I’m not saying we were the Kennedys of the West, either, just that my parents are loaded.
What does my father do? Good question. I’ve never figured it out. I know the company he works for, and I can point out the building from the interstate. That’s about it, though. When you don’t give a crap about a person, why waste time finding out more about them?
Most people, when they hear my name, don’t know anything about me, and I do my best to keep it that way. I’ve never wanted privileges; I know the price. I’m sure there are nice rich folks in the world. Not my folks, though.
* * *
When I walked into Jess’s apartment, the lights were off, but I saw her outline on the couch and I could hear the clink of ice in her glass. Jess loved vodka tonics but rarely indulged.
I sat my bag down by the front door and flipped the light on.
“Don’t!” She bolted off the couch and switched the light back off.
“Jess, what’s going on?” I had to admit her behavior unnerved me, but then her giggle put me at ease.
“Oh, Paige, don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m just not in the mood for having the lights on, that’s all.” She sauntered back to the couch and resumed drinking.
“Okay.”
We didn’t often sit in the front room of her apartment with all of the lights off.
“Do you want me to light the fire? It’s a little cold in here.” I shivered to emphasize my point.
“Nah. Grab the comforter from my bed and we can snuggle out here.”
After bumping through her dark apartment, I situated myself on the couch with Jess, both of us under the comforter.
“How was dinner with Mel and Wesley?”
Something about her tone sounded off to me. “Um, it was okay.” I tried to stare into her eyes, but could only make out the outline of her face. “Are you okay?”
“Me? Yeah, why?”
“Well, you left a message on my machine saying you had to see me tonight and now we are sitting in the pitch dark. It seems a little odd.”
“Oh, that. I just wanted to see you.” She paused. “I had a hard day at the office today.”
I wasn’t positive, but I could have sworn she made quotation marks with her fingers when she said the word office. It reminded me of Weasel’s comment about her internship.
“So, I think Weasel thinks you’re a kept woman.”
“What!”
Her alarm surprised me. “I think he thinks I pay all of your bills.”
“Oh, really. Why do you say that?” I had her complete interest now.
“He asked if your internship was a paying gig. I said I didn’t know, but I thought so since you never wanted for money, and he scoffed at that remark.”
I felt Jess bristle and I patted her leg. “Don’t worry about what Weasel says. He’s a jerk, and a used-car salesman to boot.”
Her body relaxed beside me. “Besides, wouldn’t it be kinda cool to be a kept woman? You know that if I could I’d make sure you lived in the lap of luxury.”
Jess leaned against my shoulder and I felt her tension melt away. “I do love your innocence, Paige. Please don’t ever change.”
The vodka tonics kicked in soon, and Jess was sound asleep. I, however, was wide awake. Slipping out of the apartment, I went for a drive. I hadn’t seen the sunrise since I left for school, and I had a special place where I liked to watch it alone.
The first few times I had done this when staying at Jess’s place, she flipped out. I have no idea what thoughts went through her mind when she woke up to find me missing. I didn’t help the matter by not leaving a note. Jess hates feeling abandoned. I learned to leave a note and she learned that I wouldn’t ever tell her where I went. She didn’t like it, but she gave up asking.
When I crawled back into bed, Jess, half-awake, asked if I had taken one of my mysterious drives. I answered in the affirmative and kissed the back of her head. She nestled up close to me, and the warmth of her body eased me into sleep.
Chapter Ten
Liddy appeared tense. She sat down and tapped her pencil on her notepad. I didn’t say a word. I wanted to see what she was up to. Would she say that she couldn’t help me? Would Jess buy that? Or would I have to find a new therapist?
Let’s see, I counted on my fingers. This was my fifth session. So that meant I had forty more appointments to fulfill my promise since school isn’t in session every week of the year.
“Paige…” her voice cracked and she hesitated. “I’m wondering about your arms. How did you cut your wrists? Horizontal? Or vertical?” She made two separate cutting motions on her own wrist to demonstrate.
“Why?” I fidgeted in my chair. Was she going to mock my ineptitude?
“I want to know how serious you were at the time.”
“You want to know if it was a cry for help.” If I’d had anything in my hands, I probably would have thrown it against the wall.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I just need to know.”
“Okay.” I unbuttoned my shirt cuffs and slowly rolled up each sleeve. The narrow, long jagged scars were getting fainter—no longer so red and inflamed. Sometimes, I didn’t notice them, but I wondered if that was because I saw them in the shower every day.
Liddy casually looked, keeping her expression judgment-free. I think it surprised her that I had revealed my actual scars instead of just describing them. I had promised Jess I would do my best to open up more.
“Thank you.” Liddy settled back into her chair. “I know that wasn’t easy for you.”
I looked away, wishing there was a window I could stare out. “This isn’t my favorite part of the week.”
“I know. At first, I didn’t think you would let me in at all. You are so rigid when you sit there. This takes guts, and I want you to know it hasn’t gone unnoticed.” She made sure I was looking at her. “You are extremely brave, Paige.”
Brave? Oh boy, she didn’t know anything. Nothing! I was a coward. A chickenshit coward.
“Who found you?”
“Jess.”
“Who’s Jess?”
I shook my head, “Just Jess.”
“Okay, we’ll go with that for now. Why did you do it?”
I started to laugh. The “Why?” question again. If I knew any of the whys would I be in this chair? “I was having a bad day, I guess.”
Her scrunched forehead told me that wasn’t the right answer. “I don’t think it was just one bad day. But let’s take this slow.”
Perking up in my chair, I started to devise a plan that would allow me to drop one piece of information over the next forty sessions. Maybe therapy wasn’t so hard after all.
Liddy continued, “I don’t expect you to have all of the answers, and I don’t expect you to open up and tell me everything all at once. In fact, I never expected to see your scars.”
The scars were easier to live with; I just had to wear long sleeves and voilà, I could forget about them. Mostly.
“Does that mean we can call it a day?” I quipped.
“Not exactly. But I do love your sense of humor.” She looked down at her notepad. Was she intentionally avoiding eye contact? “Do your parents know?”
“No. I kept it quiet.” I didn’t add, Or they would have locked me up and thrown away the key.
“The first time I saw your name, I wondered if you were connected with the Alexanders who are in the paper from time to time.”
“Yes.” It was me who avoided eye contact now.
“I’m going to ask you once: do you think you need twenty-four-hour supervision?”
“Really? Now you’re asking?” I scoffed. Five sessions in before she thinks of that question. University counselors are quacks. Good! Stupid people are easy to manage. I looked her in the eyes. “No. I don’t.”
“Good. We agree. My answer may have been different if I had seen you in the hospital right after the incident. But you have strength about you, Paige.”
Why was she
feeding my ego?
“I don’t feel strong, but I promised”
“Your word is important to you, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Why didn’t she have a window in this office? I was suffocating.
“And you gave your word to Jess?”
I wanted to shout out: You can dance around Jess all you want, but I’m not going to spill the beans, Doc! But I didn’t.
“Yes.”
“Do you think your parents would lock you up?”
I didn’t like her line of questioning. It was too close to the truth.
I sneered. “Shit no. My mom would just want me out of her hair—college seems to work fine for her. My dad wouldn’t want the news to hit the papers. Besides, he’d call me a copycat.”
She seized on that word, and I immediately regretted it. I had said too much! Again.
“Copycat? What do you mean? Has someone in your family committed suicide?”
I looked at her and sighed. Way to go, idiot. Did she know? No. She couldn’t know. Only four people knew, and I was one of them. Abbie and my father didn’t care, and the other person was dead. Liddy couldn’t know. But I had let the cat out of the bag. Pull it together, Paige, or you will be locked up.
“Not successfully. My mom tried years ago.”
“After the Lego incident.”
I was starting to loathe the word incident. My life seemed to be made up of “incidents.”
“No, after her second surgery. Before the first one, she thought everything would go back to normal, or at least close to normal; it didn’t. Then she needed another surgery, and that one was even more painful and the recuperation took a lot longer. I actually don’t think she recovered from the second one.”
“What happened?”
“I was late. I was supposed to be home right after school, but I was running late.” I removed my long-sleeved shirt. The air was stifling in here. Did they have the heat on? Did Liddy plot this so I would have to strip down to a T-shirt?
I let out a long, audible sigh. “I can remember it like it was yesterday. Why is it so much easier to remember the bad than the good?”
Liddy must have thought my question was rhetorical, or she flat-out refused the bait. Maybe she wasn’t that much of a nitwit after all. So far, I was proving to be the bigger blockhead. Why had I let that comment slip out? Now I would have to explain because Jess had told me to answer all of Liddy’s questions. I wondered if Jess had contacted Liddy to supply her with the correct subjects to explore. I wouldn’t put it past her. Who could blame her really? She did find me in her tub, bleeding to death. A few more minutes and…
Liddy cleared her throat.
“Oh, sorry, I was wandering.” I tapped my head. “I realized that I was really late and I knew I had to rush home to give my mom her next dose of pain meds. I don’t know if this actually happened, but now I remember feeling that something was terribly wrong.
“When I got home, I slammed my body into the front door and hauled ass to the back of the house to her room. At first, I breathed a sigh of relief. She looked to be sleeping so peacefully, more peacefully than I had seen her sleep in some time. Usually, by that time of day, she’d be awake, barking at me for her pills.
“I crept to the bathroom to retrieve her pills. If I had kept them on the nightstand, she would have just kept taking them. The pain never truly went away, so she said. As I exited the bathroom, I smelled something: metal, rust, or—something.”
I crinkled my nose. The smell still haunted me.
“The light in the room was always dimmed, so she could rest. Squinting my eyes I saw crimson tinged with black. All of her bedding was white. Mom didn’t like colors. I knew right then. I was young, but I knew what she had done.”
Needing a moment, I asked Liddy for a glass of water. My throat was parched.
She handed me a plastic cup filled with lukewarm water and settled back into her chair. “Did you call 9-1-1?”
Bobbing my head from side to side, I explained. “The blood had stained her nightgown. I panicked and reached for the phone on her bedside. My fingers were like lead weights and I fumbled the phone. When I leaned down to retrieve it, her hand knocked the receiver away. I saw the blood on her arm. The razor was on the ground by my foot. I tried to fathom how she managed to rifle through the bathroom to get it.
“She told me not to call—she wanted to die. Over and over she chanted, ‘I’m already dead.’ Over and over and over. All I wanted to do was run away from the room, from the house. I wanted nothing to do with any of it.”
I took another drink of water. My eyes stared straight ahead, but I saw nothing in the room. Even with my eyes wide open, I still saw her. The blood. The razor. The dial tone of the phone droned in my head. And the disgusting smell—blood, sweat, and sickness, putrid death—was still in my nostrils.
I let out a mirthless laugh. “By the age of ten I was burned out. What could I do, though? I couldn’t just stand there and watch her die. I had to conquer my fear.”
Jesus. I couldn’t believe I put Jess through the same torment. A tear rolled down my cheek. I prayed that Liddy thought it was for my mom. Oh Jess. I’m so sorry.
They say suicide is one of the most selfish acts a person can commit. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized the extent of that statement. Why hadn’t I remembered that before?
“What did you do?” Liddy’s gravelly voice brought me out of my head.
“I called 9-1-1. It was a struggle. She kept clutching at the phone, kept screaming for me to let her die. It was like I was trapped in a cheesy horror film and this old woman in a blood-covered nightgown was fighting me.
“The paramedics came. I didn’t think of calling my father. By that time, he was just an entity in the house, not a person. But they called him. Or maybe the dispatch operator did, since he arrived before she was taken away. That was even worse. He pranced in and the first thing he did was slap me for being late. I was sitting in the hallway outside her room, covered in her blood, and he wrenched me off the ground and slapped me hard across the face. If we were alone, I think he might have killed me.
“But he straightened his suit jacket and strolled into the bedroom. My mother was still screaming, and from the sound of it, fighting off the medics. For someone who had been bedridden for years, she put up a mighty struggle.”
Sitting in the chair, I suddenly didn’t know what to do. Tears streamed down my face and my nose was dripping. I was never in the Girl Scouts, so I didn’t pick up the habit of carrying tissues in my bag. I was never prepared.
Liddy handed me a box of Kleenex like a good Brown Owl—the name seemed fitting for sweet, innocent Liddy.
“I don’t think my mother ever forgave me for not heeding her pleas. I know my father never forgave me. But I’m not sure if he was miffed that I was late or that I was not late enough. He’s a tough man to read. That bastard counted on me to take care of everything at home, as if I wasn’t his child, but a servant. I still have no clue where Abbie was that day. She was never accountable for anything. No chores. Nothing. Might as well call me Cinderella, except without mice and birds to help me out.
“My mom was away for a few months. How my father kept that quiet, I don’t know. It was right after her surgery, so maybe people believed there were complications and she was in intensive care or something. My parents were popular, but they didn’t have friends. No one asked if they could visit her. No one cared enough. I didn’t see her once, not the entire time.” I searched the ceiling for an answer. “In fact, I don’t even know where he stashed her. Weird.
“And, if you want me to stick to this honesty thing that you like, I was glad she was gone. It was a relief to just be a kid for weeks. I didn’t enjoy being alone with my father, and we never hung out. He was either at work or in his office at home. It was as if nothing happened. No one talked about it or anything.”
I picked at the shirt in my lap, unsure whether I wanted to put it back on.
“That’s how it was all the time at home—nothing ever happened, everything was always on the up and up. If I disappeared to an institution like my mom, my father would put some fancy spin on it and no one would be the wiser. Fuck, he would probably forge a death certificate. He has a knack for sweeping shit under his magic rug so nothing stains his reputation.”
Liddy’s eyes showed interest. “Does your mom ever talk about it?”
“Nope. No one does. We’re like automatons. When there is a camera on us, we smile and pretend to be a loving family. The rest of the time, we go through the motions and stay out of each other’s way. Our house is huge. I can go days without seeing another living soul.”
A thought crossed my mind. “I know there’s a patient/doctor confidentiality deal, but does that apply here?” I glanced about the room, nervously.
“Yes, of course.” She seemed puzzled. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. My dad has influence. I didn’t know if there was a way he could find out about this…about me…and about what I say.”
“You really do fear him?”
I didn’t answer her.
“Paige, everything you tell me is confidential. None of this will get back to your father. You can trust me.”
Oh, the famous last words: “You can trust me.” Briefly, I considered what it would be like if all of my family’s secrets were leaked to the press. Oh, that would be grand. I would love to watch my father try to wiggle out of it. Many might think there isn’t a situation my father can’t figure out, that he’s like Indiana Jones. But I never saw him that way. I only saw him as he was: a despicable man who hated me from the start. Others could glorify him; I just wanted to escape him.
But what lengths did I have to go to just to be free? Death? There is a beauty about death. No one can bring you back. But fucking it up, that’s just messy for all involved. I glanced at my arms. Without thinking, I turned my palms up and eyeballed my scars.
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