The Art of Feeling

by Laura Tims

  But Dr. Brown mentioned that she moved to the area right before she started seeing us.

  “We usually just go one or two school districts out—makes Gabriel’s taxes easier. Far enough where I won’t bump into anyone, but I wouldn’t have to switch any of my doctors. But this time we skipped a whole county—and she relocated, too. I think Gabriel paid her to do it. He probably figured it was less effort than finding a new one who’d tolerate me.”

  “I’m surprised you tolerate therapy.” Specifically that therapist.

  “It was one of the things Gabriel made me agree to in exchange for a certain level of independence once I turned seventeen. Being annoyed one hour a week is better than being annoyed always.”

  “Is she a good therapist?”

  I’m being sneaky, but I don’t want to bring up her book.

  If he’s been seeing her for years, though, he’s probably already read her book and the passage that argues he’s not human.

  “Therapy is predicated on the notion that you can fix what’s fundamentally wrong with a person. There are no good therapists, just people wasting your time.”

  “Well . . . do you feel good after talking to her?”

  “No,” he says after a moment. “She always seems very interested in me, but not in a way that makes me feel good. More like I’m a specimen. I think I tried to become more complicated to stump her.”

  Then he stops and shakes his head. “It doesn’t feel normal, telling you that. Surely normal people don’t run around telling everyone about their own private lives.”

  “We don’t, until someone earns it. I’m sorry to tell you this, Eliot, but I think you might be a normal person.”

  I just earned a piece of him, which he gave to me not because he was inebriated but because he trusts me.

  But I still feel prickly, like how my hackles have been rising at school whenever Anthony’s friends approach Eliot. Go away, I don’t trust your intentions!

  “Which makes you not normal, as the only one to earn it.” Eliot is smiling. “An aberration.”

  And even though all he did was call me a weird thing, it feels like he said something nicer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  DR. BROWN’S OFFICE IS THE SAME AS ALWAYS, with its Legos and banana-colored walls. But now I’m seeing it through Eliot’s eyes, imagining his scathing Eliot thoughts about the strategically positioned tissues and the subliminally quiet classical music.

  “So, Sam,” says Dr. Brown.

  Maybe she starts sessions with him like that. So, Eliot.

  “I’m not scheduled to see your family until next week, but you requested an appointment. Is everything okay?”

  Dad asked, too, when I’d said I wanted to see her. I’m probably being crazy, but I had to find out if she’s okay for Eliot, even if I’m not sure how. She’s not an amazing therapist, but I don’t think she’d break patient confidentiality laws.

  It’d be easier to ask Eliot again, but I’m learning that he’s terrible at recognizing when someone is bad for him—he assumes everyone is, so he accepts shitty behavior because it’s normal for him.

  “Everything’s fine,” I say.

  “Have you made progress with your streams of consciousness?”

  I squeeze my leg. “Just waiting for the right moment.”

  “Remember what I said about closure.” She scratches her nose. “It’s important to let ourselves feel pain.”

  “Why?” My heart beats faster. “I mean, I take painkillers so I don’t have to feel pain, because a bunch of doctors agreed I shouldn’t have to suffer for no reason. Isn’t that what my antidepressants are, just for emotional pain?”

  “Emotional pain and physical pain are alarms that alert you when something’s wrong with your body or your mind and environment. Sometimes you can’t fix what’s wrong with your body, so there’s no harm in muting that alarm—”

  “Sometimes you can’t fix what’s wrong with your life,” I interrupt.

  “It’s true that you can’t bring your mother back. But with emotional pain, there’s rarely one obvious culprit, so you need to stay tuned in to what it’s telling you. Antidepressants don’t block your emotions; they make them manageable. Say you take a pill to get rid of hunger because it’s an unpleasant sensation. Eventually you’d starve to death.”

  Her voice is tranquil. It’s strange that she has a whole life outside of this, that she’s a person I don’t know anything about.

  “Pain alerts us to the needs of others as well as to our own,” she says. “It makes us human.”

  “But, hypothetically, what if someone couldn’t feel it? Everyone feels emotional pain, so say they’ve never felt physical pain.” I swallow. “They’d still be human.”

  She smiles slightly. “I’m actually writing my next book about this, Sam.”

  I’m silent.

  “When you’re a therapist, you notice patterns in how people describe their emotions. ‘Like a punch to the face . . .’ et cetera. Physical pain is our introduction to both kinds, and not feeling it means you’d lack a basic understanding of what pain is—the alarm systems are connected. You’d never be able to empathize with others.”

  “But if I stub my toe, I don’t know how it feels when someone else stubs their toe. Maybe their toe was already broken. At some point I’m using my imagination a bit.” I speed up. “So if someone had to rely entirely on their imagination, and knew they couldn’t assume anything, wouldn’t they be less likely to make mistakes?”

  “I have a case study close to what you’re describing, funnily enough. A person who can’t feel pain.”

  I tense up.

  “As you can imagine, I’ve done my research,” she adds, a little drily.

  She doesn’t have to worry about patient confidentiality, because she doesn’t realize I know she’s talking about one of her patients.

  “I’m afraid he disproves your point. Due to his lack of empathy, this subject repeatedly failed to connect to peers, despite various social environments.”

  “Lots of people are awkward,” I mutter.

  “He himself had no need for human connection. At best he isolated himself; at worst he’d provoke people. He relied on strange categorization systems to compensate for his absence of natural insight into others.”

  She was studying him like he was literally a lab mouse.

  “Was he unhappy?” I ask quietly.

  “That’s not what the study was about.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “I’ll send you a copy when it’s published since you’re so interested.” She leans back like a smug cat. “But let’s get back to your life.”

  She’s still smiling, but it’s resigned. I’m not the patient proving any of her theories. She’s just not getting paid to brag about her book.

  I stand up. “I think I’m all set now, actually.”

  “I’m sorry?” She’s frowning.

  “Like, as your patient,” I elaborate. “I made a new friend, see. And he’s super smart, and he tries hard to understand me. So I don’t have to pay you to try to do that anymore.”

  She puts down her notebook. “Sam, a friend is not a replacement—”

  But I’m already out the door.

  The lobby is populated by a white-haired woman next to a man in a wheelchair, and a father whispering sternly to a toddler. They stare at me as I pant in the doorway. I pour myself a cup of water from the cooler and chug it until my mouth is no longer dry.

  I take out my phone to text Eliot that he needs to stop seeing Dr. Brown, but he’d want to know why, and I don’t ever want him to know why.

  So I’ll have to figure something else out.

  Dear Gabriel,

  You said to email if there were any issues with Eliot. It’s not about him per se, but his therapist. Someone I know sees the same one, and apparently she mentioned that she’s writing a book about Eliot and his condition.

  I thought I’d let you know, since Eliot told me you like to s
ue people.

  Sincerely yours,

  Sam Herring

  I like to err on the side of formality when I write emails to adults. By the time I’ve phrased everything the way I want, it’s past ten.

  He replies within two minutes.

  agree that this is concerning. will investigate.

  glad to know eliot says such wonderful things about me.

  did he get my birthday present?

  (Sent from iPhone)

  I only process one word: birthday.

  I text Eliot immediately:

  Were you trying to bake a cake the other day because it was your birthday?

  Yes, he answers.

  Why didn’t you tell me??? I text frantically.

  For some reason I thought you knew.

  That reason may or may not have to do with an altered state of mind.

  Oh, my God. I rest my forehead on my knees.

  This explains why you were so confused about the cake.

  HAPPY (LATE) BIRTHDAY! I’ll give you your present at lunch tomorrow!

  I groan, so loud Tito barks downstairs.

  Why did I send that? There’s no time before school to get him a present.

  I consider going back to sleep, and then I realize why he texted me randomly that day about a fire he didn’t need me to put out.

  I’m not big on birthdays. They’re like tests for how much your friends like you, and it always felt like I failed. Before I joined lacrosse, people would RSVP to my halfhearted Facebook events but cancel because too many things in their lives were higher on the echelon than my birthday parties.

  Even when you rebel and plan nothing, it’s still failing the test, because if someone really cared, they would have thrown you a surprise party.

  I must have a present for Eliot tomorrow, and it must be perfect.

  I climb out of bed.

  All my possessions that I use are on my floor, and everything else is in the closet. I yank the doors open, and everything falls everywhere: Girl Scout sash, stained towels, old My Little Pony figurines. . . .

  Mom had said a present measures how well you understand someone, but it also needs to have a piece of you in it. A Girl Scout sash won’t work for Eliot, but there are plenty of other pieces of me lying around.

  I dig holes with my crutches, accidentally unearthing the cardboard box that Rex and I have been using to hide framed pictures of Mom from Lena when she’s on her trash bag rampages.

  I want to go through them, but the pain is too intense, collected in one place like this.

  Maybe if I wrote down the rest of the accident and processed that pain like Dr. Brown wanted, I’d be able to do things like open this box.

  Instead I shove it to the back of my closet.

  My old jacket topples onto my head. It belonged to Mom’s grandfather when he was in the army, and she passed it down to Rex when he was depressed after being expelled from school, and he gave it to me after the accident. It was comforting, so I wore it all winter.

  I press it to my cheek. It smells like family.

  Eliot never wears a jacket.

  Another thing Mom had said about presents: that finding the right one feels like a puzzle piece sliding into place.

  Students aren’t allowed to eat lunch in the library, but the cafeteria is full of people pretending not to stare, so Eliot and I do anyway.

  I poke at my cold lasagna I brought from home. Another one was dropped off at our door last night, even though neighbors aren’t supposed to keep giving you baked dishes after half a year.

  “I have it . . . your present,” I blurt.

  I’m wearing the jacket, because the idea of taking it off and handing it to him seemed poignant at the time.

  A faint pink tinge appears in his cheeks, and he casts around for a different topic.

  “Where did you get that coat? Did someone win a who-can-design-the-ugliest-item-of-clothing contest?”

  My expression must plummet as much as it feels, because right away he winces.

  “You get me a present, and I insult your clothes. I’ve never gotten a birthday present from a friend before, but I’m assuming that’s not the correct procedure.”

  I should have bought him a gift card. A gift card doesn’t have your whole family history tangled in it, and their skin cells on it, which I now realize is gross.

  After school, I’ll get the gift card.

  Except I already told him I had his present, and now he’s looking at me expectantly, and I can’t say, Sorry, I know this is your first birthday present but I was actually kidding.

  I shed the jacket. Even though I’ve done it a thousand times, number one thousand and one is when I manage to get stuck.

  “You don’t have to keep it,” I say, muffled by the fabric over my head. “But I thought you should have a coat, since you don’t feel cold. We sort of pass this one around in my family to whoever’s having a hard time—and my mom thought presents should have a piece of you in them—”

  Light floods me, interrupting my rambling. Eliot has freed me from the coat and is putting it on.

  “I’ve been wanting to augment my—what did you call it?—slutty-vampire aesthetic.” He inspects the sleeves. “This jacket screams down-on-his-luck, ex-army, drives-an-Impala vampire hunter. The ideal ironic contrast.”

  “Really, I’ll get you something else.”

  “Do I have to give it back?”

  He clutches the jacket around him.

  I cover my face. “No.”

  “Excellent,” he says. “Because I’m never taking it off.”

  I sink into my plastic library chair and peek between my fingers. The rough-but-exotic vibe actually works for him.

  “You have to, when it’s hot,” I croak. “You’ll get heat exhaustion.”

  “I’ll take that trade-off.” He looks at me seriously. “This is the best present I’ve ever gotten.”

  “Better than your ukulele?”

  I guess I hate that ukulele. Eliot probably has to think about his stupid parents every time he plays it.

  “A good present doesn’t force a self-respecting individual to learn an instrument championed by hipster tweens.” He removes a pack of cigarettes from his backpack and tucks them happily in a jacket pocket. “When’s your birthday? It’ll be hard to outdo this, but I have a competitive streak.”

  “It was four months ago.”

  “Before I met you.” He swears under his breath. “I’ll get you a late one. The jacket was late. Fair’s fair.”

  I have an idea. “Only if I can pick what it is.”

  “I’m not above bullying Gabriel into giving me large amounts of money, so your price range is—”

  “I want you to stop smoking,” I cut in.

  “Sam.” He recoils. “I’ll tell him I need a new car. I’ll give it to you.”

  “A car won’t save you from lung cancer.”

  “I’ll die from my condition way before lung cancer has time to start in on me,” he scoffs.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” I point at him. “That’s not an excuse not to take care of your health. I’ve researched it; plenty of people with your condition live long and happy lives. Why did you even start smoking?”

  “Same reason for everything I do.”

  “Stupidity?”

  “Boredom.” He hesitates. “But I’ll stop if you’re truly so personally offended by lung cancer. Also because I want to get you a present.”

  He toys with the jacket zipper, looking away.

  I almost tell him about how our family gets attached to objects because Mom taught us that things retain the magic of the person who owned them. That I’m glad the jacket will have his. But then my leg twinges, and opening my mouth feels like opening the box in my closet.

  But if I’m going to know everything about Eliot’s life before he met me, about the seventeen birthdays I’ve missed, I have to be prepared to offer secrets to trade.

  “This is unrelated,” I start.

&nb
sp; “Hm?”

  I bite my lip. What if he thinks I’m damaged? But I’m locked into the follow-up now.

  “I don’t remember my accident,” I tell him, and he sits up, because I’ve never talked about the accident before. “But when my leg hurts, I get flashes of it. If I write what I’m seeing, I remember more. Only usually I’m too afraid.”

  As I say it, though, I realize I want to remember. Not because of what Dr. Brown said about closure, but because it was something that happened to my mom and me, and it should be remembered. I’ve been acting like Mom died alone.

  “Fascinating,” he murmurs, then smacks his own arm. “I mean, I’m sorry you have to go through that.”

  “It’s okay.” I steel myself. “Actually I think you might be able to help.”

  “How?” He’s too surprised for sarcasm.

  “Sometimes, when my leg hurts and it reminds me of the accident, I . . .” It’s so hot in this damn library. “I picture you. Not doing anything in particular, just being. It helps.”

  He stops playing with the zipper.

  “As in, just by existing, I’m making you feel better? As in, the concept of me as a person causes you positive emotions?”

  Maybe he’s teasing me. But no, I’m finally learning how to tell when he’s joking or not, and right now his eyes are wide and startled. For some reason it makes me shy.

  “Well, that’s how it is with people you’re close to. If I think about my family, I feel happy.”

  At a basic level, I’m not unhappy they exist, anyway.

  “I didn’t know I could do that,” he says almost inaudibly, like he’s discovered a superpower much better than invulnerability to pain. Then he fake coughs. “Of course I’ll help. Tell me when you’re ready to try writing down your memories again. We can do it at my house or yours.”

  “I’m ready,” I blurt before I can overthink it. “Let’s do it soon.”

  I’ll never be ready if ready means that I’m not scared. Sometimes it has to mean I don’t want to, I am scared, but I’m going to do it anyway because it needs to be done.

  Which means ready is whenever I decide.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ON SATURDAY, I FACE OFF AGAINST DAD across the kitchen counter to tell him I’m not going to our family session with Dr. Brown and I’m never going again.