Out of the Blackness (17 page)
Eventually I recover and dinner continues, but that bowl is never far from Noah's reach. Sam and Kira only get a single large spoonful. Noah is much more generous with me, though. He allows me three overlarge spoonsful for making it and promises a lifetime supply of cookies if I make more for him to take home. Sam, of course, is all over that, offering to run to the store immediately for ingredients. I stop laughing long enough to assure Noah he’ll have a fresh batch for New Years and that if he’ll just slow down, he can take the leftovers home with him.
He regards me seriously across the table. “Pinky swear?” he asks holding up his hand, the digit in question extended.
“What?”
“Avery, you have to pinky swear or I’m going to camp out in your kitchen until you make more.”
I laugh and shake my head.
He turns to Sam. “He thinks I’m joking.” Back to me, he says, “Aves, I like to camp, but I warn you now, I get ripe after a few days. So…pinky swear?”
As ridiculous as it is, I almost believe him. I glance at Sam who gestures emphatically at Noah's hand. “I’m the only one allowed to get ripe around here,” he says. “Pinky swear with the man!”
Kira buries her face in her hands. “Why do I hang out here?”
Sam places a sweet kiss to the top of her head. “Great sex and Avery’s cooking.”
“Oh yeah.” She shrugs and looks up at me. “Swear, Avery! There won’t be any great sex if these two get into a smelling contest. Save us both. Please.”
“You’re all crazy,” I pronounce, looking at each of them in turn. “I’m not pinky swearing.”
Sam shoves back from the table. “I’ll get the extra blankets. I’m taking
your
pillows, bro.”
“Okay, okay,” I laugh, more than half believing him. “Fine.” I slowly bring my hand up to Noah's, knowing full well this will be the first time I’ve touched his skin to mine. I curl my pinky around his warm, rough, much thicker one and he squeezes back and hangs on. I feel the current jump between us and my gaze jumps to his hazel one. Quickly, I jerk my hand away before our fingers are melded together by the heat of his flesh on mine. His eyes won’t release mine though and I see the emotion flame in those hazel depths. I shiver from the intensity of it, torn between fear and the first real flush of desire I’ve ever experienced from touch.
Hastily I tear my gaze away and fumble for my water glass, my eyes not daring to look anywhere but there. I bring the drink to my lips, the glass and the cool water reacting against the hotness in my body.
Too much, too much, too much
, I think.
I flinch when Kira drags the almost empty glass from my lips. “Shh, relax,” she whispers, smiling indulgently at me. I peek at her long enough to tune back in to the moment. Sam and Noah are already deep in conversation. I heave a shaky sigh and Kira smiles at me, patting my hand where it rests on the table. I smile back and chance a glance at Noah. He winks at me and takes another bite of the dessert I made just for him.
***
After Noah leaves and Sam and Kira retire to Sam’s bedroom, I curl up on my bed with my sketch pad. I usually only drag it out after a session with Kendall, but this has been an emotional day and I could really use the wind down. As usual, I grab what’s left of the black pencil and start with that. Tonight, I only make a few horizontal lines, some thick, some thinner, then a few vertical ones of alternating thickness to intersect with them. Once those are complete, I stare at the image and pick up the blue pencil. I shade around each of the black lines, then make blue lines following the same pattern as the black ones. It’s when I pick up the green pencil to finish the job that I realize what I’ve done.
I laugh at myself and silently curse Noah. I’ve just drawn that blue plaid shirt he wears so often, the one that has somehow become my favorite. The man is entirely too far into my brain, but how will I ever him out of it?
T
hree days later, it’s my first scheduled therapy session after the holidays. My hands shake the pages so badly I can hardly read the words I’ve written on them.
“It’s okay, Avery. Just read what you’ve written. We’ll get into the details later.”
I want to roll my eyes because if that was supposed to make me feel better, Kendall went way wide of the mark. I don’t do it, of course, because of the lessons well-learned and catalogued on the paper in my hand. Setting the paper on my lap so it will stop shaking, I take a breath before beginning. “I’m going to do this kind of chronologically, okay?” At her nod, I continue. “Memory: My dad’s funeral. What I learned: Mom hated me after that, but I don’t know why. It seems like she didn’t before that, but I only have a few memories from when my dad was still alive, so I can’t be sure.”
I take one more deep, steadying breath. I have to get this all out. I thought writing it was bad, but it hurts so much more saying these things aloud. Even though I’ve known them my whole life, they sound so much worse, more real almost, in my own voice.
“Memory: Carl beat me for not cleaning my room good enough or for walking in front of the television or for tracking mud in the house. What I learned: No matter how hard I tried, he would always find a reason to beat me. But I still tried to be good. I didn’t want him to hit me. I wanted him to love me—or at least like me.
“Memory: Mom told me I was an abortion that didn’t work, that she wished I’d never been born. What I learned: That she hated me, that no matter what I did, I’d still have been born.
“Memory: My mother dropped me off at a fire station six days before my eighth birthday. What I learned: Even my mother, who was supposed to love me unconditionally, wanted me gone enough to just leave me at the side of the road. If she didn’t love me enough to choose me, neither would anyone else.”
“Good, but that’s only four. Did you have a fifth memory?”
I look at her in astonishment. “Wasn’t that enough?”
She nods, as if in agreement. “Okay, can you give me one good memory then?”
My shaking has slowed but this memory thing still hurts like mad. I’ve spent all week trying to catalogue the bad memories into a top four worst list and now she wants me to find a good one? “I—I don’t know. I suppose there is one.”
She smiles like she knew there would be. “What is it?”
My mind casts through the recesses of my memory, desperate to find my first good memory. My heart swells with love. “The day I met Joey.”
“Okay, and what did you learn from meeting Joey?”
“That I wasn’t alone.” I swallow hard around the tears of loving and losing him so quickly in succession. “Except then I was because he died.”
“Are you angry at him for leaving you?”
I shake my head, not wanting to talk about him. If I keep him inside where no one else can get to him, he’s still safe and still mine. “No. I wanted to be, and I think I was at first because he’d left me alone in that house with them, but I’m not anymore. If I’d thought of it, I might have done it first. It was the only way he knew to make it stop.”
“What would you tell him if you could talk to him now?”
Emotion chokes me. “That I love him. That I miss him every day and that I understand.”
Kendall nods and makes notes on her yellow legal pad. “Talk to me about those other memories.”
I close my eyes and swallow against the swell of pain. “My mom hated me. Her boyfriend hated me. His kids from a previous relationship hated me. They made sure I knew it every day. The only bright spots at home were the two little boys mom and Carl had together. They were too young to know to hate me, but I’m sure they would have eventually.”
“Are you angry with your mom for leaving you at the fire station?”
“I—I don’t know. No, I’m not angry. It makes me sad and confused. I wish I had been good enough for her to love me, but that wasn’t ever going to happen. I just wanted to be good.” Angrily, I grab a tissue and press it to my wet eyes. “I just wish she could have seen how hard I tried, that it would have counted for something. I didn’t want to be bad. I swear I never meant to be. Why couldn’t she see that? I’ve never understood why she hated me so much. What could I have possibly done wrong at that age for her to hate me?”
“Avery, you have to understand that her hate wasn’t about you; it was about her. I firmly believe that she started out loving you—she may love you to this day—but something got in the way of her being the best mother she could be and she had no idea how to handle it, so she directed it at the person least able to hurt her or defend himself—you. Some would say her greatest act of love was getting you out of that house, getting you somewhere she thought you would be safer.”
I boggle at her. “What? She loved me so much she dumped me at a fire station? She loved me, so she hit me and kicked me and made me lie about her and Carl breaking my bones? That’s not love. That’s hate. She hated me for being born.”
“That’s also possible, but, again, you have to realize that’s her fault, not yours. You didn’t do anything to create that hate or to perpetuate it, and you certainly didn’t deserve to have them physically or emotionally abusing you.”
I stare out the window and try to absorb her words. They make no sense. “I can’t talk about this anymore.”
“Okay, tell me about your holiday. Noah was coming over for dinner, wasn’t he?”
I take a few minutes to put mom and Carl out of my head, then I give her a rundown of holiday events. I try to leave out the meltdown, but the woman is too dang good at her job. She makes me drag the whole thing out so she can examine it piece by piece.
“We have to do something about your self-talk, Avery. The way we talk to ourselves is, in many ways, more important to our mental health than what other people say to us. We are the ones in our own heads, the only ones who are able to constantly reaffirm our self-worth and build our self-esteem. That’s another thing we need to work on.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with anything,” I answer honestly.
She brushes her long red hair behind her shoulder and leans forward. I watch as the strands slowly retake their previous position. “When Sam told you he loved you, did you believe him?”
I frown, knowing the “correct” answer, but unable to say it. “I know he cares for me, yes.”
“That wasn't the question. Do you believe he loves you?”
“I—” I turn to look out her window, hoping it looks like I’m trying to compose an answer, but in truth, I shut down my brain. I can’t go here. I can’t examine my every interaction with Sam like this. Yes, he cares for me. Yes, he
takes
care of me. But that other word…that’s not part of my world.
“Avery?” she prods after long moments of silence.
“I’m not—I don’t deserve his love.”
“Why not?”
“Because of who I am.”
“But, Avery, everyone deserves love. Everyone deserves a chance to be happy. Don’t you think that applies to you, too?”
I shake my head, fighting against the tears. I wish what she says is true, but it isn’t, not for me.
“Sam loves you, Avery. It has to be true or he wouldn’t have stood by you and protected you in the group home. He wouldn’t have come back for you, and he certainly wouldn’t be living with you now if he didn’t love you. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t deserve it,” I say, finally breaking down. “One of these days he’s going to figure it out, just like they did.”
“They being your mom and Carl?”
I nod.
“But what if they were wrong, Avery? What if all those horrible things they told you and called you weren’t really about
you
at all? Then what?”
I can’t stop crying and I can’t form sentences either. The thought of losing Sam hurts so much worse today than it did before Christmas because now I can feel how empty I would be inside if he stops caring about me—even being pawned off on Noah would be better than that.
Kendall hands me a paper cup of water. Irrationally, I hope these things aren’t being added to my bill or I’ll never get her paid off. “Drink this,” she instructs kindly. It’s amazing how taking in water stops the water from flowing out. Neat trick.
When I’ve collected myself, Kendall smiles back at me from her chair. “I want you to repeat after me: ‘Sam loves me and I am deserving of love.’”
I shake my head almost frantically. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
“C’mon. ‘Sam loves me and I am deserving of love.’”
“No!”
“It’s a simple sentence—well, compound actually, but that’s neither here nor there. Say it with me then: ‘Sam loves me and I am deserving of love.’”
“
NO!
”
She leans forward, almost aggressively. “Why not, Avery? Tell me why not and I’ll leave you alone.”
“
Because no matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t make it true!
”
Kendall smiles widely and relaxes back in her chair. “Exactly, Avery! Exactly! And no matter how many times your mom and Carl and the boys from the group home reinforced their lies and venom and hate with their fists and boots, it didn’t make them true either. It just means they left a more lasting mark on your psyche. So our job is to figure out why you’re still holding on to t
hose
lies so tightly you won’t let any good, positive truths into your head and your heart.”
***
Sam pushes his plate away and leans back, his hands on his flat belly. “Thank goodness that’s the last of it. I am so sick of turkey.”
I laugh and poke his belly. Unlike the Pillsbury doughboy, Sam doesn’t giggle; he grunts and doubles over protectively. It’s even cuter, really. “It’s your own fault. I offered to make you something different.”
“I know, I know. But that would have meant turkey tomorrow and I
am not
starting off the new year with that dang bird.”
I laugh again and gather our plates for the dishwasher. “I guess next year you won’t buy the biggest bird you can find.”
Sam groans again. “Definitely not. Next year it’s back to Chinese. Wait, does Noah like Chinese?”
The forks in my hand clatter to the sink but I refuse to give him more of an answer than that. Noah's likes and dislikes have been frequent topics of conversation with Sam in the last six days. “It’s New Year’s Eve, Sam. Give it a rest.”