The End of Forever (23 page)

That night her headache was the worst one she’d had in weeks. The medication didn’t help, and it was nearly dawn before she fell into an exhausted sleep. Erin was in a stupor when her alarm sounded, so she told her mother to let her sleep in till noon, then she’d go to her afternoon classes.

The sunlight was streaming in her bedroom window when Mrs. Bennett barged in and shook Erin’s shoulder. “Wake up, Erin. You have some explaining to do.”

Erin opened her eyes and tried to focus. All she saw was her mothers grieved, tearful expression. “What’s wrong?” Erin sat up slowly.

“Dr. Richardson just called. She said you’ve missed your last two appointments. What’s going on? Why have you been lying to me?”

Swamped with guilt, Erin pulled the covers tighter as if to hide from her mother’s wounded expression. “I didn’t lie.”

“You
said
you were going to therapy, then didn’t go. What do you call it?”

“I got tied up with play practice and school-work and all. I just missed a couple of times.”

“But you
must
understand the importance of this therapy in solving the mystery of your headaches,” Mrs. Bennett admonished, twisting a wadded tissue as she spoke. “I want you to be well again, Erin. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you too.”

By now Erin was starting to get angry—she hated the guilt trips her mother kept sending her on. She tossed off the covers and jumped to her feet, but the medication made her woozy, and she swayed.

Her mother reached out to steady her. “Just look at you—you’re so groggy you can hardly stand up. Don’t you realize that therapy is your only hope for getting rid of your headaches forever?”

“And don’t you realize that sitting in that office
all by myself and having somebody dig around inside my head stinks?”

“Of course it’s tough, honey. But you have so much ahead of you—college, career, family—everything. Why, someday you’ll have kids of your own, and then you’ll understand how I feel.”

Kids of her own
. She was the last of the Bennett line, because her father had no brothers or sisters. “Being married and having kids doesn’t sound like such a hot idea to me.”

“Why do you say that?”

Erin wanted to shout,
“Because yelling and fighting and leaving isn’t fair”
. Instead she walked past her mother and started getting clothes together for school. “I need to get dressed.”

Her mother took her arm. “Erin, please promise me you’ll go back to Dr. Richardson this Thursday.”

Her face looked pinched, and her tone sounded so pleading that Erin felt fresh waves of guilt. “Okay, I’ll go.”

“I’m counting on you to keep your promise.” Mrs. Bennett sounded relieved.

“I’m your ‘responsible’ daughter.… Isn’t that what you always used to tell me?”

“You still are.”

Her mother stroked Erin’s hair, and yet it was as if a great gulf separated them, and Erin didn’t know how to get across. “Then I can’t let you down, can I?”

“It’s for your own sake,” her mother called as Erin hurried toward the bathroom.

Erin shut the door and leaned against the walk
fighting tears and feeling as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders. She turned on the faucets, and after the bathroom had filled with steam, she breathed deeply to relax and try to ward off a recurrence of her headache. The breathing exercises worked, and soon she felt better. Before climbing into the shower, she took her finger and wrote in the steam on the mirror: “Amy doesn’t live here anymore.” Then she smeared the words away and quickly showered and dressed.

Dr. Richardson treated her as if she’d never missed an appointment. Erin was relieved, because she couldn’t have stood another lecture. The counselor’s office seemed comfortable and homey, with framed passages of needlepoint on several of the walls. Curious, Erin thought, that she’d never noticed them before. She pointed at one. “Where’d you get these?”

“I do them. They relax me.” It had never occurred to Erin that the therapist might have a life outside of her office. “What do you do to relax?” Dr. Richardson asked.

“I dance. The physical exercise makes me feel good.”

“I tried aerobics once,” Dr. Richardson said, “but there was nothing relaxing about grunting and sweating.” She wrinkled her nose to make her point.

Erin giggled, glad that they weren’t probing into her mind right away. She studied the intricate scrollwork of one particular needlepoint and read
aloud, “ ’Is there no Balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?’ What’s that mean?”

“Gilead was a place in the Middle East where a legendary balm with miraculous healing powers was supposed to have come from. You simply smoothed it on, and all your diseases disappeared. Caravans used to bring it out of Gilead to sell to the rest of the known world.”

“Too bad you can’t find some of it and rub it into my head.”

Dr. Richardson tapped her desk with a pencil. “For me the balm of Gilead is what I try to apply to peoples hearts and souls, because healing begins from the inside out.”

“Do you think I’ll ever get well?”

“The fact that you’re here, trying, encourages me.”

“But just talking doesn’t seem to be doing much.”

“Aren’t there longer and longer gaps between your headaches?”

“Yes, but I still can’t figure out what’s triggering them. I’ve been fine for a while, then the other day I was just talking to David, and bang—one hit me hard.”

“How are you and David getting along?”

“Better.” Erin felt her cheeks color. “I asked him to our school’s formal dance.”

“I’d say you were doing better. What changed your mind about him?”

Erin laced her fingers together in her lap. “We
talked. I went with him to see his clown routine, and I met his kid sister. She’s deaf.”

“But there’s still something about him that sort of gets under your skin, huh?”

Dr. Richardson’s perception amazed Erin. “It’s like he
likes
being different, as if he goes out of his way to be outrageous.”

“And that seems to bother you.”

Erin stared at the carpet for a moment, trying to put her thoughts into words. “In the beginning he actually brought on some of my headaches, but now, in some weird way, he helps keep them away. I can’t figure out why.”

Dr. Richardson didn’t say anything right away. When she did speak, her question seemed off the topic. “Erin, tell me what your sister Amy was like.”

Startled, Erin looked up. “Cute. Everybody liked her, but she had some pretty annoying habits. She was
never
on time, and she could talk me into doing anything for her—which used to make me really mad. But I couldn’t help myself. She’d always rope me into doing whatever she wanted. She was never serious about anything, except wanting to be a great actress. Like the world was waiting for Amy to make an appearance. She didn’t take life very seriously. But then David says I take life
too
serious—” She stopped talking as insight swept over her.

“You look surprised. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Its Amy and David. They’re a lot alike, you know? I—I never realized that until now.”

“How does that make you feel?”

Erin wasn’t sure. “Strange, that’s all. Gee, I don’t see how the world could handle
two
Amys.”

“But David’s David.”

“Yes, that’s true. They’re different, but they’re alike too. He does silly, goofy things like Amy would. We had a slime fight after rehearsal one day. When Amy was in the eighth grade, she led a Jell-O war in the school cafeteria.”

“Does it make you feel sad to remember?”

“No,” Erin said slowly. “But it makes me want to see her and talk to her again.”

“If you could see and talk to her, what would you share?”

Erin shook her head. “I don’t know. And I don’t feel like talking about it right now.”

“There are several kids your age in my support group who’ve lost a sister or brother.”

Lost.
The therapist made it sound as if the person could be found. As if death wasn’t final and irrevocable. Erin thought of Beth, who might be “losing” her mother.

“Will you think about coming? We’d love to have you.”

“Maybe. Look, I’ve got to get back to school for evening play practice. My dads got a meeting at school tonight too, and his car’s in the shop, so I have to give him a ride home.” Erin knew she was making an excuse to bow out of the session early but didn’t care. She wanted to leave.

Dr. Richardson walked her to the office door, where Erin turned and gestured toward the framed needlepoint about Gilead. “If any caravans pass through selling that stuff buy some for me.”

Dr. Richardson asked, “Do you know what ‘debridement’ is, Erin?” She shook her head. “When a person’s been badly burned, the dead skin has to be removed, or debrided. The skin is literally scrubbed off the wounds.”

Erin grimaced. “That must hurt.”

“It’s very painful, but unless it’s done, the burn victim can’t begin to heal.”

“So what’s that got to do with me?”

“There’s something inside you—something about your sister’s death—that’s trying to get out. Your headaches are an expression of that ‘something.’ These sessions with me, and meeting with the support group, is a kind of debridement for your psyche. No matter how much it hurts, it has to be done so that you can be all right again.”

“So there is no magic balm?” Erin asked wistfully.

“Only in the figurative sense. And you can’t buy it either, you have to seek it on your own.”

Erin sighed and left, unsure if she had the strength for the hunt.

The play rehearsal went so smoothly that Ms. Thornton and Mr. Ault let everybody go home early. Not wanting to linger afterward, Erin quickly gathered her things and hurried to her father’s classroom. She approached the room cautiously.
unable to forget the day she’d stopped by the school and discovered him weeping. She’d never told him, but the memory of his tears haunted her still.

Erin stopped at the closed door, listened, then knocked.

“Come in,” Mr. Bennett said. Erin entered to see him putting papers into his briefcase. “Hi,” he said, and smiled. “I thought I’d be the one waiting on you.”

“We got out early. Are you finished?”

“I sent the Lowerys home with their promise to make Pam work harder in my class. She’s bright enough, but she just doesn’t apply herself. She’s not nearly the student your teachers tell me you are, Erin.”

She shrugged. “That’s me … little Miss Einstein.”

“Don’t make light of it. I know it must be tough putting in time for that play and still keeping up with your schoolwork.”

They walked to Erin’s car and got in. The night had turned cool, and the smell of rain was in the air. She turned on the engine. In the glow of the mercury lamppost, the outside world looked colorless.

Her father asked, “Say, I’ve got an idea. How’d you like your old man to treat you to a hot fudge sundae?”

Surprised, Erin asked, “But we’ve got school tomorrow, and it’s already after ten.” Big drops of rain splattered against the windshield. She turned on the wipers.

“Oh. come on. It’ll be like old times. lust you
and me and Amy and—” His voice stopped, and Erin’s heart squeezed. Rain pummeled the car. The headlights cut a sweeping arc through the darkness, and Amy’s ghost wedged between them in the seat.

Erin was the first to recover. “I think a hot fudge sundae sounds yummy,” she said with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel.

“Me too,” Mr. Bennett said quietly.

Erin drove cautiously, because the rain made the road slick. At the minimali she parked, and they ran for cover into the old-fashioned ice cream parlor, where waiters were dressed in white shirts and red-striped vests.

Once in a booth, Erin asked, “Are you gonna call Mom?”

“She said she’d be going to bed early, so I don’t think she’ll miss us.” Mr. Bennett didn’t meet Erin’s eyes as he spoke.

They ordered, and once the waiter had gone, Mr. Bennett asked, “Do you want to talk about what happened in the car?”

“What happened?”