by Anni Taylor
“I am.”
“Good. What do you remember?”
“I still don’t remember anything. Maybe I made myself forget?”
“That’s possible. How about we talk about how you’ve been feeling the past month or so.”
“Okay. But there’s not much to tell. I’ve just been . . . numb.”
“Anything else?”
“And angry. It’s been a whole six months without Tommy. With no resolution.”
“Can you tell me what kinds of things you thought about when you were feeling angry?”
“I just felt like the police weren’t doing enough.”
“They weren’t coming up with any answers?”
“Yes, that. It was their job to find him, and they hadn’t done that.”
“You were angry at them?”
“Not exactly. Just . . . I just felt rage. In general.”
“Phoebe, were you keeping a journal or diary or anything this year?”
“No.”
“Poetry? Ever write that?”
“I’m not a poet.”
“I was trying to help jog your memory of the letters. You must have had the paper and envelopes somewhere. A sleepwalker has to start somewhere. In your waking hours before all this happened, you would have known where to find those things.”
“I don’t remember ever seeing them before.”
She sucked in her lips, moistening them. “I’ll let you know that Detective Gilroy invited me to view the film of you putting the envelope in your mailbox. It was helpful for me to see what you were like that night.”
“What did you think?” I said, hiding the fact that a tiny part of me hoped that she’d have noticed something different to everyone else.
“Well, you were certainly in some other kind of state. It seems to me that you need yet more time before any memories return to you. If we can figure out how you came to write the letters, it might help us to discuss your feelings at the time. It can be difficult to heal things sometimes if we can’t see them clearly. Also, you seem to want to remember.”
“I do.” I eyed the clean, white ceiling. “Do you have any idea why I would choose to use Nan’s old typewriter to write the letters on, when I’ve never used it before? I mean, I didn’t even know she still had the thing. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid. I’m not even sure I’d know how to use it.”
“Well, I can’t claim to have used one either. But they don’t look very technical.” She gave a half grin. “It is an interesting point, though. There must have been something in your subconscious that drew you to it.” Dropping the grin, her eyes grew quizzical.
“You ended up in your grandmother’s yard that night, right? Trying to get inside her toolshed? What was that all about?”
“I honestly don’t know. I dreamed that Tommy was there and he wanted to get into the shed. So I was trying to help him.”
“Looks like the sleepwalking is connected with old memories.”
“That’s what I thought. But none of it really makes sense.”
“Well, people do a lot of things when sleepwalking that don’t make a lot of sense. They drive cars and crash them. They write nonsensical stories. They can even get violent.”
“I did something worse. I wrote notes that made me believe that we were close to finding Tommy’s abductor.”
“Maybe that’s the real reason you wrote them,” she said gently. “Perhaps you wanted so badly to get answers that you invented this person.”
“Maybe. It terrifies me to think I’ve done something like this and I can’t recall it. I could do something else and not remember it. Something worse.”
“Well, we’re going to work on making sure that doesn’t happen. Like I said, it seems you need a little more time. We’ll return to this at the next appointment. Let’s just concentrate on you for the rest of this session. How are things between you and Luke? Things were quite . . . tense when you two came in.”
Thinking of Luke made me suck in a breath of resentment. “Things got even tenser. I found out that Luke’s been fucking some other woman.”
I didn’t know for certain that he’d been fucking her, but he’d smelled of her perfume. That, and the cringing look on his face, was enough to tell me that something had happened between him and her.
She gasped, her fingers touching her lips. “Oh no. . . .” She straightened herself then, nodding in a more business-like way. “You’ve had an extremely rough couple of days.”
“You could say that.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“When Luke and I got home from our visit with you, we had an argument. Luke went out for a walk and came back an hour later smelling of perfume. He admitted he’s been going to see someone. I moved out, and I’m at my grandmother’s now.”
It hurt retelling those scenes. It seemed like someone else’s life.
I could tell that she was searching for something to say that was free of bias. She was recalibrating her vision of Luke in her head, trying to match what I’d previously told her of him with this new, tarnished vision. Since I’d started seeing her, soon after Tommy’s disappearance, I’d told her the same perfect couple story that I’d told the police.
“Oh . . . Phoebe . . .” She breathed in and out heavily. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.”
“Tell me, how has all this been affecting you? What are you feeling?”
“Empty.”
“So, you’re living with your grandmother now?” She furrowed her brow. “I remember that you haven’t had the smoothest relationship with your grandmother in the past.”
“She can be a hard person to be around. But she’s been okay.” No, she hasn’t been okay. She’s been her usual critical self.
“You’re planning on staying with her? No plans to head anywhere else?”
“No plans yet.”
“Of course. I’m sure you’re still feeling numb and bruised. So, all of this with Luke came as a complete shock?”
I chewed my top lip. “I knew something was happening before the night I found out. But I didn’t admit it to myself. I didn’t want to see it.”
“What didn’t you want to see, Phoebe?”
I tried to hold back. I didn’t want to talk about this. I wanted her to make me remember writing those rhymes, but we’d gotten nowhere with that.
“I didn’t want to see that I’m a disappointment to him,” I found myself saying in answer to her. I folded my arms, trying to barricade myself.
“Why did you think you disappointed Luke?”
My eyes closed, betraying the barrier I’d tried to put up. “Because I’m not all he thought I was.”
“Luke had a different picture of you?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think he had a different picture?”
I hesitated, the truth of Luke and me welling inside my chest.
I wanted to talk.
“Because he never knew me,” I said, the words flattening as I spoke them.
“He didn’t know you?”
“No. Luke had always pursued me, I mean, from the time we were teenagers. But I didn’t give in. And I think, because of that, he built me up in his mind to be something more than what I was. Every year that he didn’t have me, the more special I became—in his eyes.”
“In other words, he put you on a pedestal?”
“Exactly. And in a way, that was his biggest criticism of me. I wasn’t good enough as I was. He just saw some ideal of me.”
She sat back, eyeing me thoughtfully. “What things about you do you think Luke doesn’t know?”
“He doesn’t know what drives me.”
“What drives you, Phoebe?”
“It’s hard to explain. It’s that feeling of having a warm body. Of feeling totally alive and awake.”
“Can you tell me the last times you felt that way?”
“When I lived in London I felt like that. As a theatrical actor. It didn’t pay
much, but I felt alive in those days. There was an energy. I travelled a lot. Travel is easy from London. Things were constantly moving.”
“When do you think things stopped moving?”
“I guess, when I became pregnant with Tommy. Luke and I married, and we moved back to where we started. Everything became centred on Luke, and he expected that I’d be happy with that. He was working around the clock to be able to afford the house we have now. There was no time or room for anything else.”
“And then when Tommy was born?”
I stared out the window, at the arch of bare-branched trees that lined the avenue. Dark, brittle sunlight had turned the scene sepia. “When Tommy was born, he was like this little squashy alien being who I knew nothing about, and who knew nothing about himself. He was sick for the first few weeks. It was hard for me to accept that he was even mine.”
“Am I right in saying you felt a bit of distance from your baby?”
“Yes. I wasn’t an instant mother. At least, I didn’t feel like one.”
“And in the months after the birth? How were things then?”
“I guess . . . I always felt like a bit of an imposter being a mother. It wasn’t something I was qualified for.”
A smile stretched the edges of her pink-lipstick mouth. “It’s a job none of us feel qualified for.”
“I just wasn’t the mother I should have been.”
“You didn’t feel adequate?”
“No.”
She hesitated, tapping her pen lightly on her notebook. “It’s a common experience for mothers to feel inadequate.”
I stared at her. “I wasn’t just inadequate. I didn’t protect him from someone stealing him away.” Something inside me broke. “I can’t stand it. The weight of it. I can’t do this anymore. After the first weeks, people started saying that time would find me in a better place. I’m not in a better place.”
“Can you tell me the place you’re in?”
“It’s so deep. There’s no light. I feel . . . hate. Hate for everyone this hasn’t happened to. Because they get to live in a different world to me. Hate for myself for not protecting Tommy.”
I cried, listening to myself speak words that I didn’t know I’d been holding inside. I hated people for not being me?
Dr Moran fetched me tissues, saying soothing things I could barely hear.
A lull fell in the room. I’d given away too much of myself. I could see that her eyes had changed.
“Phoebe, I’m going to ask this directly. Have you had thoughts of harming yourself lately?”
“No,” I lied. I wasn’t ready to tell about what I’d done. If I did, she might want to put me in a facility somewhere. And I didn’t want that. I needed my own space. A cocoon.
She didn’t look convinced. “I always wondered in our earlier sessions if you were holding things back. I want you to get the most out of these sessions, and you won’t if you hold back. I’ve sensed anger from you, but you haven’t brought those feelings to the surface. Except for little bits and pieces.”
“I’m trying to put it behind me, I guess.”
“It’s hard to put things behind us when they’re following us everywhere. Sometimes we need to stop and turn around and face those things.”
“I don’t want to talk about this stuff anymore.”
“Okay, but we’ll return to it at your next session. I think we’ll make another appointment in three days. Right now, we’ll concentrate on small steps to get you back on that road of having a warm body again. Tell me, how often do you do things you enjoy doing? And how often do you see your friends?”
“I can’t say I really have hobbies anymore. I don’t see my friends very much. I don’t have much in common with them anymore. They have lives, and I don’t. They’re all doing things and going places, and I’m not. It makes me feel worse, so I avoid seeing them.”
“You have a life. It’s what you do every day that makes up your life. If you stay home every day and stare at the four walls, well, then that becomes your life. Sometimes, when you’ve reached rock bottom, it takes going step by step to get yourself out of there. But you can do it. We’re going to make a plan for you. Just small steps.”
Handing me a piece of paper, she asked me to write down things I could do over the next week that were different to what I usually did. Small steps.
I wrote:
Go swimming.
Have my hair cut.
Have dinner with friends.
Go to Bingo with Nan.
Go see a movie.
I planned on doing none of those things.
When I glanced up from the page, Dr Moran was eyeing me fixedly. “Phoebe, I’m going to be in close contact. I’m going to want to know that you are doing these things, okay? I’ll be calling you each day to see how you’re going. You’re going to need to have your phone switched on. I’ll be calling at four in the afternoon every day. Just to see how you’re going with your small steps.” She smiled warmly, taking my sheet of paper and quickly reading it.
“I’d like that,” I said, lying to her for the second time.
She copied down what I’d written and then returned the page to me. “See this as a contract. I will tell you that I’m concerned about you. In my experience, you’re at a tipping point. If something else happens, you might well need to have a stay at a place where you can rest—and be monitored. Yes, I’m that worried. I need to know that you’re going to take these steps to reconnect with yourself.”
Straightening my jacket distractedly, I nodded. I had to be more careful at future sessions. I’d revealed too much, and now I’d won myself daily phone calls from my psych.
28.
PHOEBE
Tuesday afternoon
NAN SAT IN HER ARMCHAIR, MAKING a scratching sound with her pencil as she did the puzzles from a women’s magazine. She wore a green cardigan that had been pulled out of shape around the collar, from all the years she’d scrunched up the cardigan around her neck to keep out the cold. I knew that the cardigan would smell musty—everything in this house did. Even Nan. She had no care for new things. Behind her, on the wall, a sixty-year-old clock ticked loudly, winding its way around to two in the afternoon. I hated the ticking. But Nan didn’t seem to even notice the sound.
The whole day had passed slowly. I sat reading a book, wishing I’d put reading on Dr Moran’s small steps list yesterday. She probably wouldn’t have been happy with it, though. She wanted me to see people, get out of the house. Anyway, I’d read the same paragraph six times over. I couldn’t get into it, and this was only the second page. The book was one of my mother’s old historical romance novels. I used to like them when I was a teenager. Now, it seemed that romantic love was a lie.
“It’s soup for dinner,” Nan announced out of the blue.
“Okay.”
“It’ll be pumpkin.”
“Pumpkin’s good.”
“Sass called around while you were out at the doctor’s.”
“Okay. I told her I’d be at Dr Moran’s. Must have forgotten.”
Nan peered over the top of her reading glasses at me. “She’s still flitting about unattached, I see. Should be married off by now, that girl.”
“The man she was engaged to years ago is in prison, Nan. I think she dodged a bullet.”
“Well, she’d better find someone else, quick smart, before she turns thirty. She didn’t look crash-hot when she stopped in here last week, and I told her so. Too much makeup. She’s lost that glow of youth, she has.”
I stifled a sigh. “There’s no race to get married by thirty anymore. Why did Sass come by last week?”
Her expression softened a touch. “Drops in all the time. I guess I’m like family to her. She was forever in this house as a child, cheeky little so-and-so she was.”
Nan didn’t add that kids only used to come here when my father wasn’t around. It was an unspoken understanding. She hadn’t thought much of Morris—my father—but she’d forced herse
lf to tolerate him because he was her daughter’s husband.
I used to spend a lot of time at Saskia’s house. Her parents and grandparents were relaxed and happy people. The house wasn’t there anymore. It had been pulled down years ago, to make way for the apartment blocks that were coming. Saskia’s parents and grandparents had moved way up north to Queensland.
All the old houses would be gone soon. Including Nan’s.
Nan switched on the TV. She flicked from channel to channel, complaining about the quality of the TV shows these days. She settled upon an old sitcom.
The canned laughter of the show ate its way under my skin. The whole thing was a manufactured experience, the audience instructed when something was funny and what to feel. Laugh. Stop. Be sad (cue slow music when the character says something poignant) Stop being sad. Laugh.
Nan scowled when the show finished and a home renovation program began. I knew exactly what she was thinking, because she often said the same thing when those shows were on: People want change for the sake of change. Why fix something that isn’t falling down?
Nan put another sitcom on. More canned laughter. I thought of heading upstairs just to lie on the bed and get away from the noise.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was Pria—all sympathy and comfort. Saskia had told her about what happened with Luke. Typical Sass. She couldn’t keep anything to herself for more than a day. Pria begged me to come up to her house so she could hug me in person. She couldn’t come to me because she was waiting on Jessie to get home from school. Kate was on her way there, too. Sass couldn’t make it, Pria said.
I was about to make an excuse when I remembered Dr Moran’s small steps again. It would be something to tell her when she called later. Plus, I enjoyed hanging out with the girls when I made the effort. I told Pria I’d come up there for a few minutes.
“Be back in time for dinner!” Nan called as I left the house. I suppressed a smile. It was like I was ten again.
I ran my hands through my hair as I walked down Nan’s garden path and out onto the street.
Deliberately, I looked away from the Wick house and number 29 when I walked past. If Bernice was peeking through her window, I didn’t want to see her. And if a curtain shifted at number 29, I didn’t want to know. And I didn’t look at Luke’s parents’ house or my own house either. If Luke wasn’t going to be in my future, then I had to start separating myself emotionally.
