September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (11 page)

The overall feeling of the moment is
one of . . . wholeness. But only because my five year-old mind
couldn’t put a label on it. It was not a happy scene. It was a
goodbye—my mothers’ last monologue, her big send-off—and my young
heart couldn’t comprehend. I only recalled that moment with
happiness because when my mother cuddled me and spoke, I didn’t
know what she had planned.

It’s amazing how much harm a little
ignorance can do.

+++

I pulled myself out of the memory.
Looking at Doctor Williams’ calm face irritated me. I noted the
ocean soundtrack seemed to be playing louder.

“I don’t get why we have to do this.
When people are gone, they’re gone. And I barely remember her. It’s
like she never existed.”

“But you remember
that da
y.” Doctor
Williams declared, and I felt the pull of that phrase.

The scene . . . her words . . . they
sucked me back in. I wanted to run, to shrink away, but the sound
of her voice cemented me in that faraway place I’d spent my life
trying to forget.

+++

An old brown, boat of a car clipped
the curb as it backed out of the gravel driveway onto what I assume
was a suburban street and took off a little too fast down a long
stretch of road. The little girl in the white dress was standing in
the front seat, holding onto the headrest as she bounced up and
down.

I couldn’t see the edges of the
memory. There might not have been any other houses beside the one
they left behind. It might have been surrounded by
desert.

+++

“You remember her. Why do you feel
like she never existed?” Doctor Williams’ glasses slipped again and
she pressed them back in place with her thumb and index
finger.

Her question triggered something and
my mind switched back to her office. But then, I let it go again,
refusing to focus. I didn’t want to be there, either.

When I was sitting in Doctor Williams
office, I’d do it all the time—make myself be somewhere else. The
images that used to spring up were so vivid, as if I could reach
out and touch them. They were full and alive, they could block out
anything. Everything.

So that’s what I did. I blocked out
her office and my session. I didn’t curl up and float away I just
let my lively imagination explore the first ridiculous scenario
that popped into my head when I looked at Doctor Williams holding
her pen up near her chin.

+++

I was sitting in a dim lounge at a
small round table. Doc Williams was standing at the other end, in
the center of a small stage, holding a microphone, staring out at
the audience. There was a poster advertising an open-mic night on
the wall behind her. The dark tables surrounding the low stage were
filled with eager patrons and a two-drink minimum. She’d just told
her best knock-knock joke and the punch line was met with silence.
Crickets comically chirped.

+++

“Is something funny?” Doctor Williams
looked at her watch and back to me. One of her eyebrows had gone
crooked. “Miss Patel, I need you to focus.”

My mind teetered between three worlds.
The world where my shrink’s stand-up comedienne act was bombing,
the other was in her office—where I couldn’t stand to be—and the
third was that damned roadside—the last place I wanted to be but
could not manage to leave.

It was as if her words were a trigger
that pulled the lever on a viewfinder, changing the backdrop on
me.

“Tell me about
that day
, that one
memory,” She urged, her voice sounding as serene as a
song.

And just like that, I was back to that
place where the driveway met the road. The injustice of that
mournful moment returned. My throat swelled. I tasted bile.
“No.”

“Alright. Let’s move on.” She casually
shuffled some pages of my file. “How is your friend, Avery? Have
you been seeing much of her lately?”

I froze. It was so like her to jump
from one impossible thing to the next.

The topic of my friendship with Avery
was expressly forbidden. Avery had made it very clear after I
mentioned her in one of my sessions that I was never to do it
again. “Grownups never like me,” Avery reasoned, and knowing her
the way I did, I knew she was right. The Foster barely liked her,
but she was still diplomatic about our friendship. If Doctor
Williams ever met with her, that would change.

“Please, don’t make me ask. Avery
won’t come.”

Actually, she might but I hadn’t asked
her. And I couldn’t really see how having my best friend talk to my
shrink could possibly help anything. But I was running out of
excuses.

“What about a boyfriend?”

That last word caught my attention.
“What?”

“You’re a pretty, seventeen year-old
girl. Haven’t any boys approached and asked you out on a
date?”

I couldn’t stop my answering smile.
“Nope. No boys. No boyfriend.”

Doctor Williams clicked the pen she
was holding and looked down at the notepad in her hand, flipping
through pages. “Have you been attending your classes?”

“Yes.”

“What about anger
management?”

“Just went to my last one, so . . .
yes,” the‘s’ hissed a little too long, matching the recorded cry of
a sea bird.

I’d been assigned, so I had to attend.
Social workers and guidance counselors working in tandem with my
psychiatrist were all very interested in my every move—being that I
was a ward of the state and all. Any one of them would call The
Foster if I missed a class.

No one ever called to report good
news, like progress. Just the bad. Or if they did, I never heard
about it. It seemed that people only took time out of their busy
lives to rag on me. So I tried my best not to make waves, keeping
my proverbial nose clean so I could continue to do what I wanted,
namely seeing Jake. My Foster, Deanna, was never comfortable with
our age difference, but told me she recognized that she was not my
mother and left the final decision up to me.

The only upside to anger management
was that they were over.

“Good for you. Before I let you go, I
would like an example of how your newly acquired anger management
skills were put into practice this past week.” She raised her
attentive pad and pen, waiting to jot down my every
word.

I wanted to smile because, back then
it was a joke. At that tender age of seventeen, I had never been
legitimately pissed with anyone but my mother. And I figured I was
doing pretty well because if I could cope with knowing my mom
wanted me dead, then everything else was tolerable.

Even though there
was
a lot
of
everything else that kept me on edge, I was only ever sad or
peeved. Righteously irritated from time to time, but never
angry
. Maybe because my
first instinct was always to run and hide.

Avery—who knew me better
than anyone—once said that she knew, deep inside, I wasn’t brave
enough to let myself feel the rage. I wanted to roll my eyes when
she said that. I mean, hot-headed
Avery
giving
me
advice about how to handle anger?
The only reason I was assigned to the stupid classes in the first
place was because of her.

She’d punched a senior, Shelley Bloom,
who gave me a bloody nose for using her gym locker, even though
they weren’t assigned. I guess Mrs. Ryan, Shelley’s softball coach,
heard something, because the next thing I knew, I was being
suspended. I didn’t care; three days vacation from the hell-hole
they called school was cake. They sent me home with my assignments
and some open-book tests and I was fine. Shelley’s eye was black
for a week.

I never told anyone Avery was there
because she’d been protecting me and the least I could do was keep
her secret.

Since Doctor Williams was still
waiting for my example—I swear, the woman was never satisfied
unless I was filling silence—I decided, on the fly, that I would
give her anger management skills something to stew
about.

“
It was last
weekend.”

Doctor Williams’ eyes were
all aglow as I dove into a story all about how it was mine and a
made-up best friends’ birthday party. “Well, our actual birthdays
are only a week apart so we always celebrate together—my foster
‘mom’,
Chanel
,
was working, as usual.”

Yeah, it was the kind of blatant lie
that deserved to be called-out. I paused, waiting for her to raise
a brow, correct me or call me a liar, but all she did was click the
top of the pen she was holding.

So, I kept going, making up more and
more as I went. I pressed my fingernails deep into the creases of
my elbows, connecting myself to the moment, willing myself to
answer her inane questions, when she raised them. They were the
type of questions that forced me to elaborate. She wasn’t going to
make me stop, not while I was on a roll. All sevens.

The story evolved into one I had
overheard in the girls bathroom—a typically moronic teenage drama
about an ex-friend being confronted over her supposed kleptomania
at a slumber party. I concocted a list of names and descriptions—it
was good. Really detailed. And it would end with a confrontation,
just like she wanted.

The lies poured out smooth, like warm
syrup over a pancake. “I gave her a little shove—”

“You physically pushed her?” Doctor
Williams was practically out of her chair, gripping the
armrests.

“No!” I argued, thinking over all I’d
said about a fabricated conflict. “Well, a little, but not because
I was angry. I was just trying to keep her from
leaving.”

Her crinkled brow smoothed out as she
tossed her hand, clicking the pen-top again. “You were
saying?”

I went on with the lie, paying more
attention now, trying not to betray how much fun I was having.
“Yvonne slipped, but she didn’t fall. I pretended like it was an
accident, but then I told her: ‘My foster mom doesn’t allow thieves
in her house,’ I said. She crossed her arms, sounding all snotty.
‘Don’t you mean trailer?’”

“‘
Mobile home,’ I told her,
trying to sound just as snotty. We argued a little, back and forth,
but—”

“In what way did you two girls
‘argue’?”

I kept myself from smiling. “In a very
adult fashion.”

She shook her head at the snark and
made some notes in my file which was thicker than most people my
age. But, I’d been through more than most, so there was a lot more
to write in there. Much more to force me into talking
about.

I’ve never understood why shrinks feel
it’s necessary to hash out every little thing that happens. Therapy
might have been mandatory, but it never felt like it was for my
benefit. It seemed like it was for the doctor, to make her feel
better about her own messed up life. And her life was a freaking
soap opera. I’d heard her talking on the phone a couple times when
she didn’t know I was in the waiting room and her office door was
open. For someone whose profession required secrecy, she wasn’t
very discreet about her personal life.

Her son was all depressed and her
husband, from what I understood of the conversation, was being an
asshole about it. I felt for her, but it wasn’t my job to distract
her from her life. I had my own shit to deal with. And I found it
tough to take advice from someone who so obviously did not have
their own life together.

I was so over everyone telling me how
to live and I didn’t need her therapy. The ocean soundtrack she
used was way more therapeutic than her. Music, really, was all I
needed. That was the only thing that ever made me feel better. I
could lose myself in it. And Jake. He was the calm to my storm, the
warm blanket on a cold night. He was my therapy, my panacea for any
ailment—him and his music. I’d spend hours, days upon weeks,
soaking it all up. It was all about Analog Controller. All the
time. I was at almost every show, first row, center stage, right in
front of my band and my leading man.

“So, how was this confrontation
resolved?”

“I didn’t hit her when she called me
trailer trash.” I shrugged.

Doctor Williams shook her head. “Come
on, I’ll walk you to the lab.”

We walked shoulder to shoulder down
the white corridor that reeked of rubbing alcohol, towards the
buildings lab to get my blood drawn. She made me pee in a cup once
a month. Drug testing to make sure I was on my meds and nothing
else, because once I tried some crank at a party and totally
freaked out. I also got my blood tested once a month—something
having to do with chemical imbalances.

“Miss Patel?”

“What?”

“Have you experienced any more blank
spaces?”

I shook my head, “Not for a long
time,” and turned into the tiny glass-walled office that was the
source of the sharp scent.

Blank spaces were an accepted part of
my life, like my memory problems; a side effect of the accident.
Doctor Williams was the dutiful physician who helped me pinpoint
the lost time and got me started on trying to keep track of it. She
was keenly interested, which made me want to hide it.