by Linda Berry
The Lab took his cue and came to the couch, momentarily sniffing Rebecca but paying more attention to Sean. Sean half smiled, stroking Homer as though he were a long-lost friend.
“Homer, pillow,” Maggie said. Homer settled back on his bed.
“He’s well trained,” Rebecca said curtly. “He listens to you. Dogs are easy. Kids are hard.”
Maggie saw Sean’s smile vanish. He stared at his feet, hair falling across his face like a curtain.
“Look at him. This is what he does,” Rebecca said. “Goes someplace else. He ignores me most of the time.”
“Rebecca,” Maggie said in a soothing tone, “I wonder if you’d mind if I just talked to Sean for a minute?”
Rebecca nodded and leaned back in her seat, gripping the folder on her lap.
“Sean,” Maggie asked, “have you ever talked to a therapist before?”
He lifted his head and Maggie saw the glint of suspicion in his eyes. “No.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’d think this is pretty weird,” Maggie said. “You don’t even know me.”
Sean shrugged.
“I’m wondering if you’d mind sharing with me some of your interests?”
He looked up and blinked.
“Something you’re good at, that makes you happy.”
He looked at his hands, then back at her. “I don’t know.”
“Answer her,” his mother said sharply.
His shoulders slouched and he hung his head.
Rebecca jumped in. “This is what I deal with every day. Sean doesn’t talk. Doesn’t do his chores, or schoolwork. He shuts himself in his room and plays video games.” Frustration tightened her features. “He has a Teflon shield where I’m concerned.”
Sean’s face flushed red with anger. The tension between the two was as taut as barbed wire.
“I’m seriously thinking about putting him in a private school back east,” she continued. “Maybe military.”
“I won’t go,” Sean said, clenching his fists in his lap.
Rebecca ignored him, talked directly to Maggie. “He needs to get away from the influence of his lowlife friends.”
“They’re not lowlifes,” Sean said.
“They smoke pot,” she said coldly.
“Not all of them. It doesn’t mean I do.”
“Not yet.”
The animosity between the two, Maggie guessed, had been running at full throttle for some time. Unfortunately, Rebecca was now ready to wash her hands of her son. Bringing Sean in to see a therapist, Maggie imagined, was her last-ditch attempt to mend their shattered relationship. At this stage of the game, it would take time, a lot of hard work, and cooperation.
“Sean, you were about to tell me a little about your interests. How do you like to spend your free time?”
Sean studied his hands, said nothing.
“Skateboarding,” Rebecca said grimly.
“I can talk for myself,” Sean mumbled.
“What do you like about skateboarding?” Maggie coaxed.
“When I’m skating, I’m not thinking about anything else.” He kept his eyes on his tightly clasped hands and talked in a monotone. “It’s just me and my friends having fun.”
“Do you practice a lot?”
“Every day after school.” He peeked at her through strands of hair. “I do lots of tricks.”
“For two or three hours,” Rebecca interjected. “I wish he’d put as much time into his schoolwork.”
Maggie focused on Sean. “Are the tricks you do pretty tough?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you get hurt?”
“They’re dangerous,” Rebecca said. “But he doesn’t listen to me. He comes home bruised and scraped all the time. His clothes torn.”
“Sean, please continue,” Maggie said.
“I guess I do a lot of things that are pretty crazy. But the guys that are really good take a lot of risks.”
“Are you really good?”
He nodded, his voice a little more energized, a hint of a smile touching his lips. “I’d like to compete … but …” He looked at his mother and his smile disappeared.
Rebecca opened her mouth to make some remark, thought better of it, and remained quiet. Maggie felt empathy for her. It couldn’t be easy living her life shuttered off from her son, but that was her survival response, something Maggie would address later in the session. “What’s your relationship like with your friends, Sean?”
“They come to me and talk about shit.” He looked at his mother to see her response.
Her expression was closed off and long-suffering.
“Most of them are older,” Sean continued. “But they talk to me and tell me their problems.”
For the next thirty minutes, Maggie encouraged Sean to talk about himself. He went on to explain his high-ranking position in his hierarchy of friends, how the boys shared confidences about their problems at home, their romantic relationships, and how he spent a lot of time teaching others the mechanics of his tricks so they would avoid injury.
“What I hear, Sean,” Maggie said, “is that when you’re skating, you’re facing a challenge. And you have an opportunity to be brave, because you’re facing the possibility of injury.”
Sean pulled his hair back, revealing a thin, intelligent face.
“You like being part of a group,” Maggie continued. “Your friends look up to you like you’re a leader. They listen to you. That’s interesting to me because you have to be a fair-minded guy for people to talk to you about their problems.”
“I guess so.” Sean glanced at his mother, who sat listening with a keen expression.
“Rebecca, I know you have your own concerns here, and that’s important, but I’m wondering if you would take a moment to think of a time when your son was happy.”
She reflected for several long moments. “When we were all together as a family. It’s just been hard the last couple years … since the divorce …”
“Can you think of a time when he did something that really mattered to you?”
Rebecca slowly smiled. “Yes. A few weeks ago I was out of town on business. The day I came back was my birthday. When I got home, the house was clean and Sean had made dinner. I didn’t even know he could cook.” She looked at her son with affection. “It was probably the best dinner I ever had. Because you made it for me.”
Sean’s face brightened.
“But what’s the point of reflecting on one good evening?” Tears welled in Rebecca’s eyes and her voice trembled. “Sean needs an attitude change, and I don’t know how to make that happen.”
Maggie handed her the tissue box. Rebecca wiped her eyes and blew her nose. The three sat in silence while she regained her composure.
“Before you make a major decision about Sean, Rebecca, I wonder if you’d be willing to make a two-month commitment to these sessions. I believe we can work through some of these issues where you and Sean seem to be at odds. We can look at ways you can talk to one another that may be more productive and respectful.”
Rebecca’s face tightened again. Maggie knew she wanted to believe that Sean was solely responsible for the fault lines in their relationship. Maggie would have to be gentle with her. Therapy wasn’t easy. Untangling the knots of deeply held beliefs could be very painful.
Rebecca pursed her lips, eyes focused on the file in her hand.
“Say yes, Mom,” Sean said. “Don’t send me away.”
Rebecca heaved out a sigh. “Let’s give it two weeks, Sean. Then we’ll reevaluate.”
Maggie spent the rest of the session playing peacekeeper. Communication had opened up a little and mother and son were being cordial to one another, choosing words carefully. Maggie gave them both home assignments. As he walked out the door, Sean’s eyes sent out a plea of help, which tugged at Maggie’s heart. Two weeks of therapy wouldn’t win him any battles, but it might put a few cracks in Rebecca’s unyielding attitude.
After the Deckers left, Maggi
e was haunted by the similarities between Sean’s predicament and that of her own son. Her husband, David, had been as critical of Eric as Rebecca was of Sean. She remembered David’s compulsive, restless nature, and how it drove him to work sixty-hour weeks, striving for perfection. His idea of recreation was competing in triathlons, pushing himself to exhaustion. She could barely recall moments when her husband just sat still. She was convinced stress led to his heart attack ten years ago. She was reminded of his enormous talent every time she drove through her upscale neighborhood and saw the stunning luxury homes his architectural firm had designed. Maggie loved David, but when his critical eye turned on Eric, trouble erupted. In sports and academics, her son’s achievements were above average, but that was never good enough. David belittled Eric for lack of effort. “Don’t push him so hard,” she often chided. “Let him be a child.”
“Children need to learn discipline to become successful adults” was one of David’s battle-worn responses. After years of exhaustive arguments on child rearing, David just tuned her out, preferring to take advice from the carpenter or the plumber, or some witless neighbor down the street. Anyone who agreed with him. Maggie countered David’s criticism by over-praising Eric. Their parenting model, she knew, was dysfunctional and polarized. Poor Eric. Stranded in the middle, trying to find a sense of balance in his life.
No one survived parenthood without collecting a trunk load of regrets. Self-forgiveness was what most parents needed to work on, what she still worked on, whenever she reflected on some dispute with Eric that she could have handled better. The pressure of tears warned her that she needed to get out of her head and focus on her work. She picked up the file for her next patient and began reviewing notes from their last session.
CHAPTER THREE
The mercury was soaring, topping out at a scorching hundred and five degrees. Beyond the rodeo stadium, the monotonous desert landscape stretched for miles, wavering on the horizon as though underwater. The air was so dry Justin could barely rustle up enough spit to swallow. A fine layer of dust coated his chaps, boots, protective vest, and every inch of exposed flesh. Even his eyeballs felt grainy. The smell of livestock and manure hung in the air, shifting when the smoke drifted over from the fast food stands carrying the smell of grilled meat.
His gaze swept the inside of the arena. Bleachers half-full. A few hundred spectators. A surprising turnout for a tiny hick town hidden in the Sonoran Desert. By national standards, this rodeo wasn’t even on the radar, but bull riding attracted folks willing to drive in from Tucson and Phoenix. Fighting a bad case of nerves, Justin wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve and pulled on his helmet. This was his first Professional Bull Riders rodeo. Until now, he’d only competed at high school and college level. Backroad rodeos nobody ever heard of. But some top riders were here today, and the bulls looked bigger and badder than anything he’d ever ridden. Watching seasoned cowboys getting tossed in the dirt within two or three seconds wasn’t boosting his confidence any. He felt a jolt of panic when his alias came crackling over the loudspeaker.
“Next up folks, our last bull rider, Alex Hamilton from Beaverhead, Oregon. Riding Cyclone. A bull with a whole lotta mean. This cowboy’s gonna need some serious talent to last more’n a second on this animal.”
As Justin climbed up on the bucking chute, a hush fell over the crowd and he picked up on their edgy excitement. They’d been waiting on this bull. Compact and powerful, Cyclone had thirty wins, no outs. No rider had ever lasted more than three seconds on his back. No one here thought Justin could ride him, and no one would hold it against him if he dismounted early to save his tail. He lowered himself into the chute and straddled Cyclone and felt hot sweat from the bull’s hide soak into his jeans. The bull shuddered and thrust back his massive head. Justin jerked away from the horns. The bull thrashed to the right, crashing into the side of the chute. Justin kept his feet up on the rails. Shit. He wasn’t even out of the chute yet. Fighting down a wave of fear, he shoved his gloved hand farther into the rope handle and curled his resin-sticky fingers around it tightly. The cowboy handler shot him a sympathetic look before yanking the rope tight around Cyclone’s chest. The world closed in. Nothing existed but Justin and this bull. He sucked in a breath and nodded. “Let ’er rip!”
The gate opened and the bull exploded into the arena. The world blurred. The ground jerked skyward and crashed back down. Cyclone’s hindquarters rose like a tidal wave, spine almost vertical, then hit the ground like a ten-ton truck. Justin moved with the propulsion, his free arm thrusting skyward, his spurred heels digging into hide for all he was worth. The bull lurched to the left, then to the right, bent into a spin. Justin posted himself over the center, every muscle screaming as he strained to hold on. Spine-ramming bucks came one after the other.
Justin held on.
The buzzer sounded.
He freed his rope hand, flew off the bull and landed in the dirt on all fours. Fifteen feet away Cyclone pawed the ground, horns thrust forward, ready to charge. A bullfighter clown darted between them. Cyclone turned momentarily. With loud snorting right behind him, Justin sprinted to the railing and flew over it to safety.
Holy fucking smoke! His heart hammered his chest. He could barely catch his breath. That was close. He’d been a hair away from dead. But he did it. Stayed aboard badassed Cyclone for eight seconds. Adrenaline electrified his system. His focus sharpened. Colors brightened. The applause from the crowd was deafening. The emcee’s excited voice blasted his win. “That bull ain’t never been rode for eight seconds before! Out of thirty tries. We seen a first here in Red Rock today. You gotta get it done on the dirt. This cowboy got it done.”
As he waited for the verdict from the judges, Justin evaluated his performance. His style points weren’t the greatest, but still, it was his best ride ever.
“Alex Hamilton moves into number two position,” the emcee said. “Good ride, cowboy.”
Second place. Thank God. He made some cash.
Cowboys grouped around him, high-fiving, slapping him on the back. “Way to go, cowboy.”
“Good ride.”
“How’d you stay aboard that freaking thrashing machine?”
When the attention died down, Justin took off his vest, chaps, and spurs and squatted in the dirt to pack his gear bag and then crowned his damp, sandy-colored hair with his brown Stetson. He was starving. Nerves had stymied his appetite all day. He needed something wet and cold to flush the dust out of his parched mouth. He hiked over to a food stand being dismantled by a couple of teenage boys, paid for the last three lukewarm hotdogs, a bag of barbeque chips, and a king-size soda, then sat in the shade of the stands wolfing down his food. The crowds were dispersing into a mowed-down field of weeds, and dust clouds were billowing as cars headed out.
By the time he picked up his prize money the arena had emptied and the hall behind the chutes was deserted. The sudden echo of boots moving swiftly behind him made him glance over his shoulder. His heart skipped a few beats. What the hell? The three roughneck cowboys he’d bet against in a bar last night were headed his way. This had bad written all over it. His prize money was in his pocket. Three thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills. He aimed to keep it there.
Pulling his hat low over his forehead, he trotted out to the contestants’ parking lot and slipped behind a row of horse trailers, aiming to get to his truck, but the sound of boots behind him grew louder. A Dodge Ram towing a trailer pulled out of a slot in front of him and blocked his path. Justin turned to face the men braking to a halt behind him. A hard-looking lot. Hats marbled with sweat. Faces as sun-cured as old saddles. Men who scraped by doing shit rodeo jobs and gambling. Justin had seen them at dozens of rodeos in the Pacific Northwest and had taken pains to avoid them, until last night. “Whaddya want?” he asked, taking an offensive posture.
Porky, the ringleader, resembled a starving coyote. Bone-thin, long-pointed nose, hollow cheeks, hand-rolled smoke tucked between chapped lips
. “Jus’ wanna talk,” he said.
“I’m kinda in a hurry here,” Justin said. “Make it fast.”
Porky shared an amused expression with his sidekicks. “We’ll try not to take up too much of yer precious time. You owe us money.”
“The hell I do,” Justin said.
The three men closed him in against the side of a trailer.
Justin’s heart started pounding.
“Yer ride don’t square up with the bullshit you fed us last night,” Porky said.
“Ya said ya hardly ever bull rode before.” This from Waters, a shorter version of Porky, only bowlegged, with a wandering eye that twitched like a needle on a seismograph.
“That ain’t what I said.”
“That what he said?” Waters asked his partners.
“That’s what he said,” Porky answered, smoke curling up from his cigarette.
Their dusty companion grunted in agreement.
Justin spoke slowly. “What I said was, I’m an amateur. That don’t mean I hardly ever bull rode.”
“You knew we was putting money on Chet,” Porky said. “But yer ride pushed him into third place. He got a damned belt buckle. We lost our paychecks.”
Justin assessed the situation. It appeared the men didn’t have the IQ of an earthworm between them. Something wild and violent stirred behind Porky’s amber-colored eyes. “And what, you ’spected me to warn you off? Sorry to hear you took a loss, boys, but I ain’t no gambling adviser. I’m in the game for myself, just like you.”
“Ya rode that bull like a pro,” Porky sneered. “You ain’t no greenhorn. In gambling circles, we call that cheatin’. We’s getting our money outta you one way or another.” He punctuated his words with a sharp jab to Justin’s chest.
Justin jerked his hand away. “Ain’t my fault Chet messed up.” He had watched the high-ranked cowboy stagger out of the bar stinking drunk last night, just minutes before Porky and his pals blew in. That kind of drinking would throw any rider off his game. All the more reason why Justin bet on himself. “I ain’t giving you nothin’.”
