The First Time She Drowned (19 page)

“What’s wrong?” she says, alarmed.

“I’m sorry but I think you better go.”

“Was it something I said?”

“No, no. I’ll explain later.”

When I return to the table, my mother looks at me through sad, swollen eyes. “You’re such a good girl,” she says.

• • •

Zoey is on the phone with a friend when I arrive back at the dorm with food for her. I suspect she has been talking about the night
because she clams up quickly and says, “I gotta go, Mol. See ya in class.”

I hand her the Styrofoam box. I am depleted, feel like my insides have been dried out.

“I ordered the steak for you. I hope you like it. Her boyfriend dumped her.”

“Oh,” Zoey says. “I kind of figured that’s what it was.”

“I feel so bad about sending you home.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

“It’s just, you know, she needed a friend.”

“Then why didn’t she call one?”

“What?”

I stare at her across a long, tense pause.

“Nothing,” she says finally. “Never mind.”

I try to shrug it off and then slip inside our small closet to maneuver out of my dress. I know Zoey thinks it’s weird that I’m so modest, but the thought of changing in front of another person is horrifying to me.

“Oh, before I forget, your boyfriend rang,” Zoey says. “He wants you to call him back if you have a chance.”

“I won’t,” I say, more to myself than to her. I poke my head out. “And he’s not my boyfriend. Obviously.”

“Cassie!”

“What?” I say, but I can hear the note of concern in her voice.

She looks at me and sighs. “I think Chris really likes you. Just because your mother can’t make her relationships work . . .”

“What does my mother have to do with anything? I mean, I get that you don’t like her.”

“It’s not that I don’t like her. It’s that I like you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I stare at her, braced against what she might say. I want to scream at Zoey that she has had her mother her whole life and I am only just now getting mine and I can’t afford for her to be taken away. “You don’t know what she’s been through,” I say. “Her mother was awful to her.”

There is a loaded silence.

“Anyway,” I say. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”

I close the closet door again and finish changing.

“Don’t forget you have that appointment tomorrow,” Zoey says when I come out in my pajamas. “You still gotta get that note.”

I see Liz’s card on my desk with our appointment time, and I swipe it into the garbage when Zoey isn’t looking. The last thing I care about right now is school.

“Good night,” Zoey says.

I stare at the wall and pretend I don’t hear her.

Soon I am drifting off to sleep, being sucked into a dangerous ocean. Someone is on the sand waving me in. I can’t see their face. I try to reach them, but the waves are slamming too hard on the shore, and no matter how hard I swim, the undertow keeps pulling me back.

ZOEY WAKES ME
up the next morning by sitting on my bed and poking me like a child. “You have to go to your appointment. I’m not letting you fail out.”

I roll over on my stomach, hoping she’ll leave me alone, but instead she jumps up and starts singing, “Wake me up before you go-go!” at full and torturous volume. When I open my eyes again, I see that she is also using jazz hands interspersed with finger snapping. I sigh, push the covers off and head to the shower.

“That’s my girl!” Zoey calls after me. “I’m going to the library after History. Meet me there when you’re done!”

• • •

The sun is unlit and the grass still damp with dew as I make my way across the campus. My head is swampy from a restless night’s sleep, so it takes me a second to register the sound of my name being called.

I turn.

It’s Chris. He starts walking toward me, and in that moment of space before memory kicks in, I am happy. Then I hear my mother’s voice assuring me that all he wants is sex.

I turn away like I don’t see him and duck inside the nearest building. As I pass by the window, I see him staring at the door I’ve just disappeared behind, his brow creased in confusion. I move
out of his line of sight and wait until I’m sure he’s gone before I slip back out and head to the counseling center.

By the time I get there, I’m in a pissed-off mood, a brewing rage coming from somewhere I can’t name, at someone I can’t see. I don’t even know why I’ve bothered to come back here.

When Liz enters the waiting room, she looks so genuinely happy to see me that I can only assume she perceives it as some notch on her belt that I have actually returned for this session. I grunt a hello and walk past her into the office, put my newly purchased schoolbooks down on the couch beside me. I doubt she’ll even notice them.

She quickly pours hot water into a mug, presses a spoon against the steeping tea bag and sits in her leather chair. I take the edge of the couch closest to the door and ignore the concerned look on her face. The single lamp casts a pale, strained light against the gray morning. The room smells of cinnamon.

Liz tilts her head as if to say, “What’s wrong?”

I fold my arms across my chest like a petulant five-year-old and refuse to speak. Then, on second thought, I decide to tell her exactly what’s wrong. I lean forward.

“Look, I’m sorry to say that your little plan to get me back here didn’t work.” Then because I realize that I am, in fact, back here, I add, “Or at least it won’t work. Like, in the future, it’s not going to be working.”

“My little plan?” She sets down her tea and furrows her brow in confusion. “What little plan is that?”

For a moment her response makes me doubt myself, but the pull of experience reassures me that I’m right. I am angry with myself
for being manipulated into trusting her, suckered into believing I’d get what I needed. The anger feels so voluminous, in fact, so completely out of nowhere that I sit on it lest I look like a crazy person.

I turn to the window. A curtain of fog blocks my view of the ocean.

“Did something happen?”

I don’t answer.

“You think I would trick you?”

“Whatever. Look,” I say. “No offense or anything, but I was only doing this to get a note. And since clearly no note is forthcoming, I think I’ll just go back to my regularly scheduled failing out and expulsion.” I grab my books and stand up.

“Wait,” she says. “I should have told you when you walked in. I realized last time I forgot to give you a note, so I called the dean instead.”

I remain standing, refuse to look at her.

“Do you want to hear what he said? I’m not sure if you’re looking for a real answer. Maybe you want to fail out?”

“Why the hell would I want that?” I feel the reins of control slipping.

“You tell me. There must be a reason you keep sabotaging yourself.”

I stare at her, say nothing.

She matches my silence.

I hesitate. Consider whether or not I should still leave. My automatic impulse is to say,
Fuck it, fuck you, I don’t need your help,
and walk out. But I know that would be “sabotaging myself ” and thus proving her right. Instead, I sigh loudly, sit back down and refold
my arms across my chest.

“I didn’t tell Dean Wilson you were depressed. I just said that you had been sick with pneumonia and were struggling a bit and that you and I were working on getting you back on your feet.”

She examines my reaction closely. I squeeze myself tighter, refuse to meet her eyes.

“He said that as long as you and I were working toward this goal, he was willing to hold off on any disciplinary action, but that it would be up to your individual teachers to determine what you would need to do.”

The fact that she went to all this trouble for me is so far from what I expected that I’m not sure what to make of it. Only that I can’t trust it. And the truth is I’m not even sure I want it anymore. The chance, I mean.

“I believe we can do this. Everything you’ve told me about your life tells me you’re not a quitter. Including the fact that I see you got your books.” She smiles with what looks almost like pride.

She noticed.

“So whaddaya say?” she says. “Would you like to keep trying?”

“You want me to keep coming back here?” I can’t imagine why she would ever want to see me again. “What, do you have some patient quota you need to meet or something?”

For the first time I notice how little of her there is in the room: a desk, a phone, a small table, a clock.

“You’re eighteen years old, Cassie. You certainly don’t
have
to do anything.”

I lean back into the couch and consider my options, or lack
thereof. I wonder what would happen to me if I got kicked out, where I would go, how much it would really matter in the scheme of my life. At the moment, it seems far easier than trying. Then I think of my uncle Billy, who spent his whole adult life as an addict living in his parents’ basement. I remember how he used to draw pictures for me, my favorite being a surprised-looking scuba diver swimming in a tank full of sharks. My mother used to say that Billy could have been a cartoonist if only he could get out of the basement, but I always thought Billy’s problem was that he couldn’t get out of the shark tank.

“What’s happening over there?” Liz says.

A memory swims around the edges of my consciousness. I can feel its big, dark shadow just below the surface. I sit up. “Nothing.”

“You had a look on your face.”

“Just thinking about my uncle Billy.”

“What about him?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. Look,” I say. I’m about to tell her that I can’t do this, that I’m not going to come back here and deal with another fucking doctor trying to get inside my head and mess with it. I’ll just have to figure out some other way. Then I notice something.

“Hey, no ashtray,” I say. I had been sure she was going to retrieve it from the wastebasket as soon as I left the last time.

She smiles at me in that warm, bright way my mother always reserved for Matthew. “I meant to thank you for that, actually. You were right. How can I ask my patients to let go of unhealthy attachments if I can’t let go of my own?” She winks at me. “Smart cookie.”

I roll my eyes, but she pins me with her stare. Her behavior is
disorienting. My brain doesn’t know what to do with it.

“If you would like to give this a chance, Cassie, I believe we can work on this together.”

I fold my arms tighter and turn to the window. I can’t look at her, don’t want her to look at me. It all feels like such a risk.

“Fine,” I make myself say finally, avoiding her eyes. “I’ll talk to my teachers and see you next week. But don’t expect much.”

I gather my books and stand. At the door, I turn, look back at the table. “You miss it?”

She looks confused and then follows my gaze to the space where the ashtray had been. “Actually, it was harder to look at every day than it was to give up, as it turns out. I guess I reached that point where not changing was tougher than changing, ya know?”

I shrug. Not really.

Liz hands me an appointment card for Wednesday at three and calls “bye, Cassie” as I flee.

I step outside, still lost in thought about my session, when all at once a memory of Uncle Billy comes rushing back to me, like it was just waiting until I was alone to visit.

IT WAS THE
Thanksgiving just after Great-Aunt Dora had left our house and I was wearing the dress my mother had insisted I wear, the one that my father had bribed me into putting on. We were at my grandparents’ house, where the adults were playing charades in the den, getting more animated with each cocktail, while Matthew and I observed them with the special blend of fascination and horror usually reserved for watching mimes. My mother, who was teamed up with my father and Uncle Billy, was, to no one’s surprise, kicking everyone’s ass in the game. She had always been excellent at charades.

It was my grandmother’s turn. Already three bourbons deep, Leigh staggered to the front of the room and mimed that her chosen idea was a movie. Then she put her hands over her head in a point and opened her mouth wide.

“
Jaws
!” my mother shouted, bouncing in her chair.

My grandmother teetered for a second, her eyes widened with drunken shock.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” my mother said. “It’s
Jaws
, right? I got it on the first guess!” She high-fived Uncle Billy and my father.

Leigh slumped back down beside my grandfather Nick, a small, dapper man with a three-pack-a-day habit and a mean streak, and scowled at my mother.

“Oh, look at Bevy,” my grandmother taunted from the couch. “She thinks she’s sooo smart. La de da.”

My mother’s head drew back in wounded surprise. “Maybe I don’t ‘think’ I’m smart, Mother. Maybe I actually am.”

My grandfather chimed in, muttering something clearly unkind under his breath.

“What was that, Dad?” my mother demanded.

“Who wants to go shoot some pool?” Uncle Billy said, quickly ushering Matthew and me toward the basement and out of firing range.

The basement where Billy lived was an entirely different landscape from the rest of the house. It was womblike but seedy, the belly of a prostitute. The only light was a poker lamp that dangled over the pool table, drawing smoke and casting a petroleum-jelly haze over the room. The walls were lined with posters of motorcycles and naked girls and the chalkboard where Billy drew cartoons for me.

“Anyone up for a bong hit?” Uncle Billy joked as he gathered the pool cues. We stared at him blankly. “Never mind. Wrong crowd.”

I didn’t really want to play pool so I plopped down on the floor cross-legged to watch Billy teach Matthew how to play. We were having a great time, Matthew acting all cool and grown up with his pool stick, and Uncle Billy pausing between shots to take hits off his bong and do magic tricks for me. But then Matthew overshot his mark and a pool ball came hurtling directly at my head. I
was sure I was about to get beaned hard, so I closed my eyes tight and brought my hands to my face as if that would help. Instead, the ball landed with a soft thud in my lap. I opened my eyes, looked down and laughed with relief. Billy was laughing too as he came over and reached down to retrieve the ball.

All at once, his hand seemed to move toward my body in slow motion, huge and terrifying and dangerous. I stopped laughing. Fear-bats beat against my chest. I looked down at the ball and then up at Billy as his hand drew closer. Our eyes met, mine wide with panic and his full of confusion. I jumped to my feet and ran up the stairs.

“Cassie!” Billy called after me. “Wait! What’s wrong?”

But the truth was, I didn’t know.

I found my mother seated alone on the couch in the den with her arms folded, the game of charades over, everyone else gathered in the kitchen without her. I sat down beside her just as Billy and Matthew reappeared from the basement. Billy’s brow was furrowed and his hands were jammed deep into his pockets as he stood in the doorway, shifting the weight of his body from one leg to the other like a swaying elephant. He took a deep breath, looked at me and then went and sat down abruptly on the other side of my mother. His hands came out of his pockets and appeared over the glass coffee table. His thick, square fingers drummed on it in a minor stampede. He stopped, leaned in to her and cupped his hand over her ear. I heard the sound of my name and my ears perked up like a dog’s.

“Turkey time!” Leigh’s voice called from the dining room.

Uncle Billy was still whispering to my mother. “I’m worried about her,” I heard him say.

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” my mother said, standing. “And frankly I don’t care right now. I’m starving, and I want this damn dinner over with.”

We sat down at the formal dining room table. The tension, still in the air from charades, was further enhanced by my father’s insistence on saying grace. The only known god in my grandparents’ house was a bottle of Jim Beam and a lit cigarette.

“Thank you, dear Lord, for this lovely food our hostess, Leigh, has prepared—”

“Had catered in,” my mother said pointedly.

“Ah . . . right . . . um . . . Had catered in,” my father stammered, glancing nervously between my mother and Leigh. “And thank you, Lord, for the caterers and this loving family I have been invited into.”

My mother coughed at the word
loving
.

My grandmother slurred, “I’ll drink to that!”

Beside me, Billy reached over to cut my turkey and to dot a dollop of gravy on my nose.

My grandmother clinked her now half-empty glass with her spoon. “A toast,” she said, sloshing her glass of booze to and fro. “To all the people in my life who love me so much and so well!” She pointed her cigarette at each of us and added, “As you should.”

“Hear, hear!” almost everyone cheered as they raised their glasses high into the air. Only my mother kept silent, her glass by her side.

“And to my brilliant sons, Paul and Billy,” my grandmother continued. “Your father and I are so proud of you darlings.” I
waited for her to say something nice about my mother too, but instead she ended with, “Okay, everybody, dig in!”

I turned to my mother. Her face was red and blotchy.

“I’d like to make a toast as well,” she said suddenly. She stood and raised her glass, the ice cubes in her drink rattling as her hand shook.

Immediately I jerked my milk glass into the air.

“To Darling Dad, who liked to get drunk and beat on his daughter. And to Mommy Dearest for standing by and watching and enjoying it. Here’s to you, Mom and Dad.”

“That never happened,” my grandmother said.

“Like hell it didn’t.”

I lowered my glass.

My grandfather picked up his own tumbler and lifted it high into the air. “And here’s to Bevy,” he said with a smile, “who never fails to be a bitch.”

“Oh shit,” Billy whispered to me.

My mother, infuriated, turned to my father. “Are you going to just sit there and let him talk to me that way?”

My father looked up, surprised. Clearly that had been his plan exactly. “Nick,” he said to my grandfather, “please don’t speak to my wife like that.”

“This is my house and I’ll speak any damn way I please,” my grandfather said, rising from his chair.

My father looked helplessly to my mother.

“Don’t look at me!” she cried. “Do something!”

Billy leaned over and cupped his hand against my ear. “Ten bucks says my old man takes your old man in the first round.”

“My dad won’t fight Pappy,” I said. “Pappy’s too old.”

Suddenly my father lunged for my grandfather across the table. My grandmother screamed. The mashed potatoes went flying, big white chunks splashing onto my dress.

The two grown men were on the floor and wrestling before anyone else even had time to react. My mother started to cry. Billy and Paul jumped into the fray, trying to pull my father off of their father. Matthew stood up and shouted, “Go, Dad!” I looked on curiously. Nothing shocked me anymore.

“We’re leaving,” my mother said to no one in particular. “You all suck.”

She grabbed Matthew, and the two of them started toward the car. I was scrambling to keep up when Billy came running outside.

“Bevy, wait!”

The three of us stopped and turned.

“I still need to talk to you about . . . you know”—Billy jerked his head in my direction—“what I said I needed to talk to you about before.”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” my mother said with an angry laugh. She paused to glare at me as if I had somehow orchestrated this, and then turned back to Billy. “That’s perfect. That’s just . . . What about me, Billy? How about the fact that you should have defended me in there?”

“I know. You’re right, okay? But come on, what do you expect? I’m just . . . Billy. You know I screw everything up.” He made a
sad face.

My mother turned to go.

“Please.” Billy grabbed her arm. “I know you’re pissed off, but just hear me out, okay? It’s important.”

“Of course it is,” she said, shaking her arm free from his grasp. “Everyone is important but me.”

Billy sighed.

My mother folded her arms across her chest. “Make it quick.”

“Like I said,” Billy started, lowering his voice to a whisper, “I’m just concerned because something happened when we were playing pool in the basement and—”

My mother put a hand up to stop him. “Hold on,” she said. She turned to Matthew and me. “Kids, get in the car.”

Reluctantly, I climbed into the backseat of the Blue Bomb and then rolled down the window, straining to hear the rest of the conversation about me. Uncle Billy’s arms were reaching out pleadingly while my mother’s remained tightly wrapped around her chest. They both turned at one point and looked at me. Then all at once, my mother reared back and struck Uncle Billy across the face.

I gasped.

Uncle Billy bowed his head as if he had deserved it.

“This is just like you people!” she shouted loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. “You know, I always thought you were different. But you’re just like the rest of them. I won’t let you do it. I will not let you make me think I’m a bad mother! You just want everybody to be screwed up like you are! Well, screw you! Screw all of you! I’m done with this family.”

My mother marched toward the car, got in and slammed the door shut.

My father came running out, his glasses smashed and dangling from one ear like an earring. He climbed into the driver’s seat and checked his battered reflection in the mirror.

“Go!” my mother said.

My father started the engine.

I turned back to the window to wave good-bye to my uncle Billy—the pothead who lived in my grandparents’ basement—the only one who noticed when I was drowning. He raised his hand but did not wave it. I thought that he looked sad.

“You know you still owe me ten bucks for that bet, kiddo,” he shouted as my father pulled away from the curb. Then he gave me a small smile and did a little uppercut jab at the air.

I would not see him again.