Secret for a Song (2 page)

A
bout
fifteen minutes later, we pulled into one of those pretty, manicured office
complexes with tall, shiny glass buildings. Even with the shitty weather, the
place managed to look clean and sparkling.

The
shrinks my parents hauled me off to every year or so always fell into the
“don’t take insurance because we cater to elite clientele” category. It didn’t
make sense. I mean, if
my
kid had to go as often as I did, I’d just buy
her the cheapest one possible, the psychologist on sale.

But
I suppose I could guess why they did it. They used money to assuage their guilt—or
whatever—about the way I’d turned out. I was the bad seed that had sprouted
from the fucking angelic oak that was my family.

I
followed Mum into one of the buildings and stood off to one side while she
consulted the chart in the lobby. When she was done, we took the elevator to
the fourteenth floor. Through the glass double doors we went, right up to the
pretty receptionist.

“Hi.”
She grinned at us like she was a kid and we were Santa and his treasured elf.
There was a glob of red lip-gloss on her tooth. “Can I help?”

Didn’t
all the people who slumped in here need help? I glared at her. Seamlessly, she
moved her gaze from me to Mum, her smile intact, unwavering.

“Saylor
Grayson,” my mother said, her voice as low as it could go without being a
whisper. “Here to see Dr. Stone.”

“Of
course. Why don’t you have a seat?”

Why
don’t we? I sauntered over to the window instead, peering down past the landing
below us at the parking lot. Blackened tire tracks crisscrossed the sludge. If
I jumped and aimed for the ledge three floors down, would I be hurt badly
enough to warrant a trip to the hospital?

Behind
me, Mum cleared her throat.

“Come
sit down.”

But
I didn’t have to. A tall, bald African American man emerged from behind the
closed door and smiled at me. “Saylor?”

“That’s
me.”

“And
Mrs. Grayson, I presume?” He held his hand out to my mother.

She
took it limply. “Yes. You must be Dr. Stone. Well, I’ll let you two get on with
it, then.”

Dr.
Stone let go of her hand, his smile receding the slightest bit. He reminded me
vaguely of a giraffe, all thin legs and awkwardly long neck. “I thought this
was going to be a family session.”

Mum
pulled on her coat. “I’m afraid not. I have a pressing appointment. There’s no
need for that, anyway. You came highly recommended.”

“It’s
for Saylor’s benefit.” Dr. Stone’s smile had slipped completely by now, and
even the cheery receptionist was watching. “As I explained on the phone.”

“My
husband’s out of town at the moment, and I have an appointment.” Mum repeated
herself when she was mad, a kind of warning call to whoever was pissing her off.

Dr.
Stone hesitated a minute before nodding. He turned to me, his smile back in
place. “Well, then. Saylor, I’m looking forward to chatting with you.”

I
sighed and walked past him into his office.

Dr.
Stone’s office looked out over a back area of the parking lot that was more
trees and landscaping than lot. I sat on the pinstriped couch and stared out
the window. “Do you fuck your receptionist?”

“Beg
pardon?”

I
turned to look at him. His long legs, clad in black trousers, were crossed. He
looked like a spider. “You heard me.”

Perching
his bony elbows on the arms of his chair, he gazed at me for a minute. “Are you
trying to shock me, anger me, or both?”

I
laughed, fiddled with the injected spot on my chest. It felt more swollen.
“Been doing this a while, huh?”

“Thirteen
years.”

I
looked around at his decor. It was understated, sort of manly-but-classy. Lots
of steel and glass. None of my dad’s home office’s giant leather chairs and
brass globes. I swung my gaze back toward him. “So, are you gonna ask me
questions or what?”

“What’s
your major?”

I’d
expected
“Do you know why you’re here?”
and even
“What do you
want
me to ask?”
but not such a generic question. “Why?”

He
shrugged his bony shoulders, itched at the patch of silky ebony skin peeking
through his open shirt collar. “Just curious. Your mother mentioned you’re in
college.”

“
Was
in college. They yanked me out so they can babysit me or punish me or something.
It’s probably just as well. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing there
anyway; I was undecided.”

His
eyebrows pulled together. “I thought sophomores had to have a major declared.”

“Not
when your Dad makes regular, um, ‘contributions’ to the school. They told me to
take all the time I needed.” I pushed on the forming abscess and winced.

Dr.
Stone’s eyes followed the movement and my resulting expression, but he didn’t
say anything about it. “If you could do anything in the world, what would you
do?”

“Like,
for a job?”

That
shrug again. “For anything. What do you want to be doing right now, for
instance?”

I
thought about the syringe in my pocket. “Um, nothing?”

“Come
on.” He spread his giant hands out. “No judgment here.”

I
tried to resist rolling my eyes, but failed. “Yeah, right.” But he kept looking
at me with that expectant expression. So just to get him to stop, I said, “I’d
volunteer at the hospital.”

“Interesting
choice. Care to share why?”

So
I could learn more about my favorite hobby. Why else? “Don’t know. I just think
it’d be fun.”

Dr.
Stone sat up and grabbed a notepad, began to scribble. “I think we can make
that happen.”

“Seriously?”
The
scritch scratch
of his pen on paper continued. “You’re going to let
me go into a hospital?”

Setting
his pen down, he looked back up at me. “Why not?”

“You
know why not. Because of my ‘fictitious disorder.’”

He
gazed at me a long moment and I couldn’t help but notice that he still had that
wide-eyed look of wonder you see on kindergartners. By the time you hit the
fourth grade though, it’s long gone. At least it was for me.

“I
don’t think your fictitious disorder—your Munchausen Syndrome—makes you less
qualified to volunteer there than any other nineteen-year-old. In fact, you
might even have a better understanding of what patients and their families go
through.”

“Funny.
People who know the truth about me always try to keep me away from medical
establishments.”

He
ignored that. “What do you think you’d like to do at the hospital?”

Learn
how to make myself sick so other people couldn’t catch me out. “I’m not sure...
Maybe work on the cancer ward?”

I’d
always had a fascination with people who got sick the natural way—because of a
chance mutation in their genes, or because their cells were created with a
ticking time bomb nestled between them. What would that be like? To wander
around with a justified reason to be angry at the world? It was a luxury I
couldn’t begin to imagine.

Dr.
Stone quirked his mouth in an expression I knew well: disapproval. But when he
spoke, his tone was kind. “Unfortunately, I don’t think that would be such a
good idea. But let’s brainstorm other options. I’m assuming you’d like to stay
connected to people? That is, you’re more interested in working with live
patients and their families than, say, filing?”

“Um,
yeah. You’re assuming correctly.” I’d rather help Mum with her dollhouses than file.

He
chuckled. “Okay. I’ve got an idea. I think I can have someone set you up in the
support group section.”

“Doing
what, exactly?” I was instantly suspicious. I’d been tricked into attending
group therapy meetings before, and I wasn’t about to fall for that one again.

“Well,
you’d have to talk to the administration about that one. But I’m hoping they
can hook you up with something you’d like. They’re fairly good about that. I’ve
sent clients their way before.”

Clients.
I liked thinking of myself as his “client,” like he was my personal shopper
instead of someone who was trying to help me un-fuck my fucked up life. “Okay.”

He
grinned, a splash of joy across an otherwise imperturbable, serene face.
“Excellent. Now, there is one caveat, though.”

There
it was. Always the caveats. I couldn’t function without caveats. Yes, you can
go to college—as long as you stay home for the first year. Yes, you can get
your driver’s license—as long as you agree you’ll only drive with my
permission.

“What?”

“I
need your permission to inform the hospital administration that you have
Munchausen Syndrome. It’s for your protection.”

We
locked gazes for a full minute, during which time I considered getting up and
leaving. Saying, to hell with this, I don’t need it.

But
the truth was I didn’t know what else I had. There was the hospital or there
was home. Home where I could follow Mum around all day, taunting and pushing
her into talking with me, if only to tell me to get out of her space. I could
sit by the window and wait for my dad to come home, and fume when he called to
say he’d be working overnight at his office. I could inject myself with saliva
when Mum wasn’t looking. I could think of a way to go to the store so I could
buy more medical supplies. The thought of doing all of that, of going back to
how I’d been living only six months ago, made me weary. It was a weary beyond
any weariness I’d ever experienced before: this went all the way to my bone
marrow; it went to the core seed of my soul.  

And
so I looked at Dr. Stone. He wouldn’t be there, in the hospital, to oversee me.
I’d probably be able to find a way around that “no cancer ward” rule
eventually.

I
crossed my arms, pretended to think. “Will they keep that information
confidential?”

“Absolutely.
They’ll need your signed consent, just like I do now, to release it to anyone.”

“Fine.”
I signed the paperwork.

At
the end of the session, on my way out, Dr. Stone asked, “Will you come back and
see me again soon?”

I
glanced at a photograph on the side table, of a young Puerto Rican man in a
horrendous Christmas sweater. His face was gaunt, drawn, but his smile was
infectious.

“Yeah.
Maybe after my first shift at the hospital. At least we’ll have something to
talk about then.”

He
chuckled. “That sounds like a plan. Just call me when you’re ready to come back
in.”

My
phone beeped in the pocket of my hoodie. It was a text from Mum.

Waiting
downstairs in the car. Hurry.

I
settled back home like I’d never left. I munched on an apple as Mum worked on
her dollhouse. She was done with the flooring and had started on painting the
window trim, a mug of sweet tea by her elbow.

“When’s
Dad going to be back?” I still hadn’t seen him in the ten days I’d been home.

“Please
move back. You’re getting apple on the wood.”

I
scooted my bar stool back a foot, making sure to drag it across the floor so it
squealed. “When’s Dad going to be back?”

Mum
sighed, a long exhalation meant to induce guilt. It just made me want to bat
her dollhouse to the floor. Without raising her eyes to me, she said, “I don’t
know, dear. Sometime this morning was all his message said.”

“Where
is he this time? Arizona?”

Her
paintbrush made meticulous lines along the minuscule trim, each coat working to
hide the ugly wood underneath. “Yes. Phoenix.”

“Do
you think he’s got a mistress there?”

The
paintbrush paused momentarily, then continued to paint. Up and down, up and
down.

I
laughed. “Come on. It’s a valid question, don’t you think? He goes to Arizona
an awful lot.” I swallowed my mouthful of apple. “He may even have a whole
little family out there. I saw this news story once—”

“That’s
quite enough.” Someone who didn’t know my mother as well as I did might’ve
missed the slight tremor at the edge of her words. “Poisonous little monster.”
She said this half under her breath, as if she was talking to herself.

I
stiffened. “What did you say? What did you call me?”

She
stared at me, half-defiant, half-wary of engaging me. “I said, ‘Must you act
like such a little monster?’”

Coward.
“No, you didn’t. Say what you really said.”

Mum
looked confused. She was a good actress. “That
is
what I really said,
Saylor.”

Fine.
I’d let her get away with it this time. “You know what they say,” I half-sang.
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” I tossed the apple core on the
table, where it fell with a soft splat into her palette of wet paint.

Back
in the bathroom, I inspected the injection site on my chest. It wasn’t quite in
abscess form yet, but I’d make sure it’d get there. For someone like me, who
wore disease like a well-loved sweater, it was important to analyze the
cost-benefit ratio of amount of effort required to get disease versus how long
the disease lasted. And, of course, how severe it could potentially get. There
was a science to it all.

For
instance, poisoning oneself might, at first glance, be thought to be a highly
desirable form of self-injury. You got extremely, fantastically sick: vomiting
(blood, if the substance caused stomach lesions), diarrhea, fevers, sweating,
and even loss of consciousness could result. Most poisons were relatively easy
to obtain, too.

On
the other hand, most hospitals were pretty savvy at spotting poisoning, with
the symptoms being only a quick click away on the doctor’s Smartphone. Once
they knew what you’d been poisoned with, it was just a matter of flushing your
system, which they did really quickly.

And
of course, when your family found out the cause of your illness (i.e. that it
was self-afflicted), there was much wringing of hands and sighing, as if they
couldn’t bear to be dragged into your psychotic corner of the world yet again. All
of the physical discomfort associated with being sick, all of that research
into which poison to use, and it would all be over in less than a day? To me,
that was high cost for extremely low benefit. Ergo, I only employed poisoning
in dire circumstances.

Abscesses,
on the other hand, were largely underappreciated. I’d recently discovered that they
could cause fevers and pain. They’re not easily pinpointed as caused by
self-injury, either, because some people get them for no reason at all, what
they called “a genetic predisposition.”

They
required careful tending to, not just to manage the fever and pain, but also
because they had to be watched to determine when they were ready for lancing
and draining. And once they
were
drained, you had to take care of the
site and guard against infection while it healed. All that added up to low cost
(just a few injections of spit, a free substance) for a large return.

My
Catholic grandma used to say that we’d been “visited by Jesus and his angels”
when something good happened, like me getting over a fever or my dad landing a
client he wanted. Likewise, whenever a door to a new method of injury opened, I
felt as if Jesus and his angels had put on a whole fucking performance for me.
The experience was nothing short of glorious. I imagined myself standing in
front of my syringe, hands raised up, eyes closed, and expression orgasmic with
rapture.

I
spat into the syringe and injected the skin adjacent to the previous injection
site. Closing my eyes, I rubbed it to make sure the saliva dissipated
completely. I imagined the bacteria in the saliva as orange and flame-like,
licking through my veins, hungry, ferocious. I willed my immune system to not
fight them, to just be devoured, to accept its fate. In that flowery pink and
gold bathroom from my childhood, I sought deliverance with a headstrong fervor.
I needed this.

I
slipped the syringe back into my pocket and walked downstairs to wait for my
father.

Our
house had what Mum called a “bay window.” It was this huge thing that took up
the front wall of the house and overlooked the driveway. I could see out of it
even from just outside my bedroom, in the upstairs hall.

A
bay window was probably great for people who entertained guests a lot, since it
gave you a grand perspective of the entrance. In our house, the fact that it
existed at all was laughable. We buttoned ourselves up tighter than a maiden’s
corset in the sixteenth century. The only person who came close to being a
guest in our house was my dad.

I
sat on the bench by the window and watched the weeping willows sway in the
breeze, counting each silent minute because I couldn’t think of anything else
to do. Our house was like that; it seemed to swallow time. When my dad’s
gigantic Escalade pulled up the driveway, spraying the trees with sludge from
under his tires, I could’ve been sitting there for an hour or for five minutes.
I honestly didn’t know.

I
slipped silently into the kitchen so I could catch him when he came in. Leaning
against the counter, my breathing got shallow as I waited for the faux-jovial
greeting he always bellowed out when he returned from one of his trips. There
was something about the way he said it that grated on my nerves every time.

I
didn’t have to wait long.

“Where’s
my beautiful family?” He said it extra-loud so the baritone of his voice rang
out in the mudroom.

I
heard Mum put her dollhouse supplies down and head over to greet him. After
knuckling the abscess I was so carefully cultivating, I followed.

My
parents were deep in a whispered argument when I walked into the mud room. My
dad’s head was bent down toward hers, his comb-over trying hard to disguise the
fact that he was getting older. When they saw me, they stopped talking. My
mother’s face settled into its default nonchalant expression, and my dad beamed
at me. His expression was so bright and joyful, so completely overcompensating
and fake. It reminded me of those tacky plastic gems I used to collect when I
was little.

“Hey!
There’s my girl!” He came forward and patted my shoulder. I could tell it took
him aback, how tall I was now. The gesture wasn’t as easy to do anymore. Dad
hadn’t really paid attention to me in a long, long time.

“Hey,
Dad. How was Phoenix?” I saw my mother dart me a glance from behind him, a
warning. Watch your fucking mouth. Except she’d never say the “f-word.”

He
set his briefcase down and adjusted his tie. “Ah, it’s much too hot down there.
Felt like September instead of January.” He brushed by me into the kitchen and
opened the fridge. “What do we have to eat in here?”

Ignoring
him, Mum went back to her dollhouse and her tea. I sat down on a barstool and
watched him rummage through the shelves.

“So,
Dad. Aren’t you going to ask how I’m doing with therapy? Or did Mum already
fill you in?”

“I’m
sure what needs to be done is being done,” he said, without turning around. “I
trust your mother.”

I
couldn’t help it. I coughed out a laugh. “But don’t you want to know more?
Don’t you want to be involved in my
healing process
? You know what the
shrinks say: a sick child means a sick family.” I’d been through enough therapy
sessions to have the lingo down pat.

“Thankfully,
you’re not a child anymore, Saylor.” He turned around, a piece of fruit and a
bottle of water in his hands, and used his foot to close the fridge. “Well, I
better get going,” he said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “My next
flight’s due out soon.”

I
glanced at my mother, but she was busy sanding a part of her dollhouse. She
didn’t even look up. I turned back to my dad. “You’re leaving already?”

“Criminal
lawyers in great demand have to travel, Saylor, you know that!” he said, still
so ridiculously jovial. And no, I didn’t know that. Weren’t laws different from
state to state? Why would he be needed in other states anyway? “Flights in and
flights out. I just wanted to come by to see my beautiful girls for a minute.”

“Are
you leaving because I brought up therapy?” The question came out sounding
desperate and whiny. I wanted to pummel myself. What was wrong with me? I was
usually adept at keeping a handle on these things. Dad was like a skittish fucking
deer in some respects—too much emotion and he ran.

“Don’t
be absurd,” he said, heading back to the mudroom as quickly as he could without
running. “I told you, I need to catch a flight.”

I
turned around in my barstool, but didn’t go to him. He slipped on his shoes,
his shades, and his briefcase and again he was in costume, ready to take on the
legal world.

“Right...
See you later, Dad.”