Days Like This (13 page)

THIS OFFICE STILL looked the
same as it had the first time I met Dr. Lambert four years ago, back when we
found out Mom was bipolar. I crossed my legs, uncrossed them, and rested my
hands at my side. Next to my seat was a side table covered in little random
items. Rubber bands, stress balls, little toys, a Zen sand garden with a mini
rake thing. I debated picking one up, but settled on the pillow and clung for
dear life as the door closed.

“Thanks for
coming, Cassie.”

I looked
around the office, and followed Dr. Lambert’s movement. “Why am I here again?”

Dr. Lambert
grabbed a pen, and sat across from me with a smile. “Joyce and I have been
speaking a lot about how all this has affected you. She told me a little about
your discussion with her a few weeks ago.”

I shifted in
the seat. “Discussion?”

“The one when
you tried to get her to take her meds and recounted a few of your childhood
disappointments.”

Mom told her
all that? “Was I not supposed to say that to her?”

Dr. Lambert
crossed her legs in her chair. “On the contrary. Cassie, no one knows your
mother’s illness better than you. You’re the one who is best suited to help
her.”

“I can help
her?”

She focused
her eyes on me. Therapists were amazing with the way they could zoom in, like
they found that one flaw on perfect skin and made a target out of it. It was
unsettling. “The next time I saw her that moment was all she could talk about.
She didn’t know about all of those moments, not consciously, not in a way that
meant anything to her. Part of her recovery, part of her journey to
self-sufficiency depends on you being honest with her, on being vulnerable.”

I wanted to
laugh because that wasn’t something I did well. “Self-sufficiency?”

“Bipolar
disorder isn’t the end of a life; it’s the beginning of a new one. Joyce has
the capability to take care of herself, to be on her meds, to work if she
wants, but she lacks currently the drive and the understanding. That’s our job.
Yours and mine.”

Our job.
The only real team I’d ever been on was
with Graham. He’d said “we” a lot. Eventually, it did feel like we until
eventually we weren’t. Now we were on opposite teams or even different games, maybe.
I grabbed a small squishy ball from the table and squeezed it in my hands.

“So what—you
want me to tell Mom all the ways she’s disappointed me? That doesn’t seem
helpful.”

“Not exactly,”
Dr. Lambert said. “I want you and I to have a discussion right now, that’s all.
I want you to tell me about yourself.”

I dropped the
ball back down. This whole table next to my seat was an arsenal for avoidance.
“You know me.”

“I used to,
but you’re not the same girl who visited me in this office a year ago. Are
you?”

I laughed and
squeezed the pillow. “I definitely am not.”

“So, tell me
who you are. Tell me something real,” she said, uncrossing her legs. I tried to
find somewhere to focus on in the room. Somewhere not Dr. Lambert. Something
real about myself. I wrapped my finger around a frayed thread dangling from the
pillow. “You’re nervous?”

“I don’t
really talk about myself much at school. I’m a little out of practice.”

“Why don’t you
talk about yourself?”

I shrugged. “I
went there to reinvent myself.”

“To change?”

I nodded. “I
left everything because I thought I could escape who I was there, who my mom
was, what her past was. I wanted to be happy.”

Dr. Lambert
clicked her pen, but she didn’t write anything down. She didn’t look away from
me in case moving her gaze meant I would disappear completely. “I remember that
you were conflicted, unsure, a little stressed. You never mentioned anything
about happiness. You weren’t happy here?”

“I was.”

“But you
wanted a different happiness? What were you really trying to find?”

“I wanted to
stop it from repeating.”

“Stop what
from repeating?”

I stared at
Dr. Lambert. Her eyes were wide and brown, open like she really did care. I
took a breath and picked up one of the rubber bands off the table, wrapping it
around my fingers. I didn’t look up at her, just watched the green band twist
around my fingertips.

“I was five
and we spent all day in the car. I remember the metal seatbelt was hot on my
skin because she didn’t like to use the air conditioning. Mom always preferred
the purity of the wind. ‘Everything in its natural state.’ Before we went, she
bought me this set of brand new crayons and a unicorn coloring book. The
picture I remember the most had a unicorn trying to eat the moon, and I colored
it pink,” I said. I was already smiling at the memory. I hadn’t thought about
that day in so long, but I could recall a lot of details. “All day we were in
the car. It was hot, I was hungry and Mom told me, ‘It will all be worth it
when we get there, Cassie. You have to wait for good things.’ We ended up at
the beach in Wilmington. It’s like a four-hour drive and when we got there I
cried because I didn’t want to get out and she made me anyway, dragged me
through the parking lot while I was screaming.”

The rubber
band stretched as I pulled it across both my hands. I had to focus on it. I
didn’t want to see her face. I didn’t want to see pity there, or something
worse.

“But then we
got closer and I saw these lights from this Ferris wheel. The whole boardwalk
was a carnival with rides and games and food. She knelt down, a big smile on
her face, and wiped my eyes. ‘You want to have some fun?’ I remember everything
about that day. I won a stuffed mouse that was white with a red-and-white
lollipop and floppy ears, which is still in my bedroom. We played games, ate
lots of food. At the end of the day, there was a concert once the sun set. I
have no idea who they were. I just remember her singing, swaying with me on her
hip, and me playing with this glow stick necklace she got me. I fell asleep on
the ride home.”

“That doesn’t
seem like a bad moment.”

“It wasn’t,” I
said, unwinding the rubber band from my fingers. “But it was her first manic
episode—at least the one I can remember. The next day she was still chipper, so
happy and cheerful. We went shopping. Everything was smiles and sunshine and
presents and adventures.”

“For how
long?”

I shrugged,
sliding the band on my wrist. “Five days. Five days my mom was the most
excited, the most cheerful, the most amazing. I said to her that second day,
‘Mommy, you’re pretty today.’ And she said, ‘You’re pretty, too. It’s a pretty
day!’ That’s what we called them before we knew that’s what they were, her
manic episodes. They were pretty days.”

“And then they
weren’t?”

I nodded. “And
then they weren’t.” I threw the rubber band back on the table and let my gaze
drift back to Dr. Lambert’s face. She was still watching me, notepad and pen in
her hand, but she wasn’t writing.

I readjusted
how I was sitting, pulled my legs up into the couch and kept ahold of that
pillow. “She was always more hypomanic in the beginning— happy, reckless,
excited. She would talk fast or get an idea in her head and we had to do it.
Right then. A few times I would wake up at night and she would be in the middle
of an episode and I’d hear it.”

“Hear what?”

I closed my
eyes quickly, exhaled. “Her in her bedroom having sex with whatever guy she’d
found. I don’t know where they came from, but they were around in the beginning
a lot more than when I was older. Or maybe she didn’t bring them home. I don’t
know.”

She scribbled something
on her notebook. After a second, she met my gaze. “The majority of bipolar
patients suffer from depressive episodes. Do you remember her first depressive
episodes that affected you?”

The first one
I thought of was the night I left Graham. I didn’t want to share that one.

I cleared my
throat. I knew the statistics and the general cases. Long states of depression,
then manic highs.

“My mom was
more like a tsunami. For months, she’d be fine. She’d be herself. Then all of a
sudden she’d be in my face like a bee drawn to sugar. Adventure was sugar.
Shopping was the sugar. That’s how we got the convertible—on a manic episode
when I was eleven.”

I remembered
that day too. She’d just received a check for one of the songs she produced.
She cashed that whole check on the car.

“I really only
remember one time vividly that was early on,” I said.

“Tell me about
it.”

I stared
beyond Dr. Lambert, studying the lines on the wallpaper. They swirled and
cascaded into each other until I couldn’t tell them apart.

“When I was
eleven it snowed,” I started. That storm was a big deal, because it rarely
snowed in our part of North Carolina—and never like that. “Everything was white
and it was so deep it was above my knees. I wanted to play outside, but Graham
wasn’t answering the phone. We were the only two kids our age on our street,
but Mom made me French toast and played The Beatles all morning, and she was
happy.”

I remember
thinking how much she must’ve loved snow, with that look on her face.

“I told Mom I wanted
to build a fort. She asked if I knew how, but I didn’t, and she grinned and
said she did.” I smiled a little at the memory. Mom put on as many layers as
she could find, since we didn’t have much real outside wear, and tied bread
bags over my socks before I’d put my rain boots on. She’d held my hand as we
walked through the snow. I’d loved her like that and I’d never wanted her to
let go.

 “We made a
snowman and had a snowball fight and made a fort from the trashcans around the
back of our house. We must have been out there for hours because I remember
everything hurt, frozen, but I didn’t care. It was beautiful and Mom was happy
and everything was amazing.” I said with a pause.

I looked at
Dr. Lambert from the corner of my eye, and she listened, intensely. Her face
showed no emotion, and I didn’t know how someone heard a story and showed no
emotion. I cleared my throat.

“Then Mom
showed me how to make a snow angel. ‘Count to twenty and come find me. If you
find me, we’ll have cocoa.’ She snuck around the corner and I laughed and made
that angel.

“I didn’t
stop. I moved my arms and legs like she showed me, and stared up at the sky as flakes
started to fall again and counted as loud as I could. When I hit twenty I stood
up carefully so I didn’t mess up my angel.”

It was quiet
in the room, just like it had been that day.

“There were no
tracks anymore because the snow was coming down hard, so I couldn’t find her. I
went the way I saw her go, but the whole world was frozen and covered in white.
It was still and quiet. I called her name, over and over. It felt like forever as
I searched for her, behind everything, under everything. I didn’t know where
she went. I cried.”

I continued
talking because if I stopped, even for a breath, I wouldn’t be able to start
again. “I walked to the woods. Mom wouldn’t go in there, but I walked along the
edge of the woods anyway. I found her curled up at the spot near the fence
where the woods and the grass met, sobbing on the ground. I thought she was
hurt, but she started rambling about being sorry, about hating everything, and
I knew she was lost. I tried to get her inside, but she couldn’t even hear me.
When she was like that, she never really registered that I was around.”

I remembered
the whole thing like yesterday. The cold. The weight of her. Trying to drag her
through the snow.

“Every other
step she would fall down and start bawling over again. She would call out for
my dad—Richard—like he was around the corner waiting. ‘He’s inside,’ I kept
telling her. ‘We have to get inside.’ And that’s when Graham came outside.”

“Graham saw
you with her in that state?” Dr. Lambert asked.

I nodded and
shifted in my seat. His face when he saw us there was confused and concerned. I’d
told him I couldn’t get her inside. The wind pierced my skin and I couldn’t
feel my legs or arms. Graham asked me if she was hurt.

 “She’s sad,”
I’d said.

“Does she get
sad a lot?”

“Can you help
me?”

“I’m sure my
dad can—”

“No!” I’d yelled
at him. He’d looked scared. “You have to help me. You can’t tell anyone. Promise
me forever. You will not tell anyone ever.”

His eyebrows
furrowed, but he’d nodded. “Promise, forever.”

Dr. Lambert said
my name. “Cassie, what did Graham do?”

“He helped me
get her inside. Somehow we convinced her to walk, but when we got into the house
she collapsed on the couch. Graham stood in the kitchen and watched me. He
didn’t say anything until I sat down at the table and I made him promise not to
tell.”

Dr. Lambert’s
forehead creased as she wrote down a couple notes. “He kept that promise. We didn’t
find out about Joyce for four more years.”