Dr. Hieler unfolded himself out from behind a desk, taking off his glasses and unveiling a closed-mouthed smile that made his eyes look sad. Or maybe his eyes were always sad. I suppose if I had to listen to tales of pain and misery all day my eyes would look sad, too.
“Hi,” he said, stretching his hand out to Mom. “I’m Rex.”
Mom extended her arm, looking too formal and rigid to be in this office. “Hello, Dr. Hieler,” she said. “Jenny Leftman. This is my daughter, Valerie.” She reached behind her and touched my shoulder lightly, pushing me just slightly forward. “You were referred by Bill Dentley at Garvin General.”
Dr. Hieler nodded; he knew this already, as he also already knew what was next to come out of her mouth. “Valerie goes to Garvin High School. Went,” she amended. Past tense.
Dr. Hieler settled into an overstuffed chair and motioned with his hand for us to take a seat on the couch directly opposite. I flopped on the couch, watching Mom as she stiffly backed up and sat on the very edge of it, as if it would soil her. Suddenly everything Mom said or did was embarrassing, annoying, frustrating. I wanted to push her out of the room. I wanted to push myself out of there more.
“As I was saying,” Mom said, “Valerie was there at the school the day of the shooting.”
Dr. Hieler’s eyes moved to me, but he didn’t say anything.
“She, uh, knew the young man involved,” Mom finished. It was more than I could take, this fake act of hers.
“Knew,” I seethed. “He was my boyfriend, Mom. God!”
There was a brief silence as Mom visibly tried to gather herself up (maybe a little too visibly, I thought, and I figured this, too, was primarily for Dr. Hieler’s benefit—for him to see just what a horrible child she was cursed with).
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Hieler said, very quietly, and at first I thought he was talking to Mom. But when I looked up he was looking directly at me, taking me in.
There was a long period of silence, during which Mom sniveled into a tissue and I looked at my shoes, feeling Dr. Hieler’s gaze on the top of my head.
Finally, Mom broke the silence, her voice sounding shrill in the close air. “Well, obviously her father and I are concerned about her. She has a lot to work through, and we just want her to get on with her life.”
I shook my head. Mom still thought I had a life to get on with.
Dr. Hieler took a deep breath in and shifted forward in his seat. He finally took his eyes off of me and focused on Mom again. “Well,” he said in this soft voice that felt like a lullaby, “getting on with her life is important. But right now it may be more important to put the feelings out there, deal with them, and find a way to be okay with all that’s happened.”
“She won’t talk about it,” Mom argued. “Ever since she got out of the hospital…”
But Dr. Hieler shushed her with an outstretched hand, his eyes once again taking me in.
“Look, I’m not going to tell you that I know what you’re feeling. I wouldn’t invalidate all you’ve been through by telling you that I have any idea of what it’s like,” he said to me. I said nothing. He shifted in his chair again. “Maybe if we just start off this way. How about if we kick your mom out and you and I talk for awhile? Are you comfortable with that?”
I didn’t respond.
But Mom looked relieved. She stood up. Dr. Hieler stood up, too, and stepped toward the door with her.
“I work a lot with kids Valerie’s age,” he said in a low voice. “I tend to be really wide open and direct. Not harsh, just direct. If there’s something that needs to be put on the table we put it on the table so we can work on it to see if we can find our way through it and make things better. I tend to initially listen and try to offer support.” He turned and looked at me, talking to both of us—me on the couch and Mom with her hand on the doorknob. “Down the road, we may or may not think there’s something that you need to change. If we do we’ll talk about it. More than likely at that point, we’ll talk more about your thoughts and your behaviors. Any questions?”
I said nothing.
Mom dropped her hand from the doorknob. “Have you ever dealt with anything like this before?”
Dr. Hieler glanced away. “I’ve dealt with violence. But I’ve never dealt with anything like this. I think I can help, but I don’t want to lie to you and act like I think I know everything about this.” He looked directly at me again and I could swear I saw real pain in his sad eyes this time. “What you’ve been through really sucks.”
Still, I said nothing. It was easier to be silent with Dr. Hieler. Dr. Dentley would’ve locked me up for it; Dr. Hieler looked like he expected it.
I concentrated on my shoes as Mom left the room. “I’ll be right outside,” I heard her say. I heard Dr. Hieler close the door and it was suddenly so silent I could hear his clock ticking. I heard the cushions of his chair let out air as he sat down again.
“This is one of those times where there’s probably not a right thing to say,” he said, very softly. “I would have to imagine that this thing is awful and just keeps on being awful.”
I shrugged my shoulders. I still couldn’t bring myself to look up.
He cleared his throat and said, a little more loudly, “First, you went through this, you got shot, you lost somebody you loved. It’s pretty well screwed up school, family, friendships, and now you’re stuck in an office with a fat shrink who wants to get inside your head.”
I looked up with my eyes only, keeping my head bent, so he wouldn’t see me grin. But he must have because he grinned very slightly back at me. I liked him already.
“Look,” he said. “Not only do I think this whole thing is terrible for you, but I’m also aware that you’ve probably had very little control over any of this. I’d like to do things differently here. I’d like to give you a lot of control. We’ll move only as quickly as you want. If I bring up a subject that you don’t want to talk about or push too hard on a topic, just tell me and I’ll change the topic to something easy and safe.”
I lifted my chin a little.
“The next time we get together why don’t we start by just learning about you, what you’ve been interested in, how life was before this happened, getting to know one another a bit, and we’ll move forward from there. Sound good?”
“Okay,” I said. My voice was tiny, but I was surprised to hear any voice there at all.
13
When I got up the next morning, Detective Panzella was sitting in my kitchen, at the table, across from Mom, a cup of coffee in front of him. Mom was smiling, her face lighter than I’d seen it in forever. The detective was grim-looking, like always, but there was a looseness about his shoulders that suggested he might have been smiling, had he not been who he is and I not been who I am.
I limped into the kitchen, the rubber stops on the bottoms of my crutches sliding slightly under my weight on the linoleum. I fought the feeling of the world going out from under me, as it had done countless times since my surgery. I was still hopped up on a good amount of drugs, both painkillers and psychotropics, and was still a little loopy over my freedom.
“Valerie,” Mom said. “The detective has good news.”
I considered sitting at the table, but thought better of it and instead propped myself against the far end of the island, putting distance between Detective Panzella and myself that I had yearned for in the hospital and had been able to do nothing about at the time.
I studied him. He was in a brown suit like always, and he looked recently cleaned up, like he’d just gotten out of the shower before coming to our house. In fact, I thought I could smell soap on him and it smelled like the same kind of soap we used in our house. I could smell his aftershave, too, and it immediately sent my stomach into nauseating loops. I felt tears involuntarily spring to my eyes and, had I had the ability to use both legs, I might have sprinted out of the house screaming just to get away from him.
“Hello,” he said. He turned in his seat to face me, dragging
the coffee cup in a small arc on the table as he did so. Later I would scrub away the sticky trail and feel as if I were physically removing him from my life forever.
“Hi,” I answered.
“Valerie,” Mom said again, “Detective Panzella has come over to tell us that you’re no longer a suspect in the shooting.”
I said nothing. Suddenly I wasn’t entirely sure I was even awake. Maybe still in the hospital, asleep, on the psych ward. I would wake in a few minutes and wheel myself to group and tell them all about this freaky dream I’d just had and Nan the schizophrenic would start yelling something about terrorists and Daisy would cry and pick at the bandages around her wrists and Andy would probably tell me to fuck off. The idiot therapist would just sit there and nod and let everyone act like that and then send us off to breakfast and meds.
“Isn’t that great news?” Mom prompted.
“Okay,” I said. What else could I say? Thank God? I told you so? Why? None of it seemed exactly right for the moment. So I stuck with, “Okay,” and added, “Um, thanks.” Which seemed like such a stupid thing to say.
“We’ve had some witnesses come forward,” the detective explained. He took a sip of his coffee. “One in particular. She demanded a meeting with me and the district attorney. She was very detailed and persuasive. You won’t be charged.”
I felt foggy. I wanted to wake up because I was starting to feel relieved and giddy and didn’t want to feel that good. It would make waking up later and finding out that I was still facing jail time feel all the worse.
“Stacey?” I croaked, shocked that she was still willing to stick up for me, even though it was obvious that she didn’t trust me and that we weren’t friends anymore.
The detective shook his head. “Blond. Tall. A junior. Kept repeating, ‘Valerie didn’t shoot anybody.’”
That didn’t describe any of my friends at all.
14
“So tell me something about Valerie,” Dr. Hieler said at our next visit. He settled back in his chair, slinging one leg over the arm of it.
I shrugged. As much as I hated having Mom around me all the time now, casting worried looks at me, I wished she had stayed in the office for our session.
“You mean like, why did I talk about suicide and people I hated all the time and stuff?”
He shook his head. “No, I mean tell me about you. What do you like? What can you do? What’s important to you?”
I sat stone-still. It had been so long since there were things about me that were important other than the shooting. I wasn’t even sure what about me other than that would be important anymore.
“Okay, I’ll get us started,” he said, smiling. “I hate microwave popcorn. I was almost a lawyer. And I can do a killer back handspring. How about you? Tell me about yourself, Valerie. What kind of music do you like? What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?”
“Vanilla,” I said. I chewed my lip. “Um. I like that hot air balloon.” I pointed to the ceiling where an antique-looking wooden hot air balloon hung. “It’s really colorful.”
His eyes followed mine. “Yeah, I like it, too. Partly because it’s cool looking, but also partly because of the irony. It weighs a ton. In this office, anything can fly. No matter what is weighing it down. Even wooden balloons. Cool, huh?”
“Wow,” I said, studying the balloon. “I never would’ve thought of that.”
He grinned. “Me neither. My wife thought of it. I just like to take credit for it.”
I smiled. There was something about Dr. Hieler that felt so safe. I wanted to tell him things. “My parents hate each other,” I blurted out. “Does that count?”
“Only if you think it does,” he said. “What else?”
“I have a little brother who’s pretty cool. He’s really nice to me most of the time. We don’t fight like some brothers and sisters. I’m sort of worried about him.”
“Why are you worried about him?”
“Because he has me for a sister. Because he has to go to school at Garvin next year. Because he liked Nick. Um. New subject.”
“Vanilla ice cream, unhappy parents, cool brother. Check. What else?”
“I like to draw. I mean, you know, I like art.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, leaning back in his chair. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What do you like to draw?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t drawn anything in a really long time. Not since I was a kid. It was stupid. I don’t know why I even said it.”
“That’s okay. So we’ve got vanilla ice cream, unhappy parents, cool brother, may or may not like to draw. What else?”
I racked my brain. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be. “I can’t do a back handspring,” I said.
He smiled. “That’s okay. I lied. I can’t do one, either. But I think it would be cool to learn, don’t you?”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess. But most days I can’t really even walk very well.” I gestured toward my leg.
He nodded. “Don’t worry. In no time you’ll be running again. Maybe even doing back handsprings. You never know.”
“I got cleared,” I said. “Of the shooting, I mean.”
“I know,” he answered. “Congratulations.”
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“When you talk to Mom… during her sessions… does she blame everything on me?”
“No,” he said.
“I mean, does she tell you about how much she hated Nick and how many times she tried to get me to break up with him? Does she tell you that I got what I deserved with my leg?”
Dr. Hieler shook his head. “She’s never said any of those things. She’s expressed concern. She’s very sad. She blames herself. She thinks she should have paid better attention to you.”
“She probably wants you to feel sorry for her and hate me, just like everyone else.”
“She doesn’t hate you, Valerie.”
“I guess. Stacey hates me, though,” I said.
“Stacey? A friend?” he asked, almost nonchalantly, although I had a feeling that with Dr. Hieler, pretty much no question was nonchalant.
“Yeah. We’ve been friends since we were kids. She came over last night.”
“Great!” Dr. Hieler eyeballed me and ran a forefinger over his bottom lip contemplatively. “You don’t look happy about it.”
I shrugged. “Well, yeah. It was nice that she came by. It’s just that… I don’t know.”
He let the sentence sit between us.
I shrugged again. “I had my brother tell her I was asleep so she would leave.”
He nodded. “How come?”
“I don’t know. It’s just…” I fidgeted. “It’s just that she never even bothered to ask if I was a part of the shooting. She’s supposed to be on my side, you know? But she’s not. Not really. And she thinks I should apologize. Not to her. To everybody. Like, publicly or something. Like I should go to each family and ask for forgiveness for what happened.”
“And what do you think of that?”
This time it was my turn to be silent. I didn’t know what to think of it, other than the idea of facing all those people—the grieving ones who were screaming for justice every time I turned on the TV or opened a newspaper or saw the cover of a magazine—still made me feel sick to my stomach.
“I had Frankie send her away, didn’t I?” I said softly.
“Yeah, but you didn’t want her to go,” he said. Our eyes locked, and then he suddenly stood up and arched his back, holding his hands over his head. “I hear it’s all in the legs,” he said, sort of squatting like he was going to jump up in the air.
“What’s all in the legs?”
“A good back handspring.”
15
Frankie and I were sitting at the kitchen table, just like always, him eating his cereal, me eating a banana, when I noticed the newspaper folded up on the table at his elbow. Only when I saw it did it occur to me that it was
the first time I’d seen a newspaper since I came home.
“Let me see that,” I said, pointing.
Frankie glanced at the paper, blanched, and shook his head. “Mom says you’re not supposed to read the newspaper.”
“What?”
He swallowed his cereal. “Mom says we’re supposed to keep you from seeing the newspaper and, you know, TV and stuff. And we’re supposed to hang up if a reporter calls. But they don’t call now as much as they did when you were in the hospital.”
“Mom doesn’t want me to see a newspaper?”
“She thinks it’ll make you sad again if you see stuff.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“She must’ve forgotten and left this one out. I’ll throw it away.”
He grabbed the paper and started to get up. I lurched to standing and grabbed for it. “No you don’t,” I said. “Give me that paper, Frankie. I’m serious. Mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I was watching TV in the hospital when Mom wasn’t around. I saw it all. Not to mention, I was there at the shooting, remember?”
He started to head for the trash again, but hesitated. I held his gaze.
“I’m fine, Frankie, really,” I said softly. “I won’t get sad, I promise.”
Slowly he held it out to me. “Okay, but if Mom asks…”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell her you were a Boy Scout. Whatever.”
He picked up his cereal bowl and took it to the sink. I sank back down at the table and read the front page article:
SCHOOL OFFICIALS SEE SOLIDARITY
IN AFTERMATH OF TRAGIC SHOOTING
ANGELA DASH
The students of Garvin High, who returned to classes last week, report a significant change in the way they see life and relate to one another, according to Principal Jack Angerson.
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