by Deb Caletti
Those are the things that make her feel guilty.
Guilt is like her own shadow. Even if she can’t see it, it’s always with her, ready to appear in the right light. Real wrongdoing is not nearly as awful as the permanent, hazy chaperone who pursues her everywhere. Has she said something wrong, done something wrong, or is she just, as a person, wrong? Here’s how it looks: Her mother says something out of nowhere, something that comes like a sudden smack after they’re getting along just fine. You’re awfully selfish or What a big shot or You brat. The shadow steps out, points the ugly finger. It makes her so mad. Makes her feel awful. But right then, she shoves it away. She goes off with her own friends, has a great time with Jess or Stephie or Sarah, plans a new life away from that bitch. But when she gets home, there are missed messages and there’s remorse and maybe even a gift, like that stuffed bear holding the heart. It’s on her bed at home. Honestly, she can’t stand to look at it. The heart says I love you, and the words in red script make her feel ashamed.
Shame is one of the ogres, of course. The fattest, meanest one, who laughs when you fall down.
“Madison? Honey?”
“I’m sorry.”
Great. Super. Her face is all screwed up because she’s about to cry. Claire’s arms go around her. Mads’s face is smushed up against Claire’s robe. “Sweetie, I’m the one who’s sorry. Really. I’m so sorry.”
Mads loves Claire. Claire is a wonderful person. Claire does not want to grasp Mads to her forever, but Mads can’t stand to be smushed up against a mother’s bathrobe. This will likely never, ever be a comforting feeling. She gives Claire a little push.
“Okay,” Claire says. “Okay.” She moves around to the other side of the island, opens a few kitchen cupboards as if searching for answers, settles on a cup and the kettle, which she fills with water. “Tea?”
Mads wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. Pinches her nose, so she’ll stop the tears. “Sure.”
“I’m truly sorry. I messed that up big-time. Here I am, worrying about you being sad, and the first time you seem really happy, I make you cry.”
Claire’s face is so honest that Mads wants to tell her everything. It seems possible she might really hear. “Sometimes . . .”
Claire waits.
“It all feels too much.” Even this is a huge confession. One of the ogres has a hand clamped over her mouth, and she has to yank and pull so she can even speak.
“What does too much look like?”
“I don’t know. Just too much.”
Mads studies the countertop.
“Here’s the deal,” Claire says finally.
“We’ve made a deal?”
“I hope we’re going to. You made it clear how you feel about talking to a therapist, but I want you to go see a doctor-doctor at least. We can’t just ignore what’s been going on, Mads. I think you know that, too.”
“You think I’m really depressed.”
“Do you think you’re really depressed?”
“I think the word depressed makes me feel depressed. If there was a cheerier word, people might feel better right there.”
“True enough.”
“A watched pot never boils, Claire,” Mads says.
“Come on, damn you.” Claire shakes the kettle. “My mom always thought tea solved everything.”
“I like that idea.”
“Me too.” Just before the kettle whistles, Claire takes it off the heat. Steam lifts as she pours, and there’s a calm little hiss. It’s late. Thomas and Harrison and Jinx the cat are off in dreamland. Harrison probably has a cape and a sword and there’s likely a dragon with the face of his fourth-grade teacher.
“I’d go to the doctor for you, Claire.”
“Well, I kind of hoped you’d go for you, but I’ll take it. Monday?”
“You mean business.”
“Better believe it.”
“Suzanne’ll be pissed if I cancel on such short notice.” Secretly, this thrills her.
“To hell with Suzanne.” This thrills her more.
“The tea tastes like grass clippings.”
“I’m convinced it’s healthy.”
“Oh my God, it is! Look.” Mads flexes both arms like a strongman.
“Impressive. It’s a green tea miracle. And one more thing . . . When you’re ready? I’d love to hear about Ryan Plug. Any guy who can make you laugh like that is a friend of mine.”
• • •
It’s going to be one of those mostly talking appointments and not a prodding-your-body appointment, so Mads gets to skip the gown that ties in the back. Still, she shifts around and crinkles the paper on the exam table. The clock ticks loudly. She’s been in there forever, long enough to think about snooping in the cupboards. There’s a blue paper sheet on the counter with only the innocent instruments laid out on it—a triangular rubber mallet, a scope with a light. There are no silver speculums that look like fancy salad tongs you’d give someone for a wedding present.
Dr. Kate Bailey has calm eyes and a round, maternal hum. This is how Mads imagines maternal, anyway. Dr. Bailey is the visual equivalent of a warm cookie. Her own mother isn’t this. Catherine Murray veers between thin and too thin, and she’s prone to illness and accident. There is not a warm hum around her, but more the high-pitched frequency only animals can hear.
Dr. Bailey shakes Mads’s hand with her solid one. She feels Mads’s lymph glands and taps her knees and looks into her eyes, all the while asking about that day in the water, and what’s been going on at school, and what important stuff has happened in the last year, and how she’s eating, and if she spends time with her friends.
Finally, Dr. Bailey sits on her stool and rolls right up to Mads. “An event like that—it’s understandable you’d be feeling this way. It’s traumatic. It could trigger depression, or all kinds of other feelings. When did you start having trouble sleeping? Right after that? Before?”
Mads thinks. “Before. Maybe last year?”
“Last year?”
“Yeah, sometime in the spring.”
“You said your mom’s attorney drew up some papers around then?”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” She shouldn’t have admitted that, Mads thinks. She watches for raised eyebrows, or a squint of disapproval, something confirming Mads’s betrayal, but Dr. Bailey only gazes at her steadily.
“And when everything started tasting bad, as you said? Feeling too heavy after you ate, around then, too?”
“Probably.”
“Were you able to talk to anyone about what was going on? Your friends?”
“I don’t know. Not really. I mean, we’re, we were, in different life places.”
“Okay. Well, we’re going to take some blood, make sure that sluggish feeling isn’t an iron deficiency, and we’re going to schedule a follow-up. I’m also going to give you a name of someone who might be helpful to chat with.”
“What about that medicine that makes the black-and-white cartoon woman turn to color in the ads?”
The doctor smiles. She rolls away, writes on a pad. “I think we should try the other things we discussed first. Exercise. Eating. Routines at bedtime. And this.”
Mads takes the piece of paper. Dr. Who-Knows-Whatever-She-Doesn’t-Care-She’s-Not-Going, and his phone number. Catherine Jaynes Murray has seen plenty of people over the years, people who she talked about for a few months like they were God. Dr. Goldblume, Janet Frey, Dr. Tamley, and the rest—the problem is, even God counts on you to do most of the heavy lifting.
“Can’t you just tell me what he would say?”
“He wouldn’t say, exactly. You would say. He’d help you learn about yourself. Why you might be having the struggles you are. How things might look different. It might take a while.”
“What would you say if you had to say?”
“I’d say you’d been feeling like this for a long time, before the trauma even, and that you’re probably ready for it to look different.”
“M
aybe I’ll run away and join a rock band.”
“Hmm,” the doctor says. “That might be a pretty good idea.”
“Or the circus.”
The doctor shakes Mads’s hand again. “You get to choose.”
• • •
With no school and no babysitting, the whole day is hers. The doctor’s appointment has left Mads feeling weirdly free. Some internal bass player is flipping off the media, and they’re hopping on the tour bus for the next gig in Chicago. She even gets the window seat. When she arrives at Thomas and Claire’s, Harrison is on the sidewalk, sticking playing cards to the spokes of his bike tires with masking tape.
“Kids still do that?” Mads calls.
“Dad taught me. It’s going to sound like a motorcycle.” He looks up. “What’s in that white bag? Did the doctor give you Viagra?”
“God, Harrison, you have got to stay off the Internet. What do you know about Viagra?”
“It’s what nervous ladies take when they go on airplanes.”
“In here?” Mads shakes the bag, which contains a Butterfinger she bought on the way home. “Pills to slip in your chocolate milk if you spy on me anymore.”
“Mom doesn’t let me have chocolate milk. Soy milk.”
“We need to fix that.”
That’s how buoyant she feels. She’s generous enough to forgive the little FBI agent who almost got her busted.
Inside, Claire pops her head around the kitchen door. “Well?”
Mads rushes past her, heads up the stairs. “Exercise. Eat more. See some doctor, which I’m not going to do. Run away. Join a rock band.” She doesn’t mention follow-up appointment. Dr. So-and-So exists, should she need him. It’s practically enough to know he’s out there somewhere. She feels better already.
“Join a rock band? That might be a pretty good idea.”
Mads threw away the blue and green bathing suit she wore the day she found the body. Now she only has her old red one-piece from lifeguarding. She puts it on, tosses a pair of shorts and a T-shirt over the top. It’s amazing how great she feels, just being cut loose from Otto Hermann and Suzanne. She can do whatever she wants. She chooses. It’s a big, fat present. Look, freedom is the best drug, and yours for the taking.
Downstairs, Mads snatches up her backpack. Claire spots the red straps of her swimsuit. “Mads?”
“I’m not going to the lake. Don’t worry. I could never do that anyway. I found a pool, though. An outdoor one, near that place where we went to the book sale?”
“Magnuson. I should have told you. You want company? A lumpy woman in a tankini and a little guy with a shark on his shorts?”
“Nah.”
“Just phone first if you’re going to leave forever with the drummer.”
“Will do.”
Before Mads starts Thomas’s truck, she checks her phone. She’s checked it so many times since Friday night that it’s a twitch, a reflex. No, he hasn’t called. He didn’t call on Saturday or Sunday. Now it’s Monday, and nothing. God, love drives you crazy. This isn’t love, but whatever! Pre-love, maybe-love, sorta-love, it all makes you insane. And Mads has made one of those deals you make with yourself that allow you to do something bad, but only under certain conditions. As long as she doesn’t call Billy, as long as she isn’t the one to pursue, it’s okay to see him. The discussions she had with herself about it were as complicated as some Middle East peace negotiations, and just as useless.
The current plan is a recipe for disaster: She won’t tell Billy about his mom just yet. For now, keeping the secret is less of a mess all around. Of course keeping a secret is less of a mess all around! That’s the whole great point of them! Never mind that secrets are like booze or drugs or gambling or other things that are a fabulous joyride until the crash. Poor, messed-up souls, poor humans, always grabbing at the solution part of temporary solution.
Mads arrives at the pool, checks her phone again. Still no call. Whatever! It’s for the best!
Mads stands in line with the packs of kids clutching blow-up toys and fins and goggles and the crotches of their own saggy swimsuits. Inside the gate, the pool is a mash of wiggly bodies and splashing and screaming. It’s bigger than the pool at home, with enough room in the deep end for Mads to swim laps crossways, avoiding the throngs. Two lifeguards are on duty, a guy on one end, a girl on the other. They look bored in their sunglasses. It is boring, yet you have to stay alert to every dunked head and minor struggle.
She drops her stuff on the grass under a tree. There’s a line of drippy kids waiting to jump off the diving board. The girl in front of Mads yells, “Watch! Watch, Mom, are you watching?” Mom waves her hand to confirm, and then the girl steps to the end, wrestles with second thoughts, and finally leaps, popping up to applause.
Mads’s turn. She hears the wacka wacka wacka of the board as she’s midair, the second before she hits water. Then comes the familiar, bubbly quiet, with the muted fun of laughing and yelling in the world above.
She doesn’t get far. She begins to stroke to the end of the pool, and then she opens her eyes. There are limbs, kicking legs, floating arms, flashes of color and swoops of hair. Mads starts to feel funny. She manages to find a spot to kick-turn back, but just before she reaches the end, the inevitable happens. She bumps a body. It’s a girl, maybe fourteen, wearing a two-piece with stars on it, and she’s only back-floating, gazing at the sky and the tree branches above, flapping her arms by her side and fluttering her feet, but it’s enough. There’s flesh against her flesh.
Mads panics. Flurries upright. She tries to walk. The water pushes against her, an impossible force. This was a wrong move, a bad decision. The water had belonged to Mads for years, swimming had, it was hers, but she’s not the same person anymore. The moment she collided with Anna Youngwolf Floyd, she became someone else.
So, you’re feeling better already, are you? the ogres chuckle. Um, no. They are the bosses here. They will allow or not allow. Mads reaches the stairs. Only kids and middle-aged ladies and old men use the stairs, but she grips the railing, stumbles to the lawn. She sets her forehead against the trunk of the tree where her things are. She tries to breathe. She can’t breathe. There’s this crushing, stabbing. The red-suited female lifeguard is beside her. She is the former Mads, looking at who Mads is now and wondering what’s gone wrong.
“You okay?”
“Just a cramp.”
“Okay. Stretch it out.”
Cold flesh, bloated body, battered by the fall. Blank eyes. Eyes that are forever gone. This is how desperate you might get, if you couldn’t release yourself from the things that could drown you.
Something is pressing hard on her chest. She fights for air. In her bag, her phone begins to ring. Just as she is thinking so hard about his mother, there is Billy Youngwolf Floyd himself, as if he can read her mind.
“Were you ever going to call me?” he asks.
I did, she wants to say. I just did, and you answered.
Chapter Fourteen
Mads sounds strange. She’s out of breath or something. He told himself he wasn’t going to be some weird stalker, but, Jesus, the whole weekend passed, and now it’s Monday, and he thought he’d never hear from her again. Not that he just sat there all weekend checking his phone or anything. He saw Casper both days, and on Saturday, there was this bonfire at the beach at Golden Gardens, and Sunday was his mother’s birthday. He and Gran walked around sad all day until he wanted to run away and join a fucking rock band or something.
Still. Every time he looked at his phone and there was no call, no text, nothing, he wondered if he’d gotten it wrong. That Friday-night call—it seemed like something important had happened between them. He just feels this pull toward her. Maybe it’s only his pull and not her pull, but that’s not usually how it works with pulls like that. Not that he has a lot of experience, but it seems like a pull is fate and fate is mutual.
“Are you all right? I can barely hear you.”
“I said, I didn�
�t want to give the wrong idea. By calling.”
“We’re friends, right? That means you can call anytime.”
“I don’t know, Billy.” She sounds like she might cry.
“Is this okay? I mean, I don’t want to be pushing you into something you don’t want.”
He remembers the time Leigh broke up with Alex. Quentin brought over this stupid book about dating and knowing when to move on. He thought he was doing some intervention. He read parts out loud until Alex got pissed, and then they just played Night Worlds, and Alex used Barbarian Rage to wipe Quentin out. But Billy never forgot what that book said about girls who don’t make any moves back. Man, love drives you crazy.
She says something he can’t quite make out. The barking dogs in Heartland aren’t helping. He heads outside. “What was that again?”
“I said, I just need you to be the one to call.”
He tries to make sense of this. He sits down at the curb in front of the Rescue Center. He watches a garbage truck pass; a couple of guys swing off and bang some cans around. One of them shouts something bossy. “You need me to call so it’s kind of like my idea and not yours?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I can do that!” He sounds way too eager. He needs to bring it down a notch. “You know, whatever.” On her end of the phone, he hears a bunch of kids screaming and running around. She’s probably at the park with Ivy. Her voice still seems different, though. Like she’s bent over, upset. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Better now. A lot.”
Amy’s at the window, watching him. She looks mad, probably because of the big smile on his face. The Better now makes him feel pretty damn great. It isn’t just any old Better now. It means better now because of him, and this plus Amy’s pissed-off look . . . Well, you can’t blame him if he’s suddenly shot full of confidence. “You were just waiting for me, huh? Admit it. You were counting the minutes till I called.” He doesn’t tease like this with many people. Mom, Gran, Alex, and not even always him.