Authors: Carmen Rodrigues
I nodded. “Are you going to tell Sarah?” I asked. Her answer to that question was mostly irrelevant. I just didn’t know what to say, and I wanted to steer her away from my reasons why and toward something safer: the consequences.
“You did it on your own?” she asked. “Or with Lola?”
I didn’t want to lie to her, but I knew that if I told her it was Lola’s idea, she’d go after her. That would only make things worse for all of us. So I said, “Just me.”
She nodded and looked away. I studied her face, the dark bags beneath her eyes, her sharp chin, the thick streaks of eyeliner, which she wore even to bed. The silence stretched, just the sounds of our breathing, the water beating against the shower curtain, and Sarah singing.
Our fingers were near each other on the bed, and for some reason I let my hand inch forward until the very tips of my fingers rested on hers.
This brought her back to me. She looked down at our hands, and then at me. Her features softened, but only for a second. When she spoke, her voice was hard. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
I wanted her to kiss me more than anything, and I tried to tell her that with my expression. Maybe she understood, because she leaned forward a little, her mouth open slightly.
Suddenly the water stopped, followed by the sliding rings of a shower curtain pulled aside. Ellie glanced at the wall; her lips snapped shut. She stood, everything about her closed off now, and said, “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
The words stung, even though I didn’t believe she meant them entirely. She moved back to Sarah’s bed and slipped beneath the covers. A minute later Sarah entered the room, smelling of Irish Spring. She glanced at Ellie, who was already turned on her side, her arm covering her eyes. “Okay if I turn out the light, Jess?”
I nodded. The light flicked off, and Sarah slid into the bed beside Ellie. Soon I heard the sound of Sarah’s heavy breathing.
I stared at Ellie’s back, her body eerily still, as if darkness had the power to pause all the earthquakes she felt inside.
* * *
Hours later, I made my way through the house to the sofa in the basement. There I sat and thought about Ellie, from the first time
I saw her on our front porch to that day in her bedroom. I had never felt this way about anyone until she kissed me.
You don’t want me to let you go,
she had said, and it was true. I didn’t want her to let me go, but what did that say about me? About her? I could hear Lola’s voice in my head, her two words repeating over and over again:
Fucking gay. Fucking gay.
I didn’t know what to do with those words, not yet . . . so I put a pillow under my head and tried not to think. But sleep never came, just question after question and the feeling that nothing would be the same.
I can’t
b
elieve we ran thr
o
ugh the rain in
o
ur underwear. Well, I can’t
b
elieve
y
o
u
ran thr
o
ugh the rain. I’ll always run,
b
ut y
o
u, y
o
u’re t
oo
scared t
o
see the p
o
ssi
b
ilities.
B
ut t
o
day I felt like y
o
u really saw them, and that made me feel less al
o
ne, like s
o
me
o
ne else c
o
uld see the w
o
rld the way I see it.
AFTER. FEBRUARY.
Around midnight, Jess enters my room, sits on the edge of my bed, and passes a cold hand across my cheek. When I don’t respond—not because I’m sleeping but because I don’t have it in me—she shakes my shoulder. Reluctantly, I open my eyes.
I can tell she’s been crying. Her eyes are red, and strands of blond hair cling to the wet spots beneath. The rise and fall of her shoulders says she’s trying to hold it back, but it doesn’t seem easy.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She shakes her head like she doesn’t know, but I can tell this is a lie. I open my blanket, and she crawls underneath. We curve in together, clinging to each other like when we were kids, afraid
of all the noises old houses make. I wrap my arms around her. Soon her shuddering turns into crying; she pushes her face into my pillow until her moans are stifled, her eyes squeezed shut.
I remember her at age seven—her hair in pigtails, her eyes so curious, that question always on her lips:
Want to play?
But that was before, when I was the best friend she ever had. Now the distance between us has made her unreachable.
“Jess?” I lean over her, shake her softly, and then with more force. “Please. Open your eyes. Talk to me.”
When she does open her eyes, she says, “There are things you don’t know about me, Sarah.”
“What things, Jess?” I try to imagine any secret that can tear her apart like this, but her world is so predictable that I can’t. “Jess, tell me.”
She shakes her head, her gaze going blank as she retreats into herself. Minutes later, she says, almost numbly, “Some days, I just want it to all be over.”
“No, Jess.” It breaks my heart to hear her talk like that. “Please, don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”
She says, “I would never leave you, but it’s how I feel. That’s all. It’s how I feel.”
I want to tell her I feel the same way. That if I could, I’d take the first boat out of these floodwaters. That it’s just fear keeping
me in place. But I don’t say anything. It’s too hard to speak. All I can do is hold her until she is quiet—the weight of her sorrow drowning her in sleep.
* * *
Concerned Therapist shuffles around, checking her notes, lighting candles, muttering about breathing exercises and the importance of finding your center. She’s a firm believer in finding your center. I bet each morning, before she drinks her organic green tea or waters her flowers or makes love to her husband, she sits cross-legged on a yoga mat and searches for the core of her being.
“It’s important,” she repeats, settling into her chair before putting her cell phone on vibrate, “to find your center.” She turns to me and smiles that therapist smile that says,
I really see you. You’re important.
Then she clears her throat and asks, “How are you feeling?”
I stare at the clock, watch that small hand spin by for a while, before I say, “Fine.”
She nods, swallowing hard. “How are your sisters?” She angles her pen over her notebook, ready to write down anything even remotely relevant.
“Good,” I say, but I think about Jess, how scared I felt for her, and I wonder what might happen if I told Concerned Therapist a little bit about it. The thought doesn’t stick. Because I know if
I talk to her about Jess, she’ll unravel the story, untwisting all its threads until they lead back to me. So I push it from my mind. I count to one hundred and twenty, because this trick buys me time. Then I say with a lot of effort, “Yeah, everything’s fine.”
The counting is another part of my avoidance technique. For the last six sessions, I’ve successfully dodged Concerned Therapist’s questions with long silences and silly discussions:
Jess borrowed my shirt, and she didn’t ask. That really upsets me.
Mattie’s really cute, but she’s always the center of attention. It’s really frustrating. Meg is so boy crazy it drives my dad crazy. I really hate to see him worry so much.
Concerned Therapist consults her notes and picks, with almost superhuman intuition, the first name that pops off the list. “Is Jess still taking your clothes without asking?”
I think of Jess, with her frail frame and disinterest in anything. I wonder if she’ll ever take anything of mine again.
We all have secrets.
That’s what Tommy said. And it was true; we all did. Me, Tommy, Jake, Ellie . . . All of us had secrets . . . big, terrible secrets. But I never wanted that for Jess.
I’m getting worked up, so I think:
Stoic. Stoic. Stoic. Stoic. Stoic. Stoic. Stoic. Stoic.
And then I’m fine again. I’m back on track for therapy. “Jess just wants to talk about boys and life and stuff. I find it tiring,” I say to Concerned Therapist.
“And why does it bother you when your sister talks to you? Opens up to you?”
I count to one hundred and twenty before I say, “It doesn’t bother me.” And then I wait. It’s a toss-up whether or not this was the correct response. If instead I had replied that it did bother me, I might have had a half-hour session on sibling rivalry. This would be preferable to moving on to some other topic that may or may not hit a nerve. To swing it toward sibling rivalry, I add, “I guess it’s annoying.”
Concerned Therapist stops writing, taps the tip of her pen on the top of her linen pants, and stares at me. This is the danger of Concerned Therapist. Even when you try to lead her down the wrong path, she somehow stumbles onto the right one. “Let’s go with that. Why does it bother you when Jess cares what you think? When she wants to hear your opinion?”
“It doesn’t,” I mumble. And that’s sort of true. A part of me wishes Jess would open up. But another part is glad she’s pretending like last night never happened. It’s taking all I’ve got to keep myself afloat.
“What’s going on?” Concerned Therapist leans closer. Her perfume smells drugstore-bought, like an after-bath splash. It’s a small detail, but it makes her seem more human to me. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
One, two, three . . . “Nothing,” I finally say.
“Are you sure?” Suddenly, we hear a soft bell, indicating someone has entered the waiting room. It’s either my mom or the next client. Concerned Therapist checks her watch and realizes once again time has slipped away. I bet she wishes we could string these forty-five-minute sessions together like beads on a necklace. I bet she thinks that if we could, there’d be some sort of a breakthrough.
As if her superhuman intuition heard me, she says, “I’m going to talk to your mom about increasing our time together. I think we would make more progress if we had two hours to work with.” But she says this nearly every time we meet. And every time, I nod my head like I agree, which I don’t.
The truth is, I won’t see Concerned Therapist for two hours a week—at least not by choice. When Mom broaches the subject, I’ll tell her I’m doing fine. That I am much better than before.
Really, Mom. I promise
. And she’ll believe me. Not because my words sound true, but because sometimes it’s easier for us all to pretend.
You said, N
o
, we can’t press charges. Y
o
u d
o
n’t want that. Y
o
u’ll have t
o
testify. Y
o
u’ll have t
o
see him again. The
b
est thing t
o
d
o
is t
o
make him leave the city. And tell him he can’t c
o
me
b
ack. And that’ll
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e g
oo
d en
o
ugh. And I
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elieved you,
b
ecause at the time I didn’t kn
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w
b
etter. At the time, I was t
oo
afraid.
AFTER. FEBRUARY.
I arrive in Miami with two carry-on bags and a weight in my chest. The bags are light, just the essentials: toothbrush, clothes, running shoes. The weight in my chest is heavy: Ellie’s life, Ellie’s passing, my longing for Sarah, my failure at school, my broken link to my mother.
After I exit the plane, I call my mom to tell her I’ve arrived safely. Her words are the same as before: “I just don’t understand why you have to stay with your father. Why not Ohio? Or come here to Arizona. I love you, Jake. Your father loves you too, but he doesn’t care about you like I do.”
And like before, I don’t tell her that that’s the reason I’ve
come to stay with him. Instead I say, “Mom, I’m fine. I’ll call you soon. Okay?”
At baggage claim I’m greeted by my father, who gives me a slap-on-the-back hug, and his wife, Carla, who exclaims, “Oh, look at you!” And kisses me on the cheek.
Then there is the long fight through traffic on 826 West. My dad and Carla make small talk in the front, while Liza, my baby sister, sleeps soundly in her car seat, her thumb tucked warmly into her mouth. Finally, we arrive at a house crowded by palm trees. It seems like the typical South Florida construction: concrete walls, mango paint job, deep-brown roof tiles, and a paved driveway that curves around the yard like a question mark.
It’s been a while, so I get the tour again: formal living room, dining room, family room with flat-screen TV. They take me out back to show me the inground pool. They say, “It’s not like Ohio. Nearly every house here in Miami has an inground pool.” When I bend over to touch the water, they say, “You’ll get a lot of swimming done.”
They walk me to my guest room, set my bags on the bed. Carla says, “It’s so great you could come visit your home away from home.” She pats me on the shoulder. And I think,
You do not visit a home; you return to a home
, but I don’t say this. I just offer them a shaky smile.