by E. R. Frank
The three kids who were hopping the waves bodysurfed to shore. Jack kept jumping.
My father launched himself into the ocean, disappeared under a cresting wave, resurfaced right next to my brother, and grabbed Jack’s arm. You could see him pulling and Jack shaking him off. Then you could see Jack change his mind and turn toward shore. My father kept grabbing some part of Jack. His shoulder, his arm. His hair. My mom stayed at the water’s edge, her hands still shading her eyes. Jack clambered out of the ocean and right past her, my dad at his back, grabbing, while my brother kept snaking out of his hands.
“Don’t you walk away from me,” my father was shouting. Jack leaned down to grab his towel and shoes. His hair dripped on me. “God damn it!”
For some reason I looked over at the lifeguard tower. Weren’t lifeguards supposed to keep things safe? They were just sitting there, staring along with everyone else. My mother seemed stuck at the shoreline, facing us. Her hand was still shading her face, like she’d forgotten it was there.
My dad kept yelling, “God damn it, Jack!” He was yelling so loud the little girl in the lime green swim diaper started to wail, and her mother scooped her up and started packing their cooler. He was yelling so loud that the arm-in-arm couple put their backs to the ocean to watch, as if my father were a geyser or a plane crash. Jack was trying hard to get away, up the dune and over its edge to the street, but my father wasn’t letting him. He was stepping in front of Jack, so that my brother had to zig and then zag to make progress up the sandy incline. My father was screaming in Jack’s face, and Jack kept moving, like a football player in slow motion. Step left, blocked, step right. Step right, blocked, step left.
Finally Jack faked right and then dodged left and ran hard up the hill, spraying a fan of sand behind him. My father shouted at his back, his voice filling the beach with ugliness.
By the time my dad stormed back to our spot, my mother and I had somehow gotten everything gathered together and were ready to go.
“What?” he snapped at my mom. She and I were filling our arms with chairs and blankets and bags. “What?” my dad snapped again, but my mother didn’t answer him, and we trooped past the lifeguard tower and up the dune without anyone saying another word.
When we got back to the house, Jack was in his room with the door locked. My father threatened to break it open, and a few seconds later the knob clicked, and my father went inside. My mother hustled me out of the house, and we went to buy fresh shrimp, and she took a long, long time to decide which brand of cocktail sauce to buy. When we got home, my father was quietly reading the paper in the living room, facing the glass window.
I knocked on Jack’s door, and he didn’t let me in, but then I realized the door was cracked just the tiniest bit. I stepped inside. Jack was flat on his bed staring at the ceiling. His CD player and earphones were nowhere in sight, and his face was red and sweaty, eyelashes clumped wetly together.
“Get out,” he said.
“Are you okay?”
“Get out!”
“Your door wasn’t locked,” I told him.
“I’m not allowed to lock it,” he said. “Get out.”
“But—”
“Get! Out!”
“I just want to help,” I tried to explain.
He looked at me in a way I’d never seen before. With this expression that was brand-new. One that told me how small and disgusting he thought I was. “You?” he said, with that look. “You?” He snorted. “You’re no help.”
My mom is driving me to therapy. We tried to change the day because I wanted to be with Ellen when she got her new, short cast, but her doctor couldn’t switch and neither could Frances, so that was that.
“Do you remember the summer of the sharks?” I ask my mom, tugging my hat down over my ears.
“That wasn’t so long ago,” she tells me.
“Dad didn’t let us swim for practically the whole vacation,” I say. I switch the heater vents to the floor. The air blowing from out of the dashboard bothers my eye.
“You and Jack got very good at paddle ball.”
“Nobody else was staying out of the water.”
“Well,” she says.
“Why was Dad being so mean?”
“He wasn’t being mean,” my mom says. “He was being protective. Can we turn this down a little?” She’s already turning the heat down a notch.
“Protective?” I go. “Try psychotic.”
“Oh, Anna,” my mother says. “What made you think of that?” She makes a right onto Bateson Avenue. We pass the mall. It reminds me I haven’t been shopping in months. I need new shoes. And new underwear. I turn the heat back up.
“How come you let him do that to Jack?” I ask her.
“What?” she goes. “Do what?”
“Don’t you remember?” I say. “Don’t you remember him with Jack that first morning? Screaming and chasing him and everything?”
“Dad gets carried away,” my mom says. “He gets scared easily, and then he gets carried away.”
“Scared?” My father scared? No way. “He needs therapy,” I say. “There’s something seriously wrong with him.”
“Did you hear that from Aunt Jerry?” my mom asks. I’m totally surprised.
“No,” I say. “Why?”
My mom puts her thumb to her mouth and starts gnawing.
“You shouldn’t bite your cuticles,” I tell her. She drops her hand to the steering wheel. “Why?” I ask again. “Does Aunt Jerry think Dad needs therapy?”
“Can you get my checkbook out?” she says. I fish around in her purse and pull it out along with a pen. “You write it,” my mom says. “I’ll sign when we get there.”
“You never do anything,” I say, writing out Frances’s name on the top line. “You never make him stop.”
My mother glances at me and then back at the road. “I do the best I can,” she says finally.
I fill in the date and the amount, and then I cap the pen and I think about it. What I’m trying to understand is, how can my mother say my father is scared, when really he’s just a complete asshole? And how come my mother always stays out of things, reading her books or working in her study or floating out at the horizon, just letting him get away with it?
“I need to go shopping,” I say. “I’ve got holes in my socks, and my boots are shot.”
She pulls into the parking lot of Frances’s building. “Okay,” she says.
20
TODAY FRANCES IS WEARING PALE YELLOW PANTS THAT ARE SO flowy they look like a skirt, and a matching blouse, scarf, and vest. It’s pretty. Ellen’s mother has the same outfit, only she doesn’t wear it together all at the same time.
“I have SATs on Saturday, and then it’s winter break,” I tell her. “Plus, Ellen’s getting her short cast today. And my father says I have to get better.”
“Really?”
“He says I have to start driving soon.”
“Nightmares?” She’s pulling out her EMDR box and wires from a black bag.
“Same,” I tell her. “The dolphin and the wise woman help me fall asleep. But then … you know.”
“Heart attacks?” she asks. We both know they’re not heart attacks. They just feel like that in the moment.
“Not exactly,” I say. “Just little ones sometimes between classes. I remembered to use the safe place once.”
“Your Caribbean sea? The calm one with the turquoise water and the coconut smell?”
“Yeah. It worked when I remembered. But I didn’t remember the other times.”
“Do you have any idea what’s triggering the anxiety?” Frances hands me the buzzers. Triggering means something that sets me off, gets me going into a panic.
“The idea of having to drive,” I say, “a couple of times when I thought someone would ask me. But that wasn’t at school.”
“What about at school?” she asks. She helps me untangle the wires.
“I don’t know. It’s always in the halls, between
classes.”
We untangle, and she moves her chair forward a little and I pull up my legs, cross them, and put a suede pillow on my lap.
“All right,” she says. “Are you ready?” She means am I ready to talk about the accident today. It’s what we’ve been prepping for this whole time.
My heart starts speeding up. “My palms are sweating.”
“That’s fine,” she says.
“No, it’s not,” I tell her.
“Anna, this isn’t going to be comfortable.”
“I know,” I say. “You keep telling me that.”
She puts the EMDR box down on the reddish wood end table beside her and looks at me. “I think you can do this,” she goes. “You can ask me to stop or let go of the tappers anytime you want to stop. You have your safe place, if you need it, and you have your protector and your adviser. We told your mom this might be a big session, and she’s right outside in the waiting room, right?”
“Yeah,” I say.
Frances’s waiting room isn’t as nice as in here. Just a few hard chairs and a low coffee table with old magazines. I keep meaning to tell her she should get some new subscriptions or something, but then I forget, or I think it’s rude. My mother likes the pictures on the walls out there. One is a framed poster of an egg. Just an egg. It is kind of nice. Smooth and white and calm-looking. The other is a black-and-white photograph of the sky with one cloud in it.
“Okay.” I know I have to stop stalling. I wipe my palms on the knees of my jeans. “Fine. I’m ready. What do I have to do?”
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” Frances says. “I don’t want you to think too much about the answers. Okay?”
“Okay”
“At a certain point I’ll turn this stuff on.”
“Then what?” I ask.
“You just let come up whatever comes up. Images, memories, thoughts, feelings, body sensations. Whatever. There’s no right or wrong. Sometimes you may notice something change and sometimes you may not. It can help to imagine that you’re on a train, and anything that does come up is just the scenery going by.”
“Okay,” I say. She’s explained it to me before. I’ve heard the train thing. I know that sometimes she’ll turn the buzzers off and ask me what’s happening, and then I’ll get to talk. I know that I’m not supposed to censor anything or judge what happens. I know all that. It’s just hard to do what you’re supposed to do the first time you do something.
“So,” Frances says. She picks up the EMDR box and leans forward a little in her chair. “Take yourself to the night of the accident.” I nod and grip a buzzer in each hand. “Just remember.”
“The tappers aren’t on,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says. “That’s okay. I’m not going to put them on until a little later.”
“Oh,” I go.
“Take yourself back to the accident and tell me what picture represents the worst part.”
“The whole thing was bad,” I say.
“Think of it as a mini movie,” Frances suggests. “Watch it from beginning to end. Watch each frame.”
“The thing I keep seeing,” I say after a minute, “is my key chain dangling over me. It’s just there, glowing in the dark, swinging, sort of.”
“Okay,” Frances says. “Now. What words go best with the image of your key chain that express your negative belief about yourself?”
“What?” I shift my crossed legs and lean harder on the pillow on top of them.
“As you see that picture, what is the negative belief about yourself?”
I have no idea what she means. She can tell.
“It would be a statement that starts with ‘I am,’” Frances explains.
“I don’t know.” Everything was inside of me and outside of me in pieces and sideways and upside down and wrecked. “Maybe ‘I am out of control’?”
“All right,” Frances says. “And when you see that key chain, what would you prefer to believe about yourself now?”
“That I’m in control,” I say.
“So how true do the words, ‘I am in control’ feel to you now on a scale of one to seven, where one feels completely false and seven feels completely true?”
Okay. For one thing, I’m getting a little sick of all these questions. And for another, I have no clue what she’s asking.
“Can you repeat that?” I ask. So she does. The second time I think I understand. How true does “I am in control” feel now when I think about that key chain? Not very true at all, so I give Frances a two.
“What emotions do you feel now?” Frances asks.
Well. I feel the out of controllness and the wreckedness and everything sideways and upside down and in pieces, and it’s awful.
“Scared,” I tell Frances. “And guilty. Really scared and really guilty.”
“On a scale of zero to ten, where zero is no disturbance and ten is the highest disturbance you can imagine,” Frances says. Another scale? “How disturbing is it to you now?”
It’s pretty bad. “A ten,” I say.
“And where do you feel the disturbance in your body?” she asks.
“My heart is beating fast, and my hands are sweaty, and I’m all tense everywhere, and my face is hot.” I’m thinking how she hasn’t even turned on any buzzing and I’m already hating EMDR.
“Bring up the picture of the dangling, swinging key chain, and the words ‘I am out of control,’ and feeling scared and guilty, and noticing your heart and hands and face and muscles, and go with that.”
Go with that?
Then she turns on the box.
At first I’m just completely self-conscious. I mean, I’m sitting here with this buzzing back and forth in my palms, and Frances is staring at me, and the whole thing is so out there. Then the buzz, buzz in my hands turns into the thrum, thrum of Wayne’s party that night, and it’s not like I’m hypnotized or in a trance or anything. I know I’m cross-legged on Frances’s red couch, but my mind speeds up too, and I can feel the thrum, thrum and taste the Jack Daniel’s and see the signs not to party on the second floor and Seth’s peppermint patties, and all these details I’d forgotten about.
“Just notice,” I hear Frances tell me, and I realize I’ve closed my eyes. I keep them closed and keep noticing. It’s like a movie on fast forward. Drinking and a pyramid of beer cans and someone wearing a bright pink jean jacket and Ellen walking me around the second floor, keeping everything under control. Buzz, buzz. Thrum, thrum.
“Take a breath,” Frances says, and the buzzing stops, and I open my eyes and breathe in. “Let it go,” Frances tells me, so I let the air out. She waits a second, and then she asks, “What’s happening now?”
“I’m remembering the party,” I say. “I got really drunk, and Ellen took care of me.”
“Go with that,” Frances says, and she turns on the box again.
• • •
There’s Seth at the pool table, and then the green skin of the pool table turns into grass, and on the grass are small brown leaves, and my dad is screaming at me on the lawn, and then the lawn becomes the kitchen, and he’s screaming at me in the kitchen, and behind him the laptop on the kitchen table shows the poker game, and the green of the poker table on the screen turns into our lawn, and our green lawn becomes the pool table in Wayne’s basement, and I’m trying hard to sink the eight ball to impress Seth.
“Take a deep breath,” Frances says, and the buzzing stops, and I breathe in and open my eyes, and she tells me to let it go and asks what’s happening now.
“Different stuff,” I tell her. Because I can’t remember all of it. “I was angry at my father. We had a fight that night, and then I was playing pool. That was right before we left.”
“Go with that.”
I’m thinking how annoyed I’m going to get with “Go with that,” but then I forget about it, and there’s me and Ellen across from each other at the pool table, and Ellen saying something about how I’d rather be bitching about my fathe
r than be here, and then we’re in the Honda, and I’m worrying she’s going to throw up in the front seat and if she does, my dad will find out and be pissed off, and I’m going to pull over, even though she says I don’t need to, and she leans down to do something to the radio.
• • •
“Deep breath,” Frances reminds me, which is good, because it’s weird how you can forget to breathe. “And let it go.” She waits. “What’s happening now?”
“I don’t know,” I say. My voice is all shaky, and I’m breathing heavy. “We’ve been hit.” I huddle into the pillow in my lap and grip the buzzers.
My body’s freaking out, and it’s hard to catch my breath, and I’m having a heart attack, and there’s sirens and Ellen’s ponytail like glass in my eye and the smell of new plastic, and the earth dangling above, and “Hooow looong, hoow loong, how long … to sing this sooong?” and I feel Frances hand me a tissue box, but she keeps the buzzing going, and I open my eyes with it all happening so that I can wipe the tears with a tissue, and I just feel scared and ashamed and out of control, and I uncross my legs, knocking away the pillow, and I pull my knees up to my chin and keep hold of the tissues and wipe my eyes, and Frances goes, “Just notice, it’s old stuff going by, just notice,” so I try to keep noticing, and I get so tired, really, really tired, and then I’m waking up in the hospital bed, and my mother is there in her pajamas and raincoat, and she’s telling me I’m okay, and then I’m in the car with my parents, and my father’s saying, “She was in your lane, it wasn’t your fault, she was in your lane,” and then I’m in the hall at school, and Lisa is saying, “It was a cinder block,” only I know it was a tree branch, and it was Cameron who swerved, not me, and then I see Cameron’s silky hair and smoky skin, and I’m so sad I can hardly stand it.
Frances turns off the buzzing, and I take a huge breath and let it go, and I’m still half crying, and I try to explain, but it’s hard. “It wasn’t me,” I say. “I mean, I was driving, but it was Cameron out of control, not me. She lost control of her car. And it was out of control. I mean, the accident was an out-of-control thing, and I was out of control, but that’s just because sometimes things can’t be in your control, you know? And it’s just really, really sad.”