by Meg Haston
It’s bizarre, thinking about the day as anything other than the day of my death.
On the desk behind her, the phone rings. She lifts her eyebrows at me and I think she says fingers crossed on her way to answer.
“Anna Fredricks,” she says into the phone.
Oh, I think. Fredricks.
“Thanks, Linda. Appreciate it. I’ll check in when we get back.”
I’m grinning by the time she turns around.
We sit side by side in the middle seat of a white minivan, behind a male driver who barely grunts when Shrink tells him our destination. I tuck the one-eared bunny under my seat belt. I think maybe this van is the same one Cotton Candy drove, but I can’t be sure from the backseat. I wonder about the lady who drove me here on the first day. I would ask about her, but I don’t know her name.
Shrink talks for a while as the van pulls onto the road. She tells me Ashley will be weak, that it will be difficult to see her, that our time together will be short. She asks what I think it will be like.
“I don’t know.” It’s still and hot in the van, and the vents in the ceiling are blowing lukewarm air.
“How are you feeling about seeing her?”
I consider that. “Mixed,” I say again, staring out the window. “Like relieved but also . . . upset.”
“Upset angry? Upset . . .”
“Upset fucking pissed,” I tell the window. My cheeks look puffy in the glass. I look past my reflection. Outside, the desert looks the same as it did on the first day. Like somebody pressed Pause and the whole world’s been waiting for me to get my shit together. “I mean, I know it’s not about me, but still.” It is about me. It’s about me and what I did and if I had just told Cate no, thank you, no razor for me, none of this would have happened.
“Pissed,” she says. “That’s . . . yes. I can understand that. Betrayed?”
“It’s not her fault,” I say. “Did you know she has a brother?”
“I didn’t.”
“Yeah. But not a brother like Josh.”
“Hm,” she says.
“It would have been better for her to have a woman therapist, I think. Like you, maybe.”
She smiles. “I’ve been really proud of you, Stevie,” she says in a way that tells me she means it. “I think you’re starting to work, and the relationship you’ve developed with Ashley is . . . admirable.”
Don’t say nice things, I beg her silently. I’m not ready for that yet.
“I want to let you know something, Stevie. Moving back into the outside world after spending any amount of time in a treatment center can be difficult. Overwhelming in some ways. I want to make sure that you know I’m right here. And if the hospital starts to feel like too much—”
“It was mine.” I widen my eyes at my reflection.
“What was yours?”
“The razor.” I swallow the excuses: It wasn’t mine to begin with; I was only using it to shave my legs; I never told her about it, I don’t know how she . . . Noise. Irrelevant. I hold my breath, half expecting her to morph into an angry mom—I will turn this van around, young lady, so help me—but she doesn’t.
“I appreciate your telling me, Stevie.”
Shit. She’s disappointed. Angry would have been so much easier.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, obviously.”
“You realize that we will have to address this when we get back to the center.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“It will mean suspension of several privileges, and you’ll likely have to meet with our clinical team.”
“I’ll do whatever.” My voice is small. I don’t tell her about the pills I buried next to the riding ring. Maybe she already knows. I flushed the rest down Cottage Six’s toilet. I watched them circle around and around. I watched them disappear. I didn’t feel some sweeping, magnificent sense of relief. But I could breathe just a little easier, and that was enough.
The first thing I notice about the hospital is that it’s the loudest place I have ever been in my life. Shrink and I walk quickly down the hall, toward room 346. I repeat the number again and again—346, 346, 346—to have something to focus on. It’s too much, all of it: the whiter-than-white halls and the lights overhead and all the noise—my god, doesn’t anybody else hear that? The blare of the loudspeaker coming from nowhere: Paging Doctor Kildair, Doctor Kildair to the . . . The screech of the broken wheel on a gurney, someone’s laugh, untethered and bouncing through the halls. I ball my fists at my side.
“Doing okay?” Shrink slides a glance at me.
“Yeah.” I stare straight ahead. My body is vibrating with all the noise. Seriously, doesn’t anybody hear that?
“It will take a while to get used to,” she says. “Just breathe. It’s a lot, I know.”
When we get to the end of the hall, she holds up one finger and leans over the counter at the nurses’ station. She shows a woman her ID and says something in a voice so low, I can’t hear. Then she’s next to me again. She squeezes my shoulder and nods at the door.
“Can I go in by myself?” I ask, knowing the answer is no. Grateful for it, even.
She shakes her head.
“Okay.” I grip the handle and pump it slowly. The door is heavier than I imagined. Inside, Ashley is propped up in bed. Her blond curls are matted to the side of her head, clear tubes snake around her, and her hospital gown looks almost exactly like the one we put on every morning for weight and vitals. The side of her face is bruised. Finally, I look at her arm. It’s bandaged with pure white. The other is fine, unsuspecting. As if nothing bad ever happened to its mirror image.
“Hey,” she murmurs. “You came. Hi, Anna.”
“Hi, Ashley.”
I stay by the door. The room is tiny, with a window into the hall but no real windows that let in light. In the corner next to a beeping machine are three balloons. One of them says Get Well Soon, which seems like the most awful thing, but I guess they don’t make suicide balloons. There are also a couple greeting cards with sweeping cursive and pastel backgrounds propped open on the table next to her.
“Where are your parents?” I demand.
“They went out, to get something to eat. They’ve been here, though. Like, most of the time.” I think she tries to smile. Her lips are chapped. She’s pale. I wonder if her skin feels clammy. I wonder if this is what I would look like, if I actually tried to go through with it. The thought makes my stomach turn. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
“Can you, like, come a little closer? It feels weird, you all the way over there,” Ashley says.
“Okay.” I take a few small steps until I’m standing at her feet. Shrink sits in the chair by the door. I hear her bag hit the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I force myself to look at her.
“Yeah. Me too,” she says. She moves her legs a little and pats the edge of the bed. I sit.
“Did you mean it?” I ask.
She glances over my shoulder at Shrink, then back at me. She nods. “Yeah, and then no. I did at first, like I really thought maybe it would be better than going home because I hate the idea of going home. I hate it. And then things started to get fuzzy and I got really panicky, but I couldn’t move. And then I just felt really warm and that’s the last thing I remember.”
“Oh.” I lower my voice. “How did you find the, um—”
“Girls,” Shrink says gently.
“Sorry.” I give a forced, twisted smile, and she smiles back. “Cate found you,” I tell her.
“Stevie.”
“I know,” I say, without turning around. “Sorry.” I wasn’t going to tell her the rest. She doesn’t need to know the rest.
“You’re lucky, you know,” she says quietly.
I frown at her.
“Having a dad who made you come to treatment. It means he wants you to get better. It means you’re worth getting better.” Her eyes get red and glassy. “You have somebody to go home to. Some worth going home to.”
“Me, too, I think.”
“I brought you this.” I wiggle the bunny around, make it dance in the air.
“Cool.” She smiles with cracked lips. “Thanks.”
I tuck it in next to her.
“I’m going to be here for a while,” she says. “Probably.”
“Probably.”
“Do you think I could still come visit, after?” she asks.
“For sure. After.” Then I hold my breath and pat her arm, above the bandage. It’s warm and pulsing. Alive. Nothing like what I expected.
day twenty-eight: the anniversary
Thursday, July 31, 7:45 A.M.
“ARE you ready?” Shrink asks.
Just like that. We’re sitting on the lawn, on her ratty picnic blanket at the very edge of the green and the sky is so blue it could be the ocean, vast, with just a few white caps. Breakfast and supplement sit on a tray in front of me. Quesadillas, which means past-their-prime bananas mixed with generic-brand peanut butter and brown sugar, slathered on wheat tortillas and grilled. I’m full, up to the very back of my throat, even though I haven’t taken a bite.
I press my lips together. I shrug.
“I want to empower you to use your voice to express whatever you need to express to him today.” She sits cross-legged, in loose black pants. “First off, where do you feel it in your body?”
“Feel what?”
“Your words. Your story.”
My hand flies to my throat. She nods.
“Your throat chakra. The home of honest expression. Speaking your truth.”
“Jesus, Anna. Today?”
“Today is the perfect day to speak your truth, Stevie.”
I don’t want to speak my truth. It will hurt too much. I thought about calling Dad this morning but didn’t, for that very reason.
“I’m going to challenge you to speak without judgment,” she tells me.
I take a breath, a free breath, but it feels like I’m breathing through a straw.
“Okay. I hate that this is a day,” I begin.
“Tell him.”
“Josh.” I stare at the empty space next to her. I’m supposed to imagine that Josh is there, to see him in his faded jeans and T-shirt, his messy towel-dried hair and his freakishly long middle toe. I want to see him, I do. Please, Josh, I plead silently. Just today. I’ll never ask again.
“Josh,” I say again. “I hate that this is a day. I hate that there is any reason to remember this day, and the truth is that almost all of the time I feel like it’s my fault, that this will be a day every year, forever.”
“Good, Stevie.”
“You probably know I was going to kill myself today.” I can feel Shrink’s eyes on me. “Of course you know.” I touch the blanket. “And I’ve thought a lot about it and I’m just wondering, if it would be okay if I didn’t. If I didn’t do that. Today.”
I wait for an answer. The air is hot and thick, sagging with anticipation.
“I mean, I know you wouldn’t actually want me to die. That’s not what I’m saying. I guess I’m just telling you that I don’t have anything for you today. To, like, honor you. Or whatever. I don’t know what that would be.”
“I wonder if it would be possible,” Shrink says carefully, “to honor him with your life. Instead of your death.”
“The truly shitty part of all this is that if I don’t die today, then I have to deal with this . . .” I rub the back of my neck. “This.”
“What’s this?” she asks. “Tell it to Josh.”
“I’m sick, Josh. And it really sucks to be sick without you here.” I laugh, more of a choking sound. “Oh, fuck. I’m really sick.”
“Okay.” Shrink stops me. “What does it feel like to say that out loud?”
I shake my head. Jump when the tears hit my collarbone. “I don’t know how to get unsick, you know? It’s been a really long time.”
“I know. And it will take time to get healthy.” Legs still crisscrossed, she scoots closer to me. She stops once our knees are touching. Rests her forearms on her thighs. “I believe, Stevie, that human beings . . . we’re oriented toward health.”
“Meaning . . .”
“Meaning, your body wants to heal. Your mind wants to heal. If you can get to a place where you let your mind and body do what they want to do, you will start to move toward health.”
“Yeah.” I sniff and stare over her shoulder. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“What’s the deal with the paper cranes?”
“There’s not a deal, really. I like the process. I like making something with my hands. And the cranes themselves are meant to symbolize peace. Some believe that they symbolize recovery. I like that idea.”
“Oh.”
“If you’d like, I can teach you.”
I nod. “That would be . . . Thanks.” If I let my eyelids drop just a little, the desert gets hazy. I try to conjure up an image of Josh. Not even Josh as a teenager. I’ll take Josh as a little kid, at the lake. With the Mickey Mouse towel and the paperback. I’ll take any version. I’m desperate that way.
“I also want to tell him I’m sorry. Not just for the accident and for not saving him. But for Eden, too.”
“Tell him.” She reaches out, and squeezes my arm.
“She sucked me in, Josh. It’s not an excuse, I know. But I think you get it.”
“She manipulated you both.”
“Yes.”
I steady my breath to tell him the most important thing. “I love you, Josh. I never loved her. Not . . . I love you in a real way.” My head is thick with tears and all the waiting for the Anniversary. This day that can’t be erased or unremembered.
“So what has the day been like for you so far?” Shrink asks.
“Different.” I pluck two blades and twist them together.
“Different how?”
“Different like I thought I’d be dead, for one.” I keep talking fast so she won’t have room. The last thing I need today is to end up in that tiny room in the villa. “And different like I just pictured myself crying a lot and getting really mad and stuff.”
“Maybe those things will come. Grief is like that. Cold and fast and insanely unpredictable. But right now, it sounds like you’re in a place of acceptance.”
“Acceptance . . .”
“Acceptance of the fact that your brother is dead. Acceptance of your eating disorder, of needing to be in this place for a little while. Acceptance doesn’t mean you like something, doesn’t mean you’re comfortable with it. But it does mean that you acknowledge it for what it is.”
“I guess.”
“And today marks the one-year anniversary of the night your brother died.”
“It does.” I’m exhausted suddenly, like I could flop back into the grass and let it swallow me up. Sleep for days.
Shrink checks her watch. Noticeably, which has to be some sort of rookie mistake. “Listen, Stevie. I have a little something for you. Something to acknowledge the day. I’d like to give it to you, if you don’t mind.”
“Huh? Okay.” I push myself to standing and brush the dried bits of grass from another girl’s jeans. Then I pick up my tray and follow her into the villa and down the red-tiled hall. She unlocks her door.
Inside, there’s a paper crane sitting in my seat. It’s gold, and heavy when I pick it up and turn it over in my palm.
“Hey. It’s beautiful. Thank you.” I swallow the lump in my throat, but it bobs right back again. It takes effort to keep my palm flat, open. Not to crush this beautiful thing in an effort to keep it close.
“My pleasure. And one more thing.”
I look up. Look away and look back again, even though I was right the first time. “Wait.” I’m not dreaming.
He’s standing in the doorway. “Hey, Stevie. Hey, little girl.”
I forgot how much he looks like Josh, or Josh looked like him,
with his wavy, almost curly hair and broad shoulders. He’s wearing a dress shirt. He never wears a dress shirt.
“I’m not supposed to say you look good,” he tells me. “But I’m . . . you . . . it’s good to see you.”
I walk slowly, afraid that if I move too fast, he’ll be gone. I wind my arms around his neck and press my face into his chest.
“Okay. Me, too.” I press my palms against his cheeks, his neck, his shoulders, and every time he’s still there. “What are you doing here?” I pull back and glance behind him, half expecting to see her lips: perfect and red like desert dust. “Where’s—”
The corners of his mouth fall just slightly, and I feel stupid. Of course.
“She’s still in Paris,” he says. “She wanted to come.”
“It’s okay.” When I whip my head around, I see Shrink standing in her office, and suddenly I’m embarrassed.
“What are you doing here?” I ask again. “When did you—”
“Well, Anna here called. And she said that she knew it was gonna be a tough day today, with—” His voice wobbles. “So she asked if I wanted to come out and start the family part early.”
Shrink raises her eyebrows. “What do you think? You’d have to stay here for meals and sleeping and such. But we could start early with your family sessions.”
I can’t take my eyes off him. “So, like, when?”
“Now?” Shrink says.
“Fine by me.” Dad’s laugh is shaky. Nervous. I can’t blame him, and I don’t.
“Me, too,” I say.
“Let’s get started, then.” Shrink sits in her red chair.
Dad closes the door behind us and I carry myself across the threshold, suddenly, hopelessly aware of my weight. The weight of all the parts of me: beating heart and bone and flesh and things that have happened and things that are happening now. And Josh, resting still between the folds. I carry it all, and it’s heavy enough that I’m tired and need to rest. Just heavy enough that I know: I am here. I am alive.
note from the author