by E. R. Frank
“No offense,” I tell her. “But I have a feeling they’d think this is … um … like, a waste of time.”
“Listen,” Frances goes. “If you don’t stop having nightmares and the shakes and panic attacks after four more sessions, we’ll try something else.”
“Like forcing me to drive?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “Maybe medication.”
“But I don’t want medication, either,” I say.
“Okay,” Frances agrees. “So how about trying something weird instead?”
It’s hard to fall asleep because I know I’m going to have one of those nightmares, and they scare me, plus they wake everyone up, and it’s embarrassing, even though when my mother comes in, she just stays quiet and strokes my sweaty head. So tonight I try to use what we did in therapy the way Frances suggested.
She had me imagine a place that felt totally safe and comfortable. She made me describe the whole thing to her. Every now and then she’d turn those hand buzzers on—I didn’t like the headphones—and they’d vibrate back and forth. It’s a pink sand beach I made up. Not Commons End, with its greenish, choppy water. Another place. A Caribbean sea, magical, with dazzling turquoise waves that are steady and even, rolling in from the horizon in a predictable, slow rhythm. Between each wave the water’s as still as glass. You can hear seagulls and the lapping of wavelets and the breeze rustling through palm trees. It smells like coconut sunblock and seaweed, and it’s warm without being too hot. So now I try to think of that. It sort of helps, but still. It’s not like I’m actually in this place. It’s not like it can actually keep me from having a nightmare. That much I know.
I think of the other two things we did. Frances calls them inner resources. More weirdness. First she had me create a protector figure. She said it could be real, imagined, dead, or alive. I had to think about the qualities I’d want a protector to have: strong, fast, loving, smart, levelheaded, magical. I picked a dolphin. A big gray dolphin with a white underbelly. So I make myself see him now at the magical Caribbean beach with the dazzling turquoise waves, and I swim with him and feel my body relaxing, but then the minute I know I might really fall asleep, I’m wide awake again.
So I picture my adviser. This one has to be wise and smart and levelheaded and able to see problems and solutions from all angles. I’ve picked an old woman. She’s sort of tall and thin, but not in a scrawny way. More regal, like a queen or something, and she has white hair tied back in a fancy knot, and she’s dressed in flowing clothes, and she’s got wrinkled skin and this kind, knowing expression. So now I put her on the beach. She sits on a three-legged wooden stool in the shade and watches me play in the blue, blue water with the dolphin.
• • •
“Anna!”
My father’s sitting on my bed. He hasn’t turned the light on, but still I can see that he’s got a cup of water in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I didn’t mean to wake everybody up again.”
A bloody glass wave looming over me and Jack, and screaming shattering out of the wave, and blood splattering our faces, looming and red and wet and huge, and screaming, screaming, screaming.
“Drink,” my dad goes, so I take the glass and drink.
A bloody glass wave with my father standing behind it, about to throw another one, and my brother with his hands up and out, and screaming and screaming and screaming.
“I’m going to throw up,” I say, and he moves fast to grab my wastebasket and hold it near my face, but I don’t throw up after all. “Okay,” I say after a minute. “Maybe I’m not.” I’m shaking. “Thanks,” I say. “Sorry.”
“I hate to see you like this,” he tells me, putting the wastebasket on the floor and sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“I’m okay,” I tell him.
“I wanted you on medication,” my father goes. “But your therapist said to give her six sessions first with this EMDR thing.”
“I don’t want to take medicine.”
“You need to be able to drive.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“You need to stop having these nightmares.”
“Yeah,” I go. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“I want you to put this thing behind you.”
“Dad, I’m really sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry, Anna,” he orders.
“Sorr … ,” I go.
“Here,” he says. “Sit up a minute.” He straightens and smoothes my sheets and then plumps my pillow, just like Ellen might do it. “Now, lie back.” I obey. “Try to get some sleep.”
“Dad,” I say as he’s leaving my room. He turns around, but it’s too dark to see his face all that well. “Are you going to get therapy?”
“No,” he goes. “Why?”
I’m thinking about Thanksgiving. About his voice, so high pitched and awful. About him crying.
“I don’t know.”
“Get some sleep, Anna.”
“You’re not in such great shape either,” I tell him through the dark. He pauses, just outside my door. I’m frozen, waiting for him to turn around again and yell at me. But he doesn’t. I hear him just standing there for a really long time before he finally moves away and down the hall.
19
IT’S OUR LAST STUDY SESSION BEFORE THE SAT.
“Three hundred and thirty-four?” Jason’s asking. We’re at Ellen’s, as usual. She and I made chocolate-chip cookies before everybody came over. Actually, I made them while Ellen sat in her wheelchair, leg propped up, and drank peppermint schnapps straight out of her parents’ liquor cabinet. While I was scraping the last cookies off the sheet and onto a plate, Ellen poured water from my glass into the schnapps bottle to hide her crime.
“Three hundred and thirty-six,” Seth goes, chewing his ninth cookie.
“What are you going to do with the money?” Lisa asks.
“I think it’s unethical,” Ellen says. She opens up her study guide. “It’s taking advantage of stupid people.” She looks down at the book. “Ugh,” she goes. “I’m going to be so glad when this is over.”
“How do you know they’re stupid?” Seth asks. “Maybe they’re just generous.”
“Right,” Ellen goes.
“Or bored,” Jason suggests.
“Whatever,” Ellen says. “Come on. We’ve done practically no math.”
“We spent all last week on math,” Jason says.
“Well, it’s not enough. We stink at it,” Ellen complains.
“I’m going to buy you a good mood,” Seth goes.
“What?”
“With the money from all the stupid people,” Seth tells her. “I’m going to buy you a good mood.”
“I like that idea,” Jason goes.
“I’m never hanging with you again,” Ellen tells him.
“I like Seth’s idea too,” I say.
Ellen glares at us. “You people suck.”
When I get home, Jack’s in the kitchen, working on his laptop. He’s got a not-too-bad song on low volume.
“Another review?” I ask him.
He stabs at a key and scans the screen. “No,” he goes. “Amen Calling.”
“What?”
“Amen Calling,” he repeats.
We look at each other for a confused second before I get it. “Oh,” I go. “Don’t tell me Another Review is the name of a band?”
He gets it too. He laughs and turns off Amen Calling. “Yeah,” he says. “It is. I was surprised you’d heard of it.”
“Anyway,” I go.
He nods at the computer screen. “Postings for Cameron,” he explains.
My face gets hot. I remember what Frances told me, and I try to think about what my hot face is letting me know. What my body’s telling me. It’s not hard: My face is flushed because I feel embarrassed and ashamed because I still haven’t looked at Cameron’s memorial Web site. Much less written anything for it.
Jack looks up. “You want to see
?” He turns the laptop a little toward me.
I shake my head. “I’ve got to study”
He slides the laptop back where it was. “You’ll get to take them again,” he says.
“Yeah,” I go. “But still.” He got 1490 on his. I’ll never get that. Never.
“Cameron didn’t do so great on them,” Jack tells me.
“Really?” I ask. “What’s not so great?” I’m thinking for Cameron that probably means at least 1400.
“She had trouble breaking a thousand,” Jack goes.
“No way,” I say.
“Yeah.” He nods. “She did really bad on standardized tests.”
I’m not sure what to do. We haven’t talked about her at all, and the last time I tried, he lost it. So I stand here.
“She wasn’t going to college right off the bat anyway,” Jack tells me.
“Really?” I figure it’s safest if I don’t say too much.
“She was thinking of taking a year off to work.”
“But she was so smart,” I say. “Even with bad SATs she could have gone anywhere, right?”
“She thought it would be cool to just … you know … live for a year.”
The minute he says it, it’s like the room shrinks. Just gets small and cramped. Live. It’s weird how things come out of our mouths that we don’t plan. I look at Jack’s mask of a face, and I don’t know what to do. He drops his head straight down on the table, next to the laptop. Live. His forehead makes a thunking sound when it hits.
“Go away,” Jack says. His voice is muffled.
“Jack,” I say
“Leave,” he goes.
The first time Jack threw me out was the summer of the sharks. We weren’t so young anymore. Eleven and twelve maybe. Twelve and thirteen. I’m not sure.
My father was frowning at the newspaper. “This isn’t good.”
We were sitting around the table, in front of the glass wall with a view of green skylighted roofs tapering to the gray slate sparkle of the ocean farther in the distance.
“What?” my mom asked. She’d made waffles for us. We always got special breakfasts at the beach. When we were really little, it was the assortment pack of mini cereals. The sweetened kind you can open and pour milk right into the box. Other times my mom made us chocolate-chip pancakes. That day it was peach-and-powdered-sugar waffles.
“Sharks,” my dad said.
“Sharks?”
“Apparently small blue sharks have been swimming in shallow waters close to shore.” My father was half reading, half telling. “A girl had her calf bitten.”
“No,” my mom said. She sifted some powdered sugar onto her half-eaten waffle.
“Yes.”
“Around here?” I speared my next bite with my fork. “Really?”
“Not so far,” my father said. “Near Ocracoke two swimmers were bitten on their lower legs just before sundown.” He held out his plate for my mom to serve him another helping.
“Can we still swim?” I asked.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” my father answered. “You’re going to choke.”
I chewed madly.
“The lifeguards are the experts,” my mother said. “They won’t let us in the water if it’s not safe. We’ll read the board.”
“They should have flags for sharks,” Jack went.
“Does it say if anybody’s been bitten at our beach?” my mom asked.
My father scanned the paper. “It doesn’t say.”
“Are there more waffles?” Jack asked. My mother gave him the last one.
“I’m not swimming with sharks,” I said.
“I wouldn’t let you swim with sharks,” my dad said back. Then he grabbed my leg. I yelped. “Gotcha!” He laughed.
About an hour and a half later my parents were arguing in front of the lifeguard tower. Jack and I had dropped our chairs and bags. Jack’s face was this combination of pissed off and bored both at the same time. He got that expression a lot lately, especially when we were around my parents. I was scanning the ocean for fins.
“Ridiculous,” my mom was saying. “Other people are swimming, the lifeguards are keeping an eye—”
“I’m not trusting some nineteen-year-old with a shit pair of binoculars,” my dad said. “You want the kids’ feet bitten off?”
Jack had his earphones in and the volume turned way up. I tried to catch his eye, but he wasn’t having it. He had barely talked to me in the car on the drive down. Just had his head buried in his laptop.
“Nobody else looks nervous or anything,” I tried to point out, but my parents weren’t listening.
“The kids can wade,” my dad was saying. “It won’t kill them.”
“Excuse me,” some lady said. She was talking to my father. He was blocking the board. Jack picked up his chair and bag and stomped away from us.
“There’re sharks,” my father informed her.
“Harvey!”
“Excuse me?” the lady said.
“Sir, we’d appreciate it if you’d move aside,” one of the lifeguards yelled down. He had talked to my father forever already, explaining that the newspapers liked a good story and that the shark incidents south of us were too far away to be of much concern here.
“You’re going to create a panic,” my mother said. Not so quietly anymore.
“Don’t you think you should at least post this?” my father called up to the lifeguard, waving the article around. It half fluttered into the face of the lady who was trying to read the board.
“Harvey, please,” my mother said. Her mouth was getting tighter and thinner by the second. That This is wrong, but there’s nothing I can do look. “I’m sorry,” she told the lady.
It was embarrassing. I followed Jack and spread my towel out next to his. He was sitting up and scowling at the water.
“Everybody else is swimming.” He’d taken his earphones out.
“Yeah,” I said. “But what if we get attacked?”
“There’s no sharks around here,” Jack said. “Those other beaches where people got bit are sixty miles away at least. Dad’s being so stupid.”
“No swimming today,” my father told us, kicking up sand, while he dumped the umbrella and his bag and chair.
“There’s no sharks, Dad,” Jack said.
“You’re not swimming.”
“Can we swim tomorrow?” I asked.
“We’ll see,” he said.
“Mom?” I went. “Can we swim tomorrow?”
She sighed and wiggled her toes in the sand. “I think you’ll be able to swim tomorrow,” she said.
“Why do you do that?” my father asked her. He had that tone. That edge. I glanced up at him. His face was red. The vein was dancing. My mother didn’t answer him.
“Amanda,” my dad said.
Jack got up and began to walk away.
“Where are you going?” I asked, but he acted like he didn’t hear me.
“Why,” my father was saying to my mother. “Do. You. Do that?”
I got up and ran after Jack. “We’re taking a walk,” I shouted back at my parents. My mother was standing, stiff, a half-folded chair dangling from her hand. My father was behind her, arms waving. You could hear his voice, picking and picking.
We walked all the way to the big fishing pier, which Jack said was close to a mile. It took us more than an hour, and we were hot. Tons of people were swimming, but we just dipped our feet. I splashed water on my shoulders and face. Jack didn’t want his CD player to get wet, so he stayed at the edge, with the seagulls and sand crabs, staring out at the brown green horizon.
“I used to think it was undertoe, as in toe on my foot,” I told Jack when we were walking back.
He didn’t say anything.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, but it sort of sounded like he was mad.
When we plopped down on our towels, my mother was there alone, reading a book. I looked at the cover. It was call
ed Alive.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“Walking,” she said.
“I’m hot,” Jack went.
“Don’t make a fuss, please,” my mom said. “I cannot take another fuss today.”
“It’s hot,” Jack said again. “I’m going in.”
“You may not go in. Dad said so explicitly.”
“It’s not fair,” I complained.
My mother didn’t answer.
“How come he gets to make all the rules?” Jack asked. “How come everything has to be his way?”
“Don’t start,” my mother warned. “This is the beginning of our vacation. Let’s just have a good time.”
“On a vacation,” Jack told her, “you’re supposed to be able to swim!”
I spotted my father walking toward us along the shoreline, his shaggy head bent down, looking for sea glass maybe. Three kids were jumping the waves in front of us, and not far from them two surfers were paddling. I didn’t see fins anywhere.
Jack stood up. “I’m going in.”
“Jack,” my mother warned.
“Dad said you can’t,” I told him.
He’d gotten his CD player unhooked and his shirt off. He started walking toward the water.
“Jack,” my mom said. “Come back.”
“No,” he told her over his shoulder. “It’s so stupid.”
Now my mother stood up. Her book fell onto the sand. Jack started jogging, and then he broke into a run and dived into the first wave, whipping out the other side. I looked toward my father’s bent head. Then I looked at my mother, arriving at the edge of the shoreline, hand shading her eyes, calling to Jack. He stayed in the breakers, jumping, paddling, swimming. Mostly I just watched his back. When he leaped up, his slick shoulder blades looked as sharp as knives.
Even from a distance it didn’t take my father long to notice. I could hear the shouting all the way from where I was, wiping sand off my mom’s book.
“What the hell are you doing!” My dad broke into a run. A little girl in a lime green swim diaper sat back from her bucket and stared. A couple strolling arm in arm stopped.
Jack kept leaping. My dad raced toward him, stopping every few seconds to yell. “Get out of the water! Jack. Get out of the water!”
