The Art of Feeling

by Laura Tims

  “Careful, Anthony.” The mom is still watching us. “Attacking the girl on crutches, it’s not a good look.”

  “I regret that you did that.” The scariest thing about Anthony is how easily he switches from tropical warmth to Antarctic cold. I don’t know which is real. No-Moore wasn’t capable of either.

  “I regret that you didn’t get hot coffee.”

  I swing out of McDonald’s, feeling like such a badass that I don’t even care I’ll have to hide out in the J.Crew across the street for whatever stretch of time is a believable amount for a biology project.

  When they come for me, Lena is driving. She parks in a handicapped spot, which annoys me even though we have the card. Rex is so slouched in the backseat that all I can see is the one piece of hair that always stands up no matter how often Lena presses it down.

  “Samantha!”

  When I was twelve, I didn’t speak to Lena for a month because she refused to call me Sam. Then I gave up. Everyone gives up around Lena. She puts people under siege.

  She gets out of the car and hugs me. She’s pencil thin in her pencil skirt, with a pencil behind her ear. “How are you doing?” she says with neighborly sympathy instead of she-was-my-mom-too empathy.

  “Fine,” I say into her giant boobs, the only nonpencilly part of her.

  “How’s school?” she fires off.

  “Fine.”

  “I am truly interested in your life, Samantha.”

  “I learn stuff; there’s teachers.” What do people want you to say when they ask how school is? School is school. They went there, too.

  She steps back. SMD, I feel swoopy when I look at her, probably because she’s a twenty-three-year-old skinny version of Mom. Same softness to their cheeks that echoes my total roundness, same warm tint to their dark hair, same greenish eyes. But today, Lena’s face is buried under an inch of chalky concealer two shades too light. And there’s something else—

  “Are you wearing contacts?”

  She squints self-consciously, which is the first time I’ve ever seen someone successfully be self-conscious about their eyeballs. “The glasses felt too intern. I want my boss to know I’m aiming higher.”

  Her irises are mud brown. “They’re colored contacts.”

  “They look more practical.” She frowns haughtily at the curb. “Can you get into the car? I keep telling Dad to get a minivan with a lift.”

  Which I’m sure the minivan-with-a-lift fairies will pay for. “I’m not paralyzed.”

  My tone freezes her. I freeze back. Rex-versus-Lena fights are a well-worn path, but BMD, Sam-versus-Lena was uncharted territory, and we still don’t have a map. I used to keep out of her way, and she used to have other charity projects.

  She busts through the silence. “Let me help you.” And she completely unnecessarily opens the door for me and half hoists me inside.

  “Hello, my-sister-who-is-not-an-invalid-and-does-not-need-to-be-treated-like-one.” Rex glares out the window like it’s the window’s fault he’s sober.

  “Reginald—”

  “Rex,” he says with his teeth mashed together. He’s the only one who does not give up around Lena.

  “To my-brother-who-is-not-a-carnivorous-dinosaur,” Lena says waspishly, “please move over so I can make room for our noninvalid sister’s crutches.”

  “How was the bio project, Sam? Frog dissection, wasn’t it?” asks Dad in the voice of ultimate defeat.

  “They still dissect frogs?” Lena cries. “But I wrote a letter to the administration my senior year.”

  “Damn, a letter to the administration. They’re probably still holding each other and pissing their pants.” Rex wedges himself deeper into the seat. “They’re frogs, Lena. Frogs.”

  “Frogs are living creatures.”

  “Not these ones,” I reassure her.

  We drive off to a hearty discussion about the ethics of frog dissection. Halfway there, Dad intervenes with the only topic (Tito) on which the Herring family can reach a firm consensus (good, great, awesome). “How was Tito’s appointment yesterday, Rex?”

  “Doc wants to up his medication dose. He’s worried another seizure might kill him since he’s so old. It’ll be eighty a month instead of fifty.”

  Dad sucks in air, at the price or Tito’s mortality, I don’t know. As far as I’m concerned, Tito is a universal constant.

  “Eighty a month?” says Lena.

  Rex’s eyes flash. “Is there an issue?”

  Lena opens her mouth, but even she doesn’t dare. Lena was the one who convinced Mom to adopt him. She was volunteering at the shelter, and nobody else wanted him because he was so ugly. He somehow figured out that he owed his new home to Lena and followed her everywhere. But SMD, for no apparent reason, Lena acts like Tito is a smelly stray who wandered into our house.

  We spend the rest of the ride in silence. By the time we get there, I would consider jumping off the high gray roof if it wouldn’t depress Dad. Once again, Lena acts like extracting me from the car is a medical procedure, and I distract her by making a deal with the devil and asking about her internship.

  “It’s going really well!”

  A pigeon takes flight at the shrill noise and meets an untimely end via the building’s front window.

  “The level of professionalism is amazing. Coming from an undergraduate environment, it’s a wonderful change. It started as an online magazine, so it’s not facing the same problems a lot of paper magazines are.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy.” Dad’s so sincere it makes my heart ache. Lena gives a small smile and looks away.

  “Did that pigeon just die?” Rex whispers to me.

  “I’m jealous of it,” I whisper back.

  We wait in the lobby, Rex and Lena sitting like a before-and-after ad for posture improvement training. Dad puts his arm awkwardly around me and hums along with Bach. The lobby, with its stained ceiling and plastic chairs, has given me an everlasting hatred of classical music.

  “Reginald,” says Lena very politely, “have you been looking at college applications? It’s easier than you think to get your GED out of the way first.”

  “Lena,” he says with equal politeness, “go fuck yourself.”

  “Kids,” says Dad halfheartedly. The receptionist spies on us over her stack of manila folders.

  I used to be their buffer, but SMD, I’m not sturdy enough to stand between them. Dad’s been working our whole lives and never developed the necessary parenting skills, and Mom was too much of a hippie to tell them to shut up. Now when they fight and I don’t insert myself as a cushion, Dad’s response is silence on a bad day and a weak “Kids” on a good day. Today must be a good day. At least when Lena’s on Rex’s back about college, she’s not on mine.

  “I don’t think we should enable Reginald by calling him a kid, Dad. He’s nineteen, and two years wasted on that disgusting couch is two too many—”

  “You’re not that much older than me!” Rex snarls.

  “I believe that maturity is measured by education and experience, not years, Reginald.”

  “My name. Is. Rex.”

  “Let’s not fight in front of Samantha,” she says in a stage whisper.

  “The Herrings?”

  Me and Dad whip toward our savior in the doorway. Dr. Brown is a collection of conflicting parts: bored eyes, a sympathetic furrow permanently etched between her eyebrows, and a thin, angry mouth she’s always using to massacre a piece of wintergreen gum. She’s the only family therapist within thirty miles who was willing to partially waive the co-pay. She’s our only hope.

  She herds us to the back of the building. Her room is painted a nauseating banana yellow, and her armchairs look comfortable but aren’t. Legos are scattered on her carpet for her younger patients to play with and her older patients to step on.

  “So what’s new and exciting in the lives of the Herrings?” Her expectations are visibly low. Eliot, I think, and simultaneously vow never to bring him up.

&
nbsp; “My boss is considering me for a permanent position once my internship ends,” Lena says, almost shyly. Then she’ll have an even better excuse to never visit.

  “Excellent. Let’s all acknowledge Lena’s accomplishment.” Dr. Brown doesn’t have a gentle therapist’s voice. It’s gravelly, the voice Eliot will have if he lives long enough for his smoking to affect him. Which is exactly why he smokes, I realize suddenly—he doesn’t think he will.

  “I acknowledge your accomplishment, Lena,” Dad and I both say. Rex’s spine completes its jellification.

  “Has everyone finished the homework assignment?”

  Dad, Lena, and I obediently take out our lists. “Memorized it,” Rex grunts.

  “Why don’t we start with Sam?”

  I read my fake list aloud. When I look up, Dr. Brown is smiling absently. “Very good. Lena?”

  Lena rattles off a list that includes nailing down the job, getting promoted once she’s got the job, moving to a more expensive part of the city once she’s promoted, and acquiring a cat. “An older cat,” she emphasizes. “From a shelter.” She looks hopefully at Dr. Brown, but all she says is, “Excellent. Rex?”

  “A cat. Start of the decline.”

  Dad and I wince as Lena unsheathes a second sheet of paper. “I didn’t think Reginald could be trusted to make an effective list, so I wrote one for him. Number one: get his GED and apply to a community college, at the very least—”

  “Lena, first let’s hear what Rex came up with.”

  “Yes, Lena,” Rex mimics.

  Lena rolls her brown eyes—I can’t stop staring at them—and leans toward Dr. Brown like they’re business partners. “He’s intimidated by professional women,” she confides in what might have been conceived as a whisper.

  Our last appointment ended with Rex storming out. They take turns storming out. Dad is consistent, spending every one with his head retreating into his neck and occasionally raising his hands a few inches when there’s no chance anybody will notice. He’s never been assertive, but because Mom picked up the slack, I hadn’t realized he doesn’t know how to be a parent.

  It’s easy to sit back and watch when I’m blank. The appointments play out like they’re a TV show instead of my life. And Dad doesn’t expect me to help, or contribute, just like he didn’t expect me to apply to college this school year, even when the deadlines passed and I ended up missing so much school I wouldn’t have been able to apply anyway. When something horrible happens to you, people stop expecting you to function, which might be why I stopped functioning.

  Rex gives me the can-you-believe-her face. “Replace intimidated with annoyed by and professional women with my sister the psycho bitch—”

  “Rex,” I cut in. Lena made me swear to defend her if he ever used sexist insults, Samantha, because we’re in this together.

  “I choose to define bitch as a strong woman, so yes, I am a bitch,” says Lena scathingly, nodding at Dr. Brown like they’re cowriting a thesis on the subject. “Mom was a professional woman. I suspect his attitude stems from unresolved resentment.”

  Rex’s spine snaps back into place. “Our insurance doesn’t cover your bullshit, Lena.”

  Dad rips open a packet of gummy dinosaurs and drops it on the floor. I cough at Dr. Brown, but our savior is picking dead skin from her fingernails, glazed eyes on the clock. When she pays attention, she’s okay, but most of the time it’s like something is distracting her. Or maybe we’re just not interesting enough. To be fair, Lena and Rex’s fights make me go blank, too.

  “All I wanted was to offer my perspective on what you’re going through—” Lena begins.

  “You fucked off to Northton the second Mom died, you never call, and you never visit except for these meetings, and then you think you can make up for it by mothering Sam.” He snorts so hard his spit flies onto the table. “Your perspective is worth shit.”

  I wince. Rex is mostly an idiot, but he has a knack for figuring out the exact most hurtful thing to say. Lena paws furiously at the tears in her eyes and then gasps, plucking a contact lens off her cheek. One eye glistens green.

  “I don’t understand why you insist on being like this.” Her trembling lower lip ruins her stiff tone. “I’m going to use the bathroom.”

  And she storms out.

  Dr. Brown at least has the decency to look a little ashamed of her mental vacation. “I’m afraid we’re out of time. I’ll reschedule for your usual slot.”

  Dad hurries into the hall to pay the receptionist for our wasted time. Rex slumps after him. I stay. I’m required to have private sessions with Dr. Brown, and I’m the only one who recognizes the injustice of this. “You’re also the only one who didn’t come out of her room for months,” said Rex when I complained, looking guilty. He generally follows Dad’s lead in not talking about what Dr. Brown calls my Major Depressive Episode.

  “That must be hard for you to sit through.” Dr. Brown makes an I-am-your-friend smile. “Things are still pretty rocky between your siblings. Have they always been this way?”

  “They fought, but it’s worse SM . . . since Mom died.” My leg twinges.

  “And has your father always been so quiet?” she presses.

  Comparing BMD Dad to SMD Dad makes me realize how little I know him. But it wasn’t like I really knew Mom either. There’s supposed to be time to get to know your parents as people when you’re older. “I don’t know.”

  “Shall we change the subject? How about we discuss the pain issue you mentioned? You said that pain bothers you, but isn’t that true for everyone?”

  Since I am the Most Traumatized, Dr. Brown displayed unprecedented interest during our first solo session, but she returned to clock-watching as soon as she realized what Eliot did the second we’d met: that I am boring. Her desperation for me to have more original issues is kind of depressing. I picture her at a therapist tea party or whatever therapists do in their free time: This one patient says she doesn’t like pain. So much for the fascinating human psyche they promised us in undergrad, amirite?

  “Uh, yeah.” I flush. “It’s just that pain makes me feel, like, sad.”

  She leans forward. “Sad?”

  “And anxious. Like my chest is being crushed. And then I get grouchy because being sad and anxious is annoying.”

  “Is this anxiety accompanied by thoughts of your mother?”

  I play with my crutches. “I see broken glass sometimes.”

  “You still remember very little about the accident, correct?”

  “Right.” I remember grabbing my lacrosse bag that day, throwing it in the trunk without opening it because I was late for my game. I remember talking to Mom about Rex’s upcoming birthday as she drove. I remember Rex sobbing in the hospital, and barely seeing Lena except for the funeral, where Dad read a poem about swans. But nothing about the accident itself, just a black hole that swallowed Mom, even though the doctors said I had no head trauma. At least not the kind that shows up in an MRI.

  “Since you associate pain so strongly with the accident, it’s possible that pain brings back flashes of this buried memory, which naturally makes you anxious. You don’t want to relive it. But I’m concerned you won’t be able to process your feelings until you let yourself remember.”

  The problem with grief is that other people stretch it out. Every time someone says they’re sorry for my loss or asks How I’m Doing, it’s a reminder I’m not allowed to be okay yet. But I felt the feelings, I cried the tears, I did my time. Why bring something back when I could let it disappear?

  The truth is, I’m glad I don’t remember.

  “—homework assignment,” she finishes.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I want you to write a stream-of-consciousness piece next time you have this pain-related anxiety. Write down whatever comes to your mind. How bad has your pain been lately?”

  “Okay,” I mumble. “I take ibuprofen twice a day, and I have Vicodin if it’s really bad. Mostly it’s when I overdo
it and the Vicodin doesn’t kick in right away.”

  “The next time that happens, try the stream-of-consciousness exercise. See if it helps with the anxiety.”

  I learned a while ago that there’s no way to get around the homework assignments.

  “You’ve told me you have trouble feeling. Perhaps in order to block emotions about your accident, you subconsciously avoid any feeling whatsoever. But by not letting yourself feel the bad things, you’re not feeling any of the good things either.”

  I have been feeling, when I’m around Eliot. It’d be great gossip for Dr. Brown’s tea party: The girl afraid of pain is hanging out with a boy who’s impervious to it. I’ll get into the peer-reviewed journals this time!

  Eliot doesn’t have to feel the bad things. But I’m not him, and if I have to trade the good things to keep from being like I was this winter, that’s fine with me. The good things aren’t worth it.

  When Dr. Brown realizes I’m not going to say anything else, she rubs her watch with her thumb. “I’ll see you at our next appointment. Don’t forget about that assignment.”

  She rolls her chair to her desk and starts scribbling in her notebook. A few seconds later, she looks at me like she’s confused that I’m still there.

  Chapter Five

  MY FRIENDSHIP WITH ELIOT HAPPENS LIKE this:

  I find him in the cafeteria on Monday, reading at his usual table by the corner. I used to look for him automatically when I walked in—I felt better about sitting alone when someone else was alone, too. I take a deep breath and plonk down opposite him, my crutches banging against the underside of the table. He raises a hand without glancing up from his book, like I’ve sat with him every day since the beginning of time.

  “ISTP,” I blurt. “That’s my guess.”

  He pages through his book—A Guide to the Myers-Briggs Assessment Test. “ISTP. Logical, spontaneous, independent. Enjoys adventure. Wrong, but not the worst guess. Why are you staring?”

  I rip my gaze from his bruised face. “Tell me how it looks worse than it feels.”