Oblivion (7 page)

I hate the way he says it, as if my uncontrollable affliction is akin to sexual desire, and therefore—especially in the context of a Catholic institution—naughty, dirty, wicked. Something I should put a cap on, for the whole of human decency.

“Forgive me for saying so, Miss Knowles, but this”—he
indicates the words on my arm—“this doesn’t look like control to me.”

Nausea instantly returns. Sweat beads on my forehead.

I massage my temples. Take a deep breath.

It’s been a month since I’ve taken my pills. I wonder if I’m heading back there, to that dark place, where I don’t sleep, don’t eat, can’t focus, can’t function without a pen in my hand.

“Miss Knowles?”

What?

I pull my notebook from my backpack … just in case.

“Callie? Are you all right?”

The scent of lake fills my nostrils.

Rain beats on the back of my neck, my shoulders.

Sounds of the shovel, of digging, echo:
Clink, thunk. Clink, thunk
.

Everything’s white. Not bright, rather dim. But white. The square of a white area rug: I know what it feels like under my bare toes. The gauzy draperies across the room: I remember how they billow, when the breeze sweeps in off the water. The linen closet down the hall holds white linens.

My fist clenches around a strand of beads so tightly that my fingers ache.

I glance down at a bejeweled, pewter crucifix—crown of thorns hanging from the neck, shroud draped over the arms.

“Callie!”

I blink away the vivid images, and Ritchie’s office bleeds into sight.

I’m coughing over tears.

My red felt-tip is secure in my grip.

“Callie?”

I glance up at Dean Ritchie, then down at my notebook, where I’d scribbled over and over again:

Smile as you condone her.

Smile as you condone her.

Smile smile smile smile smile.

As you condone condone condone condone condone condone condone her.

L
indsey glances at me from behind the wheel of her Honda Accord. She hates the car—she wanted a convertible Camaro—but Mr. Hutch is a big believer in safety and stomped on her pleas. “Dude, that’s fucked up.”

I shrug and shove a Tootsie Pop into my mouth.

She isn’t taken aback with my dreaming about the crucifix my mother sketched, which might be the pendant she’s been babbling about for the past year or so. And I didn’t dare tell her I was dreaming about a place I recognize but don’t remember, although I’m certain that would give her equal pause. Simply, in Lindsey’s world, it’s fucked up that I blacked out in Dean Ritchie’s office.

“How mortifying!” She turns up the Sirius XM station
and proceeds to scream over the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

After my graphomania attack, Dean Ritchie called the Hutches and my caseworker, who in turn called the shrink, who decided I ought to go in for a face-to-face meeting. The dean granted Lindsey and me special permission to leave school grounds, so as to fit me into the good doctor’s schedule.

“In any case, thanks for giving me a free pass out of trig.” She drums her fingertips against the steering wheel. “Wanna smoke a bowl?”

I chuckle. “No.”

“Pack one for me.”

“And you say you aren’t addicted to pot.”

“Physically impossible.”

“I didn’t say the addiction was physical.” I reach into the center consul, and locate her stash.

“Hey, has Jon said anything about the note?”

My heart stumbles in my chest. “Um …” I pull the candy from my mouth, swallow hard, and think about the note in my pocket. I’ve felt its outline—and found much comfort in it—no fewer than fifteen times since I woke up on the cot in the nurse’s office. “I think he said thanks.”

“Thanks? That’s it?”

“Yeah.” I lick the sugary substance from my lips and hope my sister can’t read the nervous tremble in my voice. “Why? What’s he said to you since?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. And as idiotic as that is, it only makes me want him more. Dude, we have to write to him again.”

Forty-three words inscribed on my forearm in permanent ink.

Nausea.

A blackout and a school official’s witnessing my graphomania firsthand.

And Dr. Warren Ewing asks me about boys.

He’s youngish for a shrink, maybe thirty, with a frat-boy look about him—preppy clothes, tousled brown hair, Doc Martens. He’s staring at me above his square, horn-rimmed glasses—very retro Buddy Holly.

“Elijah.” He spins a pen—a fine-point black gel-writer by Papermate, comfort grip—like a miniature baton between his fingers. “When was the last time you saw him?”

I shrug. “Couple of days ago.”

“And?”

“And, what?” I hate this part of therapy—the prodding, the poking, the nosiness.

Dr. Ewing raises his eyebrows, urging me to continue.

When I don’t, he taps his fingers together. “Elijah has been, historically, an outlet for you. In your own words, your only trusted confidant at County, and sometimes he’s a direct connection with the cessation of the impulse to write. So when I ask about him, I’m not trying to pry into
your personal life, but Elijah is pertinent here.”

He’s right, of course. As always.

“I’m not ashamed of hooking up with him.”

“In telling me that—repeatedly—you convey that you assume I think you should be ashamed.”

“I know you don’t think I should be with him.”

“I never said that. Sex can be very healthy.”

“Is it, though? I mean, between Elijah and me?” I want to shut up, but before I know it, I’m spewing details of the force I felt during the ethereal fog, which preempted the red Sharpie, and how it all emerged out of thoughts of my sometimes boyfriend. “Maybe it’s a sign that I shouldn’t trust him anymore.”

“Maybe, but not necessarily.”

“Sometimes I think … it’s like he’s afraid I’ll remember what happened … the night Palmer and Hannah disappeared.”

“You think so?”

I shrug. “Maybe he’s afraid of what I might’ve done.”

“Maybe he’s detrimental to this process.” Dr. Ewing tilts his head. “Maybe he’s essential. We don’t know. Either way, dreams can be contrary. Or representative of elements in your reality.”

My reality. I wonder if mine is similar to my mother’s. Shouldn’t reality be stagnant? The same for everyone? “It wasn’t a dream. I felt the biting, like it was real.”

He nods. Gives his Papermate another spin. “Do you have marks, where you felt it? Some trauma patients self-mutilate.”

“No.” A sense of relief floods me. There’s a lot wrong with me, but I don’t do that.

“Do you think … did you write about the dream? On your arm?”

“Well, I don’t know if it was a dream, but … no. Not really.” I yank up my sleeve and present the scrawling to my shrink. “It’s gruesome.”

He’s careful not to touch me, but he leans close as his eyes follow over the words. “ ‘Pressed,’ ” he reads. “As in
for time
?”

“To death … I think.”

His eyes widen, but he quickly recovers and gives me his generic response: “Hmm.”

“The words were just … there,” I offer because I can’t tell him anything else, and he’s probably getting as frustrated as I am with my lack of awareness and information.

I assume Ewing’s goals with these sessions, while officially centered around my well-being, have something unofficially to do with a missing girl, and the fate of a missing-in-action suspect—my father. Ewing’s a court-appointed shrink, after all, and if I know anything about anyone state-appointed, I know they don’t act solely on behalf of their wards.

“And this blackout in the dean’s office. Tell me about it.”

“It was like a daydream.” I shrug. “I was in a white room, holding a rosary.”

“Rosary.” Ewing massages his clean-shaven chin with a few fingers. “Correct me if I’m wrong …” His spoken
thoughts trail into a misty atmosphere.

I shake my head, only to watch words disappear from the backs of my eyelids:
ashes amber her through sift
.

And just like that, they’re gone—in reverse order.

“Look, I didn’t mean to write it in Sharpie,” I say. “I wasn’t trying to be insubordinate.”

“No one thinks you were.”

“Then why was I sitting in the dean’s office?”

“Because, Calliope, people are worried about you. Are you taking your medication?”

After a long pause, and a hard suck on my candy, I say, “Yeah.”

He blinks expectantly behind his Buddy Hollys. “Callie, the meds are there for a reason.”

“I’m taking them.”

“No, you’re not.”

I break the gaze. It’s no use lying to him.

“Remember,” he says, “we discussed this.”

I shrug. “What makes you feel alive, Warren?” His first name feels foreign on my tongue, but I let it roll around on the tip with sugary grape Tootsie Pop for a few seconds: Warren, Warren, Warren. It makes him more person and less doctor.

“My work, I suppose. Love for my kids and my wife. Skydiving. Why? What makes you feel alive?”

“Two things.” I yank the nearly disintegrated lollipop from my mouth and lean forward, my elbows on my knees.
“My time with Elijah, and words. I don’t care about either, about anything, really, when I’m dosed up on Ativan. I don’t care about not remembering, and remembering is …” I shake my head. “I have to remember.”

His brow creases, as if in deep thought, as if he’s attempting to find a way to talk me out of believing what I said.

I twirl the lollipop stick in time with Ewing’s pen. “As much as I hate the compulsion of the graphomania, I think maybe it feeds me, stirs me, motivates me to remember.” Remembering is essential. Once I remember, I can be normal again. And when it’s all too much for me to handle, Elijah drowns the words. “Medicate me, and you might as well have my soul.”

For a while, he doesn’t say anything. Simply holds my gaze with furrowed brow.

I refuse to blink.

Finally, he claps his pen down onto the coffee table and offers a hand, palm up.

Tentatively, I slide my cool fingers into the heat of his grasp. I wonder if this violates his doctor-patient ethics code, which seems silly. He’s just holding my hand across the expanse of the coffee table, after all. It isn’t a sexual as much as a supportive gesture. One I suspect many fathers might extend to their daughters. But not mine, even before he disappeared.

“Do you know what you just said?”

I begin to shake my head.

“You’re beginning to see some good in this affliction, a means to remembering what you’ve forgotten.”

An uncomfortable chill squirms up my spine.

“The one-year anniversary of the disappearance is coming up. There’s bound to be an increase in media coverage of the case, discussions about it, what have you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you started remembering more these next few weeks.”

“More? More writing?” I already feel the headache of it. “I can’t. I just … I can’t.”

“You can.”

Tension pulls at my chest, the same sensation I get just before I start to fade away, just before the words come.

“I wish I knew what to do for you,” he says.

“I know.” I break the shared glance to let him off the hook—I’ve never expected him to find the solution to my problem—but his grip tightens when I try to pull away.

“Someday, I promise you, you’ll embrace these words. Control the compulsion, even. And someday, you’ll enjoy being with someone, whether it chases those words away or not. Someday, you’ll seek it for its own sake.”

I shift in my seat under the influence of his green-eyed stare. “Is it normal that I … that I like it?” It feels funny to even ask, but I have to know. I’m not like Lindsey, who’s no prude, but doesn’t think about it as often as I do, and because she’s the standard by which I measure the norm.…

“Yes,” Ewing says. “It’s healthy to enjoy sex.”

Palmer didn’t think so, and he drove that point home. He assumed I’d been sleeping around long before I lost my virginity—and I didn’t lose it until he was long gone.

“In the meantime, do me a favor.” Ewing pinches the bridge of his nose. “Please take the medication.”

A tear travels down my cheek. I wonder when I started crying. Defiantly, I refuse to wipe it away. “I want to be normal,” I say. “Like Lindsey.”

“I’ll bet Lindsey has her own share of problems.”

I ignore him. “I want the biggest concern of my day to be my French exam. I want to worry about which brand of eyeliner doesn’t smudge by third period, push the limits by hemming my skirt an extra inch, and wonder if the guy in my calculus class likes me.”

John Fogel’s note taunts me from my pocket.

The trouble is that I don’t know if I’d recognize normal, even if I were to do all those things. My life has never been mainstream.

“That’s good,” Ewing says, at last releasing my hand. “Deciding what you want is often the first step.”

On impulse, without consciously deciding to do so, I reach into my skirt pocket and extract the note. I start to unfold it. “I think I’m starting to remember something.” I glance up at Ewing, and this time don’t mind when he gives me the expectant stare. “Something about digging.”