by Tess Oliver
Sugar lifted a brow at me. I shrugged.
“Jules, what happened?” she asked.
Julian peered up at us from the blue shade of his hat. “Did you hear that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was sort of an anti-sound, like a whole bunch of refrigerators going off at once.”
“Right.” Julian lifted a long finger into the air. “Listen.”
I tried hard to listen, to hear something, and all the while wondering if he was losing it.
Sugar heard it first. She walked to the door and pressed her ear against it. “Lots of frenzied conversation and hurried footsteps.” She looked over at Julian. “It’s the staff. They sound sort of panicked.”
Julian nodded. “Yes, I would imagine they are. I just rendered the entire security system, gates and all, completely useless.” The voices grew louder. “No reason to cause full chaos.” He tapped his keyboard, and the buzz that had fallen silent, started up again. Voices and activity in the hallway slowly returned to normal.
“Dude.” I held out my fist for Julian. Fist bumping was one of the human contact gestures I’d taught him, but he wasn’t always in the mood to return it. Apparently, this occasion called for it. He lifted his fist and awkwardly tapped mine. “You said you were working on something big. You weren’t kidding.” The doctors and nurses liked to pretend and give the illusion that we weren’t locked in this place, but the circus of activity Julian’s little push of the atomic button had caused negated all their silly attempts. The truth was, some of us, like Sugar and me, were here because a judge had told us to sober up or do time. Julian was one of those few residents who’d walked himself through the doors voluntarily.
Julian shut his laptop. “Thought I could do it.” And that was all he needed. He had no use for this major accomplishment, but he’d proved to himself he could do it and that was that.
Chapter 4
“Tommy, the group meeting room is the other direction.” The hallway light glinted off the row of tiny gold hoops that lined Dr. Kirkendall’s ear. That ear always caught my attention. She was a neatly put together, all-business type of woman, mid thirties, nice little bod and always dressed in a crisp suit. She was like one of those girls in high school, who was the president of every club. Not the snowboarding and cheer club, but the brainy clubs like debate and chess. That one daring ear with all the tiny hoops looked as if she’d taken it off another person and stuck it on her own head. I liked that ear. The rest of the woman, I wasn’t too crazy about. Mostly because she wanted to get into my head . . . badly. And I didn’t want her in there.
“Yeah, thanks for the directions, Doc, but I’ve got to go to the can first.”
“But you are coming to group, right?”
“Uh, yeah, guess it depends on how things go in there. A lot of different ways a whiz can go, you know?”
She sighed. The tiny hoops twinkled and relaxed with her exasperated release of breath. It was obvious a lecture was coming next. “Look, Tommy, if we don’t— if you don’t make any progress, which means coming to group and coming to your one-on-one sessions, then I can’t, in good conscience, sign you out of here.”
“Not asking you to do anything against your good conscience. I just don’t think those groups do anything for me. Don’t really want to hang out and shoot the breeze with any one of those people.”
“Sugar will be there. She doesn’t always participate, but she shows up.”
“Good for her.” I said it with confidence as if my obsession with Sugar wasn’t out there in the open for everyone to see and know about.
“Maybe you don’t want out of this place,” Kirkendall suggested lamely.
“Yep, that’s it. Congratulations. After all the digging, you finally got into my brain. I just love being here in this Lysol scented, watery green, boring as fuck hell hole. You got me.”
I had to hand it to her. Even when I was acting like a rude sonavabitch, she kept her cool. The only glimmer of her being pissed off was that those gold hoops would ripple along her earlobe for a second as she discretely tightened her jaw.
“I’ll save you a seat,” she said. “Don’t be late.”
“Right, wouldn’t want to miss one riveting minute.” I turned to walk away and took a bad step.
“Tommy, is your leg bothering you?”
“Nope, it’s fine.” My leg had been the first clue that I had an addictive personality. I’d broken my femur at the age of sixteen when I crashed my dirt bike into a very non-forgiving hill. The pain pills had been the only thing to get me through the day. And I’d had a helluva time giving them up, even going so far as to pretend I was still in massive pain when I wasn’t. Not that a compound fracture of the femur didn’t hurt like hell. It was like holding your leg under a jackhammer. The pain was almost as bad as having to sit through one of Kirkendall’s group sessions.
Dr. Kirkendall was passing out little notepads and pencils as I stepped into the room. Everyone looked up. Sugar flashed me a smile that was one of those secret, only for me, smiles. I lived for those damn smiles. She knew how much I hated these sessions. Her hair was down, and one stray strand was curled up around her chin, pointing her lips out to me. As if they needed pointing out.
I made a beeline for the pink box of donuts sitting on a table. A chocolate donut could help alleviate some of the misery of a group session. Donut in hand, I plunked down on the empty chair, two seats away from Sugar and directly across from Doctor Kirkendall. Mandy, the self-proclaimed starlet, and Harold, the crossword whiz, were on each side of her. Sitting next to Mandy was Pete, a forty something business man who was recovering from a nervous breakdown, among other things. Jayleen, a thirty plus, nail biter who was heiress to a hamburger chain fortune was in the chair between Sugar and me. Peggy, the woman who Sugar had gotten the weed for, had her sweater wrapped around her as if the room was cold. She kept mostly to herself, I’d noticed. She had awesome copper colored hair and a permanent frown, a permanent look of sadness that made it hard to judge her age. Julian never came to group sessions. While the rest of us had one-on-one sessions twice a week, Julian attended them every day. Apparently, he was just a little too screwed up to attend group.
I slumped back and stretched my long legs out in front of me before taking a large bite of my donut. My unexpected arrival seemed to have stirred up a bit of tension. Everyone was watching me as I chewed and swallowed the bite of donut. Dr. Kirkendall held up a notepad. I shook my head. Couldn’t imagine what type of notes or reflections I’d be scribbling down in the middle of this silly group.
Kirkendall dropped the notepad in her lap on top of her pink clipboard. Someone, maybe even the doctor herself, had taken time, time that was lost forever, to paint yellow daisies on the clipboard. It was where she kept ‘little notes, interesting anecdotes’ she’d once told me when I’d asked her what she had under the big silver clip.
She flashed a satisfied grin at the group. “Nice turnout today, everyone. I hope you are all ready to share some things, reflections, concerns, ideas. Remember, this is a time for you to get things off your chest without being judged.” For some reason she felt the need to throw an admonishing glance my way, thus judging me before I’d even opened my mouth.
I pushed the last piece of donut into my mouth.
“I’m sure all of you are as pleased as I am that Mr. Jameson decided to sit in on group today.”
A small, derisive snort floated over from Pete. I’d hardly had any contact with the man, but he seemed to have taken a strong dislike to me. Kirkendall caught the sound.
“Yes, Pete, is there something you’d like to comment on?”
I folded my arms across my chest and stared over at him.
He fidgeted on his folding chair for a second, then spoke. “It’s just, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with his attitude. I doubt I’ll be able to share freely in group today with his arrogant smirk glaring my direction.”
I kept staring at him.
“Tommy,” Kir
kendall said, “do you have a response to that?”
“Yes.” The worm flinched as if I was going to hit him or something. I pointed to my face. “This isn’t arrogance, it’s non-committal boredom. I don’t care enough about anything you have to say to give you attitude . . . or the fucking time of day for that matter.”
Sugar laughed but cut it short.
“Mr. Jameson, out of respect for others in the group, I’m going to ask you to tone down your language.”
“So much for speaking without being judged,” I said.
Pete’s mouth had pulled into a bow, and he looked like a landed fish trying to suck in air. “It most certainly is arrogance, the kind of arrogance that comes from being born into money rather than having to work hard to earn it. Like me.”
I looked at the doctor, who seemed temporarily flustered by the rough start. I’d always known the guy didn’t like me. He always got up and huffed out of the television room whenever I sat down to watch something. Guess he really hated me. And here I’d hardly noticed him. Maybe that was why he hated me.
The hamburger heiress cleared her throat.
“Yes, Jayleen?” Kirkendall asked.
“I take exception with Pete lumping all of us who have been born into money into the same category. And, I don’t believe it’s Mr. Jameson’s arrogance that is so off-putting. I think it’s the menacing, angry aura that always seems to be swirling around him.”
Sugar giggled again. At least she was having a good time. “Y’all have it wrong,” Sugar said. “Tommy’s not arrogant or menacing.” She flashed me one more of those for my eyes only smiles. “He’s both.”
I raised a brow at her before turning back to Kirkendall. “Jeez, Doc, thanks for inviting me along today.”
“Dr. Kirkendall, please,” she corrected. She put up her hands. “All right, everyone. I’m going to ask that we get off this path of character attacks. Now, who’d like to start with something else?”
Sugar lifted her hand. “I would just like to say that the watermelon they served at lunch was exceptional.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. She had just as much disdain for these group sessions as me. She just showed it in a much more charming, less obvious way.
“I would like to add to that,” I said. “I didn’t actually taste the watermelon, but after watching Miss Scarborough, here, lick, suck and slurp on ten slices of watermelon for twenty minutes today, I agree.” I looked over Jayleen’s head at Sugar. “The watermelon was exceptional.”
“Well, I was completely unhappy with today’s lunch menu,” Mandy spoke up. “I don’t understand, with the money this place costs, why the food can’t be better. The last movie set I was on, the caterer brought out a delicious assortment of choices every day.” While Mandy went on with her list of complaints and pathetic attempt to remind us all that she was a movie star, I noticed Sugar writing something on her notepad.
As Dr. Kirkendall pried deeper into Mandy’s concerns about the food served here, Sugar’s note came to me by way of an annoyed Jayleen. I unfolded it.
“Are you mad at me?”
I grabbed Jayleen’s pencil off her lap. I guess my menacing aura kept her from yanking it back. “No, you were right. I am both arrogant and menacing,” I wrote down.
I handed it back across. Sugar read it and scrawled a response. “That I know. I meant because of the whole thing with Lawson.”
An entire food discussion was well underway while Sugar and I had our own meeting. Kirkendall was well aware of the silent sidebar conversation taking place on the other side of the group, but she hadn’t said anything yet. It seemed she might have been tiptoeing some after the ugly start for my first real time at her group.
We were running out of room on the paper and our middle man messenger was getting miffed, but that didn’t stop us. “Like you said, it was none of my business,” I wrote, but I hadn’t gotten the incident with Lawson out of my craw. I was still angry about it. The smart thing would have been to send back the note with the one line, but turned out I could be as stupid with a pencil and paper as with my mouth. “But next time you decide to wrap your fingers around some guy’s cock, don’t invite me to come watch.”
I regretted the note the second I saw Sugar’s face reading it. Her bottom lipped trembled. She crumpled it up and held it in her fist. I reached over and ripped a piece of paper off Jayleen’s notepad. This time she grunted in protest.
“Tommy, would you like a notepad?” Kirkendall asked, interrupting the riveting food discussion that was now focused on the evils of gluten.
“Nope, I’m good.” I waited for Kirkendall to focus back on Harold’s food allergy linked with strange behavior theory. Then I scrawled another note. “I can’t be mad at you, Sugar. There is no space in my head or heart to be mad at you . . . ever.” I handed it to Jayleen. Instead of handing it to Sugar, she stood and walked the paper to Dr. Kirkendall. Then she walked back, picked up her chair and placed it down hard next to Mandy. There was just air space between Sugar and me, but she refused to look my way.
“I personally think you should read the note aloud,” Jayleen said sharply.
“Come on, what is this— sixth grade?” I asked.
For some reason, this comment caught the good doctor’s attention. She faced me. “Why do you say that, Thomas?”
“Tommy,” I corrected her this time.
“Tommy, of course. Why do you bring up sixth grade?” She was digging, and I figured, what the hell.
“That was a rule my bitchy sixth grade teacher had for note passing. If you got caught, she’d read it to the whole class.” Sixth grade, when they’d started pumping drugs into me to help me pay attention. It wasn’t my attention that was the problem. I was just bored as hell.
Kirkendall positioned her clipboard as if some good stuff was coming instead of a stupid, meaningless story about me at twelve. “Humiliation? Possibly not the best mode of punishment, but effective, I imagine. So, you had a note of yours read in class, and it embarrassed you?”
She was really digging. It was sort of comical. “Nope, I wasn’t embarrassed, but I did get a three day suspension.” Now, it seemed, everyone, even old, fidgety Pete leaned closer. Dirty laundry from Tommy Jameson. Sugar was still stiff and angry next to me, and I wished to hell I hadn’t sent that damn note.
“Do you mind telling us about it? Sometimes incidents in our childhood leave the deepest footprints.” Kirkendall sat back and waited.
I glanced around at the curious stares, but I couldn’t look at Sugar. She was pissed at me, and I hated that. “I was tossing a note to a girl named Becky, and this little weasel, Bob or Bill, can’t remember his name, intercepted it and carried it up to the teacher.” I looked pointedly at Jayleen. She lifted her chin, obviously standing behind her decision to be a snitch.
“And the teacher read it aloud?” Harold asked.
“Yep. She regretted it more than me. Think she started reading it without realizing what it said, and by the full red blush on her face, it seemed she wanted to pull the words back in.”
“Don’t suppose you remember what—” Kirkendall began.
“Hey, Becky, after school, let me stick my tongue down your throat.” I laughed. “See, Doc—, Dr. Kirkendall, that’s the exact same face my teacher had after she blurted my note out loud to the class.”
Kirkendall took a deep breath and smiled. “What happened next?” Everyone seemed to be enjoying my story except Mandy, who still seemed irritated about the poor lunch choices. And that’s when it occurred to me that her sharp, bony shoulders and pencil thin legs were probably due to some kind of eating disorder rather than society’s pressure for models and actresses to be skinny. What do you know? Group sessions did reveal shit after all.
“What was your reaction after the teacher read the note?” Kirkendall asked.
I shrugged. “I guess I felt bad for Becky. She looked kind of teary eyed and embarrassed. The teacher sent me to the principal, who called my dad
and suspended me for three days.”
“How did your father react?”
My dad was the subject. We were getting into deep shit now, tar-filled territory, quicksand, the crap in my life that had pulled me down. “My dad was more embarrassed than pissed. He’d been in a meeting, and his assistant wrote down the message that Tommy was being suspended for sexual harassment and that someone had to pick him up before the end of the school day. He always cares more about what other people think.”
“Feel free to answer or not,” Kirkendall said. “Did your dad ever punish you physically?”
“What, you mean spanking or a belt? Nah, if he had, he would have hired someone to do it. We just didn’t have that much personal interaction. He was good at playing the mind fuck—” I bowed my head in apology, “messing with my mind though. That night he walked into my room and didn’t say anything, just tossed a bunch of pamphlets for military schools on my bed. Then he walked out.”
“So, he sent you to military school after that?” she asked.
“Not that year. Would have looked pretty weak for a man like Thomas Jameson to not be able to control his preteen son. He waited until I was older and completely out of control to ship me off. Although, it really wasn’t military school. More like boot camp for bad kids.” This shit should have bothered me, but it was ‘water under the bridge’ as they say. I’d already fisted a few walls on this subject. I was over it. And military school had only made me tougher, so I didn’t mind it too much. I had still come out of it with an anger problem, but I was a lot more effective when I threw a punch after my two years in the academy. Even my stuttering was better those years. The last thing you wanted to do was stutter in front of one of those teachers.
“My final question and then I promise we’ll let someone else have the floor.” Dr. Kirkendall stared down at her flowery clipboard as if she was trying to decide whether or not to ask the final question. “Do you think it was sexual harassment?” She stared at me with her dark brown eyes, blinking innocently behind the round lenses of her glasses. I wasn’t completely sure what she was getting at.