Her phone rang, the ring tune—Darth Vader’s theme song, a joke between them—signaling an incoming call from her dad. She silenced the ringer and ran slowly on through the hot afternoon, belatedly remembering her goal for invading the kitchen in the first place. Dang it, she was thirsty, and she didn’t have any money for a convenience store run. Looked like she would have to tuck her tail between her legs and go back sooner rather than later.
Reluctantly she slowed to a walk, turned and started back the way she had come, crossing the street when she saw a schoolyard with a giant evergreen oak shading part of the playground. On a whim, she ducked through the staggered chain link gate and found a seat among the tree’s gnarled roots. Then she leaned back against the rough trunk, lifted her chin, and gazed up into the dense canopy.
Her therapist wasn’t going to like hearing that she ran. Or it wasn’t that she wouldn’t like it. She would ask her to think about why she had run and what she might have done differently. Jamie could practically hear Shoshanna’s slightly nasal voice: “Clearly you gave in to your brain’s fight or flight reaction to the conversation. But let’s look at what might have prompted that response. Why specifically do you think you felt the need to flee?”
After more than six months of seeing Shoshanna once a week, the therapist’s voice had begun to appear at the back of her mind whenever she had to face something traumatic or even merely uncomfortable. While she probably wouldn’t have admitted it except under severe duress, Jamie had discovered she liked having that internal guide to help her figure out how to rein in the fear that never seemed far away. France had left her unable to rely on her own reactions or judgment, but Shoshanna’s blend of realism and practicality made sense. It didn’t hurt that she specialized in cases like Jamie’s. She knew what she was doing, and it was a relief, honestly, for Jamie to let go and trust in Shoshanna’s counsel.
Not that she’d been eager to do so in the beginning. At her first session Jamie had sat silently, arms folded across her chest, one leg bouncing uncontrollably, her gaze fixed on the paisley pattern in the dark green carpeting. Everything about the therapist’s office was comfortable and soothing, from the overstuffed couch she was sitting on to the muted abstract art on the almond-colored walls. And yet she felt the opposite of soothed. She didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened because that would mean she would have to willingly conjure the memories. And right then, only a few weeks out, she wasn’t prepared for that.
“It didn’t really happen,” she’d told herself almost daily. She didn’t believe her own attempts at pretense, of course. She wasn’t totally crazy. But the “what if it hadn’t happened?” fantasy provided a temporary respite from the “Oh my god it happened it happened it happened it really happened” panic that washed over her the moment she awoke and ambushed her regularly throughout the day. Except when she was playing soccer—on the field, she was so laser-focused on the game that nothing could intrude, not even her panic about what she was sure must be the utter destruction of any chance at a normal life.
That first day, though, Shoshanna didn’t let her sit in silence. She talked a little about a therapeutic approach called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and then turned the conversation to Jamie and what she might be hoping to gain from working together. When Jamie answered her initial questions with monosyllabic responses, Shoshanna set her notepad down and removed her reading glasses.
“I get the feeling you don’t really want to be here.”
Jamie shrugged. If her parents hadn’t told her she couldn’t play ODP or Surf Cup that summer unless she talked to Shoshanna, she wouldn’t have agreed to come.
“I get that a lot, especially from people your age. Let me guess: One of your parents thinks you’re not as happy as you used to be, so they dragged you in to see me hoping I would ‘fix’ you, without understanding that mood changes in teenagers go with the territory of hormonal shifts and a maturing cerebral cortex.”
Jamie was tempted to agree and hightail it out of there, but not only was the therapist’s assessment inaccurate, it pointed toward a fact she found difficult to believe. “Are you trying to say my mother didn’t tell you why they’re sending me here?”
“She may have wanted to, but I don’t believe in knowing things about my clients that they haven’t chosen to share. Just because you’re not an adult yet doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a say in what happens to you.”
For some reason, this simple statement brought tears to Jamie’s eyes. Only the crying wasn’t really a mystery. The notion that she should have a say in what happened to her wasn’t an easy one to swallow right then, not when she was sitting in this stranger’s office precisely because she’d done something that had resulted in another person gaining control over her body, her emotions, her life.
Shoshanna had set a box of tissues within her reach. “I’m guessing you’re not here about a little moodiness, are you?”
Jamie shook her head and pressed the tissue against her face, biting her lip as hard as she could to try to hold in the sobs. If she started crying, she wasn’t sure she would be able to stop.
“I’m sorry, Jamie,” Shoshanna said. “I can see you’re hurting. Right now it probably feels like if you start crying, you’ll never stop. I would imagine, too, that you’re having trouble sleeping, and that you’re struggling with fear and with being close to other people. Does this sound familiar?”
Jamie nodded, lowering the tissue. Tears still squeezed out of her eyes, but she didn’t feel like she couldn’t breathe anymore.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” the therapist said. “I’ve worked with too many young women—and young men, too—who have felt the way you do now. But the good news is, I’ve helped quite a few of them move through the darkness you’re struggling with now, whatever its cause, and out the other side to a stronger, healthier place. I would like the opportunity to try to help you, but you have to want that help. The only promise I can offer is that it won’t be easy. There’s no magic bullet here, no guarantees. I can offer guidance, but you have to be willing to do the work yourself.”
This sounded like something one of her coaches would have said. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d heard almost the exact same speech about learning technical skills and performing optimally on the soccer field. Maybe that was why she found herself meeting Shoshanna’s eyes and nodding one more time.
“Okay,” she said, and the tears stopped, as if they’d been waiting for her to figure out that running away from what had happened was only going to get her more lost.
Now, sitting beneath the California oak a few blocks from her aunt and uncle’s house, she closed her eyes and tried to focus on her breathing the way Shoshanna had taught her. She recited her mantra inwardly, trying to make her emotions match: “May I be filled with loving kindness; may I be well; may I be peaceful and at ease; may I be happy.” Shoshanna said that this meditation fit the “fake it ’til you make it” model, and Jamie found that it usually helped whenever she freaked out. As she recited the words “loving kindness,” she pictured her mother. Nothing about this was easy for her, either. She had been asleep in the hotel in Lyon when it happened, and Jamie had overheard her telling her dad that she should have been more attentive; that if she had been a better parent, none of this would have happened. Jamie didn’t think that was true, but her mom did.
With the word “well,” she imagined physical strength and well-being flowing outward from her heart and lungs and through the rest of her body. At “peaceful and at ease,” she relaxed her shoulders and paid even closer attention to the breath entering and leaving her body. And at “happy,” she smiled and thought of a particularly good memory—the moment the previous month when Emma had opened the birthday box containing her Man U jersey and squealed so loudly that Jamie almost dropped the phone.
She went through the mantra five times, and by the end she was still thirsty but otherwise okay. The shakiness was g
one, the anger had vanished, and what she wanted most—other than a glass of water—was to tell her mother she was sorry.
With one last pat to the rough tree bark, she rose and headed back to her aunt and uncle’s house. A block away, she pulled her phone out and found Shoshanna’s mobile number.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” she texted. “And thanks to you it will be here. I used the kindness mantra to get rid of lizard brain. See you next week.”
As she neared the house, she could see her mother and father sitting out on the front steps, waiting for her. Her steps slowed, and butterflies flitted about her belly. The clarity that meditation brought on was awesome while she was alone, but facing other people after she had messed up yet again was always more difficult than it had seemed in her head.
“Hey,” she said, nodding at her parents as they rose. “Sorry I took off. I needed some space.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry,” her mother said. “I should never have done that without talking to you first. It wasn’t planned. It just happened, but that doesn’t excuse it.”
Jamie reached out and touched her mother’s arm hesitantly. “I get why you needed to talk to her, I really do. But I think you’re right. If you could talk to me first, that would feel better. Is that okay?”
“Absolutely,” her mother said, nodding quickly.
Jamie could tell it was killing her not to crush her in one of her famous hugs. She took a breath and stepped closer, slipping her arms around her mother’s waist. “Cool,” she said as she felt her mom’s arms wrap carefully around her. And then her dad was there, too, and she was tucked between them like when she was a little kid, and it didn’t feel nearly as claustrophobic as she would have expected. In fact, she felt downright safe standing there in the warm sunshine with her parents holding her gingerly, as if she might break if they held on too tightly. Honestly, she’d been a little worried about that herself.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” her dad said.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Jamie and her mom echoed.
Then she pushed out from between them. “I am so freaking thirsty right now I could drink an entire cooler of Gatorade,” she announced, not meeting their eyes.
“Well, let’s get you something to drink then,” her mother said.
Jamie moved up the steps ahead of her parents. “Sounds like a plan.”
#
Emma read through the email one more time, grinning. She had been trying to think of a way to subtly invite herself to California, but now she wouldn’t have to.
“I’m in,” she wrote back. “I’ll check Expedia and keep you posted. Can’t wait! Love, Emma.”
She stared at the screen for a long moment, and then as she heard her mother’s voice calling from the kitchen, hit send and left the den. Love? Whatever. It wasn’t like either of them meant anything by it.
“There you are,” her mother said. She pushed a stray strand of brown-blonde hair away from her face, flushed from cooking assorted Thanksgiving dishes. Despite the gravy and cranberries splattered across her apron, she looked happy. What a difference from Thanksgiving a year earlier when Emma’s father had visited from his hotel room and the atmosphere more closely approximated that of a funeral than a holiday. He had moved back in by Christmas, but for Emma the damage was done. No matter how committed both her parents claimed to be to their marriage, she couldn’t help wondering when he would leave them again.
She smiled at her mother and danced across the kitchen in time to the music playing on the Bose radio on the counter. “May I have this dance?” she asked, grabbing her mom’s hand and spinning her around.
The older woman let herself be twirled about the kitchen as Mariah Carey crooned what she really wanted for Christmas. When the music stopped and an advertisement came on, they both collapsed against the butcher block island, laughing.
“What’s gotten into you?” her mom asked, touching her cheek with a flour-dusted finger.
“Nothing. I’m happy.”
“Well, good. Your father and Ty should be back soon with your grandmother. In the meantime, those potatoes are not going to peel themselves.”
“I’m on it.” Emma reached for an apron. There would be plenty of time later to talk her parents into letting her visit Jamie. For now, the trip to California was only for her.
The fall had been crazy—soccer season had gone so quickly, and then, right when they were set to advance to state quarters, she’d had to leave for training camp. She’d actually cried on the flight to LA, not that she ever would have admitted that fact. The first day had been rough, too. She was the only U-17er at first, training with mostly college players from all over the country who had clearly known each other a while, and she had lain awake in her hotel bed that night wondering why she had ever thought she could do this.
But the following morning one of her U-17 teammates, Jess from Boston, had shown up, and then more high school seniors had arrived and things had started to improve. Two players from UNC were already on the team, and when they found out Jess and Emma would be Tar Heels the following year, their demeanor shifted. Soon Emma found herself part of a tight foursome at meals, during warm-up, and for what little free-time they had. By the time she got home, she couldn’t wait to graduate and get started on what she now thought of as her “real life” at UNC.
One of the hardest things about the week-long camp, other than missing the final two games of her high school career (Dani left her a voicemail letting her know they’d lost the state semi-final match), had been being out of touch with Jamie. With double sessions every day—fitness in the morning and technical training in the afternoon—meals with the team, and mandatory study sessions each night so that they didn’t fall behind on schoolwork, she barely had time to talk to her parents, let alone Jamie. As soon as she got home, she sat down and wrote a long email to her, describing the camp experience, the surreal quality of being done with high school soccer, and the excitement of hanging out in LA with her future college teammates. The U-19 World Cup was slated for the following November in Thailand. It was still a ways off, but in a private conference the coach had told her she had a good shot at making the squad if she stayed healthy and kept up the good work.
“I missed you, though,” she’d written at the end. She couldn’t help but wonder if the trip to LA was a taste of what life would be like once she graduated from high school and left home: a whirlwind of activity and studying with girls she liked, some maybe a bit too much. One of the UNC players, Tori, a sophomore goalkeeper, had been undeniably cute in a tomboyish way. Emma had felt Tori’s eyes on her and couldn’t deny that the thought of seeing her again made her palms sweat. She wanted to tell Jamie about Tori, wanted to hear if she thought kissing a teammate was as bad an idea as Emma thought it probably was. But that wasn’t a conversation to have on the phone, not after she’d let it go unsaid for this long.
New Year’s, she promised herself, trying not to scrape her fingers with the potato peeler. If all went well, she and Jamie would ring in 2004 together and she would come out to someone for the first time in her life. That meant she better know what to call herself by then.
The door from the garage opened and her brother walked in, his REI raincoat and beat-up baseball cap damp with rain.
“Burr, dude,” he said, and went straight for the sliced carrots, jamming two into his mouth at once.
Emma threw a potato peel at him. “Gross. Wash your hands, idjit.”
He grinned and came at her, holding out his hands threateningly. Since spring he had grown an ungodly amount. Looked like she wouldn’t be the big sister much longer.
“Tyler Dean Blakeley,” their mother scolded. “No boots in the house. It’s only been the rule your entire life.”
“Sorry, Mom,” he said, turning back to the garage just as their father appeared in the doorway, his mother’s arm looped through his.
Emma watched as her grandmother tottered into the room, peering around fearfully. Her dad had warned
her, but Emma was still thrown by the changes in the elderly woman. With soccer and classes like AP Biology and Calculus kicking her butt, she hadn’t spent much time with her grandmother in the past couple of months. Now she wished she’d tried harder to carve out the time.
When her grandmother’s gaze fell on her, the tiny gray-haired woman beamed, fear suddenly driven out by joy. She held out her arms and said, “Come give me some sugar, sugar,” as she’d always done. Emma scooted over and wrapped her arms around the old lady, careful not to squeeze too tightly. She felt even frailer than last time.
When she pulled back, her grandmother touched her cheek. “You are so lovely, Elizabeth.”
For a moment, Emma faltered. But then she smiled again and said, “Thank you. So are you.”
“Oh, now I know you’re making things up. But aren’t you sweet.”
Emma’s mother stepped forward. “Hello, Janelle. Happy Thanksgiving. Can I get you a glass of sparkling grape juice?”
“Sparkling what?” The older woman’s brow creased. “What is that? I don’t know what that is.”
Emma’s parents exchanged a look, and then her father said, “Why don’t we get you situated in the living room, Mom? I think it’ll be a little while until dinner is ready.”
“Whatever you think is best,” she replied meekly, and followed him from the room.
“Hey,” Emma’s mother said.
“What?”
“You handled that really well. You okay?”
Emma nodded. Her grandmother had been diagnosed with dementia nearly a decade earlier, right before they sold the family home in Northern Virginia and moved her out to Seattle. In the beginning she used to blame them for “stealing” her house. Then the medical staff at the assisted living center in Kirkland put her on antidepressants, and while the dementia had continued to worsen, at least she seemed happier. The times Emma found hardest were when her grandmother asked where Roger and Dean were and they had to remind her that her husband and eldest son had been gone for more than two decades. Emma’s dad often said that at least his brother had passed away after their father died of a heart attack. That way her grandfather could be spared the knowledge of his firstborn son’s untimely death.
Training Ground Page 6
