Pretty Amy (15 page)

I was actually glad. The bell was going to ring in seven minutes. Being told I was not going to graduation would be eclipsed as the worst thing that had happened that day if I got caught in the hallway with my mom, looking like this, while classes were changing.

“You can do whatever you like, as long as Amy isn’t there,” he said, looking at her with a
You flipped out and I suppose I understand why with a daughter like that
look.

“If the general public can go, then I should be allowed to go, too. It’s discriminatory to let some people attend and not others, and I haven’t done anything wrong.” I could see tears forming in her eyes.

Since the arrest, much like me, she had gained the ability to cry at will. But unlike me, she didn’t hide it. All of a sudden her eyes were filled with tears, like there was a valve she’d turned on.

“Good luck to you, Amy,” he said.

I didn’t bother saying thank you like I was supposed to. His luck would do me no good now.

“Come on, Mom,” I said, pulling her out of the office. I had to put my arms around her to hold her up as I brought her into the hallway. Three more minutes and
everyone
would see me in this suit, with my mom, with my arms around my mom, who was crying,
in this suit
. I rushed her out of the hall and through the front doors of the school.

“When do I get to be proud of you?” she asked.

I knew it was a rhetorical question, but it didn’t make hearing it any easier.

We got in the car and drove. I could hear the bell ringing in the distance as we turned out of the parking lot. Safe. I was safe.

My mother was breathing like she had just run a marathon.

“After you are finished at Daniel’s,” she said, not looking at me, “you are going to put on your cap and gown and we are going to take our graduation photos.” She grabbed my wrist, hard, as if she would fall down into the seat of the car like it was quicksand.

And because it hurt, I said okay. At least she didn’t want to take pictures of me in this stupid suit.

Maybe Mr. Morgan didn’t understand why my mother wanted to go to graduation without me, but I did. There were aunts and uncles and canasta group members to consider. There were pictures to be taken for those people to see.

I guess my mother just needed some normalcy. If she went to graduation she would at least be able to get a program with my name in it—surely they wouldn’t have had enough time to remove my name and reprint it. And she could take a long shot of the graduating seniors, just the backs of their heads, which would all look the same. She could point to any one of them and say, “That’s my Amy.”

I suddenly felt bad for her. I suddenly felt bad for me.

“When we’re finished with the pictures, you are going to return that cap and gown and get a refund. There’s no reason to pay good money for something you’re not even going to use.” I could see her starting to tear up again.

I turned and stared out the window so I didn’t have to look at her.

Maybe she would let me put it toward my Dick Simon fund. Of course, it only paid for about half a minute of his services. There’s a real glimpse into what a high school diploma is worth. Four years of hardship, toil, boredom, and memorization; of each day feeling the happiest you think you could possibly feel and then sadder than you ever imagined, equaling the length of time it took for Dick Simon to constitute a really good burp.

Sixteen

Before Daniel could sit down, I ran for his beanbag chair. It was hard sitting in it wearing a skirt, but I didn’t care.

He was wearing another tie-dye—blue blobs covered the
V
cut into his chest by the bright green Guatemalan poncho he had over it. It was the first time I’d actually seen someone wearing one of those in real life. Well, someone who wasn’t Guatemalan.

“Why are you sitting there?” he asked, reaching over me to get his notepad. He kept looking at me, and I guess that meant my answer had better please him.

So I took my time and crafted a response that would make any cold-blooded psychologist proud. “I just wanted you to feel as uncomfortable in here as I do,” I said, even though it was obvious I was the one who was uncomfortable. The beanbag chair sounded like someone sanding a piece of wood as I shifted awkwardly.

“Uh huh,” he said, sitting in the recliner.

I pulled my skirt down and readjusted myself. At least my mother had let me leave my jacket with her in the car.

“You seem to be taking things well,” he said in a voice I knew meant he thought just the opposite.

I looked at him. If I opened my mouth I was afraid I would start crying and be unable to stop.

“You might want to try talking to me,” he said. “I may be called as a character witness for the case.”

“You’ve met me twice.”

“Perhaps your mother would be more suitable, or maybe you have someone else in mind?”

I wanted him to think I was ignoring his question rather than the truth of the matter: there really was no one else. Well, I guess there was Joe, but considering what he thought about me, he would more likely be called for the prosecution.

Sitting in the beanbag chair, I was eye level with a small wooden table that had a framed picture of a girl in a softball uniform on it. “You have a daughter?” I asked.

He looked at the picture. “Yes, and a wife and a father and a mother, too,” he said.

“Is she as messed up as I am?”

“How was the arraignment?” he asked.

I guess that was his way of changing the subject. How come he was allowed to do that and I wasn’t?

“Amy,” he said.

I didn’t want to talk about it. Not with him.

I had wanted to talk about it with my parents, instead of going out for lunch to stuff our mouths so we
couldn’t
talk about it. I had wanted to talk about it with my father, while he squeezed my hand tight, tight, tight like he used to during the game we played when I was little. But they were paying this guy to talk to me instead.

Daniel looked at me like he was trying to shake the last bit of salad dressing out of a bottle.

“It was fine,” I said. So he knew I was upset, big deal.

He sighed. “You’re just masking your fear and low self-esteem.” He turned the page of his pad. “You can choose to share what you’re feeling verbally or attempt unsuccessfully to hide it.”

“I choose neither,” I said.

I thought I was hiding it pretty well. I struggled off the beanbag chair and looked out the window. I saw my mother sitting in the car talking to herself—and
I
was the one in therapy.

“You are a textbook case,” Daniel said.

I could feel my filter waver. I wanted him to continue. Maybe he really did know something. Maybe he’d learned it from dealing with his own daughter. I turned to look at him.

“You were craving someone, anyone to notice you,” he said.

I could feel Aaron’s phone number in my bra. The paper made my skin itch, but having it there made it impossible not to think about him and I wanted to think about him. He had noticed me.

“If negative attention was all you could get, you would take it,” he continued.

I shook my head—though I couldn’t deny I had spent more time with my mother in the last couple of weeks than during all of high school. But that couldn’t have been the attention I wanted.

I wanted Aaron’s attention and I had gotten it by being the girl everyone was telling me not to be. None of them understood.

Daniel put his pen to his lips and stared at me. “You need to look inside yourself and think about whatever feelings you may have about all of this. It’s the only thing that will help you.”

I didn’t want to do that. I was afraid if I started searching around in my
feelings
, I might never come back.

He took a deep breath, made a big fuss about it, like breathing was the hardest thing he’d ever done. “Your mother says you moved into the basement. Why did you choose to do that?”

I stared at his poncho. It was as green as a traffic light. Its symbolism was probably supposed to make me want to
go
, but all I felt was just the opposite. “She’s out in the car, if you want to ask her,” I said.

Daniel should have considered himself lucky. I wasn’t the kind of person who went on and on about Momma and how weak and under Poppa’s thumb she was, her small mind and big dreams, too big for our shed-size house with a child-drawn curl of smoke coming from the chimney.

Of course that wasn’t my story. My story was a lot more complicated. I had two parents who loved me as best they could. Who gave me everything I asked for and yet it still wasn’t enough. So, what did that say about me?

Maybe it wasn’t about them. I wasn’t totally sure what it
was
about yet, but I didn’t think my parents were my real problem. I didn’t even know if I
had
a
real problem.

“I think you see it as some kind of symbolic hiding. As a physical way of keeping out the greater world.”

“I’m not alone. AJ’s down there with me.”

“Who’s AJ?” he asked, like I might be talking about an imaginary friend, like he had hit the mental-illness jackpot.

“My bird,” I said.

“Exactly my point. You let your bird in, but you won’t talk to a person.”

“I like my bird.” Maybe Daniel couldn’t understand why I liked AJ better than most people, but he should have. If he knew as much about me as he claimed he did, he should have.

He shook his head. His ponytail fell over his right shoulder. His hair was so long, longer than Aaron’s, longer than mine. He had to have been growing it for years, through who knows how many messed-up kids sitting across from him trying to deny they were messed up. I wondered how many of them he had actually helped. I wondered how many of them made him wish he’d never had a daughter.

“You need to look at the people and things you choose to populate your life with, otherwise you’ll never understand why you do the things you do.”

What was there to understand? Lila and Cassie were my friends. They were the only people in this world who under-stood me and now they were gone. They were gone and my life was gone. I didn’t need Daniel to help me figure that out.

I held out my hand for the appointment card. The small, ivory, 1" by 2" rectangle that would tell me when I would have to come and see him next.

“Do you even want to keep coming here?” he asked.

“I don’t have a choice,” I said.

“You have a choice to talk,” he said.

“You’re only listening because my parents are paying you,” I said, glancing at my mother in the car. I could see her ripping at each nail on her right hand from pinkie to thumb. Then back again like a typewriter.

“Maybe,” he said, “but I am listening.”

…

I sat on the front stoop and smoked a cigarette while my mom went inside to iron my cap and gown. I would have to put them on and smile when the flash went off. I would have to pretend that it was my graduation day, that I knew what that day felt like, even though I never would.

My mother hated when I smoked in front of the house, but we were beyond her saying anything about it. We were beyond me caring, even if she did.

I pulled my skirt up high on my thighs, trying to tan my very white legs. They were suffering from my annoying schedule, too.

I heard a bike bell jingling down the street. Joe, probably on his way home from school. This was getting ridiculous. I hated being in my house far too much to have to risk seeing Joe every time I was outside of it.

All I wanted to do was talk to Aaron. All I wanted to do was talk to Lila. All I wanted to do was talk to Cassie. I guess I was going to talk to Joe. At least it wasn’t Daniel or my mom.

I heard him getting closer, the bike bell like a jack-in-the-box being cranked, that scary, exciting sound. I took a drag. I wouldn’t get caught off-guard this time. I would be ready.

Maybe he would ask me why I hadn’t been in school that day. Maybe he would ask me why I looked so annoyed. Maybe he would ask me why I was in a suit. I considered how much I would tell him. How much I would let him in this time, if at all.

Maybe I would ask him if he had been the one who’d ratted me out to Mr. Morgan—him or his girlfriend.

I looked down at my legs, pretending to ignore him; the sun was already starting to turn them pink. I heard him ride up his driveway, heard his garage door open, heard him drop his bike on the ground and go into his house.

I guess we were back to avoiding each other. Back to that day early in sophomore year, when it was still warm enough to fool us into thinking it was summer—one of those days during fall when the leaves were just as yellow as the sun. When guys wore shorts and girls wore tank tops, and everyone hoped that a foot of snow wasn’t just around the corner, even though it always was.