Francis of Assisi made me guess it was designed for anxious relatives who felt the ER waiting room closing in on them. A blue aluminum awning was no match for the unforgiving Montana sunlight, and I stood with Roman in the doorway, blinking against its onslaught.

  Yep, definitely the creature Gollum.

  Apparently nobody’s family members were that anxious about their condition that day because only one person occupied a round brushed-metal table: a thirty-something woman in a John Deere ball cap and cowboy boots, which she’d propped on a chair.

  “I don’t think she’s here yet,” I whispered to Roman.

  “Do you know what she looks like?”

  “Whatever a retired nun looks like.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Roman said. “I’m a Methodist. They said she was waiting down here.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when John Deere Lady extricated her boots from the seat of the chair and stood up.

  “Are you Kirsten?” she called from across the patio.

  I nodded.

  “They sure changed the habit since I saw The Sound of Music,” Roman muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  The woman hurried toward us, revealing with her smile a row of big, square, bright teeth that could have belonged to a third grader. As she got closer, though, I could see her face was sun-worked in early-leathered lines that fanned out from her eyes. Despite the trim figure in blue jeans and a crisp striped blouse, she had to be forty-five at least, but not the iron-haired, religious-looking spinster I’d expected.

  I couldn’t have predicted her voice either. The words, “I’m Frankie McKee,” came out soft and warm. Like fleece. Not so much with her hands. They were strong and slightly hard as she grasped one of mine between her palms. She directed large oak-brown eyes at Roman. “What are the chances of this being a private conversation?”

  “Good if you have some ID,” Roman said.

  Yeah, I want to see some, because—what nun wears a cell phone clipped to her belt?

  Frankie dug into her back pocket and produced a driver’s license. Roman scrutinized it and then her like he was an FBI agent.

  “Hard to tell with the hat,” he said.

  She flashed him the new-teeth smile and pulled off the ball cap, uncovering a short mop of wavy auburn hair flattened to the crown of her head. Sister Frankie obviously wore that hat twenty-four-seven. As soon as Roman handed her license back she snuggled the hat onto her head again, and the tendrils at the nape of her neck curled up around it.

  “I’ll be over by the door,” Roman said to me.

  Before he turned away, he tugged at his earlobe.

  Don’t you start tugging yet. I want to see what this character is all about. Am I smelling horse poop on those boots?

  As Frankie led me to the far table, closest to the low rock wall that separated us from the parking lot, I noticed that she was about a head shorter than me and more anchored to the ground. I felt too tall and klutzy, especially when I caught my foot on a chair leg and almost did a face-plant right there on the piazza. Frankie was either blind or she ignored it.

  “You want anything?” she said when we reached the table. “Latte? Tea?”

  I’ll take a large caramel macchiato.

  “I’m good,” I said.

  “You sure? I bet you haven’t had a decent cup of coffee since you’ve been here.”

  “I haven’t had a decent anything since I’ve been here,” I said. “Except Roman. He’s decent.”

  She slid neatly into a chair. “Does he refer to you as an SI?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then he’s pretty decent. I have a problem with psychiatric labels. They limit us to our pathology.”

  Us. This woman couldn’t possibly have a pathology. She was as together as any person I’d ever met. I could feel it all over my untogether self.

  She adjusted her cap so the bill didn’t cover half her face, and I could see the eyes that, now that I thought about it, almost matched what hair I could see.

  “Tell me why you’d like to come and stay with me at Bellwether Ranch,” she said.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I just don’t have any other choice.”

  Tell me you did not just say that.

  I couldn’t believe it myself as I clapped my hand over my mouth. I could feel my face simmering to red. “I’m so sorry,” I said into my palm.

  “Please don’t be,” she said. “I like your honesty.”

  Yeah, well, don’t get used to it. It’s not her typical MO.

  “To tell you the truth, I usually am a young woman’s only choice.”

  That didn’t make me feel any better. My hands were oozing sweat.

  She smiled without the teeth. “I get the feeling that kind of honesty is a new thing for you.”

  She’s been wiretapping your brain.

  “I don’t lie,” I said.

  “It’s okay if you don’t really want to come. But can you tell me what you do want?”

  “No,” I said. Truthfully. “But I can tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want to die.”

  I see where you’re going with this. But do you seriously believe she’s going to buy that any more than anybody else you’ve tried to sell it to? Except the vicar, but he—

  “And how do you want to live?” Frankie said.

  “I don’t even know.”

  “Then that’s the perfect place to start.”

  The Nudnik’s response was Huh? But there was something about this lady with her fleecy voice and her unapologetic hat head that made me want to be honest. Or at least commit no lies of omission.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me I have to stop cutting?” I said.

  “No. It seems to be serving a purpose for the moment.”

  What?

  “But this is going to be an environment where there’ll be nothing I can use to cut myself, right?” I said.

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Well. No.”

  Frankie shrugged one shoulder. “Then no. Finding something to use would become your whole focus, wouldn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re an adult. Treating yourself better is your responsibility. But let me ask you this: do you want to stop hurting yourself?”

  Let’s see what you do with this one.

  I looked at Frankie’s sun-lined face and I couldn’t tell it anything but what I knew.

  “If I gave up cutting,” I said, “I think I’d be giving up the only thing that’s keeping me sane.”

  She didn’
t even blink the brown eyes. “All right then. But I will ask you to do one thing.”

  Here it comes.

  “Try to replace the word cutting with hurting. Can we agree to that?”

  Not exactly a deal-breaker.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And instead of calling yourself a cutter, try to think of yourself as someone who is involved in self-injury.” She smiled, and for the first time I saw dimples that had just begun to stretch into lines. “Among all the other things you are.”

  Where do I start?

  I pushed that one aside. There was something I didn’t understand.

  “If you’re not going to try to get me to stop cutting—um, hurting—myself . . . no offense, but what is the point in my going with you?”

  To get Mother off your back!

  Frankie closed her eyes and opened them again before she answered. “I’m going to try to help you get to the place where you don’t need to hurt yourself anymore.”

  My throat tightened. “And if I don’t get there?”

  “Then you’ll be no worse off than you are right now, will you?” Her voice was soft.

  Why are we even talking, then? What a lovely place to wind up. Right back here!

  But something had to happen in thirty days, right? I could figure some things out and maybe even make up time in the studio when I got back. Still finish my degree on schedule?

  Oh yes, we want to get on with that career you chose for yourself. Oh, wait . . .

  I could do anything for thirty days. Especially if I was allowed to cut—hurt—myself when I needed to.

  Ouch. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?

  Then I could come back and—

  Yeah, and?

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll come. When do I start?”

  Frankie looked unsurprised, as if I’d just processed the whole thing out loud.

  “We can leave here as soon as your psychiatrist releases you into my care and we get some instructions on how to take care of that wrist. I started the paperwork just in case, so it shouldn’t take more than an hour. That will give you time to get your things together.”

  For the first time since we’d sat down, I smiled. Sheepishly. “I’m already packed.”