Paperweight (16 page)

Wednesday, July 16, 5:30
A.M.

WHEN I open my eyes, I don't know where I am. The bed feels the same—a hard single mattress covered in too-thin sheets—but the dark is different. Opaque. I blink and search for the familiar green glow of my digital clock. It isn't there.

I sit up. The pain behind my eyes comes in waves: a slow churning that builds, then dissolves in a milky froth. My throat burns when I swallow, and that's how I know last night was real. I am humiliated. I want to die.

“I'm going to turn on the light, Stevie. Might be bright.” I inhale at the sound of Shrink's voice, and screw my eyes shut. Fluorescent light burns through my lids.

“What—” I blink, letting the light in slowly. I'm in a single bed in a bare, windowless room. Not three feet away, Shrink sits
in a wooden dining chair next to the door, one of the pillows from her office in her lap. And I remember: We came here, to this room in the villa last night. I passed out in my clothes. She must have stayed. How she could stand to exist next to me after everything she saw and heard last night, I don't know.

“How did you sleep?” She swallows a yawn.

“Best sleepover ever,” I deadpan. “Want to play truth or dare?”

“No. But I would like us to have breakfast together.”

I hate that she won't play. “Can you just tell me if I'm getting kicked out of here?” I snap. “Like, a ‘one strike, you're out' kind of thing?”

“No. You're not getting kicked out.”

“That's too bad.” At the very least, maybe they could send me packing somewhere else, wherever they store the really broken dolls. I can't stand the idea of showing up to breakfast this morning.
Heyyy, girls. What'd I miss?
I couldn't bear the way Ashley would look at me. Especially if she's figured out what I did to her last night.

“You need to get weight and vitals done.” Shrink consults her watch. “It's early, so if you go now . . . you can get them over with.”

What she really means is:
If you go now, there will be fewer people out there, which will make this day slightly less awful for you. Not much. But slightly.
I sit up and press the soles of my feet into the floor. My soles are raw and crusted with blood.

Shrink reaches for the door. “I'm going to get cleaned up, and then I'll have one of the staff members bring us something to eat, okay? We can talk in my office.”

I nod and shake my head at the same time, trying to clear my
cottony brain. Being here is disorienting. I don't know where I expected to be by now. Thirty thousand feet over some other state, an empty mini bottle of vodka wedged between my knees. Eden's couch. My bed at home. Not here.

My welcome-back breakfast consists of scrambled eggs, a fruit cup with not one but three of those bloated hot pink cherries in it, and two freezer-burned turkey sausages.

“I hope you didn't go to too much trouble,” I say politely. “I had a big dinner last night.”

The line of Shrink's jaw deepens, then disappears. “I spoke with your mother just now. She's worried, and she asked to have a family session with you. Over the phone.”

“I've been meaning to ask you: What's the deal with you and those paper birds? It's kind of weird.” I stab one of the turkey sausages, and take my hand away.
Ta-da!
The fork stays frozen in place.

“I told her I didn't think you were ready.”

“Listen,” I inform her. “I'm obviously not ready for any of this.”

“Stevie, I'd like for us to talk about what happened last night.”

The last thing I want is to talk about last night.

“You said that you deserved to die.”

“I don't—that doesn't sound like something I would say.” The ink on my forearm burns with self-satisfaction.
Bitch.

“Do you, Stevie? Believe that you deserve to die?” Shrink interlaces her fingers together, and her knuckles go white for a fraction of a second. Less, even. If I had blinked, I would have missed it. But I didn't, and understanding clicks into place in the base of my brain. I am walking on a razor-thin ledge here. One
misstep and everything I've worked for will vanish in a cloud of smoke.

“Anna.” I say it softly, fill it up with meaning. “You
know
me. I was upset, and when I'm upset, I get, like, dramatic. Right? I mean, hello?” My laugh comes out more like a cough. I reach for the remaining pillow on the love seat.

She shakes her head, slightly. “I don't think you were being dramatic. I think you meant what you said.”

“Okay. I just—sometimes I do feel like that. Guilty or whatever. But I would never do anything about it. Nothing like that.”

“Never actually hurt yourself, you mean? What would keep you from hurting yourself?”

Her question takes me by surprise, leaves me shuffling through index cards for an acceptable response. I didn't study for this one. I don't know what to say, so I respond, “Family.” It seems like something a well person would say.

“Let's talk about that. How do you think it would be for your family if you killed yourself?”

If you killed yourself.
It's weird how she says it that way, and not softer. Like,
if you weren't here anymore
or some bullshit. I almost want to thank her. At least we're speaking the same language.

“It would be hard for my dad.” I let my face go soft. I imagine him slumped in the antique love seat in
Le Crâpeau
, smoking and alone. “He wouldn't have any family left.” I hate the idea of doing to him what my mother did to him before me. But I love Josh and despise myself more. “And my mother would be upset, but mostly because it would make her look highly ineffective, parenting-wise.”

“What about Josh? How would it be for Josh?” she asks. “What would he say if he knew you were considering suicide?”

I squint at her. “Josh is dead.”

“I understand. But it seems as though Josh is still very much with you. Very much a part of your everyday thoughts. So I don't think it's fair to talk about the impact of your suicide on family without talking about Josh.”

My mind goes totally blank. As if one-zillionth of a second ago, it was full of all these thoughts and memories and feelings and now there is nothing but quiet, white space. The truth is, I don't know what it would be like for Josh. I've been doing this for him—every self-denial has been in his name—but I've never actually thought about what he would have to say about it.

“I don't know,” I mumble. “I don't know what he would say.”

“I'm going to push you to think about this, Stevie. I think it's important.”

“Why?” I drop the tray next to the love seat, untouched. “What's your deal? Are you just trying to make me feel like shit? Is that the goal here?”

“Of course not. But you don't need me to make you feel like shit, do you? Don't you already feel exhausted, and sick, and sad, and ready to give up?”

“Jesus.” I close my eyes to block her out. It's a child's game, but it's all I have.

“I'm pushing you because I think you're strong enough to take it, Stevie. And I want you to hear this. Open your eyes, please.”

I glare directly at her, into her bright green living eyes, and I'm so angry I could scream. And I hate her for making me cry
last night because now that I have, it feels like I am brimming. As if my body is nothing but water, constantly on the verge of dissolving in tears. She's made me weak.

“What? What do you want?”

She matches my gaze, but hers is soft and fierce at the same time. “If you kill yourself, it will not bring Josh back. It will not make his death any more acceptable. It will not lessen anyone's grief; it will only compound it. It will not make you feel any less guilty, because you will be dead. It will not make things any better for you, because you will be dead.”

My breath comes in starts and stops, and I fix my gaze on the titles on her bookshelf.
Treatment Manual for Anorexia Nervosa, Second Edition: A Family Approach. Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eating Disorders. Love's Executioner.

“Stevie? I'd like to come sit next to you. Is that okay?”

I nod.
Interpersonal Process in Therapy: An Integrative Model.

I feel her next to me on the couch. She rests her hand on my shoulder.

“You—look at me.”

I do.

“You are too valuable to leave this earth before your time,” she says. “And I know that if you want to kill yourself—truly want to kill yourself—I can't stop you. I can do my best to keep you safe while you're here, but ultimately your life is your own. But I hope, very much, that you will give treatment some time. That you will take your medication and continue to work in therapy and see—just see—if that changes anything for you.”

When she stops speaking, I look at her. Her eyes are wet.

“You're crying,” I say. I look down at my lap to see tiny dark
spots on my thighs. I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. It's hot and salty.
Shit
, I think.

“Yes. I feel emotional. I care about you.”

I bow my head in acknowledgment. “Did you know she didn't even cry?” I say after a while.

“Who didn't?”

“My mother. The day of the funeral. She didn't even cry. Not one tear.”

The morning of the service, I stood in the bathroom of
Le Crâpeau
, dressed in an ugly long-sleeved black dress that was the only one I owned. I knew my mother would hate it, because it was faded enough and ill fitting enough to make me look like I didn't have a mother at all. My bare feet sealed themselves to the linoleum floor. I pulled my hair back, then let it down. How was a girl supposed to wear her hair when her brother was dead?

There was a knock at the hollow door. “Stevie?”

“One second.” I turned on the hot faucet and stared at my hands under the scalding water, the skin growing a deep, repentant pink. The burn felt good, like crying underwater.

“Stevie.” Another knock. “Your mother is here.”

“I said I'm coming!” I turned off the water and wiped my hands on my dress. I rubbed my face with my hands, kneading the last bit of emotion from my face. When my face was pure and blank, I set it like granite. I would never let her see.

When I opened the door, she was standing in the front hallway next to my dad. She looked out of place: a fine porcelain doll shoved into a cheap plastic dollhouse.
One of these things is not like the others.
The first thing I noticed was her bare left hand.
Her suit was tailored: tight and black. Her hair was pulled back into a bun, her nails a lacquered red to match her lips. Next to her, a suitcase so small it made me cringe. Of course she wasn't staying. She was never going to stay.

“Oh, sweetness,” she said, and she came to me and pulled me into her. Everything that touched me was cold: the heavy links of her gold bracelets pressed against the back of my neck, and her fingertips against my cheeks. My thigh ached beneath a thick white bandage. “Oh, baby.”

“Hey, Mom,” I said into her chest bones. She smelled expensive, like flowery French perfume. We stood there in the dim hallway for a long time, the only sounds her heartbeat and my dad's muffled, choking sounds. I let her hold me because I had killed her only son. I blinked and counted my breaths.
In, out. In, out.
The air in the apartment was stale and full; so much grief and anger there was barely room for us.

“Well.” She exhaled and pulled away. “We should get dressed. Where can I—”

“My room,” I said quickly. No one had been in Josh's room since he died. Not during the day, anyway. I'd slept in his bed once, inhaling him through the worn bed sheets. But when I woke up, the comforter was tucked around me differently than when I'd gone to sleep—tighter—and I never did it again. I couldn't stand the thought of Dad standing there in the dark.

I dragged her suitcase across the carpet and into my room. She sat on the edge of the bed—the tiniest sliver. She tried not to look at the heaps of clothes on the floor or wrinkle her nose at the sour sheets.

“So, how was your flight?” I chirped.

“It was—how are—how have you been holding up, my love?” She patted the bed next to her.

I pressed the Play button on my stock response, because she didn't deserve better.

“We're doing the best we can,” I said.

“Ah.”

“I have to brush my teeth, okay?” I ran my tongue over my teeth, smooth and minty. “I'll be in the bathroom.” I stumbled out of my room and shoved through the bathroom door without knocking first. Sweat beads bulged angry at my temples, and I turned on the water and splashed my face again and again as she turned the knob and slid in behind me.

“Those transatlantic flights are just—” She sucked in a sharp, high breath.

“It's okay, Mom,” I told her in the mirror. I said it the softest way I knew how. “Okay?”

Her face crumpled for the briefest of moments. Then she smoothed it out again.

“Yes. Yes.” She set her makeup bag on the sink next to the soap dispenser. In her purse she found a pack of cigarettes. Only a few left. She tapped one out and lifted it to her perfect lips. I'd never seen her smoke. She took a long drag and blew a winding silver trail at herself in the mirror while I unjammed the frosted window. Sticky, wet summer air drowned the room.

“This apartment is not what I want for you,” she told her reflection.

“Yeah, well . . .” I sat on the toilet lid, propped my bare feet on the edge of the tub, and watched her. “We had to. Because of you.”

She pressed her lips together. “I needed to get away, and I didn't know how. Haven't you ever felt that way, like you just needed to escape?”

“What's his name?”