I'll Stay

by Karen Day

  I jumped back onto the curb. How had I gotten here? But it woke me up. I was still blocks away from my appointment and going to be late if I didn’t hurry.

  * * *

  Dr. Houseman was tall with shoulder-length gray hair and small, dark reading glasses that sat on the end of her nose. I didn’t like how her lips pinched together into a frown, as if she’d somehow gotten a glimpse inside of me and didn’t like what she saw. But then she smiled and extended her long arm for a shake, and I thought her hand was soft and her voice kind.

  We sat facing each other. Despite the air-conditioning, sweat poured down my back and the sides of my face. I took a tissue from the box on the floor next to me and wiped my cheeks and forehead. Then I glanced around her office. It was small with an enormous desk, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase stuffed with books, a wood filing cabinet, and a round coffee table between us. On the walls were framed diplomas and a painting of a coastline. Two small windows above her desk were frosted over; they let light in but I couldn’t see out. I began searching for my mother’s books in her bookcase and wasn’t sure that it was good or bad that they weren’t here. When I saw several books by Freud, I realized that all titles were related to psychology. I bet she knew the Rat Man case. Should I talk to her about that?

  “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.” She wore a white blouse, gray pants, and black, open-toed sandals. My mother rarely left the house in anything other than a skirt or dress. Hose, too. A large, spiral notebook sat on her lap, a ballpoint pen poised in her right hand. She was old, about my mother’s age. Maybe they went to school together. Maybe they knew each other. That I didn’t know this made me squeeze the sides of my chair with my hands.

  I could tell her that a crazy woman who reminded me of a sunflower was stalking me. But I didn’t know what that had to do with anything. Then I remembered why I’d made the appointment. I said, “I can’t stop crying.”

  She wrote something in her notebook. Then she stopped but didn’t look at me. “When did it start?”

  When I was eleven, I almost said. But why start there? I didn’t remember crying much when I was a kid. “Three years ago. Well, I mean, I haven’t been crying continuously for three years. Kind of off and on. But then since June, a lot more.”

  She nodded and kept her head down. “What happened three years ago?”

  I should start with how I jumped out the window and how it took me thirty long minutes to find Donny’s house. But then I’d have to tell her about what Lee said, Let her go, I’ll stay, and I wasn’t ready to do that. I didn’t want her to think I was a bad person. Maybe I should start at the beginning, when we decided to leave the Outer Banks. But was that the beginning? The beginning of what? Suddenly, the idea of telling this story with all its complexities and unknowns seemed so daunting, so exhausting, that I felt completely deflated. I started to cry. I was a faucet, a waterfall. Minutes passed.

  She looked up at me. “Do you want to talk about what happened in June?”

  “Okay.” I reached for a tissue and blew my nose. “I went to a wedding of a college friend. It was the first time we were all together since college. And my best friend, Lee, and I got into an argument and now she’s going to Thailand. And then my brother accused me. But that was before, at dinner . . .”

  See? How could I talk about the argument without first talking about spring break? I had never told the entire story to anyone. Would she think I was a terrible friend? Maybe she’d be shocked that I didn’t stay to help. Maybe, like Ben, she’d think the need to save oneself was stronger than any other desire. But maybe she’d think Lee was a martyr for staying.

  Why did Lee do that? Because I was so sexually inexperienced? Because I was scared and couldn’t stop crying? And what did she want me to figure out?

  The doctor wasn’t saying anything. Wasn’t she supposed to help me?

  I thought about my mother’s experience in therapy, how she said that it didn’t do much good. Did she talk about her feelings? Did she divulge family secrets? I didn’t know if our family even had secrets.

  The silence was excruciating. Why was she just sitting there, waiting?

  I glanced at the diploma behind her. “How long have you been a therapist?”

  “Thirty-five years.”

  “Do you like it?”

  She paused. “Ah, yes.”

  I stared at the little black clock on the coffee table. One minute passed. Then two. Then four. It was becoming clear that she wasn’t going to say anything else.

  “Have you ever read Listen, Before You Go?” I crossed my legs.

  She paused again. “Yes, years ago. Why do you ask?”

  “My mother wrote it.” A flicker in her eyes, a slight grimace or smile or wrinkle of her forehead would tell me what she thought, whether she was impressed or didn’t like it. But she simply nodded, the muscles in her face still, her eyes on me. I felt nauseated and my head ached from crying. I didn’t understand how Lorenzo did this every week. What did he talk about?

  I felt a sob rise from my chest and into my throat. “I’m not usually like this!”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “I don’t know!”

  “Do you want to tell me what you’re usually like?”

  All I thought about was what I wasn’t. I wasn’t passionate. I wasn’t a writer. I didn’t feel the beauty in a stone wall or a sky full of stars. I wasn’t really brave or the lifeline you called in the middle of the night. And despite what Logan had accused me of at dinner that night in Chicago, I wasn’t Phoebe, either. I wanted to tell her that I was confused about my mother and that I didn’t always tell my boyfriend the truth and that I’d let my best friend sacrifice herself for me.

  Instead I sat there and cried, minute after long minute. Finally, with only a short time remaining, I told her about one of the first times someone talked to me about Phoebe. Listen, Before You Go had just been published, and I was in the music room at elementary school, practicing “Hot Cross Buns” on my violin, when the new art teacher poked her head into the room and called to me. I’d never spoken to her. I hadn’t realized that she knew my name.

  “She said, ‘Clare, I thought of you as I read your mom’s book over the weekend. Phoebe looks just like you! Isn’t that something, to be the inspiration behind your mom’s main character?’ My parents’ friend, Mr. Donahue, had said nearly the same thing to me the day before. But this shocked me, maybe because I didn’t know the new art teacher. I wasn’t even sure it was true. But then everyone in the class looked at me and I liked it. It was like I’d done something important.

  “It started happening a lot, people saying that I was Phoebe and asking me questions. Did you help your mom write the book? Did those things happen to you? I began paying attention when people talked about her. I knew the book was about a guy coming home from Vietnam, but I didn’t know much else about it. Everyone loved Phoebe. She’s a hero, sort of. Well, she’s a great listener. She saved her brother, everyone said. Although at first I didn’t know what she saved him from.”

  Dr. Houseman was writing frantically, her expression unchanged. Was I making sense? What did she think of this crying?

  “I started asking myself, when things happened at school or when my mother was depressed, what would Phoebe do? Then I read the book and it was so, I don’t know. I mean, she put a lot of my life in there. My stuffed elephant. The throwing up thing. But it was confusing. Phoebe was smart and a good listener but she doesn’t save her brother. She watched while he put the gun in his mouth. She didn’t try to stop him before he pulled the trigger. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It doesn’t have anything to do with what happened three years ago or the wedding. Isn’t it so embarrassing that I’d make myself into a fictional character?”

  I closed my eyes and dropped my head into my hands. I felt completely spent, like the time Lee and I rode in this crazy fifty-mile bike race during junior year and we could barely climb the stairs when we returned to the hous
e.

  “It seems that others were awfully invested in this myth, too,” Dr. Houseman said. These were the most words she’d strung together since I’d arrived, and I didn’t know how to respond so I said nothing and kept my eyes closed. We were quiet for another minute and then she asked, “Why was your mother depressed?”

  I’d finally stopped crying but my eyes felt swollen and dry and hurt when I opened them. I shook my head. “I’m sorry. What?”

  She glanced at her notebook. “You said that you started asking yourself, when your mother was depressed, what would Phoebe do? And so I wondered, why was your mother depressed?”

  Had I said that? I crossed my legs again and glanced at the clock. “I meant to say upset. She got upset about things, like with her writing.”

  “So, she wasn’t depressed?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Sometimes I used this word—depressed—about my mother but I hadn’t given it much thought. Was she depressed? Why? And why were we talking about her, anyway? I wasn’t here to do that. I didn’t know why I was here.

  We were quiet for another minute and then she cleared her throat. “We have to stop for today. Same time next week? The week after that I’m away, but I’ll be here for the rest of the month and most of the fall.”

  “Oh,” I squeaked. “Okay.”

  Outside, the sun was big, bold, and hot as it burned through the trees. The air was still and smelled like overripe garbage. I started walking, not sure where I was going, my legs heavy and my head foggy, and feeling as if I were drunk or hung over or just awake from a deep, unsettled sleep. With every step I felt the hot air burn into my lungs.

  I thought Dr. Houseman and I would talk about Amy’s wedding and the argument. I thought she might help me call Lee to say goodbye. Instead, she’d barely said a word. And what did she mean that she’d be here most of the fall? I hadn’t planned to see her more than once or twice. It was expensive. I hadn’t told Ben about it, either. I didn’t want him to worry that there was something wrong with me.

  A therapist was supposed to make you feel better. But nothing about today felt good, not the worrying I did—in anticipation of coming—not the sobbing or the headache and exhausted way I felt now. How embarrassing that I only managed to talk about Phoebe. And what other people were invested in this myth?

  I missed Lee and how we were before everything happened. She knew me better than anyone. She’d have something funny or enlightening to say about my meeting with Dr. Houseman. But then I remembered what she said to me that night we argued, that I couldn’t be vulnerable, and I felt a flash of anger. Well, excuse me for not wanting to be so needy and demanding.

  I crossed Arlington Street, entered the Public Gardens and walked along the path until I came to the pond. And then I sat on a bench. The air was so still that the leaves on the trees didn’t move. In front of me, several swan boats, loaded with tourists and families, slowly paddled by.

  I came here a lot when I was younger, mostly with friends and their parents and sometimes with my dad. Once when I was seven or eight, I remembered riding a crowded boat with him on a hot summer afternoon, just like today. Suddenly, a man jumped off the back. He wasn’t in danger—the water was mucky and not deep—but there was a lot of yelling and pointing as he waded through the water to the shore. My dad said to me, “I’ve lived here my entire adult life and have never seen that!”

  For some reason, maybe because I’d never seen anything like this, either, I couldn’t wait to tell my mother. I kept saying this to him as we finished the ride, as we walked through the gardens, as we stopped for lunch. “Let’s go home. Let’s go tell Mom about that man jumping off the swan boat!”

  He took his time, walking slowly, looking in store windows and leading me down side streets. I didn’t understand why he wasn’t in a hurry. I’d convinced myself that my mother would love this story. I hardly ever said anything to her that she thought interesting, that surprised her or made her hungry for more. But this! Surely this was something that she’d never heard or seen.

  It was close to four when we finally got home. I had to use the toilet so badly that I burst through the door and ran down the hall to the bathroom. Sitting there, I went over the story and how I’d tell her. But as I finished, I heard my mother say, “I told you to keep her away until after five. You’ve wrecked my concentration.”

  “What a terrible thing to say,” my dad had said. “She’s your daughter.”

  I was glad he’d said that to her. But I was so worried about wrecking more of her concentration that I went to my room, got into bed, and read until I fell asleep. The next morning, I woke early and went to her office. The door was closed but behind it I heard her fingers on her typewriter. Tap, tap, tap, slam! Later, when we finally met up in the kitchen, I realized that the story no longer held the same interest and excitement for me. I wasn’t sure that I ever told her about it.

  A mother with two small children walked to the water’s edge. The little girl was dressed in a sundress and sandals, the boy in shorts and a T-shirt. They were squealing and clapping as they watched the ducks swimming in front of them. The mom reached into her bag and pulled out a loaf of bread. She tore off pieces and handed them out and the children squatted and tossed the bread in the water. Every time a duck grabbed a piece, the children turned to their mom and giggled. As if this were the best thing they’d ever seen. As if they were having the time of their lives.

  What a pleasure to watch. And their mom was so good with them.

  Occasionally my mother did fun things with me when I was younger. On the Vineyard we went to the beach and the fair. On weekends in Boston, we sometimes went to museums and movies. But there was usually a diversion in these activities (we’ll just stop by the bookstore on our way to the park) and she was always distracted, always a bit not there. I knew, even as a child, that she would rather be home writing. It was her reason for being. It was the most important thing in her life. As I watched the ducks circling in front of the children, I wondered—and this wasn’t the first time—why writing was so important that she’d choose it over me?

  But no, I didn’t want to think like this. My mother was an important author. She touched the lives of millions of readers. And she was a good enough mother, just, maybe, unconventional. Right?

  I closed my eyes and breathed in the hot summer air. When I heard the children squeal again, I opened my eyes and saw the little girl wrap her arms around her mom’s neck and pull her face toward hers. The mom smiled and laughed, her eyes never leaving her. Maybe she was having the time of her life, too.

  When I became a mother, I’d be like this woman. I didn’t want my children to worry about wrecking my concentration or growing up with impossible expectations. This woman wasn’t writing books or taking risks or chasing dreams. She was here. She was present.

  I didn’t know how long I watched, but when I glanced at my watch again, it was after five. Something had lifted from my shoulders and chest. Tonight when Ben came home, I’d tell him how cute the mom and the two children were. I’d tell him about the ducks and the bread. And I’d tell him that maybe it was time to find an apartment together. And to get married.

  Tomorrow Lee was leaving. People needed breaks from each other from time to time. I’d been okay this last month because I didn’t have to call every day and try so damn hard to keep up her spirits. She’d made her choice. She was going to Thailand. I would write in a few weeks or months. Or maybe I wouldn’t write at all.

  When I got back to the apartment I’d call Dr. Houseman and say that I’d decided not to come back. I wasn’t ready and couldn’t afford it. Or better yet, I’d leave a message on her answering machine so I wouldn’t have to talk to her. Then I’d make something light for dinner, a salad that I could keep in the refrigerator and give to Ben when he got home at ten.

  I would not have another day like today or another month like this past month. Life was too short to spend it crying and feeling guilty and trying to make up
for things that happened three years ago. It was better to live for today and the simple things in life. Like watching children throw bread at the ducks. Like smelling the hot humid air. Like baking bread and making the perfect spaghetti sauce.

  I stood and started for home.

  PART THREE

  1991

  CHAPTER 21

  My fourth-grade classroom overlooked the playground, and as I stood at the window, on my tiptoes with my hand on the chalkboard to balance, I searched for the two of them. Would they be together? Had their recent classroom bonding extended to the playground? Part of me wanted to see them off by themselves, heads bowed, examining an anthill or looking for four-leaf clovers or simply sitting in the grass, talking. Another part of me felt a twinge of foreboding.

  Sophia and Talia. Talia and Sophia.

  Before school started earlier this month, the third-grade teachers prepped me. Jonah, they said, had a temper. Abby was the most popular girl while Max, the athlete. And sweet Sophia (she’s like a little mother, one of the teachers said) was the receptacle of everyone’s secrets. Over the weeks as I watched her share her colored markers with Jonah and stay in during recess to read to Randall, who was confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg, I couldn’t help but see a little of how I must have been as a kid. She even looked like me. Freckles. Shoulder-length brown hair. Big, dark eyes. She became my favorite, just like that.

  But no one had told me about Talia. She arrived only ten days ago, her mother dropping her off at the front desk with barely a wave as she hustled back to her car. Later, Kitty, one of the fourth-grade teachers, told me about the drop off (a dump off, if you ask me, she’d said) and that rumors pegged Talia as a scholarship student, accepted after a second grader abruptly left. I didn’t know if this was true nor did I care because there was more to Talia than this. She had a presence. Whenever she walked in the room, attention instantly swung her way.