Going Underground

by Susan Vaught

  Who am I?

  I’m that guy. I’m that kid from the papers. I’m the one who—you know. Got convicted for pornography making and receiving pornography and other even worse stuff.

  Why am I here?

  I’m here because Christmas break is over and the court says I have to show up, and I need Branson’s recommendation to get off probation. I know the question is bigger than that, but right now in my life, it’s hard to think past the moment.

  What’s the point?

  I don’t have an answer for that and I don’t want to think about it too much.

  Branson’s big hands grip each rejection letter as he reads them, checking that college off on his grid.

  His office is the opposite of Dr. Mote’s. It’s in a small office complex, not an old house. It’s always cool, never warm. And it’s not at all built for comfort or familiarity. Everything in Branson’s world is made out of wood and leather. Everything feels stiff. He’s got pictures of cops and officers hanging everywhere, and a big portrait of the president under a snapshot of a waving flag on the wall behind his head. He has a nameplate on his desk, with his credentials as a juvenile probation officer.

  This place smells like polish and cleanser and paper and ink. At least it doesn’t smell like piss samples. Thank God I’ve never seen any of those sitting around. He’s even got his holiday decorations all put away, and it’s barely even January.

  “What about Community?” Branson sounds gruff when he’s working, but I don’t let it bother me. Much.

  I sit on the edge of the wooden chair in front of his big desk. “They didn’t answer by mail.”

  When I glance at his grid, I notice it looks a lot like the one I keep on my little desk at home, but Branson’s writing is bigger and bolder. He doesn’t look up from his papers. “Did you follow up with a telephone call?”

  “Yes, sir. The lady who answered told me no answer means no.”

  “Her name?”

  I give him the woman’s name, her phone number, the time I called, and the date I called.

  “Did you ask to speak to her supervisor?” Now he looks up, silver eyebrows raised.

  My guts sink. Is he kidding? But his dark eyes look way past serious. “I didn’t think about that,” I tell him, and hear the hint of a whimper in my tone.

  “You should. You should try everything, Del.” He smacks the papers down on his desk. “Don’t let them off easily. Don’t let them off at all.”

  “So … you’re going to make me get arrested all over again for stalking or harassment?” I’m not being sarcastic. I really am nervous about that. The flag behind his head looks gigantic, and like it’s growing out of his silver hair. Sideways red and white flames shooting out of a blue star field. I can’t be assertive like he’s wanting. I’m a criminal. A kid convict. An absolute nothing, and something less than nobody. How am I supposed to demand anything from anybody—least of all the people who have all the power?

  Branson frowns. Narrows his eyes at me like he’s reading my thoughts. I’m used to this with Dr. Mote, but it’s not so intense with her most of the time.

  “You’ve got a point,” he finally admits. “Let me make a call or two and get back to you.”

  For a second I just sit there, shocked, then squeak out, “Thanks.”

  Branson has done tons to help me in his own way, but this is the first time he’s offered to do any of my “work” for me. He looks … different. Worried, maybe?

  For the first time, it occurs to me that Branson’s pushing me so hard on this college-and-future-plans thing because he has no idea what I’m supposed to do, either. My nerves jangle so loud I start hearing music in my brain, and it’s “Space Oddity” by David Bowie, about an astronaut who launches off toward the moon. Something goes wrong with the spacecraft and he goes out to repair it, then gets lost forever.

  Lost in space.

  Back to that, because it’s the best metaphor I can find. I’m holding on to my chair arms like I’m that astronaut, Major Tom, trying to keep my bearings thousands of miles away from anything that’s familiar and makes sense.

  Here am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world …

  Branson’s supposed to be Ground Control, like in the song. The guy’s talking to the astronaut, trying to bring him home. But in the song, the astronaut never makes it back, and there’s nothing Ground Control can do.

  That couldn’t be true, right? Branson’s better than Ground Control. He knows the way back to Earth.

  Doesn’t he?

  The clock in the back of my head, the one counting down to my eighteenth birthday, keeps right on ticking. How am I supposed to come up with some genius plan or set of options when Branson can’t think of anything, either? There is no Ground Control anymore, is there? I’m just floating away, farther away, and I’ve been kidding myself that I’d ever make it home.

  I am so totally screwed.

  “Here’s what I’m going to do,” I say as Branson’s fingers tap on his grid. He looks determined in that don’t-you-dare-talk-back-to-me way, but also interested. “No more messing around. I’m going to write another request and send it to Community. Will that be a good start?”

  Branson considers, then nods. “I’m going to call. Send them another letter.”

  “Yes, sir.” That’s what I say, but I have less than no idea how to make it work.

  Branson shuffles his papers into a stack and asks, “Is Cherie Blankenship still giving you plenty of space?”

  “She’s keeping her distance.” Like a dark thundercloud trying to figure out how to get close enough to hit me with lightning. “She hasn’t been at the graveyard lately, not since before the holiday break when I told her I had a girlfriend.”

  “Hmm.” He keeps looking at his papers.

  Hmm is better than hmph, I guess.

  “And how is the girlfriend?”

  “Livia’s fine.” I try not to get tense even though I know he’s about to hit me with—

  “Does she know?”

  I look at my sneakers, which seem absurdly battered and filthy against his shiny, polished wooden floor. “Part of it. That I got in trouble, that I’ve got a felony conviction and I’m on probation and have to see a therapist, that I’m working in a graveyard because nobody else would hire me, and that I might have trouble going to college.”

  “And the rest?”

  “I put it off for a long time. The last three times I tried, she put it off.”

  I expect Branson to be like Dr. Mote and tell me to quit making excuses and get it done, but he goes quiet. After a while he says, “She really is a pretty thing. You just—you be careful.”

  And this time I’m sure I see worry on his face. For a second I get ticked, thinking he’s worrying about how I’m treating her, then I realize I’m an idiot. He’s worrying about what will happen to me when she knows everything and walks away without a second look back.

  “You’re close to the finish line,” he tells me, confirming this.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t screw it up.”

  “I won’t.”

  Branson gestures to the little restroom at the back of his office. “Leave me a sample before you go.”

  Sometimes stories get on my nerves—especially the ones where unfair things keep happening to the hero over and over, for no reason at all, and he valiantly overcomes it all.

  Life isn’t like that.

  Not every hero can stay valiant. Sometimes, they can’t even stay a hero, so what does that make them? A failure? A pussy? A total failure jerkwad with no hope on the horizon save finding a cemetery and digging rectangles in the ground for the town drunk?

  I suppose I could go über-religious. I could say I sinned and God punished me, but most days, I try to believe in God, and I try to believe in a God who wouldn’t want somebody done and finished with life before they’re old enough to have hair in all the right places. Now that I’ve got hair—mostly in the right places, though I’m no
t saying a word about amounts or anything—I keep letting myself hope there’s a way to put my life back together.

  Other than the whole court-ordered thing, that’s a big part of the reason why I keep showing up at Dr. Mote’s office and sitting on her couch, which is still familiar, and still comfortable, and sometimes I get kind of scared, wondering what it’ll be like to turn eighteen and not have to sit here anymore, wrapped in the pine paneling and the mountain pictures and tree pictures and beach pictures, staring across at her while she stares across at me. She’s got on a skirt today, a long denim one, and it almost hides the top of her clogs—red, a light shade that looks funny against the green area rug.

  Dr. Mote’s leaning forward, and she knows I was just spaced out, so she asks her question again, never frowning or looking annoyed because I tapped out on her. “Did you have any idea how it would affect your life when you went to court and pleaded guilty?”

  I can’t really smell the pine paneling and the trees and mountains and beaches when I breathe, but I can smell the carpet and the couch. Kind of old and musty, but Dr. Mote burns vanilla candles, so it’s vanilla-y old must, at least.

 

  It’s easier to focus on the vanilla must. On how the couch feels saggy and soft.

 

  I’m being stupid and I know it, but I can’t make myself open my mouth.

 

  “It didn’t really matter whether I pleaded guilty or not.” I’m kind of touching fourteen way back in my mind, so it’s weird. “Cory told them the truth and so did I, because we thought we were supposed to. We thought it was the right thing to do, and so did our parents, and even after we got a lawyer, that’s what he said to do, too. Now my mom and dad just feel like shit because they think they made me cooperate with the police that night.”

  Dr. Mote waits, not matching her green rug with her blue skirt and red shoes. She always knows when to talk and when to just sit there in her vanilla-smelling barrel chair and wait.

  “We all thought we were doing the right thing,” I say.

  “Did you have any idea, one single clue, how it would affect your life?” She shifts in her chair a little, relaxing more, and I realize I didn’t exactly answer what she asked me the first time.

  I shake my head.

  “Answer me out loud,” Dr. Mote says.

  We’ve talked about this before—how I push away feelings by going quiet, by not speaking out loud, or by saying “you” and “people” and “anyone” instead of “I” and “me.”

  Like, You can’t help wanting to beat the crap out of lawyers and police officers and people who keep telling you everything will be fine, when everyone knows it’ll never be fine again.

  I can’t help it. My fingers dig into the worn couch cushions. “I had no idea.” I’m clenching my fists, wanting to stop, but can’t—just can’t, and I know Dr. Mote doesn’t want me to stop. She’ll be fine if I beat the living hell out of her ancient couch, or throw myself on her floor and pound on the boards until I brain-damage every spider in the basement.

  “Maybe I deserved it.” Whispering now, but I want to be shouting. “Somehow. Some way. Maybe I’m paying for doing stuff wrong in the eyes of God, if there is a God.”

  Dr. Mote shakes her head like I did a minute ago, cheating. “I’m not here to tell you you did anything wrong, Del.”

  She stays quiet for a time after that, and I don’t think she’s waiting. More like … considering, or finding her way. It usually makes me feel better when she has to do that, too, like maybe I’m not an idiot, but today, after the whole Branson incident, I start worrying that she has no idea how to help me, either. That maybe all our sessions have been her and me, both trying to find a way through a maze with no exit when all along I thought she knew the way.

  When I can’t take the silence anymore, I ask, “If God’s there, do you think he forgives me?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Mote’s answer comes so fast, so certain, it makes me twitch on my comfortable couch cushion. She keeps on with, “The thought of God forgiving you—how did that make you feel?”

  I could blow this off. I could blow her off, and therapy, too. I could just show up and sit here and not do any real work. Lots of people do, I guess.

  “Good,” I say. “Shit, are you going to start going on about me forgiving myself again?”

  “No.” Dr. Mote smiles even though I can tell she really didn’t mean to. “I’m going to start going on about the fact I’m not sure you did anything that needs forgiving. The whole sex before marriage issue I’ll leave between you and your God. But what happened with you and Cory, in my opinion, it was natural.”

  She waits.

  “It was understandable,” she says after a while. “It was predictable. Cory didn’t think it was wrong. You didn’t think it was wrong. Neither of you was hurt by the natural, understandable choices you both made until a jacked-up district attorney made a big deal out of everything.”

  I can’t say anything.

  Dr. Mote’s been direct about her opinion before, but not this direct. Calling William Kaison, Esquire, jacked-up—now, that’s special.

  “It wasn’t wrong, Del.” Another shrug, but it doesn’t seem casual. “I don’t think you and Cory were wrong at all.”

  She’s tiptoed in this direction before, but never gone there. I’m not sure she should have. I spent all that time in Juvenile, and all these months in therapy, and all my time on probation accepting responsibility, and now, what’s she saying?

  I shouldn’t have accepted it?

  Christ, why am I getting pissed? What am I pissed at—which thing? What’s she trying to do? “You aren’t supposed to say stuff like that, that it wasn’t wrong or my fault. This is court ordered. You’re supposed to rehabilitate me.”

  Dr. Mote’s whole body tightens as she leans forward, drilling me with those therapist eyes. I can almost smell the smoke as her brain tries to bore straight into mine. “I’m supposed to treat you, and we’re running out of time. You’re my patient, not the judge or that unbelievable bastard Kaison who did this to you. To Cory. To all of your poor friends.”

  Jacked-up.

  Bastard.

  I’m mature enough not to snicker when people older than me use bad language, but hearing it fly out of my therapist seems a little strange. Kaison deserves it, though, for sure.

  “Thanks.”

  I think.

  And I’m also thinking, Maybe she does know the way home, but she’s just been too hesitant and “professional” to show me.

  Dr. Mote waits while the wheels grind in my drilled-into brain, and what churns out is, “But if I decide that being with Cory wasn’t wrong, that I’ve been completely screwed, what keeps me from making more mistakes? From doing something else that gets me arrested when I don’t even know it’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  My breath wheezes out like Dr. Mote just punched me in the stomach.

  I … didn’t expect that answer. At all. I didn’t want to hear it. And I can’t get my breath back. Everything my dad said a while ago comes whizzing back.

  No control … Sometimes the bad stuff just shows up knocking and we have to answer the door …

  “Nothing’s keeping bad things from happening right now, Del—to you, to me, to the world.” Dr. Mote leans forward again, letting me know I really, really need to listen. “None of us can see nightmares like William Kaison barreling down on our lives, or we’d run like hell and never, ever get hit. Avoiding life, avoiding making any concrete plans for your life—that’s just one way you’re pretending you can keep bad things from happening to you again.”

  The nervousness claws up my belly and into my throat, and suddenly, all I can think about is digging graves. My breath comes so short I wonder if I’m going to pass out. Dr. Mote just sits there and lets me flip out even though I’m not reall
y sure why I’m flipping out.

  “It’s possible you were a victim in this, just like Cory. It’s more than possible.” She puts her hands together, and I have a weird thought that if I were sitting next to her, she would have put her fingers over mine, light, not intrusive, just enough to bring me out of airless space. “You’re the real victim here, Del. All of you were, and I’m sorry.”

  “Therapy kind of sucked,” I tell Fred, who sits on my chest looking at me with her yellow eyes with the big black dots in the center, like she really doesn’t believe me. She makes a barking noise, so I know she’s listening.

  My headphones are off, lying beside me out of Fred’s reach. She can snip through a headphone wire with one neat click of the beak, so I’m careful about that. I sit up slowly, shifting Fred to my shoulder, and I grab my notebook off the floor beside the bed.

  I’m supposed to be writing a new letter to Community College, which is about thirty miles from my house. Branson knows I’ve got absolutely no chance with those people. They probably have the newspapers with all the headlines about me on file in their library, for God’s sake.

  “Fred,” Fred says, sounding confident as she marches down my arm and locates herself on the bedspread.

  “Fred,” I say right back to her.

  She deposits a little Fred gift on my floor just to make me have to bend over and wipe it up with the paper towel wad I always carry when I’ve got her out in the house.

  I wish I could call Marvin, but he’s at work. I wish I could call Livia, but she can’t talk after seven at night due to “family time.” Mom and Dad are at the Humane Society with their cage cleaning volunteer brigade. It’s just me, and the sleeping rooster outside in his coop, and the rescue cats and dogs sacked out in various locations all over the house, Gertrude asleep on the couch because she’s full of the tuna I slipped her after dinner, and Fred, who’s trying to pick at my notebook pages.

  “Fred,” Fred says again between assault attempts, like she’s trying to help me.