The Practical Navigator (20 page)

“What way is that?”

“Like…” She turns to look at this maddening sphinx of a woman. “Like I'm going to start chewing on my arm, if I don't stop thinking all the time.”

“What is it you think about?”

“Lately?”

“Please.”

Fari watches as Anita Beacham hesitates, then moves back to her chair to pick her bag up off the floor where she's left it. She opens the purse and, after rummaging briefly, takes out a small photo. She offers it to Fari who takes it.

“This is my son.”

It's one of those posed school photos. The boy, blond, possibly five or six, is in a blue T-shirt. He stares blankly at the camera without expression.

Something familiar.

Fari hands it back. “He looks like you.”

“He's autistic.”

“I'm sorry. That must be difficult.”

“You know some people think autism is caused by uncaring mothers? Refrigerator moms. Great, huh?”

In over a month, two sessions a week, Fari has yet to see Anita Beacham cry. She suddenly wonders if today will be the day.

“They're mistaken.”

“Are they? Are they really?”

“I'm not an expert on autism but it's my understanding that genetics and environmental factors play the most important role.”

“Great. I gave him defective genes and should have stayed away from bars and toxic dumps while pregnant.”

“Am I supposed to laugh at that?”

“I don't care what you do.”

Fari is silent as Anita turns her back to her again. Some patients can't talk if you're looking at them. Anita is one of them.

“I
was
a refrigerator.”

“I'm sorry?”

“A refrigerator mom. I might as well have been. I used to wake up every morning, dreading the day. I'd get out of bed, Michael'd already be gone…”

Fari forces herself to keep breathing.

“… and I'd be alone in the house, staring at walls. And then he'd start to cry. Jamie. And no matter what I did, feed him, hold him, change him, rock him, I couldn't make it better. I couldn't. I started hating him. My own baby and I hated him. And then I was afraid I was going to hurt him. That I was going to hurt me.”

A racing heart means adrenaline has kicked in. Adrenaline, Fari knows, allows you to use all your strength at once—but only once. “What you're describing, Anita, is an extreme form of postnatal depression. Were you seeing anyone about it?”

Anita shakes her head. Her eyes are shiny pools. “I didn't want anyone to know.”

“You mentioned a Michael. Who is Michael?” Good. Her voice was matter-of-fact. Even casual.

Anita turns from the window and again goes to her purse. She takes out and offers a second photo.

“This is my husband.”

Fari takes it. The snapshot is probably ten years old. A man and a woman in their twenties. Arms around each other. Smiling. Sun kissed. Radiant in their love. What a shame, thinks Fari, that innocence has only one season.

*   *   *

Something has happened and Anita isn't sure what. Dr. Akrepede's hand trembles slightly as she hands both the photos back. Her eyes are blinking rapidly. Anita watches as the woman carefully composes herself. Maybe she isn't always as together as she appears to be. It's an encouraging thought.

“Tell me how you met,” Dr. Akrepede softly says to her. “Tell me all about your husband.”

Though the smile is still distant and professional, Dr. Akrepede's voice, thinks Anita, is suddenly that of a dear, long-lost friend.

 

34

She has completed her freshman year of college and she has come home for the summer. Anxiety paralyzes her. She spends her days sitting by the pool, trying not to think, and her nights using a fake ID to drink in local college bars. Though asked out, she doesn't date. At the bars, she goes home with no one. She feels indifferent to anything in her life except the panic attacks. Her parents consider her objectiveless and lazy.

Dougie Nash's parents are in Idaho and he and his older brother, Jack, have decided to throw an impromptu get-together that will turn into a bacchanal for over two hundred underage partyers. Tim “Time” Warner is one of them. A freshman linebacker at the University of Arizona, he is drunk, baked, wired, and cranked and is in the company of several other boys who aren't much better. Tim Warner has always made her nervous. Senior year of high school he would stare at her as she passed in the hallways, the muscles in his jaw and forehead working, as if furious at her. Dougie Nash has told her that “Time likes you.” Great. An ape with a violent streak and a crush.

Having downed several solitary shots of vodka, she is outside by the pool, chatting with a group of unsteady girls, feeling it might be time to go home soon, when Tim Warner approaches. He stops, sucks on his beer, and stares at her. The underwater lights of the pool are on and the surface goggles like warped glass.

“Hi, Tim,” she ventures, knowing without a doubt that it really
is
time to go home.

“You think your shit's too good to eat?” he says to her. She recognizes the expression on his face. Recognizes the tone of voice. It's her father confronting her mother after more than several drinks. It means she is in jeopardy. There are people who try to break what they want and can't have and, like her father, this boy is one of them. As she turns away from him, he grabs her arm.

“I'm talking to you, cunt.”

She dislikes the word in general but especially hates it coming out of this ugly mouth. She pulls her arm away and slaps him hard across the face.

“Don't touch me,” she hisses.

Tim Warner grunts as if he's been waiting for an invitation to a party and it's finally come in the mail.

“Bitch.”

He grabs her arm again. She cries out as he twists and bends her to the side and down. And then a boy she has never seen before is wedging between them, as tall as Tim Warner but without the immense blocks of muscle.

“Time, hey! How you doing, dude? You getting out much?” The boy has a short, curly beard. Sun-streaked, woven dreadlocks fall to his shoulders.

Tim Warner's eyes narrow. His brow furrows as if it hurts to make his brain work. She is aware that everyone in their immediate vicinity has gone silent as if the wrong sound or gesture will detonate a bomb.

“Get the fuck away from me, Hodge.”

The boy doesn't seem to hear. “Arizona Wildcats, huh? You and Doug. Very well done.” The hand is off her now. She is aware that the tall boy is slowly edging the aggressor away. “Come on, man, I'll get you a beer, you fill me in.”

“I said get away from me, motherfucker!” Tim Warner swings a huge forearm at the boy's chest. The boy takes the blow on his own arms and, instead of backing away, pushes into Tim Warner, grabbing him and pulling him off balance. A moment of struggle and then the two of them go back over the edge and into the deep end of the pool.

It has happened so fast.

She moves to the side of the pool along with all the others—the babbling girls, the boys shouting out in excitement—to watch the two bodies locked and wrestling deep beneath the surface of the brightly lit water. Later she'll remember that she is afraid for the boy. She knows he is going to be killed because of her. The bodies twist and tangle. The water flumes. Moments pass.

“They're drownin',” says a drunken voice, as if it's amusing. She is suddenly aware that Tim Warner has stopped fighting and is trying to get to the surface, but that the other boy isn't letting him, is holding on, dragging Tim back, keeping him under. She can see Tim's face just beneath the clear shell of the pool water. His mouth is open. His eyes are wide with terror. His huge arms pull frantically and to no avail. She
is
going to get to see someone die. How interesting. But no, they break the surface together, Tim Warner gagging water, flailing and shrieking for breath. Behind him, the other boy, his nose streaming blood, has one arm across Tim's chest, the other tight around his neck.

“Don't make me take you back down!”

Tim “Time” Warner struggles weakly, coughs and sags. The boy pushes him toward the side of the pool, where Tim grabs the edge and holds on, exhausted. Blood drips into the water around the tall boy's bearded chin. She watches as he dunks his head. When he comes up and flings his matted hair back, the blood is gone. He turns and with two imperceptible strokes glides into the shallow end. Standing, he walks toward the steps. His T-shirt is ripped off his shoulder and in the reflected light of the pool she can see the welts of fingers and fists on his wet and glistening skin. Some other boys she doesn't quite recognize, obviously the boys he came with, are waiting for him as he comes up and out of the pool. They sing congratulations, offer high fives, praise him with their laughter. The boy—no, the young
man
—is obviously somebody to them. He turns now, glancing back in her direction. She doesn't look away. She knows that now that he's finished slaying the dragon, he will come to claim her. He nods slightly. He turns back to his friends. He accepts a towel and a fresh beer. Twenty minutes later, she watches from a distance as he and his friends depart. After several more shots of vodka, shots that do nothing for her, confused and disappointed, she goes home.

Several days after the party, she feels enough time has gone by to ask Dougie Nash about him. They are in his air-conditioned bedroom, under the covers. She has come not so much for sex as for information but one thing has led to another.

“The boy who went in the pool with Tim Warner. Do you know him?” Her voice is casual, the question posed as a curious afterthought. The pretense is probably wasted on Dougie Nash who is well into a postcoital doobie and is stoned.

“Whoa, you were there that night, Neeta?”

“You invited me.”

“I was wasted.”

“No kidding. Who was he? Hodge something.” He is like an image embedded in her brain. Sun-bleached Rasta hair and blood in the water.

“Hodgkins!” says Dougie Nash, delighted. “Yeah, it was him. Close bud with my bro.”

“Hodgkins? Like the disease?”

“No.
Duh.
Michael
Hodge.
Like an awesome surfer? Looking to go pro.”

She dislikes surfers. She dislikes the jargon, the no-worries attitude. She associates surfers with slackers. They are nerds with wet suits and boards rather than computers.

“Why, you into him?” says Dougie Nash. He makes a stupid face, makes panting noises. She decides on the spot he will never so much as touch her again.

“Don't be an asshole,” she says.

She isn't
into
anybody. But she is curious. Why did this Michael Hodge help her if not to hit on her? Why protect her if not to claim the reward?

“If you see him, say thanks for me, okay?” She's dressed now, ready to go. It feels good to know she won't be coming back.

“For what?”

“He'll know.”

“Sure you don't want the intro?”

“Don't be stupid.”

But she drives by Wind and Sea the next three nights running, wondering if one of the bobbing heads out in the water is him.

*   *   *

She sees him seven months later at—where else?—the Nashes' Christmas party. Families. Her mother and father, sister and brother. The Nashes and their children. Neighbors. Michael Hodge. The beard and dreads are gone and his thick hair is cropped close to his head. She likes him better this way. A gladiator. She is more aware of his eyes, how clear and steady they are. When he sees her, he immediately comes over.

“Hey,” he says, smiling.

“Hey,” she says, pushing the water glass of vodka off to the side.

“Merry Christmas.”

“To you.”

They don't ask each other's names. They don't acknowledge that this is the first time they've actually met. It's as if there's no need to waste time on getting to know each other. They keep sharing looks and tiny smiles that suggest secrets only the two of them possess. They take a single glass of white wine into the backyard.
He
does. She has decided not to drink any more tonight and is already regretting it. But then he inadvertently spills and, eyes locked with his, she takes his hand and licks the wine off his finger and it's just enough. The imminent sense of dread seems far away.

“All right,” she finally says.

“All right what?”

“All right thank you for what you did that night.”

He shrugs as if it were no big deal. “Glad I could help.”

“You never said anything after.”

“I know.”

“How come?”

“I was seeing someone. If I'd started talking to you, I would have had to stop seeing them.”

“Smart. Are you seeing anyone now?”

“If I was, I wouldn't be talking to you.”

“Good answer,” she says. The pleasure she's feeling she knows to be illogical and impermanent. Still, she would not lose this moment for anything.

A week and half later, without saying a word about what they both know is happening, they go down to the beach with a six-pack of beer and a sleeping bag. They have been inseparable. Coffee, movies, walks, swims, and meals. There have been kisses. There has been the holding of hands. There has been some minor touching. It is cold on the beach and the night is a canopy of stars overhead. She would consider it romantic if she believed in such things.

“Tell me what you like,” he says to her after a while.

“I like everything you're doing,” she tells him.

“You get to a place and you stop,” he says to her a while later.

“If you don't think I like this, like being here and doing this with you, you are so wrong.” She feels anxious that she's not pleasing him. It's certainly never been an issue before. But they start again and it all goes okay. Better than okay. Fake it to make it, her mother has told her. She was talking about dinner parties but it obviously applies to sex. And in pretending to have some kind of monster orgasm for him, in a way, more emotional than physical, she does. She feels she's in a cocoon with him, safe from the world, possibly changing. She feels the wetness in her and on her and, realizing they haven't used protection, she wonders if she'll get pregnant. It doesn't seem like it would be such a bad thing.