I am ten years old. It’s Kim’s birthday and she is riding her brand new bike around our asphalt driveway, circling back at each loop just before she hits the street. I watch her ride, envious. The bike still has a red bow draped around the handlebars, and I watch it flutter, its shimmery petals rolling like tides of the ocean as she moves.
“Bet you can’t catch me!” She calls backwards as she speeds away. I don’t move from my knees. I am making “soup” in an empty bucket, crushing leaves and flowers from our yard with a rock. I can hardly lift a hand before she’s back again. The wind from her bike shakes my hair as wheels move behind my back, and I shudder. I try to focus on my concoction, but I need more ingredients. I move to the yard, yanking weeds from their soft, fleshy earth. Something better, I think. There are twigs near the easement from the pine trees and I rush to them, gathering as many as I can in one armful.
When I get back to my spot in the driveway, I drop the load at once and the twigs fall heavy on the black ground. Somewhere, there is music playing. The words to that song Mrs. Robinson float to our property on the waves of the breeze. Put it in a hiding place where no one ever goes…put it in your pantry…
I can see Kim coming towards me out of the corner of my eye. I am breaking sticks now and using them like noodles in my soup. It’s a little secret just the Robinson’s affair…
I don’t move my eyes to watch Kim as she passes. I don’t see her hit the pile of sticks. I don’t see her loose control or the bike sliding out from underneath her. I only hear her scream. When I turn around, she is lying behind me, blood just beginning to ooze from her knees and elbows. Her right arm is cradled in her left.
My parents are out of the house in seconds. They rush past me to her side. I am crying too now, gentle, soundless tears that drip off the end of nose. My mother holds Kim’s shoulders. My father examines her arm. He nods towards my mother and she runs back to the house to get the car keys.
“What happened?” He asks.
Coo coo ca choo, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know, wo wo wo…
Her eyes meet mine through the tears, and with her good arm she points, her finger an arrow to my heart.
____________________________________________________________________________________
I pulled into the Tucker’s lot at 5:24pm the next evening. The traffic around the visitors spaces was sparse, just a dozen or so old clunkers dotted with a Mercedes or BMW here and there. I spotted my parents Toyota Highlander on the far side of the lot. I sped up towards the Highlander like child who had just spotted his mother, and with a flick of my wrist, steered my Volvo into the open space besides theirs.
Looking through the window of the driver’s side, I could see my father’s coat hung against the back of the seat. An empty water bottle was left in the cup holder, the condensation on the outside a reminder of the forgetfulness that insanity exudes.
My mother and father were waiting in the lobby of Tucker’s 3rd floor when I stepped off the elevator.
“Hey,” I said with cotton breeziness of pure casualness, as if I were just meeting them for coffee or a stroll in the park.
My mother was dressed in business slacks and a silky organza blouse as though dressing in her work clothes might bring some degree of normalcy to her life. She put up a single arm to hug me as I approached. “The nurse said Dr. Le would be just a minute. The case manager is going to meet with us too.”
I nodded. Turned my attention to the nurse at the door. “Can I run in and see Kim before we start?”
“Sure, honey.” She smiled and pointed to the half-door leading to 3 West.
I gave my parents a “wait here” signal with my hand and rushed through the small door. In some still hopeful place in my mind, I was picturing Kim sitting on the wood-backed couch, maybe even conversing with a fellow patient.
In reality, the room was stale with unspoken paranoia. A handful of patients were sitting on the sofas, but their lips didn’t move. Instead, their eyes spoke, darting around the room from corner to corner, bouncing off the pale blue walls like raindrops.
I caught a glimpse of Dr. Le hunched over the nurse’s station, a plastic red chart in hand.
“Dr. Le!” I almost yelled. The excitement in seeing sanity was shocking, really. It only took seconds in the ward before I was gasping for air, searching for signs of visible human life, for the warm hand of familiarity.
But he was distracted. His eyes were focused on a piece of paper, which he held just inches from his face, the corners of his mouth turned downward. I watched as his lips moved, repeating some silent order to the nurse behind the computer.
I was so focused on the shape of his mouth that I didn’t bother to examine the faces of the patients sitting in the ring of furniture. I never wanted to look anyway. The blood-red eyes, the wrinkled tee shirts, it only made the mental suffocation worse.
I was just past the longest sofa when a small voice shot out of the silence. “PTSD!” It ordered.
I spun around, aghast.
A quivering lip was projected, defiant in its diagnosis, but nervous in the act of speaking it. “It’s PTSD!”
It was Ben. He was still dressed in the blue Nirvana shirt. His jeans had the lumpy shape of over-wear, and his hair begged for shampoo.
I glanced at Dr. Le, but it appeared he had not heard.
Ben’s eyes were glued to mine, or more so to my shoulders. I wondered if it made him nervous to look me in the eye. I wondered if Kim would do that too.
“What?” I moved my head a little to the side to try to force my eyes into his.
“PTSD. They say she has PTSD. I heard Dr. Le telling one of the nurses.” When I didn’t speak he thought I didn’t understand. He tried again, “It’s what the soldiers –“
But I cut him off. It was hard enough to hear him say it. The definition might have killed me. “I know,” I said blankly. My feet tried to run but his eyes were still locked on mine, pulling me to the ground with more than the tug of gravity.
Ben shifted his weight, and I watched his bony hips protrude, making me transiently aware of the thin layer of padding around my own. I gripped an inch of fat lightly, absent-mindedly.
“I just -,” his lips were chapped and they moved with focus, determination. “I just wanted you to know. You know, she might be here a while.” His hands slid easily into the loose fabric of his blue jeans. His head leaned forwards, but his eyes turned up to meet mine again, and I noticed then that they were a muted blue, almost gray, like the color of a cloudy dawn.
My legs were twitching again. But when I moved, I didn’t move towards Kim’s room. I had lost the words that I had rehearsed on the drive here. There was something about us, as children, as adults. There was something about being sorry, or feeling sorry, or forgiveness. But in just five minutes, they were gone, lost to the dark space where well-intended conversations live forever, a haunting memory of the “would of’s, “could of’s,” “should of’s.”
Ben had his arm lifted in my direction, but my entire body was registering life so slowly that I couldn’t tell where it was headed or headed from. I shook my head and tore out the door, pulling my cell phone from the bag draped on my shoulder as I pushed past the half door and through the nurse’s station.
My parents were sitting with their feet crossed in the lobby. I couldn’t tell if I was crying, but I turned my head away from them just in case.
“Important call from work. I’m sorry – I have to take this!” I managed to squeal, holding up my cell phone as I hurried past them. I didn’t turn back to see their muddled looks. I didn’t even care.
______________________________________________________________________
Two hours later, in the pitch black blanket of my living room, I had only began to grasp the weight of Kim’s newest diagnosis. I knew my parents would be calling soon, to give me the shocking news. And then I would fake surprise, yet my heart would melt all the same. Or could they? Could they bear to hold the PTSD, to offer it to me on their hands like a gift?
I had already read over 7000 words about PTSD on Wikipedia. I had called some hotline, a number I found in the phone book, refusing to speak when a woman’s voice answered on the other end. I had googled more information on PTSD than I thought was humanly possible, but I was still in a fog. At this point I knew: PTSD was shorthand for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, it was a psychological illness that usually arose from some traumatic precipitating event, and the rates of suicide in PTSD were disgusting.
A knock on the door jolted me out of thought momentarily. I hesitantly pulled myself off the couch. What was it - almost eight o’clock? I was always a little more nervous than I should have been about living in the city, but the stories about rape, murder, and burglaries from the few friends or coworkers I had met were infinite. I had never understood the crime rate in Richmond, nor the way the natives touted it like a prized possession, as close to the hearts as the war stories of Robert E. Lee. It was like those tee shirts they sell at theme parks, oversized white cotton things displaying tacky pictures of the park’s largest rollercoaster plastered over with the words, “I Survived…”
I stood on my tip toes to see through the peep hole. Hell, I hardly even knew what a peep hole was for until I came to Richmond.
A young man in dark jeans and an oxford button down was standing at my door with a few papers in one hand. My guilt was immediate. I had been too caught up in PTSD to realize that I’d agreed to meet Jake, the cake store worker for a late dinner tonight. I glanced down at my wrinkled work slacks, trying in vain to smooth them out with my hands.
“Just a minute!” I called behind me, as I sprinted into my bedroom to swap them out for a pair of jeans.
I was breathing hard when I returned to the front door. I could not even remember the last time I worked out, I realized momentarily; just another way a suicidal sister can throw your regular schedule out of whack.
“Hi,” I tried to smile as I opened the door to Jake’s wavy brown hair.
He put up an outspread hand awkwardly. “Hey. How are you?” I could feel his desire to hug me, but our mutual uncertainty in the rules of dating kept our arms unlinked.
I had been on numerous dates since I’d moved to Richmond. I was definitely more America’s Sweetheart than America’s Next Top Model, but I had at least a few good curves on my five foot four frame, and I was intelligent enough to keep a conversation alive from salad to soufflé.
It was Kim that was the showstopper. She towered over me at a graceful five eight, with runway skimming legs and narrow shoulders that turned my athletic frame into an oger. I had always been a little jealous of Kim growing up. We had both had the same long dark hair, but hers was able to attract men from all corners of a room. The only attention mine got was from a ponytail elastic.
“I just need a minute to freshen up, if you don’t mind. It’ll only be a second. Just make yourself at home,” I gestured to the sofa, noticing at once the stack of depression reading material scattered on the coffee table.
It took me approximately seven minutes to revitalize my tear stained makeup, comb my hair, and brush my teeth. I smiled at myself in the bathroom mirror when I finished. Even I was impressed with what a little Bare Minerals could do.
“Ready?” Jake stood up off the couch, grabbing his jacket off the hook by the door.
A little more confident now in a pair of shimmery heels, I linked my arm in his and hit switch for the porch light. “Beyond.” I grinned. I was amenable to doing anything, I realized, so long as it even partially resembled my characteristic self,
pre-sister meltdown.
We decided on a Mary Angela’s for dinner, a somewhat of a dive pizza joint in close proximity to the site of interest, the Hamilton Playhouse. From our booth in the back we order a large Hawaiian style with a couple of beers.
“So what do you do at Philip Morris?” Jake asked, taking a swig of beer after the spoke. He had called me unexpectedly at work this morning, and I could only imagine the tangle of ropes he had to navigate in order to get to my desk.
I told him a little about the marketing department, its gray cubical walls, its equally as stuffy personnel. I had grown up imaging that I would love my job. I had fantasized throughout school about the sense of accomplishment I would feel after every day, the satisfying combination of exhaustion and integrity that would keep me running into the office every day. But it didn’t take me long to see the truth.
After a year of plugging away everyday with no recognition, I was finally starting to realize that working was more like drowning. It was a constant fight for oxygen, in which trying only dragged you deeper and deeper into the darkness.
“So what do you do? Are you full time at the cake shop?” Before I even asked the question, I had already started writing him off. I didn’t necessarily believe that everybody needed a college education, but in the past few months I had dated my fair share of fast food workers, mechanics, and starving artists. I was willing to give anybody a try. It was the second date that was hard to come by.
To my relief, he chuckled. Leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, amused. “No no. That’s my Mom’s shop. I just work there to help her out and make a little extra cash. Meet the ladies.” He grinned. “I’m actually working on my PhD in Mechanical Engineering. I really want to teach.”
For a few seconds, I was speechless, caught off guard by the unexpected truth of his answer. “Wow,” was all I could manage. “That’s really great. How far along are you?”
And we set forth into a miraculously seamless stretch of conversation punctuated only by clinking beer bottles and knives on the pizza pan between us. He asked me about work, my educational background, the lack of friends I had in Richmond. I questioned him about his motivation for engineering, his expansive circle of friends, his Mom’s business. And what I learned about him, I liked fully, deeply, in a seemingly circular way that was both organic and unnatural at the same time.
Only sometime after I pushed my plate forward and handed the waiter my silverware, did the airy conversation turn sour.
“And what about your siblings?” He asked, innocently. “What do they do?”
I was in tears already. I had not expected to cry, but then again, who does? They were rolling tears, thick like honey and fast as freight trains. Maybe it was the beers. Maybe it was the pure joy I had felt just seconds before. Maybe it was the indubitable awkwardness of crying in public that makes it nearly impossible not to do. Jake had moved to my side of the booth. He had put his arm around my shoulders,
his hand rested on mine on the table.
I could feel the family of four sitting across the restaurant from us starting to stare.
“I am so sorry,” he was saying over and over. And when I felt could grasp enough air to look him in the eye, he whispered, “Tell me everything.”
________________________________________________________________________________
The appliance lights blinked in the kitchen. Combined with the soft rumbling of the refrigerator, they reminded me of an airport runway. I fell gently into the down plush of memory.
When I was thirteen, Kim and I went on our first plane ride alone together. We were meeting my Aunt Julia in San Diego, and because my parents were fearful of us handling the imbroglio of a layover alone, we took a nonstop out of Washington, D.C. I had fallen asleep most of the flight, but I could still remember waking up and seeing the lights of the west coast come into view for the first time.
I let the imagine fill my eyes again, then remember Kim’s words as we touched down on the runway. “That was so easy,” she had said staring out the window.
I snapped up off the sofa, suddenly full of rage. I had lost that Kim entirely and these damn medical doctors weren’t doing anything but assigning her diagnosis with goofy acronyms and leaving her to rot in a hospital bed. The kitchen trash smelled like old turkey sandwiches and balsamic vinegar, I threw my arms elbow deep into the white plastic can anyway. Like a wild animal, I sifted through stale pretzels, empty cartons, stained napkins, all the while throwing bits of paper over the laminate floor like snow. Then, nestled between a piece of saran wrap and half a whole wheat waffle, I found what I was searching for.
It was wrinkled and stained from my car’s cup holder, but the writing was still clear enough to read. I began dialing the number on the bogus shrink advertisement.
Dr. Montague, I whispered into the still dark air as I punched the number buttons on my cell phone, I want my Kim back. Then I hit send.
