Mr. Martin hands me a tissue, and I blow my nose.
“You must miss him,” Mr. Martin says tenderly.
“He was my best friend,” I say.
Mr. Martin nods. “I’m assuming that during your father’s illness, your mother had to take over his role as the head of the household?”
I shrug. “It wasn’t like that. He was never really the ‘head of the household,’ even when he was healthy. He and my mom made decisions together.”
“I see. But as his illness progressed, he wasn’t able to make those decisions anymore?”
I sniffle. “Yeah, I guess.” I don’t think it’s worth adding that it wasn’t my mom who took over as the head of the household; it was me. Mr. Martin, I’m sure, would have a field day with that nugget of information, and I don’t see any reason to give him anything else to work with.
Mr. Martin hands me another tissue and squats down in front of me. “Think about it, Lexi. Your whole life, your parents gave you mixed signals about the roles of men and women. Your mother worked out of the home. She dressed like a man. She shared the head of household duties with your father, thereby reducing his masculine identity. He became more of a friend to you than a disciplinarian.” He places a hand on my arm. I have to force myself not to shrug it off. “It’s clear that your parents loved you very much; I’m not disputing that. But they taught you wrong.”
I twist the unused tissue around and around in my hands so it becomes ropelike and cuts into the soft patch of flesh where my thumb and index finger meet.
“You were right,” Mr. Martin says. “You don’t have an individual incident for a Father Wound. Rather, the overall dynamic between your parents serves as the Father Wound in this instance. Now, the question is, how do we heal it?”
Chapter 10
Mr. Martin walks in slow circles behind me, deep in thought. The continuous squish of his shoes sinking into the carpet is loud in my ears.
I look out over the crowded room. My eyes are blurry from the tears that I haven’t bothered to wipe away, and the blur of pink and blue before me reminds me of the ocean at sunset. It’s even moving like the ocean, the whole picture bobbing up and down faintly with each breath I take.
The seconds tick by, turning into minutes, but Mr. Martin still doesn’t provide an answer to his question: how do we heal it?
But he doesn’t really mean heal. He means negate. Because, according to Mr. Martin, my Father Wound isn’t something bad, like a physically abusive father or an emotionally abusive babysitter. My Father Wound is my entire existence, my entire childhood, my entire relationship with my mother and father. But I refuse to believe my relationship with my parents was somehow bad.
It’s all I can do to hope Mr. Martin doesn’t make me beat up my “mother” or “father.” I really don’t think I could do that.
Suddenly Mr. Martin claps his hands together once, loudly, making me jump in my seat. “Of course!” he says to himself. He selects a few items from the prop collection and pulls them over to where I’m seated, a renewed spring in his step now that he’s figured out his course of action. They’re a fold-up cot, blanket, and pillow. I’m so relieved at the lack of punching bags and baseball bats that I don’t really question what the props are for.
“Daniel, will you assist us, please?” Mr. Martin says. Once Daniel’s joined us on the stage, Mr. Martin directs him to lie down on the cot with his head on the pillow and the blanket over him. He tells him not to speak and not to get up, no matter what happens or what I say. “Now, Lexi. Daniel is going to be playing the role of your father. In this scenario, your father is in the hospital and on the verge of passing away. This is your last moment with him. What would you like to say?”
“Wh-what?” I squeak out. “I…I don’t understand.”
“Your last memory of your father is as a friend,” Mr. Martin says. “That’s where the problem lies. Your perceptions of parental roles are distorted, and because your father has passed, those memories have been frozen. But if you continue remembering him that way, you’ll never be able to get on the right track. You need to change that memory of your father. You need to let him know that you know what he and your mother did to you, and you need to let him know how that makes you feel.”
I stare up at Mr. Martin, horror-struck. Why is he doing this to me?
But he just smiles back.
I look at Daniel, completely hidden beneath the blue blanket save for his face. How am I supposed to pretend that skinny boy is my father? How am I supposed to tell him what Mr. Martin wants me to tell him? How am I supposed to form the words that will supposedly change my last memory of my father? Why would I even want to?
But once again, I’m trapped. I have to do what Mr. Martin says. There’s no other choice here—there’s no way out, literally nowhere to run.
My head is spinning. The only reason I’m even at New Horizons in the first place is because I have to fix my family. And now Mr. Martin is saying that for the de-gayifying to work, I have to reject everything that my family was and is. So what, then, is the point of all of this?
I squeeze my eyes shut and make myself think.
I could just give up now. Tell Mr. Martin I want to go home and forget I even came here at all. Go back to living with a shell of a mother who fears for my soul, hanging out with friends who don’t really know me, working overtime to pay my mom back the $9,500. It’s just as well. If Mr. Martin has his way, my relationship with my mom will never be the same again anyway. And if I left now, at least I wouldn’t have to participate in this whole Dad-deathbed charade or wear these awful clothes for an entire summer.
But Kaylee’s words repeat in my head. I promise it will get easier. Maybe she’s right—it is only the second day. And it’s a two-month program. And Mr. Martin said we’d only be working on this Father Wound thing for a few days. Maybe the rest of the summer won’t be nearly as bad. Kaylee would know—after all, she’s sat where I’m sitting now. And she said it was the best decision she ever made. Maybe I could still get something out of New Horizons even if I’m not fully behind this particular exercise. Maybe, if I stick it out, I can find the gray area Kaylee talked about, my own way to make the de-gayifying work and get the life I want but without sacrificing the things that are important to me.
The thought of my mom’s inevitable breakdown when she hears I gave up on New Horizons after only two days is what seals it for me.
“Dad…” I say to Daniel. This is by far the strangest thing I have ever done in my life. It’s flat-out wrong in so many ways. But I do my best to detach myself from the memory of my real dad and his real illness and the real last time I spoke to him, and instead focus on playing the part that Mr. Martin wants me to play. “You’ve been a good father. But you and Mom…you kind of messed me up.”
“Kind of?” Mr. Martin repeats. “Don’t be weak, Lexi!”
I shake my head. “No, not kind of. You really messed me up. You didn’t act the way normal mothers and fathers are supposed to act. You didn’t…lead by example. And now I’m confused.” I look to Mr. Martin, and he nods for me to continue. “I feel like I don’t know how men and women are actually supposed to act around each other. It’s affected me in some very big ways.”
“So what are you going to do, Lexi?” Mr. Martin says.
“I…um…” I falter. I don’t know if I can do this.
“Say it!” One look at Mr. Martin’s face confirms what his tone already gave away. This is not a suggestion—it’s an order.
“So, Dad, I want you to know…” I swallow. “Before you, um, go…that I am going to remember you as a father. I am going to forget all the things you did and said to make me think that we were friends, instead of what we actually are—father and daughter. And I am going to get my life back on track.”
“Tell him about the times he was a real father to you,” Mr. Martin says. “Conc
entrate on those memories now.”
I think long and hard, carefully choosing which memories to share. “I will always remember the time you came home from work with the swing set in your trunk and how you spent the whole weekend putting it together for me.”
I glance at Mr. Martin again—he’s moving his hand around and around, waving for me to keep going.
“I will always remember the time I got a D plus on my life science lab and how you took my allowance away until I got at least a B minus. And I will always remember you as the man who never once forgot Mom’s birthday or a Valentine’s Day or your wedding anniversary. You were a good husband to her.”
For good measure, I lean over and kiss Daniel on the cheek. His eyes flutter open in surprise and his face turns a dark shade of red, but he follows Mr. Martin’s instructions and doesn’t say anything.
“Good-bye, Daddy,” I say, and my voice cracks.
“Well done, Lexi!” Mr. Martin says, rejoining us at the center of the stage. He stands me up and takes my hands. “How do you feel?”
I put on my most grateful smile and say, “Much better. Really. You were right. That was exactly what I needed.”
“I’m so glad to hear it! And thank you so much for your courageous work here today.”
The campers and counselors break into applause, and I’m finally free from this hell. But as I make my way back to my seat, the relief is replaced by heartache as the detachment wears off and I am forced to face what just happened. I just told my dad that I would forget him—not him entirely, but our friendship. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t mean it or that I said it to someone who was only pretending to be him or that I only said it because Mr. Martin forced me to. I said, out loud, that I would never again think about all those times he was so much more than just a father figure. The fun times we had together are the best memories I have, and now they’re tainted.
I don’t know if I believe in ghosts or angels or the idea that the dead watch over us, but just in case, I whisper, so low that no one can hear over the sound of the clapping, “I’m sorry.”
Chapter 11
When we get back to the dorms, The Great Gatsby is back. It’s lying on my bed with a note stuck to it that says: Mr. Martin said this was OK. Brianna. It’s a comforting sight—a piece of home that I so desperately need right now. I wonder if Mr. Martin knew I would need the book today, after the difficulty of my Father Wound session, and made sure Brianna got it back to me.
I open to the first page and read the opening line, even though I know it by heart:
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
I slam the book shut.
Mr. Martin has officially managed to ruin everything that’s important to me.
But then I see Carolyn across the room, already changed into her nightgown and brushing her hair into the same loose, high ponytail I saw her go to bed in last night, and I know what to do. I go over to her area and give her a little wave in the reflection of the mirror. “Hey.”
She spins around. “Hey, Lexi.” There are tiny wisps of blond at her hairline, lighter and finer than the rest of her hair, and they give the opposite effect of a shadow, brightening her face instead of darkening it. I notice a tiny birthmark on her temple—it’s adorable. “How are you doing?” Her voice is low and concerned.
She, Matthew, and Daniel tried to get me to talk to them all during dinner and the walk back to the main cabin. But what was I supposed to say? After what Mr. Martin made me do and say, I didn’t want to talk about it. I still don’t.
“I’m good. How are you?” I say lightly, as if I don’t know what she’s really asking.
“I’m okay. But, Lexi, if you need someone to talk—”
I thrust the book out. “I got my book back,” I say, cutting her off. “I thought you might want to borrow it. It’s been approved by Mr. Martin. It’s not Jane Austen, but…”
“Oh! Um, yes! Thanks!” She takes the book and runs her thumb over the edge of the pages so that a little gust of wind escapes and ripples through her hair. My stomach does a flip-flop. “This is really nice of you.”
“No problem,” I mumble, repeating just friends just friends just friends in my head. “Okay, well, good night.” I duck my head and bail.
On my way back to my own area, Rachael stops me. “I just wanted to say that your Father Wound session today was really inspiring,” she says. “Isn’t Mr. Martin so amazing? I feel so lucky to get to learn from him.”
“Um. Yes,” I say. “Agreed.”
After everyone’s in bed, Deb, the counselor on dorm duty tonight, tells us we will have twenty extra minutes before lights out so we can write in our journals.
I spend my time drawing. It feels good to have a blank page in front of me again, waiting for whatever sketch or doodle is ready to break free from my pen. A string of ivy sprouts onto the page and grows wild, first just around the edges of the paper but then gradually invading the center, the vine branching off and grasping every which way, taking over the page like the stubborn weed that it is. When nearly the entire page has been overrun, I add in a figure, a tiny human no taller than a safety pin. She stares out helplessly from behind the ivy, her arms and legs caught in the vines.
I’m trying to place the expression on the girl’s face when Deb announces it’s time for our nightly Bible verse.
“‘For this reason I tell you, whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,’” Jasmine reads aloud.
We close our Bibles, and a few seconds later, the room goes dark.
***
Day two of the Father Wound exercise. At least I get to relax today. I’ve done my part.
But then Matthew is called up first, and my stomach is instantly in knots again. Mr. Martin won’t go easy on him.
To Matthew’s credit, he doesn’t lose his cool like I did yesterday. He answers Mr. Martin’s questions about his family and life back in San Diego with amazing composure. There’s even a smile on his face as he does it.
“What are your parents like?” Mr. Martin asks.
Matthew shrugs. “My dad’s a typical guy, watches football like it’s his job, owns a pool cleaning business, drinks a lot of beer. My mom stays home with my youngest sister. She’s two.”
“Wonderful,” Mr. Martin says. But the more questions Matthew answers, the more Mr. Martin looks troubled. Matthew’s family is the picture of perfection. Parents in appropriate gender roles, no abuse to speak of, three children and a dog, church on Sundays, family trips to Legoland, homemade apple pie, avocado tree in the backyard.
There’s absolutely nothing for Mr. Martin to grab on to.
And Matthew knows it. That’s why he’s so smug.
Hope builds inside me as I watch the scene up on the stage. Stay strong, I think to Matthew. Don’t give him anything.
Mr. Martin asks so many questions I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was feeding them to him through an earpiece. When he exhausts one topic, he jumps right into the next without hesitation: school, friends, extended family, past summer camp experiences, his afterschool job at the dog groomer’s. Matthew’s carefully thought-out responses are the definition of generic. He doesn’t shy away from talking about Justin—which Mr. Martin clearly doesn’t appreciate—but he gives absolutely no hint of anything that would have caused him to like boys in the first place. I’m not always sure he’s telling the whole truth, but it doesn’t matter. His performance is masterful.
Just when I think time has got to be close to up and Matthew has actually beaten Mr. Martin at his own game, Mr. Martin asks Matthew what his favorite movie is.
“Grease,” Matthew answers without missing a beat.
That one tiny word is enough to completely transform Mr. Martin’s demeanor. He freezes for a
brief second and then straightens up, confidence overtaking him, a knowing smile crossing his face.
Crap. What just happened?
“Grease. That’s a musical, isn’t it?” His voice is different now. Sly. Certain.
Matthew suddenly looks as worried as I feel. “Um, yeah?”
“What other musicals do you like, Matthew?”
“I don’t really see what that has to do with anything…”
“Just answer the question.”
Matthew grimaces. Mr. Martin is onto him; he knows there’s no point in lying now. “I don’t know…Cabaret, Evita, West Side Story…I like them all, I guess.”
Mr. Martin nods. “Have you ever been in one?”
Matthew mutters something under his breath, but I can’t understand it.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Yes, I have been in musicals.”
“When did you do your first one?” Mr. Martin asks.
“When I was seven. I did a community theater production of The Music Man. I played Winthrop,” Matthew says.
“And since then?”
Matthew sighs. “I’ve been in a lot of shows, okay? At least two a year for the last ten years. So just say whatever you’re going to say so we can end this already.”
“Very well. The artistic world is a breeding ground for SSA, Matthew. Theater, Hollywood, the fine arts…anything goes for those people. I’m sure a lot of the people who have been in these shows with you actively engage in the homosexual lifestyle?”
Matthew doesn’t say anything.
“That’s what I thought. Being exposed to that environment from such a young age is your Father Wound, Matthew. You grew up observing them, being taught that that kind of behavior is okay.”
I think back to the first day when we all introduced ourselves to our groups. Matthew said he’s known he was gay since preschool. So that was before he was in his first musical. Mr. Martin doesn’t seem to remember this though, or if he does, he doesn’t care. He’s just so damn proud of himself right now.
The Summer I Wasn't Me Page 8
