Girl Before a Mirror

by Liza Palmer

  “Six months?”

  “It’s the least amount of time this particular place offers,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  “Can your parents chip in at all?” Michael asks.

  “Probably not,” I say.

  “I know. Look. I’ll start over there; we’ll get him loaded up while he’s kind of out of it and then figure out the money stuff as we go. Okay?” Michael asks.

  “Okay. Michael, did you—”

  “I knew he smoked a lot of pot, but I don’t know. It’s Ferdie. He’s always been kind of a goof.”

  “I know.”

  “He’ll always be that little brat with the skateboard, you know?”

  “I know.” I smile.

  “Okay, I’m on my way. I’ll tell Allison what’s going on.” He gives me all the information for the Recovery House, the phone numbers, how to transfer the money . . . everything. We sign off. I whip Ferdie’s backpack onto both shoulders and hold my phone until I’m positive it’s going to break. I walk into the tiny galley kitchen—dishes, more pizza boxes, more empties, roaches skittering around the counter. I ball my hands up into fists, taking it all in. How can he live like this? I turn around and face the refrigerator. One single picture hangs underneath a magnet for the local Chinese takeout place.

  Ferdie and me.

  I brush my fingers over the photo. I must have been about thirteen and he was no more than four or five. He’s in those damn Underoos he never took off and that oversized pith helmet he got at the Natural History Museum. Dad bought him that dumb thing. The only thing he ever bought him and Ferdie just . . . he treasured it. I’ve got a pink shirt tucked into purple corduroys, an outfit pulled together with a rainbow belt and the whitest Keds any child ever had. It’s a grainy photo, ripped at the corner. I pull it off the fridge and tuck it into the backpack. The pith helmet. I have to ask at least. I dial.

  “Richard Wyatt.”

  “Hi, Dad. It’s Anna,” I say.

  Silence.

  “I signed a really big client today,” I say.

  “Would I know it?”

  “Lumineux Shower Gel,” I say, proudly.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Yet!” I say jokingly.

  “What?”

  “You haven’t heard of it, yet,” I say.

  “Is this why you called?”

  “Well…” My voice stutters.

  “What?” I can feel my face flushing.

  “Is this why you called, Anna? Honestly. To tell me about some shower gel I’ve never heard of?” I swallow. Steady myself.

  “No.”

  “Well, what then? I have to get—”

  “Dad, I need to ask a favor.”

  Silence.

  “Ferdie needs to go into rehab.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Dad—”

  “Ferdinand has been nothing but a disappointment to your mother and me.”

  “There’s a bed open at a rehab in Virginia. They’ll take him tonight, but—”

  “Ferdinand isn’t a little boy anymore.”

  “I know that. I know, Dad. He needs help.”

  “What he needs is to take some responsibility for his life. Show some control. Know when to say when.”

  “I think it’s a little more complicated than that, Dad.”

  I hear Dad heave a long, weary sigh into the phone. I can hear Mom in the background. She asks him who’s on the phone. He says it’s me. A long silence and then she launches into a list of errands she needs him to run and to get off the phone already. Stop wasting time, she tells him.

  Stop wasting time.

  “Dad, please,” I say. “He’ll pay it back. Every penny. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Silence.

  “Dad?”

  “This is it, Anna. This is all I’m doing. And he has one year.”

  “To get sober?”

  “To pay back the money, Anna. Jesus.” I give him the information. All the numbers. All the amounts. He is quiet.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  He doesn’t say good-bye. He doesn’t say anything. I hang up my phone and just stand there. In the real world where my parents are who they are and there are no phantom limbs and no glimmers. That is my dad.

  Michael arrives within the hour. I still have Ferdie’s backpack on both shoulders.

  “Jesus,” he says, walking into Ferdie’s apartment. It takes everything I have to not apologize, start tidying up, and/or make excuses for Ferdie.

  “I know,” I say, just letting it sit.

  “Okay, the car is double-parked downstairs. Did you talk to your folks?” Michael asks, stepping over various empties and pizza boxes to where Ferdie is.

  “Yeah, Dad said he would wire the money,” I say.

  “Really?”

  “It wasn’t pretty,” I say.

  “What you need, son, is to cut that hair o’ yours!” Michael says in an exact Richard Wyatt impression. He stands straight up at attention. “I don’t know how you two stood it.” Michael takes the bongs, the pipes, the pot, and the cocaine and bags them up. “Everything illegal we should get rid of just in case Ferdie doesn’t come back here.” Always the lawyer.

  “Where would he go?”

  “If he’s lucky he’ll go to a sober living house after he spends six months at Recovery House,” Michael says.

  “Hey, man. What are you doing here?” Ferdie asks, his head bobbing and his eyes blinking open.

  “I got the car downstairs; you want to go for a drive?” Michael asks.

  “He’s not a dog, Mic—”

  “Yeah, sure, man. Sounds like fun,” Ferdie says, getting up out of that stupid, old chair. He sways and after a few tries we’re down the stairs and heading out of the city and into Virginia in rush-hour traffic.

  Ferdie is in the backseat, his arm extended over Michael’s baby seat. He finds a plastic bag of Goldfish crackers and starts eating those.

  “I got the Lumineux campaign,” I say to Michael.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. This morning,” I say.

  “Oh, wow. That’s so huge. Congratulations,” Michael says.

  “What about the guy you met in Phoenix? The one who likes your Batman?” Ferdie asks, leaning forward through the two front seats like he used to do when Michael and I were teenagers.

  “The one who likes your Batman?” Michael repeats.

  “She attacked him in an elevator,” Ferdie says, digging his hand between the baby seat cushions for more crackers. He finds plenty and, of course, he eats them.

  “Lincoln Mallory,” I say.

  “That is not a real name,” Michael says.

  “It is. And he’s British,” I say. Ferdie’s crunching fills the car.

  “I know it’s been a while for you, but making up an imaginary—” Michael says, laughing.

  “No. He was real.” And I sigh.

  “You just swooned.”

  “I did not.”

  “This is bad. You haven’t swooned since . . . who was that boy? With the swoopy black hair—he swam, right? Oh, you loooooved him.”

  “His name was Cam and he was my betrothed secret lover.”

  “You never said one word to that boy.” Michael laughs.

  “I know. Not one.”

  “No, wait. You did actually,” Michael says.

  “Don’t. Don’t say it,” I say.

  “Shanks,” Michael says.

  “It was half sure, half thanks.” My head falls into my hands. “Morrrrtified.”

  “So, this Lincoln Mallory,” Michael urges.

  “I invited him to my birthday dinner,” I say. Michael finally gets off the highway. I’m thankful that we’ve passed the time laughing and talking. I don’t know how this is going to go once we get there.

  “Like a year from now birthday dinner?” Ferdie asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “I don’t get it,” Michael says, making turns on one lush Virginian
street after another.

  “I’m not ready for . . . I have other things to clean up before . . . you know,” I say, motioning back to Ferdie. Michael nods.

  “And you’ll be ready in exactly one year?” Michael asks.

  “Well—”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Anna. You can’t schedule when you’re going to start living your life,” Michael says.

  “Yes, you can,” I say, and Michael just laughs.

  “So, no pressure on your birthday dinner then,” Michael says, pulling into a parking lot behind a nothing building that looks more like a strip mall than a Recovery House.

  “He said he was saving me.”

  “From what?” Michael asks.

  “From him.”

  “Ugh, that’s such a line,” Michael says.

  “I use it all the time,” Ferdie says.

  “Well, you would,” I say.

  “Right?” Ferdie says, laughing.

  “I’m fine with it either way,” I say.

  “Liar.” Michael turns off the car. I smile and turn around to face Ferdie.

  “We’re here,” I say.

  “Oh cool. Where’s here?” he says.

  “This is the Recovery House. Ferdie, I think you need help.” Michael gets out of the car and walks into the rehab facility.

  “What?” Ferdie asks, leaning forward.

  “You need help,” I say, twisting around. Ferdie leans his head through the front seats and rests his mop of hair on me.

  “Don’t leave me,” he says, pulling my hand to him.

  “I’ll never leave you,” I say, kissing the top of his head.

  “You’re going to leave me here. You’re going to leave me here,” he says. His voice is exhausted. He looks so tired.

  “You need help,” I say again.

  “I know. I know.”

  “These people can help you,” I say. Michael comes out of the facility with what looks like two orderlies. Ferdie crumples in tears.

  “You don’t love me anymore,” he says, and the sobs come out of him like he’s a tired baby at a grocery store. He’s rubbing his eyes and just . . . crying. I step out of the front seat. Tell the men to give me a second. I open up the back door and tuck in next to Ferdie in the backseat. He crumples into me.

  “What did I always say to you? Right before bedtime?” I ask.

  “I’ll eat you up, I love you so,” Ferdie says. I nod.

  “It’s you and me, right?” I ask. He nods. “You and me.” I make him look at me. Those big brown eyes. Just like mine. “Say it.”

  “You and me,” he repeats.

  17

  The flower arrangement on my desk is from Helen. I can’t stop staring at it. The card is short and sweet. You kick ass. And she signed it with just an H. Michael finally dropped me off at home at around ten thirty last night. I had just enough energy to put on my pajamas, plug in my phone, and fall into bed. Which means I’m processing what happened yesterday in the early morning hours before Holloway/Greene opens. On the day after I landed my biggest account and checked my little brother into rehab.

  As the Lumineux e-mails stream in and the scent of the flowers wafts, I replay what the check-in counselor at Recovery House said. Ferdie is going to be on lockdown. No cell phone. No communication with the outside world. He’ll be attending meetings and earning his keep. I can come see him when he gets his thirty-day chip. That’s the longest Ferdie and I have gone without speaking. A knock on my door.

  “I knew I’d find you here,” Sasha says, stepping into my office and sitting down in one of my client chairs with a steaming cup of coffee. “Isn’t it amazing? She sent me one, too,” Sasha says, eyeing my flower arrangement from Helen.

  “They’re beyond,” I say, eyeing my phone. As if it will somehow telecommunicate with Ferdie.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  A beat.

  “No,” I say honestly. I look up at her, through the wafting beautiful flowers and the afterglow of a job well done, and I’m just exhausted.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Sasha asks.

  “My brother. We had to check him into rehab yesterday,” I say. I clear my throat and can’t stop shaking my head. “He’d tried to get sober before. Never told me about it. He’d go cold turkey for however many weeks. He even checked himself into a place once. Told me he was going to a hockey camp. Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

  “This happened yesterday?” Sasha asks.

  “He called when we were in Phoenix. From jail. Fighting. Always for fighting,” I say.

  “In Phoenix? And you didn’t say anything?”

  “I know. So, I went to check on him after brunch. It was so bad. It had gotten—”

  “So, you did a good thing. He’s in the right place, now,” Sasha says.

  “The counselor told me that—I mean, she was nice about it—but she said I was his prime enabler. Enabler. They use words like that there. I didn’t help, I enabled. Lincoln said I wasn’t helping him by constantly fixing everything. He was right,” I say.

  “You were just trying to love him,” Sasha says.

  “I know, but I need to learn how to love people without trying to control everything,” I say.

  “Yeah, well,” Sasha says.

  “Michael—he helped yesterday, we’ve known each other forever—thought my idea about inviting Lincoln to my birthday dinner was more of the same. Me trying to control everything,” I say.

  “What? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That’s romantic. It’s—”

  “It’s super controlly,” I say.

  “Maybe, but—”

  “On precisely this date at this time for this function you will present yourself to me and we shall both be ready on precisely this date at this time and at this function to be in love exactly the way I’ve always imagined and then we’ll walk off into the sunset that I’ve timed to happen just when I blow out my candle and know exactly now what to wish for that will make me happy and the question I’ve struggled with for exactly one year will finally be answered to my satisfaction,” I say.

  “That’s bananas. That was so cool what you did. Pfflt,” Sasha says.

  “That’s the thing. It sounds really cool and all romance novelly, but in reality it’s me trying to be the boss of everything yet again, so I wouldn’t . . . you know, I thought I did it because if I gave him this sweeping epic option he couldn’t say no. He could see the error of his ways and not be afraid or something,” I say.

  “No, I get that,” Sasha says, deflating a bit. “I really wanted it to be awesome.”

  “Me too,” I say.

  “So, what do you do then? Do you call him or just . . . wait?”

  “I’m beginning to think I do whatever feels completely wrong. I have to let it go,” I say.

  “Let it go? What . . . I mean, how does that work?”

  “Just like it sounds. I let whatever is going to happen, happen. Just like with Ferdie. I can’t go down there and make sure he goes to his meetings and I can’t—” I choke up. “I can’t make sure he’s okay all the time. Every day. I can’t keep protecting him. That counselor was right. I never let him grow up. It’s hard not to jump from there to it being my fault.”

  “It’s no one’s fault,” Sasha says.

  “That’s what the counselor said,” I say. “But, see, if I blame myself for it then I get to control it and then . . . I can fix it! Oh my God, it’s everywhere?!” I say.

  “Isn’t the first step admitting you have a problem?” Sasha asks.

  “It is.”

  “Well.”

  “My name is Anna and I’m addicted to control.”

  “Hi, Aaaaaanna,” Sasha says.

  We’re quiet.

  Sasha continues, “But Lincoln still might come to the birthday dinner, so . . .”

  “I know, so it’s perfect. I wait around for a year for someone who may or may not show up. I don’t have to date or anything in the interim and then if L
incoln doesn’t show up I’ve had a year to ready myself for it,” I say.

  “The good thing is that we’ve got Lumineux launching in October, so every day until then is going to be packed with awesome. Letting go will be a little easier,” Sasha says.

  “Hope so,” I say.

  “Audrey is being oddly quiet,” Sasha says.

  “Oh, I know,” I say.

  “She was CC’d on all the Lumineux e-mails and never responded.” Sasha cranes her neck toward the door.

  “We have to be ready. There’s another play.”

  “But Lumineux is ours now.”

  “One would think,” I say, crossing my fingers.

  “Well, I’m not going to let Audrey Stinkpants ruin today. We are awesome and this campaign is going to be awesome,” Sasha says.

  “Speaking of, I’m off to see the elder Stinkpants,” I say, gathering myself.

  “Charlton?”

  “He wanted to debrief on the Lumineux pitch,” I say.

  “You want me to join you?”

  “Nah, it’ll be fine,” I say. Sasha looks immediately relieved. I stride through the office to a smattering of congratulations, but mostly what Sasha and I did at Lumineux yesterday is off everyone’s radar. It’s not the big car account. It’s not that billionaire that Chuck brought in. No one cares about Lumineux. Yet.

  “Anna Wyatt to see Mr. Holloway,” I say to his ancient, terrifying secretary.

  “Right this way,” she says, rising from her chair and leading me through the gorgeous mahogany doors and into Charlton Holloway’s corner office.

  “Ms. Wyatt here to see you, sir,” she says.

  “Yes, thank you, Nora,” Charlton says, giving an efficient nod to the woman who has taken care of his professional life for decades. She closes the door behind me and I take a seat in one of the chairs across from Charlton.

  “Congratulations, Ms. Wyatt,” Charlton says, signing a letter and setting it aside.

  “Thank you, sir,” I say.

  And then he’s quiet. I cross my legs. Quiet for a long time. I recross my legs, the leather of the chair now the soundtrack to the quietest meeting on record.

  “We’re waiting on one more,” Charlton says, signing another letter and setting it too aside.

  “Oh, sure,” I say, breathless. Which Holloway child is it going to be? A quick knock and I turn to see Audrey sighing her way into Charlton’s office. I eke out a smile.