The Believing Game (8 page)

Through the dining room windows, we saw three squad cars pull right up on the lawn, lights flashing. I remember the red and blue lights spilling into the room, the wide O of Parker's mouth, and then my father simply reached over and closed his hand over the pistol. Parker kept sobbing and trembling, even as the kindly policeman led him away. It was all so pitiful.

I told Joshua this. Then, to fill in the blanks, I told him the rest.

“And he claimed it was because his father whipped him?” Joshua sounded doubtful.

“Parker was telling the truth.”

“Did you see it?” No. I heard later, from my mother's whispered phone conversations with my aunt Shelby, that it was true. The police took pictures of the marks on his back at the station. But I would have known anyway. My father's brother is a callous ass. When his son pointed a gun at us, I'd been sitting on Uncle Brady's lap. And he held me there, even shifted position so that I blocked his chest.

Joshua let out a low whistle. “And that was the worst part?” he asked. “Realizing that?”

“More like realizing that it didn't matter. No one ever called him on it.” It killed me that Parker got sent away, but my dad still golfed with Uncle Brady on the third Saturday of each month. My parents went to dinner with Brady and Shelby. My mom commiserated when my aunt moaned about Parker's latest setback. His setback, I wanted to shout into the receiver, was having that dad.

“You felt betrayed by them.”

“Not personally. It was more like it taught me that the world wasn't fair.” We lay there quiet for a few minutes. I realized, to mild shock, that I hadn't thought of Addison
for the past few minutes. And it felt easier between Joshua and me.

And then Joshua said, “It makes sense to me now.” He sounded happy, excited.

“What does?”

“What would you say if I told you that was it?”

“What was it?”

“Greer, you have to open yourself up to the idea. It's not an easy one to conquer.”

Oh God,
I thought to myself.
This is when he asks me for a blow job.
But instead he asked, “You were how old?”

“Ten.”

“Ten! See? On the cusp of womanhood.” That was a little younger than the cusp of womanhood, I wanted to point out. But Joshua continued, undeterred, “That was the gateway.”

“I'm sorry — I'm not following you.”

“What would you say if I told you that you never left that room?”

“But I did leave the room.” As soon as they'd cuffed Parker, my uncle had leapt to his feet. I might have even slid to the ground. There was shouting — “You little shit!” my uncle had hollered.

My mother had bellowed, “That's enough!” and hustled Eliza and me into her and Dad's bedroom in the back of the house, while my aunt Shelby followed her around, whimpering apologies. “Shelby, for God's sake —” my mother had said. “Go see to your child!”

“What if you didn't?”

“You mean what if I had died there?”

“Did you believe you were going to die?”

I thought back. The gun had looked oversized and clumsy in Parker's hands. Not like a toy. When he pointed it, I stared
at it, into it. Maybe I was adding this to the memory — the sense that the muzzle was full of a deep nothingness and I could stare right into it.

Most likely, though, that was my own sense of melodrama warping it. I searched and searched and all I could remember is feeling pinned against Uncle Brady's chest — trapped, unable to breathe or scream. My scalp felt wet and cold. Maybe I was sweating.

“Yes.” As soon as I said it, I felt certain of it. A flash of memory — I had pictured my entire fifth-grade class assembled. Would the principal solemnly inform them? I figured they would gather around my empty desk at school. No one would sit there for the rest of the year. “Yes,” I repeated. Swiveled my head to try to search out Joshua's eyes in the almost dark.

“That's right,” he told me softly, like he had known all along and I'd just confirmed it for him. “What if that was all it took to change the arrangement of the universe?”

“I'm sorry?” We had veered into a weird turn. Joshua sat up to explain. Clearly that signified the seriousness of the matter.

“You were very young. Too young to imagine your own death, to experience something that horrific. So, yes, your father swooped in for the gun. Your uncle released you. That happened in one piece of the universe. But maybe in some other fragment — you stopped growing right there, right where you imagined your life cut off. You never left that room.”

“That doesn't make any sense —”

“But it does, Elizabeth. Think about the methods of self-destruction you've selected: men — like all the men in the
room who failed you. Theft — as if to make up for all that life that was stolen from you.”

It was elegant, but untrue. I knew that, but Joshua's fervor could be contagious. And anyway, wouldn't it help to have one afternoon to blame all my screwups on? I thought of the long hours in one-on-one therapy, trying to thaw the remote frost of our family. Or the hours I'd spent trying to verbalize the plain fact that I'd never be good enough to rival Eliza, to even vaguely satisfy my mother.

“What does that mean, then?” Meaning:
What do I have to do?

“It means you are one of the most fortunate, the most blessed, Elizabeth. You don't have to answer for your time. According to the universe, it's all extra. Isn't that freeing?”

Kind of. But also creepy.
“Because I'm dead in a room?”

“Because part of you is. It's okay if you haven't fully processed this possibility — it's a lot to comprehend. Take some time to allow yourself room for faith and we'll talk about it more in the coming days. For now you should rest. You should sleep.” Joshua's words seemed to drag over me slowly. I hadn't planned to doze at all. But right then, without even feeling self-conscious, I sank into sleep.

I slept through my alarm. And through Joshua's exit. When I made the bed, I found a scrap of paper under my pillow. Joshua's shaky handwriting:
E
LIZABETH — YOU ARE LIKE A STAR, UNAWARE OF ITS OWN BRILLIANCE
.
I folded it in thirds and stuck it behind one of Addison's sketches. So now Joshua was like my own bizarre, New Age tooth fairy.

I heard Sophie's familiar rap against the door, followed by her voice, concerned, calling my name. I shouted to her that I was fine, and that I was alone, and that she should go ahead without me.

I slipped into statistics class right as the soft tone sounded over the loudspeaker. I shot a quick smile toward Addison, who looked worried. I didn't feel like reassuring him, though.
Focus on the numbers,
I told myself. I worked through each of the problems in the chapter review without allowing my mind to drift to alternate realms or the meaning of life. Afterward he hung back like I knew he would, and I made sure to keep my voice even. Open. I didn't even understand why I was angry with him.

He picked up his pace to keep up with me. “You okay?”

“I'm fine. Overslept.”

“Late night?”

Um, yeah. You know that.
But I just said, “Yes.”

“Joshua said you did a great job listening. To him and yourself.” It wasn't even ten o'clock yet. Addison had already checked in with him. I refused to comment. “Maybe we can bring lunch out to the quad? After lit class? Talk about it then?”

This was a gift. I preferred eating outside. You could put together a salad in a plastic case or make a quick sandwich and then be done with it. You didn't have to sit in a room smelling of all different kinds of food. Reeking of bacon.

But. For whatever reason, I wasn't ready to accept any grand gestures from Addison.

“Nah,” I said. He looked confused. “I had to skip breakfast. I might want seconds.”

“I don't know, Greer. Joshua doesn't usually work miracles.” On another day, it might have been funny. I mean, even if it wasn't exactly hilarious to me, I could see why someone else might find that comment funny. Unexpected.

I tried to keep my voice easy. No big deal. “When you say that, it makes me feel as if it would be wrong for me to eat more food. Like I should feel embarrassed to be hungry.” Dr. Saggurti would be proud. Cause-and-effect statement. Accurate description of my emotional state.

“Greer — it was a joke.” Addison's brow furrowed in a way that I ordinarily found compelling. “You know that was a joke.”

“Yeah, I get it. But I thought you'd want to know how that joke makes me feel.” I shrugged again. No big deal. Never a big deal.

“What is your problem? You said you were okay last night. Did something happen? Joshua said —”

“I don't care what Joshua said.” Ahead of us, Sophie and Hannah swung around to gawk at us. I lowered my voice. “Did it maybe occur to you to check in with me before Joshua? To ask me how I thought it went, instead of awarding me the gold star of Joshua Stern's approval? I mean, Jesus Christ.”

“I
tried
to check in with you. This morning, at breakfast. I skipped lifting to try to catch up with you before class.” And I could tell by the way he said it that it was supposed to count for something huge — he missed time at the gym. I slept with his guru breathing down my neck, but Addison had skipped his morning meathead session so we were pretty much even.

He held open his hand to me, bewildered. This was the kind of crap I did. He'd asked if I was okay with last night. I'd said yes. And the truth was, the whole thing wasn't half as bad as I'd thought it would be. I hadn't been molested or caught or thrown out of school. Maybe Joshua had even provided insight. Completely bizarre insight. But it was something. A glimpse. I'd overslept and rushed around, but none of that was Addison's fault.

I saw his hand.
All you have to do is reach for it,
I thought to myself. I willed myself to do it the way I sometimes had to will myself to reach for a piece of bread at the salad bar when I knew the monitoring teacher was watching. It felt like that — like accepting something meant giving something else up.

I reached out and tapped the inside of his palm with my index finger.

“Greer, Greer — I just want you near,” Addison sang softly. He walked me to government class. “I'll meet you at lunch? Um … in the dining hall?”

“I'll show up more normal,” I swore.

“Promises, promises.” But he grinned, relieved. And so was I. It felt like I had narrowly escaped some grave disaster. He was one of the kindest people I'd ever met. The whole time Mr. Lanre lectured on the idea of separation of powers, I kept reminding myself of that.

 

Lunchtime was kind of a tug-of-war. Addison obviously felt owed some kind of reassurance from me, but Sophie had stayed up most of the night, patrolling. She wanted details. “I can't explain it.” I said it to her, but I was talking to both of them. “Nothing really happened, but I feel like what we talked about should be private.”

They both looked hurt, but Addison recovered faster. “Makes sense.”

Sophie snorted. “What is this guy now — your priest?”

“Enough with the interrogation — what are we doing tonight?”

“It's Wednesday. You're going to group,” Sophie said. “Unless you tell them Father Joshua Stern has miraculously healed you. Then we can watch
Top Chef
.”

“I skip eating disorder group so that we can watch a cooking show?”

“Sounds right to me.”

Addison said carefully, “It could be worse — when's
The Biggest Loser
on?”

“See? That's funny.”

“As long as you say so. I don't want to come off as insensitive.” Sophie and I laughed. “I'm serious.” Addison started stacking up all his wrappers and crap onto his tray. He could eat so much in a single sitting. It amazed me sometimes.

“I know you're serious.”

Sophie cackled. “Addison Bradley, that's pathetic. You are easily the standard for sensitive men everywhere.”

“Not always.” He shook his head, gazing at me. “I try pretty hard, but not always.”

 

That night in group, I probably spoke more than I had in the entire first three months of weekly meetings. This time, I showed up with a checklist of questions I wanted answered. Dr. Saggurti looked like she wanted to award me the Most Improved Anorexic Award.

“Speaking hypothetically,” I hedged my bets, “let's say you experience a traumatic event while eating a meal — a memorable meal. Could that imprint somehow?” I tried to make myself clear. “Could that give you an eating disorder?”

“That's a fascinating question, Greer.” Dr. Saggurti practically glowed. “The short answer is yes. For instance, many cases of anorexia have been documented in children who'd recently had some kind of choking episode. The child associates food with fear and then that grows into a disorder very similar to the disease of an older sufferer. It just has its root in a different kind of source.”

“But say it wasn't choking? What if you wrecked your car going through the McDonald's drive-through or something?” Dr. Saggurti wrinkled her nose at me. “I'm serious.” I tried again. “What if you're little and a meal you had associated with fun or comfort suddenly seemed really scary and dangerous?”

“Well, I suppose it would make sense for one to develop emotional issues around food and eating.” Dr. Saggurti chose her words carefully.

So did I. “So maybe if a person were to talk through his or her issues, the symptoms might disappear?”

“Well, that's the best-case scenario. An individual might wander into eating disordered behavior through some sort of trauma. But then patients often discover that they can use their behavior with food as a kind of coping mechanism. The benefits of the coping mechanism quickly overshadow the rest. And, of course, many eating disorder cases have nothing to do with an initial trauma.”

I filed away the info for later on, to talk over with Joshua, and spent the rest of the hour attentively listening to people discuss their fear foods and body dysmorphia. I caught Dr. Saggurti studying me thoughtfully at least twice and had to talk myself down from a blind panic that she might contact my parents for background about a possibly traumatic meal lodged somewhere in my psyche. The parental figures would not be cool with that. They'd refer to it as “making excuses.”

The next day at Sal's, Joshua called it progress. “I'm so relieved that you found our time together productive,” he practically cooed. “When you invest time in yourself, you reap huge rewards. You become more of who you are.”

Joshua and Addison were sharing a pizza as I nursed my usual Diet Coke. I'd discovered a useful trick. As long as I thoughtfully examined my “disordered behavior” at the table, Joshua reserved his comments on my food. Or the lack of it. I didn't even have to order my usual halfhearted salad to sit around and make vague promises of self-improvement.

“We need to go on a retreat,” Joshua proclaimed. Addison smiled and nodded, as if this was a tradition. Joshua gazed at me. “It's the perfect time. It will capitalize on your breakthrough.”

“What's a retreat?” I meant for people like us. My dad had been on plenty of corporate retreats. I understood people went away and did bonding exercises and discussed productivity. They roasted marshmallows in a fireplace and sometimes drank too much. I knew this much from my mother, who enjoyed making passive-aggressive comments about my father's corporate retreats in front of their friends.

“Sometimes you need to journey together to clarify a shared perspective,” Joshua explained. I looked to Addison for a translation.

“We go off somewhere. We spend time together, talk a lot, live as a family. It's nice.”

I eyed both of them. Were they crazy? McCracken was not the kind of place that allowed students to plan their own school trips.

“Where would we go?” Joshua asked Addison.

Addison played with the saltshaker. He turned to me, as if suddenly struck by an idea. “Sophie has a place somewhere, right? In the Poconos?”

“
Her parents
have a place,” I corrected him.

“That would be perfect,” Addison said. “I'll bet it's a cabin, right? In the woods? As long as there's a working kitchen, we can cook our own meals. Build a fire in the fireplace. Play cards, watch movies —”

“We can have very thorough times of talk and self-reflection.” Joshua's voice was firm. He started drumming his fingers on the table. “Elizabeth, where's your notebook? It would help if you wrote down these plans.”

I had one hand in my backpack, tugging my Moleskine out before I tried to stop the madness. “Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves here? It's kind of presumptuous. We don't
actually know her parents.” Both Addison and Joshua just looked at me. “And how would we swing permission for this?”

“Greer —” Addison started to speak.

Joshua held up one hand to stop him.
“Elizabeth,”
he said, like he was correcting Addison. “You need to learn to play the believing game.”

“The what?”

“Nothing good in this world happens without faith. If you don't believe it into being, the dream just dies unrealized.”

“We're talking about a road trip. S'mores and Pictionary, right?” I want to press it, to say,
Not everything has to be so goddamn lofty.
But the two of them had launched a new mission. I played the dutiful secretary. I took notes and tried to keep the dubious look off my face.

“This will be a retreat focused on self-esteem and inner peace,” Joshua announced solemnly. “I will explain the need to the dean. We'll request the presence of you and Greer. Jared Polomsky. Everett Wesley.”

I looked to Addison. “Wes,” he explained.

Joshua listed, “Sophia, of course. Hannah Green.”

My pen paused. “Why Hannah?”

“Why not Hannah?”

Because I thought she was too fragile to deal with Joshua. Because I thought she couldn't deflect his philosophical onslaught. I said, “I'm just not sure she'd want to spend so much time with us. You know, she's not always so comfortable with people.”

“What would you say if I told you that Hannah Green is the loneliest person you've ever met?”

“That wouldn't actually be a shocking revelation, Joshua.” He sat back as if astonished and seemed to study me. “What?”

“You know that about Hannah?”

I tried to keep my tone matter-of-fact. No big deal. “Most people know that about Hannah. She has … she kind of has this wounded bird quality.”

“Well, I find it hard to stomach that you could know that and not support alleviating her suffering. That's not like you, Elizabeth.”

“It's not that —”

“Do you feel threatened by Hannah Green?” Joshua asked.

I swung my head to look at Addison. “Seriously?”

“Joshua —” Addison only sort of halfheartedly interrupted.

“What else does it look like? Be honest. Maybe Addison looks a little too long at Hannah? And it makes you uncomfortable? That's on Addison, then. It's his job to make you feel loved and secure.” Joshua added a scolding tone to his voice. “My man, you're not doing your job.”

“That's not his job!” I shouted.

Addison shot me a hurt look. “Why wouldn't that be my job?”

“That's no one's job.” I still sounded borderline hysterical. I muttered, “It shouldn't be a job.”

“Hannah needs this. I would even hazard to claim that she is our sole reason for planning a trip together. It will be a family trip. And Hannah needs a family.”

Somehow it seemed to me that the only person who ever won the believing game was Joshua. But Addison looked so excited and hopeful. That's what I should have been noticing: the incredible guy across from me who wanted to play house. Who now bent his head forward toward me and asked, “Will you ask Sophie?” I hesitated. Addison went on, “Joshua's
going to speak to the dean. I'll handle the rest of the logistics. You two have grown so close — I figure it would be weird for me to ask.”