All We Could Have Been

by TE Carter

  For the first time I feel anger rising in me, but not at strangers on TV, or at myself, or at people at school, or at my parents for not being able to help me. I’m not angry at Heath for another of his catchphrases.

  I’m angry at Scott. Because not only did he destroy the Cabots, but he also destroyed us. He took away all the things we could have been. Should have been.

  “I made pie, too,” my mom tells me when I get back to the kitchen and sit at the table. I fight back tears, thinking of her buying hand towels and knowing we’ll never have a normal holiday again.

  “Traffic was light,” my dad says. He pours three glasses of cider, setting them up on the table. We used to drink lemonade whenever we were all together for meals, but, well, none of us drink lemonade anymore.

  “That’s good. How’s the construction on the highway?” my mom asks.

  “Not bad. Surprising with the holiday, since it’s usually terrible. I guess they finally remembered what a headache it is, so they tried to clear as much as they could before today.”

  He sips his cider and my mom turns to me. “Tomorrow you’ll be meeting with Heath first, then we have the other meeting, and after that we’ve arranged for Scott to visit with you for up to an hour. Usually they only do about twenty minutes, but they’re making an exception.”

  “Since it’s been a while,” my dad adds, like Scott was on vacation or we just missed each other on holidays.

  “Okay.”

  “I ironed something for you to wear,” my mom continues. “And I made sure it was yellow.”

  “Okay.”

  We go on this way for a while. She recites the logistics of the weekend ahead, all while preparing a family dinner for three people who haven’t known how to be a family since I was twelve. My dad interjects every so often with random tidbits of irrelevant information. And I just nod and say everything’s okay.

  “I also got Scott a card, if you want to sign it,” my mom says. “For his birthday.”

  Suddenly I can’t speak.

  Nothing happened. Not really. Nothing bigger or more important than anything else. And yet it’s all darkness in an instant.

  I can’t make sense of this. I hate how one minute life is a series of moments and reflections, and the next it’s chaos and hurt and I’m surrounded by words and ideas and memories. I hate how my brain works—or doesn’t—and I hate that I can’t explain it to anyone. When I try, they just slap on phrases like cognitive dissonance or trauma response. I hate that everything is words in a textbook, but there is still no guide for navigating it.

  “I need to lie down,” I say.

  “But the potatoes will be ready in twenty minutes,” my mom says, freezing in place, because what are we going to do with all those potatoes?

  “I’ll be down for the potatoes. Just call me when they’re ready.”

  I run upstairs, to the second floor of their condo, away from them and from the multicolored corn on the sliding door to their porch and from my mom’s schedule for visiting my brother in prison.

  I collapse on the bed and take out my phone. Marcus texted while I was in the car, but I didn’t have a chance to respond. He sent me an emoji of a chicken and an explanation.

  I can’t find the turkey.

  I text him back the turkey emoji with no comment.

  How’s home? he replies.

  Not home. I hate the holidays.

  Me too. Wish you were here. My mom’s trying to make sense of a vegan turkey.

  Don’t you eat meat?

  Yeah, but she forgot to shop for groceries until almost midnight last night and this was all they had left. So Happy Lentil Loaf Day.

  He follows the text with an emoji of a jalapeño.

  That’s a jalapeño, not a lentil. I smile even though I’m still crying. Because I’m a fucking mess and my brain doesn’t know what it’s doing.

  What’s a lentil look like?

  I don’t know. But not a jalapeño.

  Prove it, he texts back.

  I’m so grateful for him, which is fitting on Thanksgiving. He distracts me from all the things that have been running through my head for the last few hours by sending me on a Google image search for a lentil. And I almost forget. I almost believe I’m a girl who misses her boyfriend and just finds her parents’ weird mealtime chats uncomfortable.

  I almost let Rory and her flyers fade into someone else’s world.

  I’m almost okay.

  Almost. Until my mom calls up to me that the potatoes are ready.

  And follows with, “Grab your brother’s birthday card off my nightstand. You can sign it while we eat.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Heath hasn’t changed much in the time I’ve known him. I come back to see him a couple times a year, even though I don’t change, either. I suppose our money could go to better uses, since five years have accomplished nothing, but then again, I don’t need more change than is necessary.

  I sit in the lobby of his office, which may as well be an accountant’s office for all its drab colors, until he finishes with his previous appointment and comes to get me.

  He’s too tan to be a therapist. Too tan and too blond. He has a beard, but it’s too neat. Everything about him is too too. He looks like he should be on a billboard for underwear or cologne or ties or something, not meeting with me to talk about my anxieties.

  “How goes it, Lexicon?” He thinks this nickname is cute.

  “Off the goddamn rails.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Come on in and let’s talk about what’s been happening.”

  I follow him to his office, which is as tan as he is. It’s not literally tan, although there are too many brown tones, and it continues the accounting vibe, but it feels like an office would feel if tanned surfers were offices. Maybe that doesn’t make sense, but that’s exactly what it looks like.

  “So tell me what’s going on,” he says, sitting and crossing his legs and looking … well, like a tan guy named Heath in designer pants.

  “Why’d you become a therapist?” I ask.

  “Is that relevant to what’s been happening with you?”

  “Maybe? It just seems like you don’t really know much about me or what it might be like to be me.”

  He reaches for his tea and sips it, placing the cup down after a moment. “We’re not here to discuss me. Let me ask you: How does it make you feel when people assume things about you based on news stories about Scott?”

  “It sucks.”

  “Yes, it does. It does suck when people think they know you based on something superficial or something outside your control.”

  Score one for Heath, but he’s still too tan.

  I sit back on his couch, picking at the threads on the blanket he keeps draped across it. “The thing that’s the worst is that I literally don’t know how I’m going to feel from one minute to the next. Like, I come in here and I’m angry and snarky and that’s okay, but I could start crying any second, and I won’t even know why.”

  “You’ve been through a great deal,” he says. “Trauma can make it very hard to understand what’s real. It doesn’t really let go of you, either. So even when you feel like you’re breaking past it, it’s still there, waiting.”

  “That’s exactly what it’s like. I’ll be happy and laughing and things are okay, and then … they aren’t and I hate it. I look like a mess.”

  “I notice you often use phrasing like that. That you look like something or another. Do you think there’s anything in that?”

  “Isn’t that why my parents pay you? To tell me if there’s anything in that?”

  He smiles and sips his tea again. I think he’s waiting for me.

  “Fine. Okay,” I say. “Yes, I say those things because … what? Because my focus is on other people?” More sipping, but his smile extends past the edges of the teacup. “Look, I know that. I know I worry too much about what people think and how they judge me, but that doesn’t make it hurt less. It doesn’t mak
e me stop worrying.”

  “But they don’t know you. They don’t know who you are truly. No matter how much they do or do not know about your situation, they don’t take the time to get to know who Alexia is. They only know a version you want them to know, or they know their own perceptions, so their opinions aren’t valid. What good does worrying do?” he asks.

  “Yeah, if I knew that, and if I knew how to have this rational conversation with myself every time it happened, would I be here right now?”

  “You can try having that conversation. Have you tried?”

  “Nope. I’ve never tried something as simple as trying to get better. I just thought it was grand to be miserable all the time.”

  He leans toward me, looking pensive. “I need you to understand something, okay? I’m not totally sure it would matter if you didn’t have a brother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People are people. Some are going to amaze you. Some make every day a memory. Others … maybe even what feels like a majority some days … they’re not like that. Some people search out weakness. When they sense it, they find those cracks, the places you hurt, and they dig at them. They’re only happy when other people are in pieces, because they don’t know wholeness themselves.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “I mean, I get that and I agree, but why wouldn’t it change if Scott hadn’t … if I didn’t have a brother?”

  “If it wasn’t Scott, you’d still have cracks. They’d just be in different places and would’ve been caused by something else. Maybe the same people wouldn’t care about those cracks, but I’m sure a new group of people would find them instead. That’s how people are, sadly.”

  “So you’re saying it’s hopeless?” I ask.

  “I’m saying it’s human.”

  “What do I do about it, though?”

  “I don’t know if there’s anything to do about other people. I think there’s only what you can do for you.”

  “This is all too reasonable and meta for the morning after Thanksgiving when you’re seventeen, you know.”

  “I don’t think so,” Heath says. “I think you’re far more capable of appreciating what I’m saying than you pretend. And I think you need me a lot less than anyone thinks.”

  “I never pretended to need you. I tell you all the time this is pointless.” He nods and waits. “And yet I’m here, right? I’m sitting here because I want to believe it? That’s what you’re saying? So this is all basically the point? That it’s about what I think will happen and self-fulfilling prophecies and all that?”

  Heath hands me a bowl full of mints, taking one out and unwrapping it for himself first. “How’s the new school?” he asks.

  “It’s … a school.”

  “It’s more than a building.”

  I sigh and look out the window. It’s snowing, but only kind of. It’s that lazy early-winter reminder of what’s to come. A few flakes, a gust of wind, and maybe a brush of white on the lawns, but nothing that we even notice unless we stop and focus for a moment.

  “I joined the drama club,” I tell him. “And I was in the play.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “It is. It was.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “At first it was weird. There were some people … they didn’t really like me. They talked about me when I wasn’t around, and I tried not to care, but I did. And I worried because I wondered what would happen if they found out.”

  “You don’t worry about that anymore?” Heath asks.

  “I told them.”

  He pauses. “Did you?”

  “There’s…” I don’t know how to explain it.

  The snow’s picking up, but it’s still not sticking to the pavement. “I told them because … I don’t know. I thought you’d think it was a good idea.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’re always talking about choice. About empowering myself. Defining myself. They would have found out eventually. If not because I visited Scott, something else would have happened. It always does. So I … I didn’t want to keep waiting for it to happen.”

  “And? How did it go?” he asks.

  “It was awful,” I admit. “It might even be worse now than it’s ever been. There’s this one girl. Rory. I thought she was my friend. She’s always defending people. Like, she’s constantly on her phone or online or ranting in class. There’s always some injustice she’s upset about, and she said I was brave for telling them. She promised I was always safe with her.”

  Heath takes another sip of his tea. “Let me guess. Turns out those injustices are easier to define when she’s dealing with abstract people rather than the flawed and complex morality of real people?”

  “Let’s just say she’s the worst.”

  “I don’t think you were wrong,” he says. “I think the idea had a lot of merit, even if it was hard. Even if it didn’t turn out how you’d hoped. There’s a great sense of pride in owning your pain. It’s a form of controlling the outflow.”

  “I hate when you talk like that.”

  “Like what?” he asks.

  “Clinical. I hate when you make me sound like a science experiment.”

  He doesn’t respond to that, but he makes a note. I’m sure it’s something else with a name. Some symptom of being me.

  “Also—and it’s not really related—but there’s a guy. Well, two guys, actually.”

  Heath nods. “I guess we’ve never talked about what this kind of complication might do to everything else you’re dealing with. Do you want to talk about him—or them?”

  “Well, one isn’t … He’s not that kind of guy. I mean, he is, but not for me. Which is good because he doesn’t feel like that about me, either, but everyone expected us to be together and…” I pause. “I’m not explaining this right.”

  “Is this situation with the guy making you more or less anxious?” Heath asks.

  “I don’t know. Both? At first it was fine. But now it’s not, because he was my friend. I really cared about him, and it was nice having this friend I connected to. And he has this thing … It’s his thing, and it doesn’t affect me, so let’s just leave it at that. But now he doesn’t want me around because of the stuff people are saying, and he doesn’t want this spotlight on him, but it means I lose. Again. I always have to lose what matters.”

  “How are you feeling about … Have you considered reverting back to old coping mechanisms because of this?”

  “No,” I say. “I’m not cutting again.”

  “And how is the environment with your aunt? Is it stable, would you say?”

  I nod. “It’s actually good. I like being there. Except this school stuff.”

  “Have you considered finishing here? You’re almost done with high school and—”

  “I think about it constantly. But I don’t want to give up. If I give up now, isn’t that basically saying the last five years were a waste? That it was some kind of failed experiment and I should’ve stayed here all along, because I can’t function on my own?”

  “You’re still young,” Heath says. “You don’t need to function on your own yet.”

  “I want to, though. I’ve given up so much these last few years. I want it to count for something.”

  “So what’s preventing you from getting through the year there? Is it what happened?”

  I shake my head. “Not really. It is, but … I’m not upset about the right things.”

  “What are the right things?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. I wish I could explain. Like Scott. I have this whole thing today to deal with, but all I’m thinking about is some people I’ve known for a few months and worrying about what they think of me. I try not to care. And it works … until I do. And when I do care, I lose it. I can’t make sense of things, and there’s no steep slope where I slide down and end up in that place. Instead it’s like I’m just walking along and then the ground’s gone and I’m in this pit and everyone’s
looking down this endless cavern at me and I can’t get out. And they’re all talking about it and judging me and I can’t get rid of the things they say and think about me. I know none of it matters, but I can’t stop my thoughts.”

  Heath nods. “I know you didn’t want to try medication before, but—”

  “No. I still don’t. Like, I get it. I know what you’re trying to say. And yes, I know it’s probably often the best solution. But it’s not the best solution for me. Because I’ll know, and it will make it worse, you know? Like, I’ll always be waiting for the ground to disappear, and when it doesn’t, I’ll know it’s only because I’m being suspended. I’ll know the ground still isn’t there. Because you didn’t fix the ground. You just gave me a parachute.”

  “That’s okay,” he says. “You don’t have to. I don’t want it to make you feel worse. But it’s something to consider. If you’re feeling like it’s hard to go on, I don’t think you need to worry about asking for help. It’s okay to take the parachute sometimes. And once the ground comes back, we can take it away again. It doesn’t have to be permanent.”

  “Fine,” I agree. “If it gets to that point, fine.”

  “Message received.”

  “So all these thoughts are there … and it’s hard to figure out what to choose to focus on. And then there’s this other thing, too.”

  “Does the other thing have a name?” he asks. “Is this the other guy?”

  “How’d you know?”

  He laughs. “That’s why your parents are paying me, remember?”

  “Touché.”

  “He has a name. Marcus.”

  “I imagine he’s aware of everything with your brother, too. If you told everyone?”

  “I told him first.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Good. It’s kind of like you promised years ago. He can look at me and he doesn’t hate me because of it.”

  “It sounds like you’ve made serious progress this year, Alexia.”

  “I think so. But then … none of it goes away. Like I’m good and then I’m not. Sometimes I kind of want to come home and pretend this year didn’t happen. But then I think of the good stuff. Like having friends before they hated me. Drama club. Marcus. And it’s all reason to fight for myself, but then … then my brain does what it does, and the world becomes chaos and confusion, and I can’t do it anymore. I just wish I was doing it right.”