by E. R. Frank
It’s like colors and shapes of sadness and out-of-controlness, and I’m seeing them outside of me and feeling them inside of me, thinking how sad it is sometimes, things can be scary and sad, and I’m just watching it, and I open my eyes and let go of the buzzers.
“So many bad things can happen,” I tell Frances. “There’s nothing you can do about it sometimes. It’s just the way things are.”
She nods. “Go with that.”
I’m thinking again how irritating it is that Frances keeps repeating practically the exact same thing to me, and then I have this memory of my father, enraged, saying, “Why are you repeating the same incorrect information?” And I get so mad, and I think about the words of the song in the car repeating over and over and over, “Hooow looong, hoow loong …” and I’m remembering when my father said, “Stop saying you’re sorry,” and I think, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and then that cop is going, “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay,” and then my body feels really heavy.
When Frances stops me and goes through her routine, I shrug. “I don’t know,” I say. “My bones feel like they weigh a lot, and I keep thinking about things with my father, and I’m sort of mad at him.”
“When you think about the original incident,” Frances says, “what comes up now?” I think of the image we started with. It’s changed.
“The key chain is in the palm of my hand, and it’s glowing really bright,” I say.
She turns on the buzzers.
The key chain glows brighter and brighter, and it’s warm and comforting, and the light of it shimmers, filling my hand with brilliant whiteness, and then the whiteness begins to expand and to hollow until it’s a steering wheel made of milky white light, and Fm gripping it and driving, and Ellen’s sitting next to me, her brown hair dancing in and out of the window.
“Wow,” I go, before Frances can even say anything.
“Take a—” she goes, but I interrupt her.
“I know, I know.” I take a deep breath and let it out, and I don’t wait for “What’s happening now?”
“I’m driving with Ellen and the steering wheel is this white light, and it feels okay.”
Guess what Frances says?
We’re driving in the sun, and it’s this long, windy road, with the ocean along one side, sparkling and calm and clear, and even though I have this little knot in my stomach, mostly my body feels warm and relaxed, with the bright steering wheel solid and smooth in my hands.
• • •
I open my eyes. “You can turn it off,” I tell Frances. She does. “I feel good,” I say. “I really do. It’s this pretty, curvy road, and I’m just driving with Ellen next to me, and it’s totally fine.”
“So on a scale of zero to ten, how disturbing is the image now?”
“A zero,” I say.
Frances smiles. Her fang is sort of cute. “Do the words ‘I am in control’ still fit? Or is there another positive belief that fits better?”
“Do they fit with me in general?” I ask. “Or with the accident?”
“With the accident,” Frances says.
“I guess. I think so.”
“Think of the original incident and the words ‘I am in control.’ On a scale of one to seven, one being false and seven being true, how true do those words feel to you now?”
I think of the original picture. It’s the earth key chain, only now it’s dangling from the ignition while I’m driving on that windy road with Ellen and the sun and the ocean and everything feeling okay.
“Maybe it’s not ‘I’m in control.’” I change my mind. “Because something could happen out of my control.”
Frances waits.
“Maybe it’s more like ‘I can be okay driving.’”
“All right,” Frances says. “So I want you to pair your image with the words ‘I can be okay driving.’”
She turns on the buzzers, and I go with it, and we’re just driving and driving, and the earth key chain is swinging from the ignition, and it’s all okay. Frances turns off the equipment.
• • •
“It still feels good,” I tell her. “Still on that road. It’s still sunny and pretty, and everything’s okay.”
“Close your eyes,” Frances tells me. “Bring up the accident and the words ‘I can be okay driving,’ and mentally scan your body. From tip to toe. And just let me know if you feel anything.”
So I do that, and mostly I feel calm, relaxed. “I feel fine,” I tell her. “Except my stomach hurts a little bit.”
“Go with that.” She turns the buzzers on. Which surprises me because I thought we were done.
“My stomach hurts a little more,” I tell her after a while. “But I still feel pretty good about the whole thing.”
Frances glances at her digital clock on the windowsill and then has me imagine my safe place. I’m tired and time is almost up, so we don’t do a lot more buzzing. Just enough to let me relax for a few minutes at that magical Caribbean sea with the dazzling turquoise water.
21
MY MOM DROPS ME OFF AT ELLEN’S.
“Where is she?” I ask Mrs. Gerson at their front door.
“In her room,” Mrs. Gerson goes. She’s smoking a cigarette.
“I thought you stopped,” I say, stepping inside. Like, two years ago.
She cups her free hand around the back of my head. “I thought so too.” Then she pulls me in a little, holding the cigarette out with her other hand so that smoke won’t drift into my face. “See what you can do,” she whispers. “She won’t let me near.”
I find Ellen in her downstairs bathroom, sitting on the lowered toilet seat. All she’s wearing is her thick brown cable-knit sweater and her panties. Blue cotton bikini. She’s holding a plastic razor in one hand and shaving cream in the other, and the tub is running, and she’s crying.
It’s bad. I didn’t know it would be so bad. Her left leg from the knee down is skinnier than anything you’ve ever seen. It’s about half the size of her right leg, and it’s covered in dandruffy skin and dark, wiry hair. On the bony part of her shin a red spot, a sore about the size of a quarter, glares up from underneath the hair.
“I bet you didn’t know pubic hair grew on legs,” Ellen goes. It doesn’t exactly look like pubic hair. But it’s completely disgusting anyway.
“I thought you were supposed to get a shorter cast today,” I say.
“They decided on that thing instead,” Ellen says. “That thing” is a plastic and Velcro ski-boot-looking contraption lying on the back of the toilet. “Because it won’t rub my leg as much as plaster, and I can take it off to bathe or whatever.”
“Okay, look,” I say. I lean down and take the razor and the shaving cream from her. I dip a washcloth under the running water and wipe it over her leg from the knee down. I get it as wet as I can without making a mess. Then I squirt shaving cream into her hand. “Start at your knee,” I tell her, “and work your way down. Keep away from the sore.” She obeys, still crying, while I fold a towel on the floor and then kneel on it. “Do you want to shave, or do you want me to?”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m afraid I’ll cut you if I do it,” I warn her.
“I don’t care,” she says again.
“Slide down to the edge,” I tell her. She leans hard on my shoulder to maneuver her butt to the edge of the toilet seat. She winces, from her chest tube spot and from her ribs, and I wait until the wince is done. Then we stretch her leg over and across the tub until we can get her heel anchored on the built-in soap dish. I’m being as careful as possible because I have the definite feeling she’s not even supposed to have “that thing” off for vanity reasons. Not that I blame her. “Here.” I hand her the razor. She stops crying and starts shaving. One neat row, edged in dirty lines of hair-tinged shaving cream. Then another. After each one I pluck the razor from her fingers and hold it under the tub tap to clean it off.
“Your mom’s smoking,” I tell her.
“I know,” she g
oes. “I smelled it.”
I hand back the razor. “So. What did the doctor say?”
She starts another row. You can hear the hairs getting sliced off. That’s how thick they are. Snick, snick. “The dicked-her?”
“Ellen!”
“I hate him,” she says. “He didn’t warn me about this. All he said—once—once, he said, Your leg will have lost a little muscle tone.’”
“How long do you wear the ski boot?” Snick, snick.
“He said six weeks,” she tells me. Except for the round sore, ringed with a thatch of hair, her lower leg is fully shaved. The naked skin is pale and veined and scaly. “But now I don’t believe anything he says. Maybe it’ll be months. Years even.” She slowly scoots herself back onto the toilet seat. I reach for the Velcro and plastic thing.
“Not yet,” she goes. “I took the dressing off” She means off the sore, I guess. “I wanted to see everything. I’ve got to redo it.”
I bring her gauze and medical tape and Neosporin and let her deal with the shiny spot on her shin and then with the boot, while I mop up stray globs of shaving cream and rinse out the tub. When I’m done, I wipe everything down with the towel I was kneeling on. I throw the towel in the laundry hamper and let Ellen lean hard on me while she half walks, half hops to her room. She collapses on the bed, winces, holds really still for a second, and then breathes out slow.
“So guess what,” I finally say.
“What?”
“I think I can drive now.”
She gives me a glimmer of a smile. “Did you drive here?”
“No. I wanted you in the car with me the first time. If …” I stare at the plastic and Velcro. At how shriveled her leg is underneath. And I get scared a little. I can feel it in my stomach, flipping over. “If you’d be okay with that.”
“Let’s go to Top Hats,” she says.
“Now?” I ask.
“You said you could drive,” she tells me. “So, can you?”
“I swear,” I tell her. “But my mom dropped me off here. I don’t have the car.”
“You can drive mine!” Ellen’s mother yells from somewhere in the house.
“Were you listening to us this whole time?” Ellen shouts.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” her mother shouts back.
There’s this long, long silence.
“I can smell your disgusting cigarette!” Ellen finally calls.
“Do you want my keys or not?”
It’s not a windy road with the ocean on one side and warm sun making everything shimmer, and there’s no white light steering wheel. Instead it’s freezing, and Ellen’s not next to me. She’s in the backseat, and it took us ten minutes, with her mother helping, just to get her into the car. Ellen’s not exactly happy, but I’m driving. I’m driving again, and I’m not feeling any sort of a heart attack coming on. Maybe I’m not in control of tree branches or cinder blocks, and maybe it’s not totally okay, because Cameron’s still dead and Ellen’s lower leg looks like a broom handle, but it’s okay enough. For now.
I wait a couple of days until I’m sure. Then I tell everyone.
Seth says, “Does your front seat go all the way back?”
Jason says, “Congratulations, Anna.”
Lisa says, “You want to drive us to Patty’s Saturday night?”
“Patty’s?” I go. The last bell just rang.
Ellen left school an hour ago to get a short cast after all. It took only two days before the doctors figured out she wasn’t keeping the ski boot on the way she’d been told to. They were satisfied that her sore seemed better and not infected, but apparently Ellen was unbelievably close to screwing up the break in her tibia all over again by wrenching it around in her sleep. Or trying to walk down the stairs on it in the middle of the night. Or something that pissed off her orthopedist enough he told her mother Ellen wasn’t being responsible, and she had to go back to a cast. Something like maybe drinking and walking without the boot, I’m guessing. But for some reason I’ve kept my mouth shut.
Now the rest of us are at our lockers, filling our knapsacks.
“It’s the SAT after party,” Seth explains to me. “Patty’s parents are going to be in Bermuda.”
“Saint Bart’s,” Lisa corrects him.
Oh,” I say.
“But we don’t have to go,” Seth points out.
“Whatever.” My throat is sort of closing up shop. It’s not a fake heart attack. It’s just … I don’t know. It’s something else.
“Really,” Seth says. “We can hang out. Make out.” He sees my face. “Count my send-a-dollar money or do origami.”
“Origami?” Lisa asks.
“He’s kidding,” I tell her.
Jason says, “Forget the party.” He swings his knapsack over one shoulder. “It’s great that you’re driving again.” He arches his left eyebrow at Lisa, and she drops it. Then he looks at me. “Can I get a ride home?”
After I drop Seth off at his house, Jason switches from the back to the front seat.
“Ellen’s getting a new cast,” he goes. I turn right at the light and crank the heat. “You’re driving again.”
“Yeah,” I say. The Honda still has that new-car smell. I like it, but Jack gets nauseous.
“So, I’ve got some news too,” Jason goes.
“What?”
“I met someone.”
“Really?” I make a left at Broad. “Where?”
“Taylor Academy.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
“How did you meet someone at Taylor?”
“Online,” Jason says.
“You’re sure he’s a kid and not some pervert?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Jason nods. “I’ve already seen him a couple of times.”
“What’s his name?”
“Turn left at the stop sign. I can’t tell you yet. He’s not out.”
“Oh,” I say. I turn onto Bateson. “Ellen’s going to be bummed.” Whoops. I glance at him. “Um … ,” I say.
Jason sighs. “It’s okay, Anna,” he goes. “I’ve known she likes me for a long time.”
“She doesn’t know you know, right?” I ask.
“I thought you two talked about everything,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“Take the left fork. She didn’t tell you about our conversation?”
“What conversation?”
“Guess not. That’s mine. The white one with gray shutters.” I slow to a stop. “Ellen got drunk.”
“When was this?” I put the car in park and keep it on. For the heat.
“A few weeks ago.”
“A few weeks ago? Where was I?”
Jason shrugs.
“Where were you two?”
“My room,” Jason says.
“Your room?” I ask. “Who else was there?”
“Nobody,” Jason tells me.
“Where was I?” I go again. He shrugs again. Therapy? Was I at therapy?
“Anyway,” Jason says. “She let me know then.”
“She let you know?” I say. “Let you know? You mean, she told you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh my God,” I go. She made a pass at him. Ellen made a pass at Jason.
“Listen, Anna,” Jason says. He turns his vents away from him and toward me. He doesn’t know how that bothers my eye, so I punch the button on the dash to make the warm air hit our feet. “You know how much I like Ellen.”
I nod.
“She’s embarrassed enough as it is.”
“She really likes you too,” I say. “I mean, not just in a crush way. In a person way. She doesn’t want you to be embarrassed either.”
“Shit,” Jason goes.
“What?”
A woman has opened his front door and is stepping out onto the front porch. She’s wearing a long fur coat with a wool shawl wrapped around her head and black ski mittens on her hands. “Who’s that?”
“My grandmot
her,” Jason goes. “This is going to be bad.”
“Does she live with you?”
“Yeah. I should go.”
She’s saying something to us. At least, I think she is. She keeps gesturing with her mittened hands.
“What’s she yelling?” I ask him.
He looks mortified.
“You want to just get out and I’ll go?” I ask. “I mean, I don’t care if you have a weird grandmother. But … whatever you want.”
He doesn’t move. He looks at me. “Ellen really didn’t tell you about this?”
“About what?”
Jason rolls down his window.
“Don’t,” I say. “It’s too cold.”
He keeps it down and then looks at me. Now I can hear his grandmother. She’s craning her head at us in the car, and she’s still waving her hands in the air, as if she’s a preacher or something.
“With a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.’ Leviticus 18:22. ‘If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.’ Leviticus 20 …”
Oh my God. I refocus on Jason, who’s still looking right at me. He mouths the words exactly along with her shouting from their front porch.
“’Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over …’”
“Oh my God.” Did I say that out loud?
“Exactly,” Jason goes. I guess I did.
“Ellen met her?”
“Well,” Jason says. “She was sort of drunk.” He tries a smile. “Ellen, that is.”
He rolls up the window and his grandmother’s voice fades, but she stays there, gesticulating on the porch with those mittens and that long coat.
“She lives with you?” I go.
Jason nods.
“She does that all the time?”
Jason nods again. “It’s kind of entertaining,” he says. He’s not convincing.
“What about your parents?” I ask.
He shrugs. “They’re not exactly thrilled either.” I can’t tell if he means about his grandmother or about him.
“That is the Bible she’s quoting from, right?”