Afterward

by Jennifer Mathieu

  “So, did you have a nice Christmas?” Dr. Greenberg asks. We hadn’t met last week because of the holidays.

  “Yeah, it was okay,” I say, my hand holding tight to Groovy’s leash. He trots out in front of me at a happy dog pace, the pace of a dog who could probably walk without a leash because he knows exactly how to get back home.

  “Did you get any neat presents?”

  “Some books and a new laptop. A couple of gift cards.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “And Caroline got me something, too. I mean, she dropped it off two days after Christmas, but it was a set of new drumsticks.”

  “Those will come in handy.”

  “I feel bad I didn’t get her anything,” I admit.

  “You can always get her something later. I bet she wouldn’t mind.”

  “Probably,” I say, wondering what I would buy her. Maybe another Violent Femmes T-shirt. The one she wears so much is so worn out there are holes in the armpits.

  “You’re still enjoying hanging out with Caroline?” Dr. Greenberg asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “That’s good.”

  We keep walking. I feel like it’s my turn to talk next, so I ask Dr. Greenberg what he did for Christmas.

  “Well, I’m Jewish,” he says, “so I don’t celebrate it, really, but I went to visit my son in Atlanta.”

  It’s weird to learn these things about Dr. Greenberg like his religion or that he has a kid. It’s like that moment when you’re little and you realize your teacher doesn’t live at your school.

  “Is your son a therapist, too?”

  Dr. Greenberg smiles. “No, he’s a Unitarian Universalist minister.”

  “But I thought you were Jewish?”

  Dr. Greenberg shrugs. “I am. But my son isn’t.”

  “Oh. What’s … Unitar … um … what did you say?”

  “Unitarian Universalist,” Dr. Greenberg repeats. “Oh, it’s a fascinating faith tradition. It supports the idea of everyone being on their own faith journey. So there really isn’t any dogma. Any set of beliefs. It’s very interesting.”

  It sounds like a strange kind of religion to me, but I don’t say that out loud. My parents and I go to church sometimes, to First Methodist of Dove Lake. We went pretty regularly after I got back, but lately not so much. I guess I don’t mind not going. I mean, it was fine, but it was just another place for people to look at me and talk to me like that cashier did at the hardware store. Just one more place to remind me how not normal I am.

  We walk for a half block more or so, and suddenly I hear my voice say, “I wonder how some people decide they don’t believe in God.” Groovy stops to pee on a tree. Maybe that’s his way of telling me he doesn’t approve of what I’ve just said.

  “It’s a question a lot of people have,” Dr. Greenberg says. He slips his hands into the pockets of his khaki slacks. “My wife was an avowed atheist. She didn’t debate God’s existence in her mind at all. But I think most people do.”

  “I didn’t know you were married,” I say.

  “Well, I’m widowed. My wife passed away five years ago from pancreatic cancer. I miss her quite a bit.”

  It’s the first time he’s ever really said anything to me about his own emotions. I like that he thinks he can say that to me. That he doesn’t mind me knowing.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “About your wife.”

  “Me, too.” He points to the big school building at the end of the block. “She taught tenth grade biology there for years. She loved it.”

  Groovy tugs at the leash, and we’re off again. I kind of want to ask Dr. Greenberg if he believes in God just to see what he would say, but I think maybe that’s too personal, no matter what he’s just shared with me. So instead I ask him, “If your wife was an atheist, does that mean when she died she didn’t think she would see you again? I mean, in Heaven?”

  “Yes, I’m pretty sure. I mean, I never asked her, but I can only assume it to be the case.”

  “Does that make you sad?”

  Dr. Greenberg nods. “Yes, it does. But in Judaism when someone dies, we say, ‘May her memory be a blessing.’ I love that saying. Her memory is a blessing every single day. So I try to focus on that.”

  We’re almost back to Dr. Greenberg’s house again. A little breeze kicks up as we pass a mom pushing her baby in a stroller. She smiles at us, and I smile back. Dr. Greenberg offers a soft, “Hello.” I wonder if the lady knows Dr. Greenberg is a therapist and if she realizes I’m one of his messed up clients. Maybe she thinks I’m his grandson or nephew or something. I guess I kind of hope she does.

  When we climb the steps to Dr. Greenberg’s porch, he suggests that if I’m up for it, we sit in the big, blue Adirondack chairs he has and talk outside.

  “Sure,” I say. It’s like taking the walk. It feels less formal. Less like therapy.

  “So when you ask about people not believing in God, is that because it’s something you wanted to talk about?” Dr. Greenberg asks.

  I stare at my shoes, considering the question. “I don’t know,” I say. Maybe I do. But not right now.

  “We can always put it on the back burner and come back to it.”

  I look up and give Dr. Greenberg a curious look. “You make it sound like questioning God’s existence is like trying to decide what I’ll eat for lunch a week from now.”

  Dr. Greenberg smiles a little. “All I’m saying is it’s a very typical question, and you have time to wrestle with it.”

  “So it’s normal,” I ask, “to question God?”

  “I like to stay away from the word normal,” says Dr. Greenberg. “Like I said, it’s typical.”

  I don’t know if that’s supposed to help, but I do know I’m not normal even if I wish I were. I guess I’m not typical either. I’m one in a million. So I don’t know why it matters what we call it.

  My eyes glance at the house across the street and then fixate on the dark wood of the front door. The Christmas wreath of red and green ribbons is still hanging there, waiting to be remembered and put away until next year. I think about what Dr. Greenberg said about having time to figure out God.

  I don’t know if I can figure out God, but I remember God. Or I remember my idea of God from before. He was this nice guy in the sky who would help me out with math tests.

  When I was in the closet, though, I prayed to God so much, begging for help. For someone to find me. And it didn’t happen.

  So eventually I gave up. And I think I started to hate God. Maybe I still do.

  I sense my hands are gripping the edges of the Adirondack chair. I close my eyes. I wish I hadn’t thought about the closet. The closet makes me think about his rough hands. His fake smile.

  My brain is buzzing. I can feel the weight of words at the back of my tongue, anxious to be spoken. Begging to be spoken. I think they’ve been there for a very long time. And I’ve been ignoring them as much as I possibly can. My heart, which had been beating along at a pretty normal pace, is suddenly racing at hyper speed.

  “Dr. Greenberg,” I begin. The words sound weird outside my ears, like I’m hearing them underwater. “For the first few months after I came back,” I say, not believing I’m actually admitting this out loud or finally even to myself, “there was a part of me that thought that he could read my mind. Even though he was dead. I mean, I knew he was dead. I knew it, like, logically. But it was like he was still there. In my head. Watching me. And I’m worried that it means I’m crazy.”

  I swallow and wait, and Dr. Greenberg doesn’t say anything right away. I must be right. I must be totally nuts. He’s probably got a form in his desk that he’s going to fill out to admit me to the psych ward. When my mom pulls back into the driveway, he’s going to have to speak with her privately and call ahead to the hospital to let them know I’m coming.

  The thought makes me panic. Even more than being away from my parents again, I’m afraid that I’m beyond getting better. If they take me away, does
n’t that mean normal or typical really can’t happen for me? Ever?

  Dr. Greenberg readjusts in his seat, crosses one leg over the other. I watch him from the corner of my eye. I can’t face him.

  “You’re not the first client of mine to have these thoughts,” he says.

  My whole body goes loose all at once, so fast my legs feel rubbery and I’m not sure I could stand if I tried.

  “Yeah?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Dr. Greenberg says, and I finally manage to look at him. He looks at me, too, his grizzled face serious. “That’s a common reaction when someone makes it through something like what you’ve gone through. I once worked with a young woman who was part of a suicide cult, and almost a year after she survived and the leader died, she still felt that the leader could read her mind, even though she had the rational thinking skills to know that such thoughts weren’t logical.”

  “Shit,” I murmur under my breath. It dawns on me that I might not actually be the most screwed up patient that Dr. Greenberg’s ever had.

  “You remember how we’ve talked about how, when someone goes through extreme trauma, the brain is capable of coming up with all sorts of unusual thoughts to try and make sense of things and just survive? I know it seems odd to you now that you thought that about the kidnapper, but ultimately, Ethan, the important thing is that you survived. You managed to survive and come back from something horrible.”

  “Yeah,” I answer. I do know this. Logically. But that I once thought he could read my mind feels absurd to me. Really, when I try to see my situation through other people’s eyes, the whole story seems absurd. “People think I just could have left,” I continue, and I feel my hands ball up into fists. “Sometimes I think maybe even my mom and dad think that, even though when we have our family therapy sessions, they tell me, ‘Oh, Ethan, we get it.’ But, like, how can they get it, really?”

  “No one can, unless they’ve been through what you’ve been through,” Dr. Greenberg answers, “but I think some people will try to understand.”

  “I mean, I was able to walk around alone outside, and I never asked for help even when I could have,” I argue back. My throat is tightening. My body is trying to decide if I should cry. “Just the other day I remembered this time we ran into a cop, and I didn’t say anything. People think that’s bullshit. Sometimes I think that’s bullshit.”

  Tears start streaming down my face.

  “Ethan, do you believe me when I tell you that I’ve studied the human mind and trauma and captivity and all of these things for years and years?” Dr. Greenberg says, his brow furrowing. He leans forward in his chair. His voice is steady and sure of itself.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And do you believe me when I tell you that the way you behaved is the way that countless victims of similar crimes have behaved? That all the research shows that what you did was what you had to do to survive?”

  I shrug and wipe away some tears with the edge of my sleeve, not really convinced.

  “Ethan, let me ask you, you do know that sometimes in wartime people in the military get taken captive, right?”

  Sniffling a little, I turn and frown at Dr. Greenberg.

  “What?”

  “You’ve heard of prisoners of war? It happens to tough guys, right? Army soldiers? Marines?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So how old do you think those soldiers, those Marines are, when they’re taken captive?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer.

  “Are they eleven?” Dr. Greenberg presses.

  “Of course not,” I snap back. “They’re adults.”

  “Right. So what if I told you there are many documented cases of prisoners of war behaving just as you did after they’ve been imprisoned? Who reacted just as you did? What would you say to that?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut for a minute and try to stop crying. I know Dr. Greenberg is trying to make me realize it’s not logical for a kid to be stronger than a Marine. But I still wish I had been able to walk away. Maybe it wasn’t possible. I guess.

  “You survived war, Ethan,” Dr. Greenberg tells me, his voice quiet. “You survived the unimaginable. Which makes you a pretty incredible person in my eyes.”

  We sit there for a while longer, and I keep my eyes closed. I feel better about the fact that Dr. Greenberg doesn’t think I’ve lost my mind, but some days the heaviness of all of it is so much I can’t stand it.

  Finally I open my eyes and look at Dr. Greenberg.

  “I feel like I’m never going to be normal again.”

  “Remember what I said about the word normal. I like the word typical. You might not be typical in your life experiences, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t experience life in ways that will bring you fulfillment. Happiness and joy.”

  “Yeah,” I answer. “I guess.”

  We sit there for a while, both of us staring forward at the house across the street. Letting time pass. I can feel the temperature shift, and it gets a little chillier, but I don’t want to go inside yet. Something about sitting on Dr. Greenberg’s porch makes it easier to unload some of this stuff. Lay it out right there in all its weird, deformed fuckedupedness.

  “Ethan,” Dr. Greenberg finally says, “I’m not going to try and reduce the weight of your burden, but I’m going to help you grow strong enough to carry it.”

  I repeat the words in my head over and over. I picture myself scaling Mount Everest with a pack that’s double my body weight. The breeze picks up again, and the places on my face where the tears snaked down my cheeks feel extra cold. I imagine going home tonight and getting into bed and having to sleep with the lights on. I’m not sure how I can climb a mountain or carry some huge burden if I can’t sleep with the lights turned off like a normal person. Or like a typical person. Or whatever.

  But I don’t say that to Dr. Greenberg. I just nod, and the two of us sit there not saying anything else, waiting for my mom’s Volvo to appear at the end of the street. When it finally does, my tears are all dried up, and I’m glad about that because I don’t think I could handle having to deal with my mom if she sees that I had been crying.

  CAROLINE—224 DAYS AFTERWARD

  There’s something about the first day back at school after winter break that truly makes a person want to move to a remote island where no schools exist, so school attendance is not only not required but also impossible.

  This morning when I woke up, the idea of going to Dove Lake High and dealing with Emma and Jason and the way my US History classroom smells like the crushed dreams of thousands of hopeful Proactiv users was just too much. I still don’t know how I managed to do it. When I got home, I went right to bed, and I’ve been here ever since.

  My phone buzzes. I stick my hand out from under my bedspread and grab it off the nightstand, hoping maybe it’s Ethan wanting to talk about some of the songs we’re going to work on. He still hasn’t shown me those lyrics like he promised. But it’s just Emma with her twenty millionth let’s-be-friends-again text. The day after Fabiola’s party she texted me like everything was normal, and it wasn’t until after I told her I saw her messing around with Jason that she even acted sorry about it.

  I ignored her all break and all day today at school. But the truth is, I’m not even ignoring her to prove a point. Honestly, the past few weeks without Emma in my life haven’t been that lonely. Which makes me think maybe all the years we were friends were sort of bullshit. Which actually is depressing to think about.

  Jason McGinty hasn’t texted me, and at work he’s read my silent treatment as the real deal this time.

  Emma being out of my life burns a little. Jason being gone just feels like nothing.

  I read Emma’s text.

  Girl come on don’t be ridiculous over this. I’m gonna say it again but I was drunk and Jason was too. You were never totally BF/GF—let’s not throw our friendship away over this.

  I almost want to laugh at how easily Emma can justify anything.

  Stop te
xting me I write back, and then I toss my phone aside. I can make out the muffled sounds of my parents fighting down the hall in the kitchen. Their voices are building in volume until I can hear everything they’re yelling at each other. When this used to happen before Dylan was taken, I would go find my baby brother and distract him with Jeopardy! on the television or one of my whistling songs. Right now I’m too frozen with my own sadness to move, but as my parents’ fighting escalates, the sadness transforms into anger. I twist my face until it hurts and beat my fists against my bed, wishing voluntary temporary deafness were a real thing.

  DAD: Mindy, it’s nothing. You’re freaking out over nothing. Stop reading meaning into shit when there’s nothing there.

  MOM: Andrew, don’t talk down to me. And don’t curse with the kids in the house.

  DAD: It’s not like Caroline doesn’t use the exact same words, and he doesn’t even know what the hell we’re saying.

  MOM: He does know! He does understand! God, you’re the reason he started cursing at all. And he has a name, you know. He’s your son!

  DAD: You don’t think I’ve had to live with that for years?

  MOM: Go to hell.

  And commence door slamming in three, two, one …

  SLAM!

  * * *

  Yup.

  The house is still for a while, and I imagine the players acting out the rest of this drama. Is MOM grabbing her phone and stepping outside to the back deck to call her sister in Chicago and cry and smoke one of the cigarettes she thinks I don’t know she keeps hidden inside the doghouse from back when we used to have a dog? Is DAD driving aimlessly through the streets of Dove Lake thinking up ways of how he could be a bigger dickhead? And BROTHER, where are you? Who is watching out for you?

  That last thought forces me up out of my bed, suddenly filled with guilt. It’s not like Mom asked me to watch him, but whenever it hits me that I’m not 100 percent sure where Dylan is, I’m reminded of that miserable day in May when my mother popped her head into my bedroom, a small frown on her face.

  “Caroline, have you seen Dylan? I thought you were keeping an eye on him.”

  I make it down the hallway and find him on the back porch with my mom in the last sunlight of the day, playing with his favorite wooden alphabet blocks, including the new ones I gave him for Christmas. The way Dylan plays isn’t by making castles or towers like other kids. He likes to take the blocks and line them up in one long line, like a train going down railroad tracks, and if you interrupt him, he gets super frustrated. It’s weird, I guess, but I think he finds it soothing, and I’m glad that he’s doing something that relaxes him at least.