Zoe Letting Go (7 page)

“My mom glanced at me, but continued to rinse out a bowl. ‘Stop it,’ she said.

“I tried again. ‘I’m hungry,’ I whined. This time, Mom straightened up and got a furrowed look on her face. ‘There aren’t any leftovers tonight. Want cereal? Or …’ She looked vacantly around the kitchen. Then she frowned in a mom-like way—I remember the moment clearly—and came over to where I stood in the doorway. ‘Damn, Zoe’ she said, grabbing the hem of my shirt and scrubbing at it. ‘Sesame oil.’

“I looked down. There was a sesame oil stain on my shirt. But how had it gotten there? Then I realized: I
had
eaten dinner. I’d eaten a plate of stir-fry in front of the TV—probably a big one. Who knows? I could barely remember swallowing it down. I hadn’t tasted the food or remembered eating it because I’d been so focused on watching the show. My stomach didn’t
even remember, even though it was full of broccoli and diced red pepper. That’s how out of it I was. Completely gone. On another planet.”

I realized how much I’d been talking and clamped my mouth shut.

“What did the experience teach you?” Alexandra asked.

Ugh, what a therapist question.

“Mainly that the average human is crazier than you’d think.”

“Do you feel that way?”

I paused. The meaning of her question was unclear. Was she asking whether I felt crazy? Or whether I believed that most other humans are crazy? I hate when adults ask open-ended questions—I hate the phrase “open-ended question,” period. Questions should always be specific. That’s the whole point of asking them.

Alexandra registered my hesitation. “What we talk about here stays between you and me,” she assured me.

“I know.”

“The exception would be if I had reason to believe that you were at risk of harming yourself.”

“I’ve been in therapy before. You don’t have to read me my rights.”

“I see. You know the drill. How about I give you a few specifics, then? While we’re on the subject? We can circle back to your memory in a moment.”

“Fine,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“The first rule is simple. If my door is closed, it means I’m with someone. Otherwise, you are welcome to come in and have
a chat any time, if there’s something you’d like to address outside of our scheduled sessions.”

“Got it.”

“I’m here from nine a.m. until dinner, but if it’s an emergency, you may ask Devon to contact me. I don’t live far from here.”

This protocol seemed unlikely to become relevant, but I didn’t dwell on the matter. Instead I let my attention wander to Alexandra’s lipstick, which was the burnt-berry color of raspberry jam. In the white room, her mouth functioned like the signal at a tunnel’s end. Why did she wear such conspicuous lipstick? Maybe it encouraged patients to concentrate on what she was saying.

I nodded absently until she finished running through the ground rules of therapy. It was nothing I hadn’t heard before in my wide and varied experience with shrinks.

“Any questions?” she asked at the end of her spiel.

“Yes,” I said. “Not about the rules, though.”

“That’s fine. Go ahead.”

“Can I be honest?”

“I hope you will be.”

No problemo
, I thought.

“I’ve been forcibly air-lifted into a house filled with girls who have forgotten how to function like human beings,” I said. “My roommate is unbalanced. I slept for two hours last night and have no way of contacting my family.”

“That’s actually not true,” Alexandra interjected.

“What’s not true?”

“You can contact your family, Zoe.”

I frowned. “That would be news to me, given that I have no phone or Internet access.”

“You can write letters.”

“Letters,” I repeated. “Great. Why stop at letters, though? Why not telegrams? Why not smoke signals?”

Alexandra smiled indulgently at my little tirade.

“How about a pair of soup cans connected by a piece of string?” I suggested. “I hear the reception on those things is great.”

“I’m just pointing out that letters are an option,” Alexandra said. “Are you cold?”

I looked down at my knees. They were trembling slightly. Had the temperature in the office dropped?

“It’s freezing in here,” I said. Despite the summer weather outside, my arms were stippled in goose bumps.

“I’m sorry,” Alexandra said, getting up from her chair. “I should have offered you something when we started.”

She opened a white lacquered chest and plucked a folded afghan from within, where perhaps a dozen identical blankets were folded and stacked in a tower. I blinked at the sight, recalling the chest upstairs from which Victoria had retrieved last night’s blankets. How many of these chests were there at Twin Birch? Alexandra handed me the blanket, which I draped over my lap. The material was lighter than a cotton ball.

“Better?” Alexandra asked.

It was better, but I was too guarded to confirm it. I didn’t like the fact that she had noticed my chilliness before I had. I get nervous when I can’t control other people’s perceptions of me. What else had she noticed?

“I try to keep the office comfortable, but the room gets drafty in the morning. Clean blankets are always in the chest, and you’re welcome to help yourself any time.”

“Thanks,” I said, working to keep my voice neutral. Alexandra wore a thin linen tunic and pants, I noticed. But she was evidently unbothered by the frosty air.

“Hot tea helps, too,” she added.

I assumed the tea was stashed somewhere in the same chest.

“Picking up from where we left off earlier,” Alexandra resumed briskly, “I get the sense that you feel disoriented here.”

“No,” I replied. “If I felt disoriented, that would mean that the solution would be to orient myself. But this is not an issue of adjusting to my environment. This is an issue of me being in the wrong environment entirely.”

“I see.”

It was hard to tell if my reply had penetrated her serene, white exterior.

“Perhaps you’d feel better if you spent some time writing a letter today,” Alexandra suggested.

“Letters again?” I said, exasperation creeping into my voice. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Very closely,” Alexandra said. “Most people, when confused, will either act out or clam up. You’ve done neither since arriving at Twin Birch.”

“Oh?” I said. “Tell me, then. What have I done?”

“You’ve watched,” Alexandra said, leaning in to look closely at me. “You’ve noticed.”

How would you know?
I thought.
You’d never even seen me until
ten minutes ago.
An uncomfortable sense of surveillance caused me to tuck the afghan tighter around my knees. Now that her gaze was focused so intently on me, I wished I could assimilate into the whiteness of the room and disappear.

“You have an eye for the uncommon detail,” Alexandra went on. “For the unexpected.”

I was silent.

“My ring,” she continued. “The red box outside my office door. You noticed both immediately.”

“I was curious,” I said. “Anyone would be curious about the box.”

“Quite the opposite,” Alexandra said. “I’m impressed with how inquisitive you are.”

“Thanks, I guess, “I muttered. “What’s the box for, anyways?”

“The red box is for outgoing mail. I empty it at the end of the day and bring any letters to the post office.”

“Oh,” I said.

“You sound disappointed.”

“I was hoping for a more interesting explanation.”

Alexandra stood up and walked to her desk, where she soundlessly opened a drawer. I wondered what she stored inside the all-white drawer in the all-white room—Wite-Out? A bag of marshmallows? Blank sheets of paper? She pulled out a box, closed the drawer, and returned to place the box in front of me.

“I think this will make you feel a lot better,” she said. “But you’re going to have to trust me.”

I wanted badly to know what was in the box.

“The idea may seem strange at first,” she continued.

I didn’t open the box. To open it would be a form of surrender, and I was not ready to surrender.

But Alexandra was one step ahead of me.

“You can take it with you,” she said. “Take it up to your room. Keep it. Use the contents as you see fit.”

I nodded, and once again we were left staring at each other in a face-off.

“Has anything else struck you as unusual?” Alexandra finally asked.

Was that a trick question? I answered with appropriate trepidation:

“Plenty,” I said.

“Good. Pick one. Pick the strangest thing you’ve noticed over the past twenty-four hours, and we’ll talk about it for the rest of our session.”

“The strangest,” I repeated. My mind shuffled through my scarecrow-like roommate, the dried apricots, Angela’s office, the ghostly figures I’d encountered in the kitchen.

“The most bizarre detail,” Alexandra said, prompting me. “The true outlier.”

The answer came at once.

“That’s easy,” I said.“The outlier is me.”

Dear Elise,

Day three.

I’ve always wanted to start a letter that way, like an astronaut beaming in from space. Or a desert-island exile scratching the days onto a coconut palm.

My pen is shaky, and my handwriting shameful. I’ve been spoiled by years of laptop keyboards. I wonder—how long will it take for human hands to morph into instruments optimized for typing? Not many of us can scribble more than one hundred words without our wrists turning into bendy straws, which is a real shame. I’ll have to get my wrists into shape because even after only forty-eight hours at Twin Birch, I have many things to document.

Want to know what I’m remembering right now? The very first party we attended. Or attempted to attend. It
was the inaugural weekend of freshman year, which meant that the party would be a landmark event. Attendance was mandatory. Ahmed, the junior who was hosting, made it clear that anyone who planned on participating in the school’s social universe had better show up—preferably with alcohol, or, failing that, with attractive friends in tow. Expectations were high, and the stakes were even higher.

By Friday afternoon the air was clotted with anticipation. Our teachers suspected that something was up—the hallways already reeked of cigarettes, perfume, and barely contained anarchy—but they were helpless to stop it. Kids jogged through the hallways and bounced off the walls. Minor rules were broken without a care. It was the first Friday of September—what did anyone expect? For that day and that day only, the inmates ran the asylum.

Ahmed’s party was crucial for several reasons. Most importantly, it would set a precedent for the entire semester. Those who hooked up would become couples. Those who acted crazy (in a good way) and those who acted crazy (in a bad way) would solidify their respective reputations. Stories would be generated during that narrow window of time—between eleven p.m. and three a.m. on Friday, September 4—that would carry us through the entire year. Those stories would become currency. Extracurricular currency. If you were at the party, you already had something in common with the cooler upperclassmen. You could tell your own party anecdotes and
comment on other people’s party anecdotes; you could laugh when someone imitated the guy who passed out on top of a beanbag and had to go to a chiropractor for three months in order to restore his back to its native posture. Or whatever.

If you weren’t at the party, you could still laugh at the stories people told. But there would always be the chance that someone would give you a weird look and say, “Wait, were you there?” And if the answer to that question was anything but yes, you could just pack up your dignity and go home.

You and I adhered to a strict pre-party plan all day. We designed a playlist with confidence-enhancing songs. We skipped lunch. We combed our closets for the kind of clothes that would attract older boys without setting off the jealousy sensors of older girls, which is a very delicate equation. At nine p.m. we stopped at Starbucks for two shots of espresso each, treating the bitter liquid like medicine. Drinking espresso on an empty stomach, incidentally, has two effects: One, it makes you jittery. Two, it takes away your appetite.

At eleven p.m., appropriately dressed, coiffed, and caffeinated, we began the twelve-block journey to Ahmed’s brownstone. By that time, we figured, the house would be full enough that we could slip in without the awkwardness of ringing the doorbell and making an entrance. It was September, but the temperature hadn’t dipped below eighty-five degrees in three weeks. And I
was preoccupied, as usual, with the likelihood of my hair frizzing into a clump of wool.

“Crap,” you said as we walked. “I’m already sweating through your shirt.” You lifted your arms to exhibit a pair of wet splotches underneath. The shirt, a white silk blouse I’d found on sale at Barneys, contrasted starkly with your summer tan. It was the nicest shirt I’d ever bought, and I admit that I felt a twinge of envy at how much better you looked in it than me.

“Not noticeable,” I said, focused on smoothing my fly-aways. “Don’t worry.” What I knew (and you didn’t) was that you could have doused the shirt in espresso and no one would have noticed. One of the benefits of being a pretty girl is that you look good in anything, even things that nobody should look good in. Things like turtlenecks and ankle-length dresses and burgundy lipstick.

“But I’m making your shirt smell terrible,” you wailed, sniffing. “My armpits smell like curry. Like spicy vindaloo.”

“It’s New York,” I said. “Who doesn’t love Indian food?”

This made us both giggle. Another side effect of the espresso.

You were exaggerating, obviously. I smelled not a whiff of curry unfurling from your direction—just the little daubs of vanilla musk we’d applied to our pulse points. Perfume, in general, was against our personal rules, but we made a special exception for the vanilla oil. Perfume
was dangerous because it was a clear sign of effort, and in our world, subtlety ruled.

You couldn’t go to a party looking like you’d spent more than five minutes putting yourself together. (A mandate also known as the Law of Kate Moss.) Of course, “effortless chic” translated for us non-model civilians into several hours of hair-rumpling and eyeliner-smudging and jeans-cuffing.