The Eighth Girl
Page 1
Dedication
For Joe—
Of course
Epigraph
The girl would see, in the locking of her mind with Freud’s, how cruelly her own understanding had deceived her.
—Philip Rieff, introduction to Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, by Sigmund Freud
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
1: Daniel Rosenstein
2: Alexa Wú
3: Daniel Rosenstein
4: Alexa Wú
5: Daniel Rosenstein
6: Alexa Wú
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Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
The Voices come and go. Like flu. Weather. Weekend shags. I’m unsure how long they’ve been here, or if they intend to stay. I want to say they’re friendly.
Alive to their company I scale the scene, first noticing the cars. Then the backup, close to a mile, crawling under my feet—snaking the strip—my eyes crimping from their blaring white lights. Families escaping the city’s hum, men heading home to their wives. Girls in studied dresses switching heels for flats as they drive across town, ripe for a big night out. Everyone going somewhere, doing something, meeting someone.
Not me, I tell myself.
Not me.
There is no small corner of the world I wish to claim and delight in. No one who knows the stir in my gut. The burn. All my mistakes frozen in the tight lock of my face.
I inch forward enough to feel a surge of adrenaline, part of me always knowing it would end this way: me, the Voices, balancing on the ledge at Jumpers Bridge.
I grip the railings behind me to steady my shake, urging myself to remember how I got here—why is there a key in my left hand? I, after all, am right-handed. Still, nothing unfolds, my mind turning blank like a page erased of its words.
How long have I been here, strangling the bars? White-knuckling as if on the ride of my life—a roller coaster, a ghost train—my bare arms pimpled with cold like the skin of poultry. An ache in the base of my back.
Losing time is never good. It’s an expression of the insane. An indicator of how close I am to completely losing my mind. Concentrate, I order myself. Focus.
The Voices clear their throats. A rise of phlegm foaming in my mouth, now spat down at migrating cars, a cool lick of wind guiding its direction. Like all good enforcers, they seem to engulf me tonight, pointing fingers of blame, their message both hateful and threatening.
I stare down at the ready dark—
Flash.
Dusk stealing me for a beat—
Flash.
And not unusually, an image of my father flares up in my mind.
He is sitting in the corner of my bedroom, his legs crossed in the high-backed wicker chair we bought from a car boot sale. When I open my eyes I notice he is wearing a black Crombie, a blue tie—the colors of bruises. His faint eyes and bristled chin payback from the night before. Floating from his left hand is a Hello Kitty balloon.
Flash.
“Happy birthday, my sweet Xiǎo Wáwa,” he whispers.
“Thank you, Baba,” I say, rubbing crusted sleep from my eyes. “I’m too grown-up to be your little doll anymore. But I am sweet. Sweet as kittens.”
Flash.
Not wishing him to be the last person I relive before letting go, I picture Ella instead. The two of us are sitting in her backyard wearing denim cutoffs and cotton halters, jelly shoes rubbing the soft balls of my feet. The smell of jasmine in the afternoon air. I move a pitcher of beer around the shaded table to avoid the glare of sun. A bowl of salted nuts lassoing our thirst.
Suddenly, Ella surprises me with a silver box, a matching silk bow—which I pull, very gently, its twin loops coming apart. Inside: a stunning pair of gemstone earrings.
“Green ones,” she says, “to match your eyes.”
The memory calms me, and for a second I favor climbing back to safety. My helplessness eased. But then a single tear escapes, acting as a reminder of what she did.
Nerves turned on, I look down again.
How could she? Cunt.
Numb, forlorn, grief drenching my empty body, I loosen my hands. The Voices whispering softly in my ear: Jump, you fucking crybaby.
1
Daniel Rosenstein
I walk toward my desk and gaze out the open window at the amber evening, August light spilling through a veil of drooping wisteria. I check tomorrow’s diary: Thursday 8 a.m.—Alexa Wú.
Normally I wouldn’t start so early; certainly not before nine, but I have bent rules to accommodate her. A minor allowance because she’s looking for full-time work, has several job interviews lined up, and also works nights—did I have availability early morning, because she could do any day of the week if it was early? This she spoke to my answering machine, her voice trembling at the edge. I’d wondered about this. Imagining it may have been difficult for her to ask for something—the possibility that it might be refused.
My receptionist returned her call the following day, saying I had space on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That maybe she would like to come in then? She agreed; they fixed a day and time; I adde
d Alexa to my roster of patients.
Other psychiatrists might steer away from bending their daily routine, but I have learned such gestures go a long way in the encouraging and building of relationships, am convinced that those who experience some adjustment will eventually learn to compromise.
Outside, patients are fighting signs of fatigue. With tight yawns they shuffle about, heads limp, shoulders down—their last attempt at exercise before one of the nurses will escort them back inside the ward before supper. Earlier they appeared disorganized and manic; eyes darting, movements awkward. Handicapped as much by the medication they take as the neurosis that makes the medication necessary.
Gathering on the solid timber bench, four patients decide to rest, but reluctant to engage with one another, they stare at the huge oak and surrounding island of grass. Hands cupped in their laps as if waiting for loose change.
In the distance a flock of lively blackbirds have landed, unruffled, on the copper power lines and at once appear like musical notes. Their song is enchanting until they migrate to the blushing apple trees, their chorus now moved to the shelter of leaves.
I open the top drawer of my desk and pull out a packet of M&M’s, allowing myself six candied yellow peanuts with what remains of my coffee. This I take black with three sugars—a long-standing ritual that commenced shortly after I was appointed Glendown’s consulting psychiatrist eight years ago. I rest my mug on the ceramic coaster; on it: a circular hand-painted picture of Aesop’s fable “The Tortoise and the Hare”—a gift from a former patient. A bipolar chef who, from the tender age of eleven, fantasized about setting objects alight. On her thirteenth birthday she set fire to her mother’s entire wardrobe: the smoldering Chanel kindled to a pile of ashen confetti. I like to stare at the coaster, replaying the hare’s boastful behavior and foolish confidence in my mind. Moral of the story: Never sleep on the job. Especially when your pyromaniac patient has access to a lighter.
Some clinicians claim the eroticization of gift-giving is meaningful because of its connection to the libido; that often the gift represents love and affection that is not always verbalized in the room. Even Freud, in his overzealous theories, believed a child’s first interest in feces develops because he considers it a gift given up upon the mother’s insistence and through which he manifests his love for her. Further insights led Freud to discover this unconscious link between defecation and treasure hunting, but in this I have to wonder. Maybe sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a gift just a gift. A poop just a poop.
Evening drawing in, my thoughts turn to supper. A sudden rise of hunger spurs me into the tidying of clinical notes, Post-it reminders, mail, and my letter opener—also a gift, from Lucas, a recovering alcoholic who every evening had a strict one-hour OCD ritual that involved elaborate checking for serial killers in the cutlery drawer. “Oh no, not the flat ones again,” I would tease. And Lucas would smile, rolling his eyes, acknowledging his need for control and obsessive compulsions before tapping the sole of his oxford lace-ups eleven times.
When Clara passed away five years ago, Susannah, who rarely visits, suddenly appeared one afternoon with a corned-beef bagel, claiming she just happened to be in the area. As she looked around my office, a glint in her eye, she jokingly named it “the Museum of Shrink Memorabilia.”
“Your patients are absolutely everywhere, Dad!” She cried freely. “On the desk, on the walls, over there on the shelves. They’re even in the goddamn kitchenette! You know what? You should start paying them!”
I had belly-laughed at the time—my kind, funny daughter. Physically her mother’s child, with quick, grassy-green eyes and jet-black hair. Her broad shoulders, back then, weighted down with grief. I recall smiling—the joke causing my muscles to do something other than sag—as I grieved the loss of my wife. Her death making its own demands, my own emptiness impossible to ignore.
2
Alexa Wú
I think I might die of excitement. Seriously. Reason: Ella Collette—best friend, bona fide babe, and, as of last night, matchmaker extraordinaire! Yep. Not only do I have a date, but I also have a date for the date. Next Saturday. Nine p.m. Hoxton.
“He couldn’t take his eyes off you,” Ella teases, batting her heavy lashes, mascara having left a tinge of slate above both cheeks.
Already dressed, I jump and land on my bed, straddling Ella’s flat body between my thighs, head pounding from last night’s vodka tonics.
“Well, he couldn’t!” she yells, triumphant, defending her ribs from my tickling hands.
“Shhh,” I say, tapping my head.
“Well, he couldn’t,” she whispers.
I blush as I always do when Ella gets like this. Am reminded of the time my Reason took it upon herself to fix me up with one of her former school friends, inviting him in a hurried, liquor-laced phone call to her house one Friday night. Both of us had been loose and giddy from cheap Russian wheat vodka. But this time it’s different. This time I actually like the guy. He’s funny. And smart. Handsome, but not too handsome. Tall, but not giant. And he has a body to die for. Swoon!
We met last night in Hoxton after Ella insisted that another night drinking wine at home and watching repeats of Girls was simply not an option.
“Fancy meeting up?” she’d called and asked, making it sound more like a demand than an inquiry. “Some cute guy came into work handing out flyers for a new club—the Electra. We got to talking. I thought it might be fun. Sounds kinda different.”
“Different how?” I asked.
“You know, different.”
So I went. And we met. The cute guy and me. Ella introducing us while he served sleek cocktails in chilled tall-stemmed glasses. His blue eyes holding hostage every girl seated at the bar. Ella noticed my dropped jaw as soon as I clapped eyes on him, then disappeared, squeezing my hand three times—a code we both use for reassurance. Help, I’d mouthed at her, palms dripping, stomach in knots, before catching his smile, which I nervously threw back. Then he leaned over and kissed me hello. I looked past his shoulder, aware the club was brimming with attractive bodies and girls performing lavish burlesque on a narrow mirrored stage. One girl with long red hair and legs for days feigned intimacy with a nickel pole at the far end. Her shoulders shimmering but her gaze somewhere else as she fingered a delicate gold necklace with a small key attached. I gawped for longer than seemed right, lost in her drops and swerves, her perfect body forcing me to want to run home and never eat again. But then cute guy’s gaze brought me right back, pinning me to the spot. Stirred, I felt my breath fill my entire chest.
Flash.
Snapping back from the memory, I see Ella, drenched in mischief, cupping both hands beneath her chin to form a heart.
“Alexa and Shaun, sittin’ in a tree; K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” she sings, looking around me at one of my many clocks. “Fuck!”
“What?” I yell, startled. Mouth dry as a bone.
She pushes me off her—“Fuck! Fuck! Shit!”—jumps up and grabs her skinny jeans off my bedroom floor.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she scolds.
“I thought you took the week off work,” I say, knowing I’m not being dense.
“I did, but I’m babysitting the kid, remember? It’s half term. Mum’s got that temp job.”
The kid, aka Grace, is Ella’s younger sister. Not particularly bratty for a thirteen-year-old, but she does have a tendency to nick stuff. A month ago it was a pair of hair straighteners, a week later steampunk comics and a manga Pop! Vinyl from Forbidden Planet. A large, goateed security guard caught her with them tucked under her sweater. He didn’t report her, just scared her a little, made her cry, and then called Mrs. Collette, which, if I’m honest, was probably worse than calling the police.
“We can give you a lift if you’d like?” I say, upsetting a pile of ironed clothes stacked on top of my oak dresser. “Anna’s driving me to Glendown, so we can drop you on the way.”
Ella relaxes.
“Okay,” she purrs,
knowing she looks pretty when she pouts, “that would be great. I can pick up Grace from her sleepover, then we’ll walk back home.”
She throws herself, belly first, back on my bed. Her perfect elbows supporting her perfect chin. It’s the kind of chin that looks good in anything: mirrors, photos, cute scarves, turtlenecks. Anything. I walk toward her, pretending I’m a photographer while Ella poses, my fingers bluffing to click, click on a push-button, flash, flash.
Chin up, chin down, Ella tilts her head. Her tired eyes narrowing for effect until a final look involving her full lips sends me off balance.
I check my watch, aware I also need to get a move on.
Ella, calmed now, picks up last month’s Vogue. “So what’s his name, this new Glendown shrink?”
“Dr. Rosenstein. But he said to call him Daniel.”
“I bet he did. And I bet he said you’d have to pay through the nose for the pleasure, thank you very much. I guess they do that, don’t they—shrinks—get you to trust them, act all friendly, lure you in before rawrrrr—pouncing in!”
Ella’s imitation of a wildcat isn’t half-bad. On hands and knees she dismisses her Vogue and claws her fingers, opens her mouth wide, and prowls along my bed like a tiger in the savannah. She roars again.
“You’re crazy!” I laugh.
Thrilled with the compliment, Ella crosses her eyes and shows me her jazz hands.
“Anyway, enough of the shrink,” she says, swapping my pajama shirt for her cotton tank top, “you’re clearly besotted with this Shaun guy, which probably means I’m about to lose my best friend until you get bored of him. When are you meeting up?”
“Saturday.” I shrug.
“Saturday,” she mimics, coy and kittenish, then points at my forehead.
“What?”
“Your bangs are all wonky,” she says, her hot breath blowing the fine strands of my hair.
Not convinced, I stride toward my Venetian mirror, but when faced with my reflection, yep, soon realize what she means.
“I was going for electro-pop,” I say, feeling defensive and licking my three longest fingers, using them to press down on my bangs.