Notes on a Near-Life Experience (5 page)

“There's no lunch in here. Dad usually makes me a lunch.”

“Oh, that's right, I forgot. Well, I'll give you some money for a school lunch today, and then we'll decide what to do for the rest of the week tonight, okay?”

Keatie frowns. “But I don't like the lunches they make at school. I want bologna.”

My mom sighs. “Keatie, it's just one day, then we'll figure something out.”

“It isn't just one day. Dad made the sandwiches and now he's not here. Tell him to come back. Tell him it's for the bologna.”

I rinse my bowl in the sink and tune out the rest of their conversation, wondering how it is that the lack of a bologna sandwich may be the thing we notice most about my father's absence.

I
MET MY BEST FRIEND
, H
ALEY, ON THE SECOND DAY OF FIRST
grade. Actually, it was my first day of first grade, her second. I was supposed to be in kindergarten that year, but when I got to class on the first day, the teacher found out that I already knew how to read, tie my shoes, and add.

“Do you know your address?” she asked.

“Two nine oh one El Rancho Via, Yorba Linda, California. Nine two eight eight six,” I said.

She left me in the chair where she'd been interrogating me since she'd found me reading
Make Way for Ducklings
and spoke in loud whispers to the other teacher.

“What am I supposed to do with her?” She acted as if I'd done something horribly wrong.

They decided to call my mother. The next thing I knew,
I'd been kicked out of kindergarten and put in first grade. I wasn't a child genius. I knew how to read because Allen did. I'd had no idea I was transforming myself into some kind of freak by learning to read, tie my shoes, add, and recite my address.

So I met Haley on the second day of first grade. I thought she must have been a princess or a giant, she was so tall— taller than all the kids in first and even second grade. I was pretty short, I guess, so that made her seem even taller. When the teacher had us draw pictures of ourselves, Haley's looked different than everyone else's: she had a neck in her picture, and her arms weren't drawn as short as the rest of ours.

Our teacher, Ms. Beccia, assigned me the desk next to Haley's, and it just made sense for us to be friends since we had to share paste and stuff.

We've had disagreements: I used to want to hold her hand all the time—it felt natural since she seemed almost as tall as my mom—and she didn't like it; she wanted us to take tennis lessons together, but I was more interested in dance; she wanted us to dress up as cowgirls one Halloween, but I wanted us to be princesses. At some point it must've dawned on us that we didn't have to be clones to be friends.

Now I make up dances and Haley practices tennis. I dream about kissing Julian Paynter and Haley dreams about finding a guy who is taller than she is but who doesn't think basketball is the only reason to live. I hang up flyers for the spring dance concert and Haley writes the phone number for the Rwandan
Relief Fund on the chalkboard of every classroom in school. Between the two of us, we can talk about anything.

But I feel that saying something out loud makes it more true. Final. I haven't told Haley about my parents. It feels like telling her will make this whole mess real. Right now, there are some things I'm not ready to finalize.

M
Y DAD DECIDED THAT
A
LLEN
, K
EATIE, AND
I
NEEDED THERAPY
if we were ever going to be normal again once he moved out. I think it's the Woody Allen thing; all the people in Woody Allen movies see analysts, but they're all weirdos who live in New York City and have affairs with their sister's husband or their girlfriend's best friend. Mom agreed to take us to a shrink, but only if she got to pick him. These are the things they argue about. Like they are children. Mom's friend Eileen recommended Dr. Lynder. I had no say in the matter.

So here I am, sitting on the leather couch in the waiting room, reading
People
magazine, trying to guess what Dr. Lynder will be like.

I wonder if he'll try to seduce me. That's what always happens in the movies. You know, a young, innocent girl, a bit
unstable, goes to a shrink, and the next thing you know she's thinking, He's the only one who really understands me. One thing leads to another…. You get the picture. Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing…. And then when the girl tries to expose the psychiatrist after she figures out that what's going on isn't right, after she regains some of her sanity, he diagnoses her as delusional and has her locked up, along with his other victims.

The receptionist tells me to fill out a paper with a bunch of statements on it that you have to rate from one to five, one being never and five being always. They are questions like:

My life is of value.

I am loved by others.

I love myself.

I contemplate suicide.

Questions for crazy people. Any reasonably intelligent person can figure out what the right answers are. It's pretty easy. I put in some twos and fours on the less crazy questions so that it will look like I've really thought hard about the questions and my true feelings.

The door to Dr. Lynder's office opens and a man and a woman step out. The woman looks like she's about twenty-five; she has long ice blue fingernails and wears leather pants. The man is balding and fairly nondescript. I imagine myself falling asleep during our sessions.

“See you next week,” the woman calls after the man as he heads for the door. The man grumbles as he leaves. Before I can stop him, before I realize what's happening, my boring, balding therapist is out the door, leaving me with the blueclawed
bimbo. She notices me before the door closes behind the man. “You must be Mia,” she says, smiling down at me. “I'm Lisz Lynder.”

“Yeah, umm, hi.” I don't know what to say. I mean, I don't know why I assumed my doctor would be a man. When I get a closer look at Lisz Lynder, I notice some little lines around her eyes and mouth; I realize that she probably isn't as young as I thought, probably closer to my mom's age than to twenty-five.

“Whaddya say we go back to my office and talk a little,” Lisz Lynder suggests.

I follow her through the door she and the bald man just came out of.

During my first visit, Lisz—she says I should call her by her first name, “Dr. Lynder's too formal”—explains that we'll talk about whatever I want to talk about and that nothing I say will ever leave this room unless I give my express permission or if she suspects that I have plans to harm myself. I must not look very thrilled about what she's said.

“Mia, why don't you tell me why you are here and what you hope to gain through your visits.”

“To tell you the truth, I didn't want to come here. My parents thought that all us kids should get counseling because of, you know, the separation. So my brother, Allen, and I are going to visit you, and my sister, Keatie, is seeing someone who specializes in helping younger kids. I think the whole thing is ridiculous. I mean, my parents are the ones who need counseling, not us.”

Lisz isn't fazed by my answer. She says that if I don't feel
like I have anything to say, that's fine. She also says that if it's okay with me, she'll think up some topics for us to talk about, write them on pieces of paper, and put them in a jar. Then if I feel like I need help figuring out what to “discuss,” I can take a piece of paper out of the jar and talk about what it says. If I don't like one topic, I can choose another paper and another until I find something I am willing to discuss. Or we don't have to talk about anything.

“If worst comes to worst, if you don't feel like chatting, we'll play Uno or something,” she says.

I try to smile.

“But I want you to understand what I hope to do here as well. I am not going to tell you what's wrong with you, or tell you what you need to do to be a happy person or anything like that. My approach to therapy is a little different. I believe that we all possess the faculties we need to be happy; we just need to learn how to access them. So we're going to talk and you're going to find your own answers, a way to live that works for you. I'm going to be your guide, in a way…. If you ever get lost or really off track, I'll help you find your way back, and I'll try to help you understand what's going on in your life and what your options are for coping with certain situations. Everyone sees the world differently and has a different set of values, so we're going to figure out what yours are and help you be true to them. How does that sound?”

“Great,” I manage to respond. What am I supposed to say? “It sounds like a load of crap and I can't believe you get paid for this?” “Excuse me, I can talk to myself for free?” “Did you
graduate from an accredited institution of higher learning or earn your degree through a correspondence course?”

So now I have my own shrink, my own Dr. Marlena Evans from
Days of our Lives
. But the whole thing seems weird: talking to a stranger about the things that are most personal and important to you; paying someone to listen to you. Why would they care? They don't even know you; you could tell them whatever you wanted and they'd never know if it was true. Besides, I don't even know what's really going on. I don't like the idea of someone else figuring my family out, figuring my life out, before I do. And what if she gets it wrong? What if she sees things I don't, or things I don't want to see?

T
ODAY ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL A DOG RUNS OUT INTO THE
road, and Al swerves and slams on his brakes to avoid hitting it. Al's backpack is open and its contents spill onto the floor of the van. As I'm shoving his stuff back in, I notice a small silver canteenish thing among the pencils and notebooks.

“What's this?” I ask him, shaking the silver container. I can hear liquid swishing around in it. “A canteen?”

Allen looks nervous. “Yeah. You know, instead of carrying one of those stupid plastic water bottles, I use that…. It looks cooler.”

“Yeah, I guess, but it doesn't hold much. You know what it looks like? A flask, like some bum on the street or a secret
agent would carry. I've never seen one before, but this totally looks like it could be one.”

He laughs. “A flask? Yeah, the principal would love it if I brought a flask to school, huh?”

He's weird sometimes, my brother.