Pulling Me Under

by Rebecca Berto

  My throat tingles and the lump expands so Liam must hear me breathing, but although I want to feel Paul, I still tighten in the familiar way that shuts my emotions down. It’s like a switch I haven’t reset the automatic shutdown option for.

  I touch my cheek: hot but not wet.

  “What do I do now?” I say, barely able to get the words out, as if each one were made of rocks that block my throat.

  “Dr. Madison: she specializes in the same type of therapy as Dr. Crowley. Here’s her card.”

  He passes the card, and I stare at it, transfixed. Our fingers rub when we exchange the card. He holds my hand for a moment, and in my mind I mumble, don’t let go.

  I should say thanks in every language. Instead, I grab his shoulders and pull him in. As soon as we’re against each other, anxiety spins in my mind so I feel delirious. Through the spinning and sick feeling, I hold on tight.

  Liam settles his chin in the crook of my neck. I breathe in. And it falls into place. I’m so calm when I’m this close to Liam because it’s him I’m smelling, not the chlorine burning my insides. He really is saving me, even if he thinks he’s doing a less-than-decent job.

  I shift so our eyes meet. We’re so close, it’s strange blinking. The freckles I only see up close are there. And his eyes. God, I lose myself in them, so much so that my fingers find their way to the side of his face and brush his skin to feel it. I could swear I’ve hated people touching me ever since He left, but I find I need Liam. My mind and my body need him, even when I think I don’t.

  He’s the only person who I feel could probe inside every inch of me and find no surprises. And I need him. Because, despite my talk, I don’t know me and he does.

  And I need me back.

  Blackness is everywhere. I’ve closed my eyes to drink in his feeling and at the same time he’s kissing me again. I would have pulled back if our first kiss was like this: slow, soft, tender.

  And guilt-free.

  But I don’t pull back this time. I part my lips and he grabs on to my hips and pulls me close to him. He kisses my bottom lip, then my top, then both.

  All too soon, there’s pressure and he’s pushing us apart. More like a jolt. As if he’s remembered something.

  Why is he doing this? Am I too late? Of course, this is punishment. I’m trying to repair what damage I’ve done and—

  “Kates.” Liam sets his hands on either side of my neck, and I feel safe. “Rochelle told me something. She made me promise not to say anything yet, but . . . ”

  “But? What?” I scoot back and my fists are white knuckles, and my muscles are trembling with anger.

  “It’s Ella.”

  Liam’s Volkswagen screeches around my street corner. Between grabbing my handbag off the floor at Liam’s and speeding through two red lights, I’m grateful of at least one thing. Liam was kind enough to offer his car, knowing full well I could easily rack up more than one fine on my way.

  The “O” of Mom’s mouth is the first thing I see as I rip up the handbrake in my driveway. She’s hunched forward. One hand holds her suitcase, the other reaching for Ella’s Barbie bag. Oh. My. God.

  I slam the door so hard she shivers and drops the suitcase. Pointing my finger at the bullseye spot, between her eyebrows, I say, “Put-that-down.” Her fingers remain frozen, and she looks like she’s seen a ghost, despite her cake face of makeup.

  “K—Katie.”

  “Yes, Hi,” I growl, stomping up my driveway. “It’s your daughter. Katie. And what are you doing? Please, do tell.”

  Mom blinks obviously a few times and seems unaware she’s opening her mouth without a voice.

  “Please.” I grab Ella’s bag and fling it behind me, where I can protect it. She can keep my useless clothes. I’ll go naked if I have to. “Do tell.”

  “Dad and I have discussed this. “We think—”

  “What about what Ella’s mother thinks, huh?”

  Mom visibly swallows. She stands back and wipes her forearm across her forehead. “This is for the best. Look at you,” she says, holding out a palm. “I’m glad we’ve chosen the right thing. We love you so much. We want the best for Ella and the best for you.”

  “You . . . you . . . you . . . ” I keep repeating the words until Mom’s face twists in confusion. I pace back and forward until I formulate a plan.

  If I’m stubborn, then my mom’s a rock—unreasonable. I have to find a way past her. I’ll do anything. I promised Liam I’d see that doctor, didn’t I? See? I’m fine. There are no problems. Everyone has bad days. My mom wasn’t close to perfect as a mother raising me.

  I’ve grown up knowing I killed my brothers and sisters growing inside her. She reminded me about it often enough.

  I shake my head, still pacing. No. I’ve tried the attack avenue; it doesn’t work.

  I know.

  I lick my lips and ruffle back my hair. As I saunter to Mom, her face is wary. She must be wondering why her crazy daughter isn’t stricken with grief, why my shoulders aren’t hunched, why my fists have loosened.

  “Mom—” I thrust my hand toward her and bury my face in my other hand. Does this look like I’m ashamed? I don’t know, so I count to five. “It’s been hard. So hard. I’ve been lost without her father. But I’m beginning to find myself again. This weekend, when I went for a drive? I found a clinic, Mom. It’s for mothers and children to reconnect. I was going to ring up their after-hours number tonight to inquire.”

  “Oh, um.” Mom rubs her chin. She sighs, slowly letting her body fall against her car. “I’m proud of you. Come here.”

  Thank you. Thank you. I smile so forcefully that my cheeks throb, but I don’t let my lips scowl until I’m pressed into her hair, and our chins are propped over each other’s shoulders. For a stone heart, my mom was easily won over.

  “I’m so happy you’ve decided to do this. Hopefully, this’ll mean they’ll still take you without Ella and you’ll come back much sooner than we thought. Maybe Ella will only stay with us for a little while.”

  “Whaaat?” I shove her back. Screw the niceties. How dare she play me?

  “We’ll still be taking Ella, Katie. Dad and I think you need the time to recover and rehabilitate without her disrupting and stressing you.”

  “You do realize you’re the one stressing me? Always have. Always will. I will never relinquish my daughter to you. Not so you can blame her for all the screw ups you can’t shoulder.”

  “Katie!” Mom gasps and strokes my shoulder. “We are doing this for you. For you!”

  “Stop. Stop, stop.” I chuckle, and hold my chest to ease the laughter. “Don’t drag Dad into this. We both know this is your idea. Now stop playing games and put that suitcase,” I point to the one where she’d stood when I arrived, “back into my spare bedroom. Do not touch Ella’s. I’ll get hers. And get the rest of my stuff you packed in your trunk back to my house.”

  Mom shakes her head sorrowfully. “Katie, I have the CAT team’s number saved in my phone. I can put your stuff back, but I’ll have to call them to help you when I get home.”

  Something, similar to electricity, jolts me. Maybe it was an earthquake? My chest halves in capacity and my lungs and heart double in size, so I’m stuffed into this tiny body, when my head, my organs, my reflexes, everything, has expanded. The implication of the CAT team, Crisis Assessment Treatment team, whacks me from under the chin, as if a bodybuilder has wound up his fist and sent me flying across the driveway. My body is here; my thoughts, there. All I’m left with is This can’t be happening.

  We all know when the CAT team comes, you’re insane and incapable of living by yourself, or caring for others.

  My knees give way and my hands scrape along the concrete of the driveway. I’m in pieces, so it shouldn’t be possible I’m whole, even if I’m slumped
in a heap.

  “Let me help you,” someone says, though it’s quiet, muffled, distant.

  Later, the same voice says, “What’s this?”

  My thoughts gather after a while. I scan my surroundings, feeling hopeless, drained. “Who are you?”

  “Katie. It’s Mom. What is this?”

  I push myself upright and Mom helps me onto my feet. I wobble once and she catches me.

  “I’m fine. Let go,” I say, hating my weakness.

  After rubbing down my sweater and jeans, I realize there’s been no earthquake, no end-of-the-earth. We’re still in my driveway, with Mom taking my daughter away from me. With my power all gone. Nothing I can do to stop her.

  In Mom’s hand is the new Elly, slipped out of my handbag.

  “Well, that’s the new Elly doll. It was only released two days ago. The shop all the way out in Georgetown had a few left. I asked them to transfer to a closer store and put it aside.” What does a stupid doll matter now?

  “You bought this for her?”

  “No. I stole it. A gun-wielding security guard chased me out of the store, but I hid in the bushes until he left.”

  “These are sold out. Ella’s been asking for it for three months. Since they announced the new model on the news.”

  I thank whoever is on my side. “Well that’s why I made sure I got one. I’d hate for her to be the only girl out of her friends to miss out.”

  After a while I look up to Mom’s face, because she hasn’t responded. I’m not sure what I expect, but she’s staring at this doll, as if it’s gold and she’s been mining for this piece her entire life.

  “I tried to pre-order online but they couldn’t guarantee I’d get one.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I tried five stores near my house but they ran out.”

  “Georgetown doesn’t have new technology, or much of a system. The few they had left were hiding apparently.”

  Mom passes the doll to me. Her hands look frail. Her arm is limp.

  Maybe I have her wrong. Maybe she’s so screwed up in some ways, but she’s caring in another way after all.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?” she says, her voice finally piping up.

  “I understand why you’re doing this. Things in my mind aren’t always what they should be, things are racing by too fast, and I can’t get a hold. I can’t get past . . . him. I need to. Somehow.”

  “Erm, Katie?”

  I don’t know where’s she’s going. What else she can take from me. There’s nothing else she can take from me that matters. Hasn’t she done enough? “Yes, Mom. What?”

  “I just remembered I need to take Roxy for a vet check.” She checks her watch. “Oh, no,” she says in a flat tone. “It’s in half an hour. I’m going to rush home right now, drop everything I’m doing, and take my dog to the vet.”

  What the?

  As she weirdly just explained, she struts back to her car in her heels and takes off, smiling and waving at me. Confused, I look around, see if I missed something. Obviously there’s nothing there, but my phone beeps not long after, with a text from Mom saying:

  I’m sorry I judged too quickly.

  Looking for other clues as to what she means and what just happened, I see the rest of my suitcases are resting just outside the front door. Stumped, I squat, and balance with my fingertips resting on either side of me. Yep, needed the air.

  I’m not sure why Mom decided to believe me. She sure seemed shocked I was able to get my hands on a new Elly doll, when even after all her efforts she couldn’t get one. Maybe I just needed a little proof that I’m trying to fit my life back together.

  I make a promise to myself. Ella means everything to me. I’ll do everything to win her back. Even if it means splitting open my head and letting the chlorine-ridden Molten Man eat me alive.

  10.40 am. Trust that my GP is late for the appointment. Ten minutes. I am breathing a little too quickly and am clammy.

  I pick up a magazine beside me. It has pictures that once were vibrant and whole. I flick through the pages until I see an article titled, “Kate Moss: Baby bump or food baby?”. Years later, it’s apparent that Moss wasn’t pregnant in the first place. I scoff, snap the pages shut and put it back where it lay.

  10.43 am. I tap impatiently on the plastic armrests of the waiting chair.

  The last two days went by so fast I swear it was a whirlwind pretending to be my life. Liam insisted that he drive me here for support but my natural reaction was to push him away. Afterward, it was too late to grovel for him to change plans. Naturally, though, my friend Nancy popped by and, after three cups of tea and a couple of hours of Seinfield re-runs, we agreed she’d wait for me outside.

  “Katie,” the doctor calls, shaking me back.

  I greet him by his first name, Adam. He motions me toward his room with a beckoning finger. I sit on his vinyl chair where hundreds of other ill people like me have awaited their fates.

  I have this habit of examining him on the occasional visit where we see each other. His round spectacles make me think of what Harry Potter would look like grown up, if he had Asian heritage. There’s nothing new about his attire; still a “tidy” feel about him, still the slicked hair and overly constricted tie.

  “How have things been?” he says. I get the feeling it isn’t the first time he’s said this to me while I’ve sat here.

  During the first few minutes, I can’t help but scan over everything in his room. At the portrait of a girl, of about seven years, on his desk—she clings onto his leg with a sheepish smile. At the plastic cup full of wooden paddle sticks that dissolve ill children’s excitement as they sit in this chair and realize the paddle pop stick doesn’t come coated in sugar.

  Why does Adam’s room feel so claustrophobic when this type of thing doesn’t usually faze me? The walls seems so close together. This room feels like a cube I could throw a ball in, and it would bounce between the walls a few times before losing its spring.

  After the initial chitchat—his wife is great, his seven-year-old girl is great, work is great and everything’s so goddamn great—Adam asks me questions about my family, friends, lifestyle, routines.

  At first, I nod and agree in the right places, but as the appointment progresses, he asks me how I deal with grief, what the state of my relationship with my daughter is like, and I freeze up. What am I meant to say? My Mom threatened to call the CAT team on me?

  Then Adam rephrases his questions so I answer sentence-by-sentence until we’re somehow having a conversation.

  He pushes up his glasses for the umpteenth time. “What would you really like to talk about today?”

  I should start from the beginning, where I think of Mom, ‘cause we’ve had a bad history for as long as I can remember. One time when I was five, Mom stopped playing dolls with me because the phone rang. When she answered it, her voice sounded hoarse.

  “I wanted, um . . . ” I look to Adam’s cheerful girl on his desk. I’d once been like that.

  I remember Mom at the beginning of her sobs, her voice just beginning to break. She didn’t use manners on the phone, like she’d taught me to use when speaking with people.

  How do I tell Adam—beg him—to help me?

  “That’s it, Logan,” Mom said, sobbing. Her back faced me but I could make out her shiny nails wiping around her eyes. “No more . . . no! Not you and me. Them. K-A-T-I-E is it.”

  I knew how to spell my name from the last year when I was in kindergarten, so I didn’t know why Mom pretended I couldn’t hear her. At the time in the kitchen, though, when I heard my name, I didn’t understand what “it” meant.

  I focus on the picture of Adam’s girl. “Paul. I need to . . . ”

  Mom had put the phone down, walked inside th
e U-shape of the kitchen counter, and pulled the phone with her as she slipped down. I tiptoed across the tiles so lightly I remember hearing the pads of my feet stick and unstick. Within a few seconds, we exchanged our original positions: her around the other side of the counter, me crouched underneath outside the U-shape.

  “We almost had him this time,” Mom said. She resumed in a whisper. “Katie jinxed us. She’s doomed Max and all our other babies. I swear it.”

  Dad didn’t sound as worked up as she was. If Mom were on the other end, I’d have heard her hysterics clearly. But not Dad. He was so calm I didn’t have a clue as to what he was saying.

  Mom began again. “I’m sick of the waiting, the disappointment, then the pain. I’m forty-five. Our time for others is over.”

  As I sit in Adam’s vinyl chair, I’m twirling my hair faster to the motion of the butterflies fluttering in my stomach. Because I know what Mom will say. How this memory ends every time.

  “If I hear another word about babies or trying, we will be through. Don’t you think it’s weird that now Max is the eighth one to die? What? Of course it’s her fault! That childbirth—it wrecked me. No, no. Listen to me, Logan. She’s a murderer.”

  Five-year-old me learned: if I want my family to stay together, I must keep secrets. If I do exactly as she says, I won’t kill any more babies like this “Max”.

  Thinking now about how Dad phoned to see how Mom was after her miscarriage, it changes what I planned to say to Adam. Those horrors have eaten Mom up for years, and those babies I killed before they had a chance to live have each been a weight on me whenever I think about my Mom’s aspirations, or my tattered family.

  If I keep Paul’s and Marco’s secret any longer, I won’t survive.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening to me. The way Paul, my husband . . . ” I have to clear the tightness in my throat. “What I did to him. Everything I felt, I see and hear it all the time. I don’t think it’s normal.”