by Toni Andrews
Another twinge of guilt pricked me. I’d never met Sam’s father, despite the fact he’d invited me to meet him about one week into our acquaintance. I’d made plans to go to his house several times, but with one thing and another, I’d always ended up cancelling. It had never been intentional. I hadn’t been avoiding the meeting. Had I?
“I’ve heard rumors,” Sam went on quietly, “about a birthday party. It’s supposed to be a surprise party, but I didn’t think you’d like that much.”
“I wouldn’t.” I was annoyed. I knew Sukey disapproved of the breakup, but I hadn’t thought she would go so far as to invite Sam to a party she was throwing for me. “But don’t worry, I already guessed what the Balboa Scooby-Doo gang was up to and headed them off.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I winced inwardly. Sam was the one who had coined the group’s nickname when he, Hilda, Grant and Tino had teamed up to find out where Sukey was being held by a man who had kidnapped her in order to get to me. I guess he wasn’t really a member of the gang anymore.
If he was bothered, he didn’t show it. “I don’t imagine Sukey’s taking that too well,” he said.
“She’ll get over it,” I replied.
He nodded, but it was an acknowledgement rather than an agreement. “She will, but you should be aware how excited she was about it. You know she lives to do things for the people she cares about.”
This time my wince wasn’t entirely internal. I did know. And I felt bad about disappointing her, really I did. But not bad enough to sit through a birthday party in my honor, watching a bunch of people get drunk who I liked better sober.
“She’ll forgive me,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
“She always does.”
Meaning what? I wondered, and tilted my head to look at him sideways, but his expression didn’t hold any clues. Meaning I did a lot of things that required forgiveness, maybe? Probably.
“Well, I just agreed to something else she’s been trying to get me to do,” I said sourly.
“What?”
I surprised myself by telling him.
“I’m going to see my parents. My adoptive parents.”
He put down his beer and turned to face me fully. “The ones who gave you up?”
“They’re the only ones I’ve got.” I knew I sounded sarcastic, but he was used to that. He didn’t say anything right away, but he viewed me with slightly narrowed eyes, as if he were trying to figure something out about me. Which he probably was.
“Does this have anything to do,” he started, speaking slowly, “with what’s been holding you back from telling me your secret?”
There it was. The topic I had most hoped to avoid. Sam knew I had a secret, I’d admitted as much. I’d also told him I had my reasons for keeping it, at least until I “took care of something.” Which meant “determine whether I’m human.” Because if I weren’t, it was one hell of a relationship issue.
“It’s something I need to do, that’s all.” Ambiguous enough?
“It’s like she’s an alien or something. Talk about not speaking the same language—I’m not even sure she’s human anymore.”
Georgette Clausen had opted for the couch rather than the recliner. The therapy room in the minute office that housed my practice included several seating options, and clients seemed to choose them about equally. Georgette was still in the introductory phase of her first hypnotherapy session—the part where I made damned sure her stated objectives for the visit were no more than they seemed to be.
In light of the fact that my clients followed my posthypnotic suggestions to the letter, starting each session with a little Q & A, in which I used a mild press to induce total honesty, had turned out to be a good thing. For example, one woman who claimed to need help staying on a diet turned out to have an eating disorder that needed medical help. Another who purported to always be making careless mistakes was actually a battered wife. And my personal favorite, a man who had come in for help remaining faithful to his wife, had turned out to be a bigamist. When I’d asked him which wife he was referring to, he’d told me, “Both of them.” I’d resisted the urge to instruct him to perform a few anatomically impossible acts and sent him on his way.
Georgette, however, was another matter. She claimed to be having a difficult time controlling her temper when dealing with her not-quite-teenaged daughter.
“What happens,” I began, wanting to make sure I understood the extent of the problem, “when you lose your temper?” I’d dealt with a horrific child abuse case a month earlier and had no desire to wade back into those waters.
“I yell at her. I completely forget all the calm, rational things I planned to say and just start screaming.” Even though I had started by instructing Georgette to get into a relaxed state similar to real hypnosis, her tone and expression showed distress. “I’ve even called her names. I—I used profanity to my own twelve-year-old daughter.”
Based on some of the behavior she’d described—lying, stealing, skipping school—I might have used a little profanity myself. On the other hand, I’d done all those things as a kid, too. But in my case it had been after I became a ward of the state. After Bobbie and Thomas Hollings gave up on me.
“I don’t want to give up on her,” said Georgette.
The hairs on my arms rose. Could she have heard me telepathically? I’d been hearing thoughts more regularly, especially from people I’d pressed in the past. I sincerely hoped it wasn’t working both ways.
Sukey had a theory she referred to as “the Drano Phenomenon.” She claimed using the press opened up a channel by sort of unclogging psychic pipes. I was not at all comfortable with the idea.
I forced myself back to the matter at hand.
“How would you handle the situation between yourself and your daughter if your temper was not a factor?” I asked. I was probably going to do as she had asked—I couldn’t imagine any scenario where controlling one’s temper would be a bad thing—but I was curious. Roberta Hollings had certainly done her share of screaming and name-calling with me. She’d called me “freak” long before the schoolyard kids took up the chant.
Georgette looked eager. “All the things the books say to do. Ask questions. Listen. Let her know it’s the behavior I have a problem with, not Tina herself. And,” she sighed, “stay firm on the boundaries. Stop giving in just because I can’t stand arguing anymore and want to end the tantrum.”
I nodded. “It sounds like you know what to do.”
Georgette slumped against the back of the sofa. “After she ran away last year, the school suggested a counselor. We went to see her, and the advice was really good. If I could just not get so mad…” She smiled. “My husband’s talked about sending her to a boarding school for difficult kids. But it doesn’t feel right. I mean, she’s my daughter. It doesn’t matter what she’s done—I’m in it for the long haul. I’m not quitting just because things are a little rough right now. You know what I mean?”
Not really, no.
“Okay, Georgette, I want you to relax a little more and breathe deeply, okay?”
“Okay.”
“We’re going to talk about what it feels like when you’re about to lose your temper with Tina, and what you’re going to do next time you start to have that feeling.”
By the time we were finished, I was satisfied that we’d accomplished what Georgette had asked for.
“I feel much better,” she said, after writing a check at Sukey’s instruction. “Now if I could just get Tina to come in and visit you. Maybe you could hypnotize her and get her to tell you what she’s so mad about all the time.”
“I’d be happy to, but she’s got to be in total agreement.” Parents were always trying to get me to fix their kids. I’d decided I wasn’t going to fix anyone who didn’t want to be fixed, especially not a kid.
“That’s it for the day,” said Sukey. after the door closed behind Georgette. “How’d that last one go?”
I laughed.
“She wanted help controlling her temper, and I’m pretty sure my instructions will work.”
Sukey’s freckled brow wrinkled. “So why is that funny?”
I sighed. “It isn’t, really. It’s just that sometimes I wish I could press myself. I can’t always control my own temper, and here I am telling someone else how to do it.
“Your temper’s not so bad,” she said. When I raised my eyebrows, she added, “Well, it wouldn’t be if bad things didn’t happen when you get mad.”
“Bad things” was a serious understatement.
“Anyway, I rearranged your schedule like you asked, and you now have a three-and-a-half-day weekend, starting Friday at noon.”
I didn’t really like taking extra days off—I’d already done so too many times in the few months since I’d opened my office. “I should probably fly,” I speculated aloud. “But what if they aren’t home, and I have to turn right around and catch a flight back?”
“You’re not thinking about changing your mind again, are you?”
I shook my head. “No, if I wait until the time is right, I’ll never do it. I’ve been avoiding this for eighteen years.”
“Why?” asked Sukey. “I mean, I get that it’s going to be pretty weird. But if it was me, I would have gone to see them a long time ago, even if it was only to tell them to kiss my ass.”
I laughed. “I can’t imagine you telling anyone to kiss your ass, Sukey.”
“You’d be surprised. But seriously, I think I know why you haven’t gone to see them.”
“Why’s that?” I was genuinely curious, because I wasn’t sure I knew myself.
“It’s back to that losing-your-temper thing. You’re afraid you’ll get mad and do something to them.”
Pretty much what Grant had said, and close. But there was something I feared even more.
I was afraid I would press them and tell them to love me. And that was a line I would never cross. Never.
“Anyway, can you take Cupcake home with you again? I have a…a thing tonight.”
At the sound of his name, the large black blob sleeping in the corner of the office awakened, yawned and coalesced into Cupcake. I held out my fingers, and he got to his feet, lumbering over to have his big head scratched.
“Sure. What thing?”
Sukey’s freckled cheeks flushed prettily. “I’m taking a class at Orange Coast College two nights a week. It started Tuesday.”
“That’s great, Sukey.” Sukey hadn’t gone to college—in my opinion, mostly because her otherwise loving family had subtly convinced her that she didn’t really have the brains for higher education. Which anyone else who’d known her for more than a few weeks knew was bullshit. “What kind of class?”
The flush on her cheeks deepened. “Introduction to Private Investigation,” she said, her eyes on her handbag.
I resisted the urge to grin. Sukey had gotten interested in the subject specifically to help me get some answers about my past. I guess she’d decided to take it a bit further. I was glad she was taking the initiative, but the idea raised my hackles a bit, too.
“So,” I asked, “do you think you want to become a P.I.?” I had a flash of Sukey creeping through a dark alley in a trench coat, stalking some shadowy, dangerous-looking figure. I grimaced before I had a chance to stop myself.
“I just might,” she said; then, misinterpreting my expression, she hurried on. “Part-time. I’d still run the office.”
“You’ve already got everything so automated, I know it’s not really full-time for you,” I said. I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t being supportive, and I knew P.I. work was really only dangerous in the movies. Wasn’t it mostly done on computers these days?
“The instructor is a friend of Bob’s.”
“Bob Gerson?” Sukey sometimes dated the Newport Beach Police detective.
She nodded.
“He opened his own agency after he retired from the police department. We’ve only had the one class, so it’s too soon to know if I’ll be any good at it….”
I managed not to snort. She was obviously fishing for a compliment, and I happily took the hook. “You’re good at everything you decide to do, Sukey. If you really want to be a P.I., then you’ll be a great one.” It may have been flattery, but I meant it.
She beamed. “If I do, I promise you’ll be my number-one case.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said dryly. I didn’t especially like to think of myself as a “case,” but my sarcasm was lost on her.
“My pleasure. Besides, I may need to get you to press someone for me sometime, as part of an investigation.” My expression must have darkened, because she added, “Only if it was really, really an emergency, of course.”
Like the song says, I figured we’d burn that bridge when we got there.
3
I’ve never thought of myself as claustrophobic. I’ve even found small enclosed spaces oddly comforting at times, like the bottom bunk in the bedroom at a crowded foster home, where I used to hang a blanket curtain and read with a flashlight. I’ve been stuck in an elevator and experienced only annoyance that I would be late for an appointment. And I’ve made love in the tiny cabin of Sam’s sailboat.
So if small spaces don’t bother me, why does the wide-open sky of the desert at midday make me feel like the air is being sucked from my lungs?
Before that weekend, I’d driven across the Mojave a few times, or at least the small section between Riverside and Palm Springs. I guess there had always been too much traffic for me to notice the sky.
I’d always heard people say the sky was bigger in the desert, but I hadn’t thought too much about it until the trip to Tucson. The sky was whatever size it was. I understood that the absence of trees and buildings made a difference, but I’d been out on the ocean, miles from shore, without a thing to interrupt the horizon in any direction. It was beautiful, but it was the vastness of the Pacific that had actually comforted me.
This desert was different than the Mojave. The air was crystal clear all the way to the limits of my perception, without any of the haze that was almost always present, even if not visible to the naked eye, along the California coast and, as often as not, a few miles inland. The open vista should have made me feel free, unobstructed. But I felt like all that open space was pressing down on me, feebly protected in my little Honda.
When the sun had finally set, I’d never been so glad of darkness.
The dawn sky wasn’t as bad, at least not from the little patio outside the back door of my motel room. I sipped my coffee, scalding hot from the tiny pot and undiluted by cream—I draw the line at standard hotel issue foil packets of generic powdered nondairy creamer—but better than I would have hoped. I’d slept better than I’d expected, too, as nervous as I was. I’d been afraid that I wouldn’t be able to stop mentally rehearsing what I was going to say to Bobbie and Thomas.
“Tom. Bobbie.” I tried the names out loud. I hadn’t spoken them many times before, although I’d used them in my imagination, at least when I was still a kid. Before the hearing when I’d been remanded into the custody of the state, I’d called them Mom and Dad.
Sukey had done some online research and found out that in New Jersey, the state court had the right to dissolve any adoption at any time, although it was usually only done in extreme circumstances. I remembered the hearing, although most of it took place without my presence in the courtroom. I didn’t know what the Hollingses had stated as a reason for requesting that I be turned over to state custody. But I knew why the judge had ruled to honor their wishes.
It was because I’d pressed him.
A lot of the details were vague, but I remembered sitting in a chair facing the judge. It had been a small courtroom, nothing like what I’d expected from television. There was no witness stand, no bailiff with a Bible. We were sworn in as a group, sitting in a row: Bobbie and Thomas, a woman from child services who functioned as my representative, the psychologist who had examined me, and an attorney
hired by my parents. Because they’d still been my parents when we walked into that room, although I’d been staying in a group home while the hearing was pending.
I’d almost looked forward to the hearing, because by that time I’d begun to understand the strange ability that had started to grow about the time my body began to show the signs of impending womanhood. I’d become mostly silent, because I’d learned my words could be weapons, even when I didn’t intend for them to be. I had started to recognize the difference that putting that special emphasis behind my commands made. I imagined myself pushing down, pressing the intent into the listener’s brain like shapes into soft clay. Then they had to do what I said.
There were still some problems. It often happened unintentionally, that much was immediately obvious. It had only taken a couple of schoolyard arguments, with disastrous results to my opponents, to teach me that lesson. I was too young to completely grasp the more subtle issues of euphemism and hyperbole. Those I pressed didn’t necessarily do what I wanted—they did what they perceived that I wanted. A “flying leap” meant different things to different people. In one case, a boy my age had taken it to mean he should throw himself in front of a moving vehicle.
He was lucky to have lived.
I might not have understood the intricacies of my gift or, as I was more likely to think of it, my curse, but I knew I had to be very careful in the courtroom. I’d likely have only one chance to speak my piece, and I had to get it right. So I’d practiced what I was going to say.
I was going to tell the judge to send me home. Make him tell the Hollingses I was their responsibility and legally enjoin them to take care of me until I grew up. To treat me well.
And to love me. I was going to press them to love me.
But as I sat there in the small paneled room, looking at the profiles of two people who were afraid to turn their heads and look directly at me, I had an epiphany.
