“So what do you want, a doctor’s note? You want me to write her a letter and say you’re all better, that you won’t have any more panic attacks from sticking around? That you’re not staying here outof obligation?”
Not a bad idea,a really dumb part of my brain tells me, the part of my brain that’s exhausted and lonely and terrified of losing Greer. Instead I say, “No.” But it sounds sullen. It sounds like I’ve been caught out after curfew, not that I ever had one of those. It sounds like I’m telling her I wouldn’t jump off a cliff if allmy friends did.
For a good half minute, neither of us says anything, and in that time all the hope and adrenaline of my memory seems to drain out of me. I feel it pool at my feet, feel my body sink by degrees into it. I think of Greer in that bed, her already blackening eye and her braced wrist, the tight line of her mouth as she’d turned her face from me.
“She kickedyou out, huh?”
I nod, keeping my chin down. My throat is tight; my eyes are wet. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a hug so bad in my life. It’s humiliating, what I’m thinking right now. Unprofessional and probablydisrespectful.
I’m thinking about what it’d be like to have someone like Patricia for a mom.
“You know that’s not necessarily about you, right? Her tellingyou to leave?”
“I know she doesn’t like me seeing her this way. She’s—” I pause, think it over. I want to use the exact right words. “She’s proud of herself, for being as strong as she is. It’s hard for her to have a setback.”
It’s Patricia’s turn to nod, and I know I’ve put her in a tough spot here, or at least I know we’ve put each other in a tough spot, sharing Greer between us. I may be Patricia’s patient, someone who pays her for her services, but Greer’s more than that to her.
When we’re moving side by side again, Patricia takes a deep breath. “I’m sure it’s hard for you too. You finally figure out you can stay somewhere, and once you do, you’re not needed anymore.”
“Jesus, Patricia. You want to kick me in the nuts whileyou’re at it?”
“Again with this drama. You can take it. But you can’t sit around outside the hospital and wait for her. It’s not good foreither of you.”
“I want to show her that I can be here for her. Not just that I can be. ThatI want to be.”
Patricia doesn’t look over at me, but I can feel her thinking, turning something over in her mind. “I’m not charging you for this,” she says, a blunt, brook-no-argument tone to her voice. “This isn’t me giving youtherapy, okay?”
“Okay.”
She stops again, puts her hands on her hips as she looks up at me, her serious face almost funny in those big blue sunglasses, if I were in the mood to find anything at all funny.
“I need to try and say this in a way that’s professional.” She looks down, takes in her track pants and T-shirt, and shrugs. “Imagine you’re a person,” she finally says, choosing her words carefully. “Imagine you’re a person who had years—painful, scary years—when people weren’t hearing what you told them. Abouthow you felt.”
Except you,I think, and nothing about Patricia is even almost funny now. She should be standing there with some kind of medal around her neck, for saving Greer. Forhearing Greer.
“And then afterward, everyone who’s ever loved you said you weren’t strong enough to do things on your own. Can you imagine it?”
She’s asking it rhetorically; we both know I can’t. It may well be the biggest gulf there is between me and Greer. No one’s ever taught me I wasn’t strong enough. No one’s ever taught me there was an option to be anything but on my own. So I don’t say anything at all. I wait for her to finish like I’m waitingfor a verdict.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, Alex. But maybe the way you show her is to go. Maybe you leave, and she’ll know you believe she’s tough enough to take it.”
Chapter 19
Greer
“Mom,” I say, my voice croaky and slightly impatient, my fingers clenched around the phone. I repeat it when she doesn’t seem to have heard me—when she continues right on, reminding me for what must be the hundredth time about “the scare you gave thewhole family.”
“I’ve taken a Xanax every morning since the accident. I don’t see why you won’t come here andstay with us.”
From my spot on the couch, I lift my still-heavy head from where it rests on two pillows I’ve stacked behind me and peer past where Kenneth’s perched at my feet. Outside the front window I see the tidy post light that stands between our townhouse and the neighbor’s, the orangey glow that lights the pond’s geyser-like fountain. Every once in a while, a beam of light crosses through the room, and I hear the gentle swish of tires moving slowly through the neighborhood, no one ever going faster than the prescribed, frequently posted 20 mph, lest they attract Joyce’s Listserv wrath. I close my eyes and think about the city—noise and light and open all night, and so far away right now I don’t ever feel like I’llget back there.
“Because I’m fine,” I tell her. “I don’t need to be staying with anyone.”
“Ava says you kicked her out.”
I sigh, set my fingers against my sternum, feeling it fall with my exhale. “Mom, you know she didn’t say that.” When Ava had come to the hospital Sunday morning, a small backpack of my clothes in her hand, I’d asked her to help me change in the bathroom, away from the prying ears of my mom, who’d done averyauthentic shocked face when she’d returned to find Alex gone. “Please, Ava,” I’d said to her, my chin wobbling. “Please, just let me have a few days to myself.” She’d hugged me when I cried, had helped me wash my face and comb my hair into something presentable. She’d told me she’d stay at Doug’s place, and I’d said, “Who even knew Doug had an apartment,” and both of us had laughed before I started cryingall over again.
She left me all herbath bombs too.
