Give Me Your Answer True

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Oh, come on, I know you have chops. I’ve heard you in the dark, remember.”

  Daisy threw her napkin across the table. Lucky laughed and deflected it.

  “Was it weird, you think?” Daisy asked. “The four of us so uninhibited in the night?”

  Lucky shrugged. “I found it kind of comforting, actually. Beat the alternative. Will always said, ‘I’d rather overhear them making love than fighting.’ Not that you guys fought.”

  “We spared you, right until the end,” Daisy said over the rim of her coffee cup.

  “I would’ve welcomed that screaming match, to be honest,” Lucky said quietly.

  “So how’s Ed in bed?” Daisy wasn’t particularly interested to know, but girl talk made a convenient subject change.

  “Ed? He’s predictable.”

  “How so?”

  “I can set the calendar to it. Twice during the week. Always on Saturday night. Sunday is iffy, depends on the football game.” Lucky ran her hand over her head and scrunched her curls. “And he talks too much.”

  Daisy laughed. “Talks about what?”

  “He just talks. Not even dirty. I mean, good Lord, Will and I would have our goofy nights, sure. But they were the exception to the rule. Ed’s home base seems to be goofball. He doesn’t get… I don’t want to say serious. What do I want to say?”

  “Passionate? Intense?”

  “Intense, yes. He doesn’t get that way unless he’s stoned. And he’s never indulgent about going to bed, like lying around naked for an entire Sunday would be out of the question. Staying in bed to screw and talk and then fall asleep and wake up to touch and make love again. Calling in sick to work so you can go back to bed. I don’t know, Dais, we have a good time, we laugh, we joke. He’s not a bad lover but…”

  “He’s not Will.”

  Lucky raised her glass. “Fuckin’ A.”

  “Did we get ruined?”

  “I hope not.” Lucky took a long drink then set her glass down. “Do you talk to Opie about what goes on in therapy?”

  “Rarely. Why?”

  “I just wondered. I mean, how much of a ghost is Erik?”

  Daisy smiled. “Too much. And it’s hard. John says he’s open to whatever I want to tell him but…”

  Lucky rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, talk about whatever you want. Except Erik.”

  “Which is pretty much all I talk about in therapy,” she said. “You know, it’s hard to be in a relationship when you’re working out your shit with your ex-boyfriend.”

  “You think?” Lucky said.

  “Between you and me and the pickles, I spend way too much time worrying about how it’s going to end. How I can possibly get out of this without breaking John’s heart.”

  “You won’t,” Lucky said, smiling.

  God, don’t let me.

  Don’t let me be that girl again. I won’t cheat. I’ll slit my wrists before I do that again. But please, don’t let me kill him. Let it end amicably. Let him leave first.

  After sex, night after night, she lay awake in the circle of John’s arms. He slept behind her, spooning her, and she couldn’t deal. Couldn’t drift off with him leaning on her back, the breeze of his breathing irritating the nape of her neck. She lay wide-eyed and trapped, watching the numbers on the digital clock. Twenty minutes was her quota then she gently eased him off her and rolled flat on her back.

  “No spoons?” he said.

  “I like holding hands when I sleep,” she said, taking his. And some truth was in that: lying on her back next to him, hand-in-hand, sleep finally came to her.

  You sleep differently with different boyfriends, she argued with herself. Don’t make such a big deal about it. Don’t compare everything to Erik. It’s boring.

  It was impossible not to.

  “I’D LIKE TO GO BACK to something you said earlier,” Rita said. “In fact, now that we’ve caught the past up to the present, I have a few things tagged I’d like to explore. How does that sound?”

  “All right,” Daisy said. Her eyes were mesmerized by the pages Rita was thumbing through. Chunks of handwriting. No words discernible from where she sat, but she could see colors. Highlighted sections in neon pink, orange and blue. Tiny post-it flags. One paragraph flashed by and seemed to be circled several times.

  She never doubted the woman was listening to her. She watched Rita take notes at every session. But what lay in her lap now went beyond notes. It might be her salvation. Or her undoing. And Daisy felt smack between wanting to curl up in bed and read it, and wanting to seize the fucking thing and fling it out the window.

  “I might be talking more than I usually do,” Rita said.

  Daisy picked up her coffee cup. “I might enjoy that.” She took a sip and burned her mouth. “Dammit…”

  “You said people at work were being nice to you.”

  Wiping her chin, Daisy raised her eyebrows.

  “Have you told anyone what happened to you?”

  She sat back. “You mean the cutting?”

  “Any of it. Lancaster. How do you explain your scars?”

  “I cut where nobody could see. I didn’t have to.”

  “I mean the scars on your leg.”

  “Oh. Shark attack.”

  Rita laughed. A real guffaw, not a polite and precipitating chuckle. A laugh that slowly faded as she took in Daisy’s bland expression.

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re serious?”

  “Yeah. Actually. It does the trick.”

  “What trick?”

  “Well…it sends the message that no, obviously, it wasn’t a shark attack but it’s not something I talk about.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s private.”

  “Why? Let me stop a minute. I’m going to be saying the word ‘why’ a lot. It’s not confrontational. And it’s not invalidating the answer. It’s digging into it. Like a two-year-old would. Except with a Ph.D.”

  Now Daisy laughed. “All right.”

  “It might be difficult to fight the kneejerk ‘because’ and allow yourself to tease it out a little. Try to lean into the why and let yourself talk. Don’t worry about being coherent or eloquent.”

  “Kneejerk the other way. All right. Which ‘why’ were we at?”

  “Why is it private?”

  “It’s not a short story. I don’t know how to tell a condensed version. And it also… I mean, I imagine it would bring all conversation to a grinding halt. I’m not sure what I mean.” She blew her breath out. “What do I mean? Which scars are we talking about?”

  Rita seemed to rear back a little. “Do you treat them differently?”

  “No. Yes.”

  “This is interesting. Are you more willing to talk about one set than the other?”

  Daisy opened her mouth then closed it. Nodded slowly as her chest grew tight. “The scars from the shooting are private,” she said. Without thinking about it, she drew her favorite pillow into her lap. “This got hard all of a sudden,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Those scars are private.”

  “Are they worthy?”

  “Worthy? I don’t understand.”

  “Are they worthy of sympathy?” Rita looked uncertain as she touched her fingertips to her temple. Her voice was hesitant as it followed her own train of thought. Daisy found it comforting to see her fumble. It felt collaborative.

  “Is your story touching?” Rita said, her cadence slowly picking up. “Moving? Would people have compassion for your ordeal? Would they admire your courage and your bravery? Would they understand your battle with post-traumatic stress disorder and your experience with self-harming?”

  Daisy stared, not recognizing herself in all of that.

  “Or,” Rita said. “Would they only see the girl who cheated on her boyfriend? Is that how you define it all? So in essence, if you shared your story, it would be boring at best and repugnant at worst.”

  Clutching the pillow, Daisy looked around, unable to r
ecognize anything. She was in the dark, lost in that black, dimensionless cavern whose vastness could kill her.

  “Your professional life is about other people’s entertainment,” Rita said. “Why do you make your personal life about it as well?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Always presenting a pleasant exterior. Hiding your weaknesses because nobody would be interested or sympathetic. Or possibly because they might find it terribly upsetting.”

  She felt sick. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “All that time in rehab,” Rita said. “Working with your trainer. What were you doing? Don’t think, just answer.”

  Daisy’s eyebrows twisted at the stupid question. “Recovering?”

  “From what?”

  “My leg,” she said.

  “What happened to your leg?”

  “I was shot.”

  Rita’s eyes bored into her. “Say it again.”

  “I was shot.”

  “Again.”

  “I was shot.” Her throat was on fire. A flame ignited through the center of her chest, as if it were a piece of paper. Scorching brown, then the edges charring and curling before blue and gold flames licked through.

  “James shot me,” she said.

  She felt hot. Her mouth was dry.

  “You were shot,” Rita said. Each word chiseled from the air. “It’s a fact. Not a dramatic ploy for attention or a way to monopolize conversation. You had nothing to do with the scars on your leg. You were shot. Not by a random stranger but by someone you knew. He was your partner. You connected with him as a sister. In your own words, you gave him your time and your trust. You brought water to his desert. And he shot you and killed your friends.”

  “I’m cold,” Daisy said, reaching for the throw blanket draped over the arm of the couch. Her teeth chattered as she drew it around her. “This is crazy,” she said. “Why does this seem so obvious and yet at the same time it’s like it’s never occurred to me?”

  “I was wondering that myself. It’s as if you downplayed your entire role in this. And made Erik’s experience of the shooting a much more terrible thing.”

  “Wasn’t it? He tried to talk a gunman down. He watched James blow his head off.”

  “And you were shot in the leg and lying on the stage floor, all but bleeding to death next to your partner. And watching as James shot the windows of the booth where Erik was. You were bedridden for a month with a horrible injury. You nearly lost your life’s dream. Wasn’t that terrible as well?”

  “It was. But…”

  Rita was still.

  “I don’t know where I was going with that,” Daisy said. Her skull was a vacuum. No train of thought, not even the tracks.

  “A traumatic event like this is tantamount to being in war, Daisy. Tell me again what your father said to you.”

  “We come back from war changed,” she whispered.

  “Yes. Spiritually and emotionally changed but also neurologically. Trauma like this literally rearranges your brain’s neural pathways. I’ve read studies about how traumatized youths have trouble regulating their body temperature or judging external temperature. Something I think about every week when I see you dressed inappropriately for the weather or burning your mouth on your coffee.”

  Flashing hot and cold, Daisy stared, thinking of all the singed tongues. All the times she misjudged how hot the water was in the shower and how it was always colder outside than she thought.

  “You have a strong sense of responsibility, Daisy. You don’t shy from ownership of your actions, which is admirable. But at the same time, sometimes a legitimate reason exists for poor judgement. I’d like to see you recognize the things beyond your control and acknowledge one or two of the truly shitty things that happened to you. And maybe even accept how being shot severely disabled your ability to take the temperature of a situation and make good decisions.”

  “I was shot,” she said, shivering inside her burning skin.

  “LUCKY SAID YOU held it all together,” Rita said at the next session. “She pulled you out of bed, saying you had to get up or everyone else would fall down. Why would she say that?”

  “I don’t know. It was something dramatic to shock me back on track, I guess.”

  “Or was it true? Did you feel like you held it all together?”

  Her thoughts rolled their eyes but she moved past them, looking for how she felt.

  “Sort of,” she said, blinking hard as she remembered the teary-eyed applause the first day she walked back into the dance studios. The hands reaching to touch, hold, hug and squeeze her. Support was in their touch but also a desperation: Thank God. Our captain. Our leader. You’re here.

  Will’s pained eyes leaping from his shorn head as he learned to partner her again. Lucky fussing over her with the royal we. Kees embracing her at the end of the day, saying as long as she showed up, he’d show up. And Erik, who wanted her as close to him as possible, whenever possible. Pulling her into his lap or pushing his shoulders up against her chest in bed.

  As long as you’re all right, I’m all right. I just need you. Nothing else.

  Get up, Dais.

  You have to get up. If you don’t get up, we all fall down.

  “You did get out of bed. You found it in you to get up.”

  “Erik needed me.”

  “You needed him, too.”

  “I… You know, after I got out of the hospital last December, and John and I drove down to my parents’ house, I overheard him and my father talking. John said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner.’ Pop kind of laughed a little and said, ‘The time to call us was two years ago. And you didn’t have our number.’”

  Rita nodded.

  “Nobody called for help,” Daisy said. “Was that youth or ignorance?”

  “I think youth certainly played a part. When you’re full of adolescent resilience, you feel nothing can permanently hurt you.”

  “I was hurt,” Daisy said softly. “But I was lucky. Other people I knew were killed. I was still alive. And it’s not like I…”

  Rita leaned forward a fraction. “Not like you…?”

  A long, liquid moment where Daisy stared, mouth open. Pressing, reaching, groping for the tantalizing revelation just beyond her mind’s reach. Finding and pushing the words out was like trying to string beads on the end of an unraveled and frayed string.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Try.”

  Her brain dug deep, scrabbled in the barren dirt and came up empty-handed. Except for, of all things, Christine Fiskare’s face. When she was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, and she and Daisy were discussing what to do about the man they loved.

  I need to talk to you as a mother. He’s breaking down… He wouldn’t get out of the car after the last funeral. David almost had to carry him. He can’t eat. I’ve never seen him not be able to eat.

  “He was sick. He’d been through so much…”

  “And you hadn’t?”

  “I had but…” Her breathing was growing choppy.

  “But what?”

  “But it was different.”

  “How?”

  The words were sharp, cutting the inside of her mouth. “It wasn’t as bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I… Because… I can’t, I don’t know, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Try this on,” Rita said. “And don’t be afraid to say it doesn’t fit. But within your circle of friends, the friends who survived the shooting, something made you feel your pain didn’t measure up to theirs. You didn’t hurt as much. You weren’t quite in the same club.”

  Daisy felt her eyes bulge. Tears spilled over and down her face. “Yes.”

  “Especially Erik.”

  “No.” She shook her head in vehement denial. “He never implied he had it worse.”

  “It’s not what he did. It’s what you felt. What you believed to be true. You downpl
ayed your part and thought his was the worse experience.”

  “But it… It was. Because I didn’t remember.”

  “You didn’t remember the shooting.”

  “Yes…”

  “Why did that make you different? Tell me.”

  “They all remembered. Erik could tell a story. David, Lucky and John, even Will had tangible memories. I had nothing. I got plucked out of that place and woke up in the hospital and missed everything. Their dreams had imagery and context and mine were a black cavern of nothingness. I was scared of nothing.”

  “Go on.”

  “Erik went to the funerals. I was safe in the hospital while he went to four funerals in three days.”

  “You were bedridden.”

  “I know but… I know now. Now that you’re pointing it out to me, but why… What does all this mean? I don’t understand.” She hammered her fists on her knees, confused and frustrated as her memories were dissected and twisted.

  “What do I do with this? I didn’t consciously think ‘Oh, I had it easy. I shouldn’t complain.’ I only know that I…”

  “That you what?”

  She was frantic to be understood. “I loved him.”

  “But you couldn’t let him hear you scream. Just like you couldn’t let your father hear you scream.”

  Anger swept through her and she seized it. “Don’t give me any childhood psychobabble bullshit. Don’t you blame my father for this. I love my father.”

  “Of course you do. And you kept him safe.”

  “I told you what happened. Hearing me scream would kill him.”

  “He’s a grown man. And he’s your father. I think he could have handled it. You were lying in a hospital bed with your leg shot and your calf sliced open, yet you thought about your father’s needs first. That’s incredibly selfless, but it also might have been damaging.”

  “I screamed on Erik. I screamed then. I threw up in front of him. I threw up on him.”

  “In the hospital.”

  “Yes.”

  “But ever again?”

  “I…I don’t remember. No.”

  “So just the once you flayed your own self open and let him see you weak. Shattered and broken.”

  “Like glass,” she whispered.

  “And what happened shortly after?”