Circle the Soul Softly

by Davida Wills Hurwin

  There’s no going to bed; way too much adrenaline is pumping through my veins. I breathe, but can’t relax, even with the light on. None of my usual tricks work. I tiptoe over to my brother’s room; his light’s out. I traipse down the stairs but make a U-turn at the bottom and end up back in my room. Finally I grab my geometry book and realize it is good for something—maybe I can numb myself enough to sleep.

  Finals get closer and teacher tolerance shrinks in direct opposite proportion to the swell of student paranoia. Classes accelerate and expand, and there’s simply too much noise—in the yard, in the classroom, driving in the car. I’m having a hard time keeping track of what I’m supposed to do. I desperately need to avoid a public display of my recurring hallucination, and yet I can’t seem to keep my focus on anything. I start counting—cracks in the pavement, bricks on the wall, the number of lines in the hardwood floor, even the words in my reading assignment. It lets me concentrate on planning the next half hour and perpetuates the pretense that I’m still running my own life.

  Which I clearly am not.

  In brief rational moments, I give thanks for David’s Ivy League college dreams. He has AP bio, trig, Latin IV, Great Books, honors U.S. history—and SAT II’s—leaving no room to worry about anything else. He doesn’t notice I’ve completely stopped talking; he assumes I’m in the same boat as him.

  But my boat has a leak. I’ve got an oar and I paddle frantically and constantly, but I don’t move out of my own tiny circle. I can’t see land in any direction; I can’t find the horizon; I don’t have a clue which way I’m supposed to go. I keep whirling around to try to catch sight of whatever’s chasing me, but I never quite see it. Meanwhile, I’m steadily sinking. And it’s still five weeks till summer.

  I wonder if you know when you’re going insane.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I have the dream, but this time it isn’t the Monster—it’s the scary man, without any face. This time he’s not content to skulk in the corner; he comes closer and closer, and I want to run away but something’s holding me down. His hands are on me and he lifts me and all of a sudden I realize my eyes are open, and this isn’t a dream or a hallucination—

  It’s a memory.

  I see myself as a little girl—skinny, two long honey-blond braids, blue eyes, in Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas, sleeping in my yellow bedroom with the rainbow trim and the large framed picture of Minnie Mouse, in our blue and white house in Santa Rosa. I hear the shushed slap-slap of bare feet on the hardwood floor. There’s a shadow in the doorway, then a creak and a click as the door is gently shut.

  He’s in the room.

  He’s smiling.

  I’m afraid.

  His voice confuses me: How’s my girl tonight?

  I see the little girl who is me squeeze her eyes tight shut, hoping he’ll think she’s sleeping and go away. He doesn’t. He never does. He comes to the bed and carefully pulls back the covers.

  You’re a good girl, Skates.

  His voice slides to a rough, hoarse, scratchy whisper that doesn’t sound at all familiar.

  I love you very much.

  The little girl who is me keeps her eyes closed.

  Don’t worry, sweetie.

  The hand that slides around the back of the little girl’s head is the same one that saved her from the ocean.

  I won’t hurt you.

  The other hand pulls her up and out of bed and he slides in and puts her on top. He holds her tight; she’s so small against him. He breathes faster and faster and slides her back and forth. She would scream except his hand is holding her face pressed into his chest, and it’s hard to breathe. She would tell him to stop—he is hurting her—but her voice is traveling up, into her head, where it will not be found, where no one will ever hear it.

  He rolls her to her back and takes her hand and moves it to touch him. She opens her eyes and looks up, but can’t see his face anymore. She counts the rainbows on the wallpaper. She stares past him to the large framed picture of Minnie Mouse in her yellow polka-dot dress. She feels herself starting to float up and apart. Minnie reaches out a gloved hand and grabs her arm. The fog drifts in and the danger recedes, like the tide. The little girl who is me is safe. Nothing can hurt a floating child.

  I sit up.

  For a second or two, I don’t recognize my own room; I feel drunk—altered. I look around, half expecting Minnie Mouse and rainbows and finally realize this is now. I’m at Robert’s. I concentrate on breathing and look for something to count. There are vertical blinds, but counting them over and over doesn’t help.

  Because I know.

  I don’t want to—but I do.

  Something happened to me when I was little, something very bad. I don’t know details or remember when it started.

  I’m not sure when or why it finally stopped.

  But I recognize the Monster.

  PART TWO

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Prom is in two weeks, and though David insists he doesn’t “expect” anything, he’s reserved a hotel suite with a couple of his senior friends.

  Which makes me kinda tingle in anticipation.

  Which makes me remember San Francisco.

  Which makes me angry—because now I have this “memory.”

  Which absolutely, positively, cannot be true.

  Except it is.

  Those are my father’s eyes I see over me, seconds before I blot them out. That’s his hand reaching from the Monster’s body. It’s his breath soft and warm in my face.

  David wants me to come over tonight; his parents aren’t going to be home. I’m supposed to call and tell him when to pick me up. Instead, I sit in my room and don’t move from the bed. I stare out the window at the sky past the huge oak that owns our backyard. Now that I know, the hallucinations have stopped. But at what price?

  The man who swept me up in his arms to save me from the ocean, the man Michael says loved me the best and rescued me from everything from scraped knees to little-girl traumas—how dare I imagine this man could ever hurt me? He was my daddy. I miss him more than I will ever be able to say. What sick stupid person have I become? What is wrong with me?!

  But even as I rage, piling argument upon argument in defense of his innocence, his love, his self—I know. Like words to a song I can almost remember and never escape, the melody lurks in my bones.

  Mathematicians are immune to essential issues of humanity—even the most desperate personal situation cannot alter a homework due date. So it matters not to my geometry teacher why I was up until three; only that I didn’t finish her assignment. Acting teachers tend to be a little more sensitive, but even Tess doesn’t let me get away with two bad monologues.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” she says as I’m leaving class. “When’s your free?”

  “Third. But I have to meet my geometry tutor.”

  She smiles. “Well, this will only take a few minutes.”

  I watch Tess finish up a phone call. She’s definitely an older woman—her face full of lines and creases, her hair streaked with gray—but she’s also somehow young. Maybe because nothing for her is halfway—she simply doesn’t compromise. I want to tell her what I think might have happened to me and ask what the hell to do about it. But when I try the words out in my head, they’re awkward and melodramatic and make me sound like I’m in a soap, playing the hysterical teenager who craves attention.

  There’s also that little issue about the police being called to Stacey’s house.

  Tess hangs up and peers over her desk. “Okay, baby. What’s going on?”

  “I am so sorry. I just wasn’t prepared.”

  “I’m not talking about your monologue.”

  “No?” I give my best stab at innocence.

  “No. What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing. I’m good.” I try my cute kid smile. “It’s just school stuff. See, I’m basically flunking—”

  “Katie, listen,” she interrupts. “The thing about artists is this�
�it may not always feel like it, but we are of a whole. We don’t compartmentalize very well. If something’s going on in our personal life, it finds a way to be in our art. And something is obviously going on for you. ”Those eyes of hers burn all the way into my brain. “Is it David?”

  “No, no, I swear! I’m just stressed, from school and my mom getting married….”

  “All right.” She keeps examining me and I finally have to look away.“It’s not my business unless you want it to be. And it’s totally okay if you don’t. But know that you can.”

  “Okay.”

  She sighs and smiles. “And please figure out what your character wants in that damn scene.”

  “Got it.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Tight. Small. Thumbs tucked inside the fingers and fists closed until it hurts. Back rigidly immobile, even my face is polar, the tiny muscles around my eyes refusing to budge, mouth pulled just ever so slightly and stuck. Legs crossed, back of my knee over thigh and again, ankle wrapped around ankle. All the openings clenched, involuntarily? Nothing can get in. But the other reason. Nothing can get out.

  “Katie? You okay?” my brother asks.

  “Yeah, end-of-the-year stress, you know.”

  “Sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, well, I’m here. If you …you know.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Strange how we all have our scripts. Except mine isn’t working so well, not that anyone notices. I have plenty of lines, but none that make sense. This scene should have been played years ago, before the subtext got twisted and hidden and I spent all that time thinking I was going crazy.

  Which still might be the truth. I am willing to consider all possibilities, and I am doing everything in my power to keep some kind of perspective. Otherwise I could turn out like Stacey—doing drugs, having rampant sex—oh wait, no, I can’t. I freak out when my totally wonderful boyfriend holds me.

  “I can’t wait to have some real time with you!” David says as he drops me off at home after school. His eyes have smudgy dark circles under them from late-night studying. We haven’t even had time for IM’s or phone calls. “I miss you.”

  “Me too.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Maybe it’s all a desperate attempt to blame someone besides myself for that fact that I’m so screwed up. It is clever—create a deep dark secret to account for social ineptitude and a serious inability to fit in, but choose something that can’t possibly be proven or disproven, because the “perpetrator” is dead and it happened where nobody else saw.

  Besides—if any of this were real—someone else would have known. It was a small house. My bedroom was next to Michael’s and just down the hall from our parents’. My mom used to wake up when she heard me going past her room to the bathroom. At the very least she would have noticed that my door was shut. I hated going to bed with the door shut.

  “Okay, you really have to tell me the truth.”

  My mother has her wedding gown on. It’s strapless and laces like an elegant corset in the back. “Do I look fat?”

  “You look amazing.”

  “Do I look old?”

  “You look beautiful.”

  “Really, truly?”

  “Beautiful.” And she is.

  If something this awful happened, why didn’t I say something? Nobody screamed in my family. Nobody got hit. I wasn’t scared of my mother. Why didn’t I tell her? Unless there was really nothing to tell, because it didn’t really happen. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe I got confused. It’s perfectly reasonable that I dreamed the Monster and then my dad came to tuck me in and I made him part of the dream.

  Because this is not the kind of experience people forget.

  Except I did.

  “Kate, honey, when you have a moment, will you stop by my office?” Robert asks as I’m going upstairs to study after dinner. “I’d like to talk to you about something.”

  “Uh, okay.” My stomach starts warming up for tricks.

  “It won’t take long.”

  “You mean like, tonight?”

  “Yeah. If you can. Thanks. I’ll be up till eleven.”

  The biggest question of all is why?

  I was a little girl. Only sick, terrible, nasty men do bad things to little children. My father was not that. My father was a kind man. He loved me. He loved all of us. He would never do anything hurtful, not on purpose. He took care of me and he made me laugh. Even during chemo, when he got so weak he had to stay in bed, he was never cruel, never mean or awful.

  And yet . . .

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Robert’s attention is so completely focused on the computer screen in front of him, he doesn’t notice me tapping on his office door, which is cracked open a couple of inches. I watch a minute; he’s a different guy when he’s not gazing Puppy Eyes at my mom. He actually looks distinguished! I find it bizarre that I barely know this man and in another month, he’s going to be my “father.”

  I push open the door and step inside. He glances over, smiles, and goes back to typing. “One sec, Katie.” I stand by the door, willing my stomach to stop turning cartwheels. Why am I nervous again? Maybe because there’s nothing in the world we could possibly need to talk about? And it’s almost eleven and I have at least two hours of homework left? Just then he shuts his laptop.

  “Sorry, I really had to finish that.” His eyes look tired. “I appreciate you coming down. Close the door for me?”

  Whoa. Stacey’s stepdad lands smack dab in the middle of my brain. The door clicks, but I stay standing.

  He indicates the couch.“This won’t take long.”

  I perch on the arm. If he even hints at inappropriate, I’m outa here. And I don’t plan to be quiet about it. But he just rubs his eyes and settles back a little in his chair.

  “I’m going to jump right in, okay? I heard Michael on the phone with his buddy from Santa Rosa. He’s planning to move back up there after the wedding.”

  I blink.

  “Do you know about this?” His voice is kind, not at all like someone who wants to interrogate me.

  I nod and wish I hadn’t; I told Michael I wouldn’t tell.

  “Do you know why?”

  “Uh …I think…. well, um . . .” Oh, brilliant.

  “Katie, I promise I won’t say anything to your mom or to Michael. I just need to know if I did something.”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “You pretty sure on that?”

  “Uh-huh.” I take a really close look at Robert and realize for the first time how very hard it must be to love a woman with two teenagers. I kick myself—figuratively, of course—for suspecting him. “He doesn’t like LA.”

  “That makes sense. Thank you.” I’m just about ready to stand up when he adds, “And how are you doing?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “End of the year sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’m proud of how hard you’re working.”

  “Yeah, well, I still might have to take geometry over the summer.”

  “So what. That’s what summers are for, huh?”

  “Actually, I thought they were for swimming.”

  He laughs, and I find myself liking how his eyes crinkle up. He reminds me a little of Tess. “Robert, why haven’t we met your daughters?” I blurt it out. Way to go, Kate, one step forward and five back.

  “That’s direct.”

  “I’m sorry. Forget it, it’s not my business.”

  “Actually, it probably is.” He shrugs. “You haven’t met them because they’ve chosen not to be part of my life.” His face sags a little. “I can’t say I blame them. I wasn’t much of a dad. My priorities were definitely skewed. We had a great life—but I was never around.”

  “Oh.”

  “The divorce wasn’t friendly.” He looks embarrassed now and I wish I’d kept my big mouth shut. He reaches across his desk and picks
up a picture of two teenage girls. I stand to take it. “That’s my girls—Jan and Elizabeth. Of course, that’s a while ago.”

  The girls are in soccer uniforms that say “Bentley Evans Prep” on the front. I suddenly realize why I was able to get in there at the last minute.

  “Maybe if they knew you were getting married…?”

  “They do. But your mom’s only forty, and they’re thirty-two and thirty-four. They’re invited. Lisa is too, their mom. But I doubt they’ll come.”

  “Oh.” I hand him back the photo, then settle into the chair next to his desk.

  “Bonnie knows all this. She understands.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “She’s an amazing woman.”

  “Yeah, I guess she is.”

  “She’s changed my life.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I smile.

  “It must have been hard on you all when Tom died.”

  “Did you know my dad?”

  “No, but I feel like I did. Your mom’s talked a lot about him. He sounds like a wonderful man.”

  Okay, explain this: I have to blink to keep from crying. Robert stands and reaches across the desk to touch my arm lightly, briefly, then settles back. His voice is gentle.

  “I’m sorry, Katie. I shouldn’t have said anything. I know you loved him very much.”

  “No, it’s okay.” I smile. Again. Of course.

  “Listen, I’m not trying to take his place, all right? Because no one could. But—” He grins, in a mischievous way.“I would like to do a couple of dad things. If it’s all right with you.”

  I shrug; I’m not quite sure what he means.

  He winks and reaches for his wallet. “How about we start with Prom. You’re going with your boyfriend, right?”