Circle Nine (26 page)

I am only half listening as he continues telling me the ins and outs of this thing I have — dissociative fugue — which sounds like something slimy and infested. He knows. He knows for sure that I’m hiding something. Something so big and so horrible that it pushed me out of my mind for a while and warped me forever. I wish I could tell him what I did that night. I wish I could work on it and get better. I wish I could let him help me. But even as I’m wishing these things, I feel the same suffocating guilt for even wanting to get better when my family is gone. They didn’t get another chance; they didn’t get to do anything over. I will never, ever tell him. I will live with my secret forever.

This is what should have happened next. This is the way I dreamed it would happen, over and over. I wish it could have been this way.

It’s there, just like I remember it. I walk through the heavy iron gate, ironically the gate to a cemetery, past tiny clusters of mourners, and I have no trouble at all finding what I’m looking for; the tree is one year older than before, but I imagine the extra year only adds to its grace and beauty. It is gnarled, elegant. Its long branches bow toward the ground, nearly sweeping the frosty grass with their fingertips. It’s nearly barren now, of course, in preparation for Vermont’s cold winter. Even without the protection of most of its leaves, it’s still majestic, still welcoming. I climb to the top and find the spot, our spot, where we used to squeeze in together and hide from the world, and trace our initials with my thumb. Still there, even after so many months of neglect. I used to like to imagine all the history this tree has seen, never realizing that someday we — my sister and me — would be just another blip in its century-long cycle. I sit here for a while, thinking of my parents, then when I can no longer keep them at bay, I allow my mind to train itself on my memories of Katie. She’s the reason I need to be here.

“I’m so sorry, Katie,” I whisper. Saying it out loud makes it feel somehow trivial and less of an apology, so I say it in my head — everything I’ve wanted to tell her since it happened. I sit in our old spot in our tree and tell my sister how sorry I am. I tell her how much I loved her, and how she saved my life back then, and again now, because the memories of how happy I was when I had her have given me reason to go on in spite of everything that’s happened since.

When I finish, hours have gone by. I am drained and shaken, sedated and luminous, as if my parts have divided and are floating around me instead of sticking to me, as they should. Finally, I scramble back to the ground. My fingers unclasp my necklace without communicating with my brain or heart.

In my mind, I slip the gold necklace around her neck.

I want you to have it forever, I think at her. It means courage to exist in an imperfect world.

I push the necklace under the soil beneath the tree.

Abby,
it reads, its letters partially obscured by earth and grass. My gift from her, it named me when I didn’t know who I was. It brought me back to who I was supposed to be.

But instead, this is what happened the day after my session with Dr. Tessler. I told myself it was how it had to be.

During job-search hours, I walked straight, head bent and shoulders hunched, baseball cap in place, for at least a mile. I walked until I felt far enough away. I went into a gas station and asked where the nearest pawnshop was. There is always a pawnshop, no matter where you are.

I walked back in the direction I came, asking for directions twice more before I found it. I stopped in front of it: a nondescript brick building, sandwiched between two other buildings, with a cheap yellow awning:
Buy, Sell, or Trade!
it read, as if everyone to walk in there wouldn’t leave with a heavy heart.

I opened the door and stepped inside. I approached the counter. A line. I waited two or three minutes. A woman with a porcelain tea set: twenty dollars. Then me. Facing a register boy, too young to work in this business, with a face full of acne.

My fingers unclasp my necklace without communicating with my brain or heart.

“Seventy,” the boy said.

“That’s not right.” My fingers were shaking. “I need at least three hundred. Look — it’s twenty-four-karat gold. And there’s a diamond.” My voice had risen a few octaves. I’d sounded desperate. The boy sighed, not a real sigh, but a bargaining sigh. One that said,
I’ll meet you somewhere in the middle. You know it; I know it.
He pulled out a magnifying glass from below the desk and pretended to look closer at the stamp on the necklace. I turned away.

“Not that many people will want to buy it,” he said. “It says
Abby.
There’s not that many people named Abby who wander in here.”

“I know,” I hissed. There were tears.

“All right, all right,” he said, palms up. “One twenty-five, since there’s a diamond. That’s the best I can do.”

I nodded. And then it was done.

I wish I had done it the other way: spoken to my sister, told her how sorry I am. Grieved my family the way I want to — the way I would if I weren’t forever twisted, defunct. Maybe even let Dr. Tessler try to fix me.

But instead, I am on a bus, with nothing but my old clothes and the book I’ve taken, moving away from my past at fifty-five miles per hour. I won’t read the book just yet. Instead I will allow myself to stay where I have become comfortable, just me alone with all the things I am feeling below the surface, afraid to rise out of it or sink farther down. I still can’t let the feelings out, or I will fall apart, splintering into millions of pieces. Maybe I’ll never be able to let them out. And maybe the
Purgatorio
will ever remain tucked under one arm, unopened. After all, how can I know just now what will happen, who I will become? I have ten hours ahead of me before my ticket’s up, and then I’ll have to find another way. But I will — I will always find some other way.

Maybe one day, I’ll have the life I left behind. Maybe I’ll open an art studio in California, sketch portraits by the waves, live in a modest little house and walk barefoot to work, use the one thing I’m good at to take me somewhere better. Maybe I won’t be Abby or Addie there, but someone else entirely, someone bold and capable and strong.

Maybe I’ll turn into someone I can be proud of, someday.

Maybe someday, I’ll fall in love again.

Maybe I’ll have a family. And if I do, I will open my heart to them without fear for myself. I will teach them to give back to the world. I’ll show them how loved they are and I’ll live in every moment of all of the pain that comes along with loving.

I promise myself that I’ll do all of these things someday.

One thing: after this, no more hiding. I’ll never hide again.

But for now, I’ll just sit on this bus, and I’ll watch the Vermont mountains rush by, and I’ll dream.

I am so grateful to those who lent me support of all kinds as I completed this book, and to the people who were there to encourage me as a developing writer long before the idea for this novel was conceived: Hilary Van Dusen, Josh Adams and Tracey Adams, Tor Seidler, Jackie Resnick, Suzanne LaFleur, Terence Heltzel, Alex Heltzel, Professor Katherine Tillman, Bob Jones, and especially, Patrick Chan.

A
NNE
H
ELTZEL
earned her MFA in creative writing from the New School.
Circle Nine
is her debut novel. She says, “I wrote
Circle Nine
shortly after moving to Mumbai, India, where I lived for a year and a half. It was a surreal and isolating experience at first, giving up my job and friends to move to a country I’d never even seen before. Nevertheless, the magic of the city was ever-present; my reality had, in a sense, changed entirely. This all contributed to the creation of Sam and Abby’s cave-palace.” Anne Heltzel lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her dog, whose name means “cobbler” in Hindi.