Coach Graham leaned over the bed rail, placed her hand gently on Mia’s thick white cast. “Nobody’s perfect, sweetie.”
Mia’s eyes filled again and the look on her face was crushingly transparent. She was waiting for her parents to agree.
Mom tightened her grip on my hand. I could feel that force field of energy swell again. I looked at her and saw thirty-three years of smothering expectation swirl in her eyes. I could anticipate the showdown. It would be so much easier to say the pent-up words to these people she hardly knew than to her own parents.
I squeezed her hand tighter. “Nobody is perfect,” I whispered. I leaned over and gave Mia a hug.
“Thanks for the white roses,” Mia said with a smile. “You remembered.”
“Thank you,” I said, “for explaining things.”
She nodded.
I took Mom’s hand and we exited quietly out of the room. When we walked through the lobby, everyone’s conversation came screeching to a halt. The harsh beams of light from the fluorescent bulbs above hurt my eyes. I looked down toward the tiled floor.
Quinton raced over toward me and tried to hug me. I remained limp with my arms at my sides. “Quinton,” I said, sounding a little desperate. “Thank you but I just need to go home.”
He released me obediently. “Of course. I’ll call you. Everything’s okay,” he reassured me.
Mom took my hand again and we walked toward the exit. Just as the sliding glass doors opened I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw Max. My eyes welled and my lip trembled. I couldn’t face him. Not like this. Not after he had warned me about using hypnosis. Not after I had refused to listen. Not when my entire world was crashing in on me.
Without saying a word, he pulled his hand away. He gave me the saddest smile I’d ever seen. Then he turned and walked away.
32
When Mom and I got home I slumped onto the couch feeling depressed, like everything I wanted I had managed to destroy. Max. Grandma and Grandpa. I thought back to our first day here when Max and I were on the porch. There was a moment between us, I was sure of it. If only I had grabbed that opportunity and said how I felt, maybe everything could have turned out differently.
But maybe with Grandma there was still an opportunity to say what I really needed to say. I picked up the phone and dialed the numbers before I could change my mind. She answered on the first ring.
“Grandma,” I said a little breathlessly. “I want you to come here—to our house—for dinner tonight.”
Mom craned her neck from the kitchen and gave me an inquisitive look.
“Oh,” Grandma replied. “Now? I could just pick you up and we could go to the steak house in town?”
“No,” I answered. “I want you to come here.” I felt a small burst of satisfaction.
Mom walked over. She had a small smile on her face. “Tell her to bring Grandpa.”
I raised my eyebrows. She nodded. “I’d like you to bring Grandpa,” I said into the phone. “If he’s up to it.”
Grandma agreed, sounding a little taken aback.
We hung up and I walked into the kitchen. “Where’s the phonebook ?” I asked. “I’m ordering Chinese food.”
One hour later our doorbell rang. I thought Mom would be nervous but she wasn’t. Instead she shuffled around, opening up the cartons of Chinese food with an intrigued look on her face. I opened the front door. Grandma was stiff backed and tentative, tightly clutching the crook of Grandpa’s elbow.
“Grandpa!” I exclaimed, excited to see him up and walking. “You look fantastic!”
“I feel fantastic!” he bellowed.
I led them through the foyer and gestured for them to sit at the table.
“What’s that smell?” Grandma asked as she helped Grandpa set his cane down.
“Hunan beef,” I answered.
Grandma’s eyes widened slightly.
“And sesame shrimp,” Mom added, emerging from the kitchen with white cartons of food. She placed them down on the table with four glasses water.
I passed out napkins and utensils. For a moment Grandma
and Grandpa were motionless so I propped open the cartons, stuck spoons inside and said, “Dig in!”
Mom reached over and started dishing out the food.
“Look,” I said before I lost my nerve. “I asked you here tonight because I wanted you to see me.” I looked over at Mom. “I wanted you to see us—in our world. We don’t eat on fine china. We don’t have a lot of home-cooked meals. We didn’t use an interior designer.”
“You barely have furniture,” Grandma said, looking around.
“But it’s fine,” I said. “It’s not perfect, but this is us.” My eyes started to feel glassy and the back of my throat burned. “We are not perfect. Mom’s made some mistakes and I’ve made mistakes.”
“Willow,” Grandma tried to interrupt.
“No, let me finish.” Through teary eyes I told them about using hypnosis on Mia. “I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. I’m sorry if you think I’m a terrible person, but I’m still the same girl who planted tulips with you last month. I’m still the same one who wants to go see The Nutcracker with you. I’m still the same girl who just wants my family to be whole again.”
Grandma’s lip trembled. “I want us to be a whole family, too.”
“Well then you have to accept us the way we are,” I said. “Mistakes and all.”
“Of course I do,” she said.
“No, you haven’t.” I started to cry. “Mom’s tried really hard to change her life but you won’t give her a chance. You didn’t even ask about her new job; you just called it nonsense. That’s not fair.”
Mom reached over and put her hand on top of mine.
Grandma’s forehead furrowed. She looked from me to Mom. “I’m sorry, it’s just such a foreign thing for me and hard to understand.”
Mom looked across the table at Grandpa. “Tell her, Dad.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
Grandpa looked at Grandma. “Vicki’s been coming over every week when you’re at your Junior League meetings. She’s been doing hypnosis on me to help me with my pain.”
“What?” I asked breathlessly, thinking how I’d counted on Mom’s late nights to allow Georgia and me to do our crazy potions and spells. I’d never stopped to question what she was doing.
“What are you talking about?” Grandma asked, swiveling her head back and forth between them.
“Vicki’s helped me so now I can move my right side without the shooting pain. Not only can I walk, but Vicki has helped me with another important life skill. Now I can flip the channels on my remote.” He laughed heartily, the sound ricocheting off the walls.
The sound of his laughter rang in my ears, resurrecting old memories from my childhood—of us playing checkers on the porch, him teaching me to bait a hook.
“But that’s a result of your physical therapy,” Grandma insisted, clenching her pearl necklace.
“Earlier in the summer I quit therapy,” Grandpa grumbled.
“What?” Grandma exclaimed, throwing her hand to her chest.
“It just hurt too damn much,” Grandpa said, grimacing at the memory. “Vicki suggested I give her pain control a try and I thought, What have I got to lose? After a few sessions of hypnosis, when the pain was less, I went back to physical therapy to help with mobility. This time I actually made some progress.” He smiled over at Mom. And she smiled back at him with appreciation for his honesty. His acceptance.
“So all this improvement you’ve made?” Grandma’s face scrunched up in disbelief.
Grandpa nodded. “Vicki’s doing.”
“But . . . but,” Grandma finally said, flustered and confused.
“Yes, Mom, hypnosis can be used to help people,” Mom said softly.
“Vicki’s been taking online courses and she got a big fancy certificate and a pay raise,” Grandpa said with pride. “And she’s started an online business selling instructiona
l hypnosis videos to help people stop smoking, lose weight and lots of other things.”
“Well,” Grandma said. “Well.” She leaned her elbows on the table as if all this new information knocked the wind out of her.
I was overwhelmed too. I looked over at my mom and for the first time I didn’t just see her purple heels or her short black skirt. When I looked in her eyes I didn’t just see her enticing beauty. I saw something different. I think what I saw was contentment. Pride. Accomplishment.
“I came back to Georgia with the idea that I had to prove something to you,” Mom said to Grandma. She tucked her long hair behind her ears. “But after our fight”—she bit her lip slightly—“I realized I have no control over how you think or what you feel. Only you can change your mind.”
“Victoria . . .” Grandma said, but Mom interrupted her.
“But I realized I needed to prove something to myself. I needed to prove that what I was doing with my life was valued. Respectable. Meaningful.” She turned toward me. “And I wanted to take better care of us.”
“You take great care of me,” I said. And I meant it. For the first time I realized that while all this time I wanted to have the perfect family, what Mom and I had was already pretty perfect. We took care of each other.
I leaned over and hugged Mom. Then I realized that while I was hiding my secrets of deception, her secrets were about making a better life for us. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m so proud of you,” I said softly.
Mom hugged me tightly.
The room was filled with the same silence that had penetrated Mia’s hospital room earlier—the waiting for affirmation.
I looked over at Grandma. She was still leaning against the table looking completely staggered. “I’m so sorry, Victoria,” she whispered. “I’ve been so”—she struggled not to cry—“unfair.”
Mom broke free from my hug and reached across the table toward Grandma. “The thing is—I still may not be the ideal version of the daughter you always wanted. I’m never going to be a country club member or want to garden or go to the ballet. But”—Mom got a little teary—“I’m finding the ideal version of who I want to be. And you just have to decide whether that’s good enough for you.”
“We’re flawed,” I said. “We make mistakes. The best thing we can do is try and learn from our mistakes and move on. But we’re never going to be perfect. But that’s who we are. Take it or leave it.”
“Oh, I’ve made so many mistakes, too,” Grandma cried. She looked over at Mom. “All I ever wanted was to give you the perfect life.”
“Maybe your perfect life wasn’t perfect for me,” Mom said quietly.
I thought about Mia’s beach photo and realized that maybe there was no perfect model family. Maybe the more you try to mold and create something, the more likely it is to crack. Maybe, instead, we all had to find our individual best selves and that happiness would bond us together as a whole.
“Well,” Mom said, spooning a heaping serving of sesame shrimp onto Grandma’s plate, “if we’re really going to make this thing work, you can start by calling me Vicki. I hate Victoria.”
“But Victoria is such a beautiful name,” Grandma insisted, smiling.
Mom huffed.
Grandpa shook his head. “Women,” he grumbled, and we all laughed.
Grandma smirked then gave in. “Okay, Vicki.” She took a tentative bite of her food. She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Hey,” she said. “That’s not bad.”
“In this house,” I said, teasingly, “I was taught not to talk with my mouth full.”
We all burst out laughing.
“Well,” Grandma said after swallowing her food. She smiled. “Your mom taught you well.”
33
For the remainder of the night, Mom and I smiled and joked around—happy to be accepted, happy to be part of Grandma and Grandpa’s life again. After we cleaned the dishes and Grandma and Grandpa left, I plopped down on the couch, exhausted from the very long day. Mom sat down next to me with a more serious look on her face. “Do you understand now why I didn’t want you fooling around with hypnosis?” she asked. “It can be fun, sure, and it can be very useful, but it’s also very powerful and not something to be taken lightly.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
She sunk further into the couch and flipped through the channels until she found Love Actually just starting on a movie channel. And for a minute I thought it was all over. That all the chaos from my bad decisions was rectified—forgiven—but I couldn’t rid myself of the lingering situation: Quinton. I wanted to think that Mom would forgive me for that, too. That she would help me out of the mess. But it was so hard to say the words, to admit more mistakes, to acknowledge my desperate need for her help. Would she think of me differently—not just because I’d done the hypnosis, but because I’d looked her in the eye and lied about it?
On TV, Hugh Grant’s familiar voice narrated in his comfortable British accent: It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters ...
And suddenly I was crying. I needed her help. But mostly, I needed to know she still loved me. Through heaving gulps, I told her everything about the love spell from the innocent start to Quinton’s spiraling obsession. I told her how I tried everything to undo the hypnosis to no avail.
Mom sat stone still but put her hand on top of mine. And that was all I needed. “It’s okay,” she said reassuringly. “We’ll figure it out. Tell me everything.”
I calmed my tears and told her about Georgia’s and my escapades in attempting to break the love spell.
Mom sat frozen. “You did what?” she asked, troubled.
I repeated the list of things we had tried—the cleansing potion, voodoo, banishment, and the Cut the Mojo love charm. “We tried everything to break the love spell,” I repeated slowly, watching her mouth pop open in surprise.
“Break the love spell?” Mom stood up, putting her hand to her temples like she was in pain. “Willow, you didn’t cast a spell. You’re not a witch! You did hypnosis! It’s totally different! There’s science behind hypnosis—why do you think I’ve been studying so much? Why do you think it bothered me so much when Grandma called it ‘new age voodoo’ ? You didn’t cast a spell; you gave him a hypnotic suggestion!”
“Okay, okay,” I said, cowering back a little. I had never seen her so worked up. “Well, what do I do then? How do I stop it?”
Mom inhaled deeply and ran her fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp. “You need to put Quinton under hypnosis and de-suggest the attraction.”
I nodded. “I read that.” I explained how Quinton didn’t think he needed any more hypnosis because his sleepwalking had stopped.
Mom sat down next to me. “There is a method called rapid induction where you use a quick-jerk handshake and if the person has previously been hypnotized the handshake method will put them under almost instantaneously.”
I nodded and told her I’d read that in her textbooks but that I had tried it to no avail.
“I’ll teach you,” she said. “So invite Quinton over tomorrow. And let’s fix this mess once and for all.”
And as I watched her, a feeling of reassurance washed over me. Mia had survived crashing out of a triple flip with a few broken bones. We had survived our reconciliation with Grandma and Grandpa, and were on the path to mending our family. Surely we could undo my control on Quinton’s mind as well.
Sunday I invited Quinton over for lunch. He showed up promptly on time with a batch of brownies he made for me. We ate turkey sandwiches and talked about Mia’s recovery, then ventured over to the couch with the brownies to watch a movie. I sat stiffly next to him, knowing this was my opportunity.
My heart beat nervously and I swallowed my fear. I reached for Quinton’s hand and he looked over and smiled at me adoringly. With a quick, jerky flick of the wrist, a move that I had practiced a hundred times t
he night before on the enormous stuffed teddy bear Quinton gave me, I wrenched his hand, leaned in close to his ear, and spit out, “Sleep!”
Honestly, I hadn’t fully believed that it would work, although Mom insisted. But sure enough, Quinton’s head flopped over to the side like a scoop of ice cream tipping off its cone.
Mom leaned her head around the corner eagerly. “Progress?” she asked.
“He’s under,” I said.
She nodded. “Get to it, then.”
So I turned back to Quinton and looked at his beautiful face. I tried to create a perfect boyfriend, a perfect relationship. But sometimes when you try to get everything, you walk away with nothing. I took a breath and tried my best to keep my voice steady. “Quinton Dillinger, when you see me, Willow Grey, you will think, Willow is a nice girl. We had a nice relationship. But I need to move on. I need to focus on my academics and football. If someone else comes along, I’ve learned that too much obsession is unhealthy.” I took another breath and brought him back.
He stretched out lazily on the couch. “Oh man, I think I dozed off,” he said apologetically.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Boring movie.”
He smiled and looked at his watch. “I better run,” he said, and I walked him to the door. He gave me a funny look, but then shook it off, kissed me good-bye, and left.
Monday morning Quinton picked me up as usual and held my hand as we walked from the parking lot into school, but he seemed a little distracted. Something looked different in his eyes. We reached my locker. He kissed me good-bye and left.
Georgia scurried up next to me. “Any evidence that it’s working ?” she asked.
“Hard to tell,” I said, grabbing my books and slamming the metal locker door.
“Did you hear?” Georgia asked.
“Hear what?” I asked tentatively, thinking, Please don’t make it be another Facebook fan page or some other insane display of Quinton’s love.
Crush Control Page 25
