Let Me: An O'Brien Family Novel (The O'Brien Family Book 2) (27 page)

“It’s too soon to be sure,” I respond. “Perhaps a different dose or-or maybe she’s restless.” I’m not one to stammer, but stammering beats crying which is what I’m ready to do.

Violet nods, yet offers no hope, nothing to kindle that spark I so badly need. “I brought an album with me,” I say, motioning to my heavy bag. “Pictures from when I was little. I was hoping to show them to her so . . .”

My voice trails when I realize my mother is crying, tears releasing in tandem along her cheeks. “This might not be a good day for a visit,” Violet says.

“But I have to visit,” I insist. “It’s the only way she’ll ever know me.”

Violet looks at me, probably in the same way she’s looked at other family members who she thinks harbor false expectations. But I’m not one of them. I can’t be. I need my mother, and more importantly, I need her to get better.

“I hear what you’re saying,” Violet says. “And can sympathize with what it means to you.”

“Good,” I answer, forcing a smile. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I lift my bag, swinging it over my shoulder as I walk away. I’m trying not to move too fast or too slow, working to keep my steps natural and pretend like I didn’t just receive yet another emotional ass-kicking. Somehow, I manage to hold onto my smile, through the heavy metal door leading out of the locked unit, past the reception area where a few of the staff are gathered, and to the front porch.

I cut a hard left when I see another family walking up the wide wood steps, reaching for my phone and pressing against my ear as if I just received a call. “Hello?” I say, pretending yet again.

Get it together, girl.

I don’t want that family, or the one behind them, to see the tears of frustration that want to come. From the outside, this place looks like a beautiful old colonial mansion. Strip away the pretty furniture on the inside, the soft demure colors painted on the walls, and the nurses who dress in pastel scrubs, and this is just another institution where the severely mentally ill spend their days far from those they can hurt, and from those who most need their love.

“I was supposed to fix her,” I say without meaning to.

My eyes widen from my momentary lapse of weakness. I can’t be weak, my mother needs my strength. I keep my back turned, waiting for the families to pile through the front door. I’m not sure if they heard me, but if they did, I don’t want to know.

I glimpse back at my phone. The words that spilled are those I want to confess to Finn. But admitting as much confirms that I didn’t accomplish all I set out to do. And that all this time away from him has caused me nothing but torment.

Sofia told me he’s hurting, and that sometimes he’ll be at a heavyweight bag, pounding it viciously, his stare absent of anything human. “He seems to check out,” she said.

I know she means well, her calls are a way of looking out for him. But hearing how he’s suffering only reinforces my belief that I’m the cause. I don’t think she realizes how badly I miss him, or how I wake dreaming his arms are around me, and that when I think about all the times he made me laugh, all I want to do is cry.

I did this to him
, I want to tell her. But I don’t. Instead I keep quiet at the mention of his name, even though all I want to do is spill my soul.

The heels of my boots
clip, clop
against the wooden floorboard as I walk to the end of the porch. My hand lowers when I spot the sun porch. It extends out slightly further than the building. My mother’s seat lays empty. Violet or perhaps a few of the staff must have coaxed her inside.

Are they drugging her
? I wonder.

Is she safe
?

Does any part of her remember she once loved me
?

“Sol?”

The voice is so familiar, but in my preoccupation with my mother, I don’t realize it’s Mason speaking until I turn around and see him standing by the entrance. As a renowned psychiatrist, and a well-credentialed one at that, I shouldn’t be surprised to find him all the way out here. But I am.

“Hi, Mason―I mean, Dr. Shavis,” I say. In the private setting of his office, he was always simply “Mason”. But this is a professional setting and I need to address him as such.

He moves forward, his camel wool coat brushing against his legs as he walks. He motions to the phone in my hand. “Am I interrupting your call?”

I quickly pocket my phone. “Um, no, just finished.”  Jesus, I’m such a horrible liar.

Like always, Mason smiles kindly. It seems like an innocent and genuine reaction, but this is a brilliant man. He knows there’s more to my response, and has likely already analyzed and made a diagnosis, tracing my nervousness and awkwardness to my toilet training or that time I face-planted on roller skates.

“Are you interning here?” he asks, tilting his head.

“I’m inquiring.”

Okay. Another damn unnecessary lie. Since first meeting Mason, I’ve picked his brain, observed him during sessions, and followed him around like a giddy little puppy simply ecstatic to be around him and hoping for that proverbial pat on the head. But I never told him anything about me. At least not anything that mattered, especially pertaining to my mother. He may be a professional, but I was trying to be one, too.

“If you need a recommendation, I could give you one,” he says, surprising me by taking a seat on the porch swing. He doesn’t seem to be in a rush to leave, not by the way he stares out to the lawn covered with lingering patches of frost.

I sit beside him. “You’d do that?” I ask. “Despite that I left earlier than expected.”

He gives my comment some thought. “You mean following the weeks you worked, putting in double the hours your degree required, assisting the staff with extra projects, connecting with your clients and supporting them through their issues, and reorganizing our library so we can actually use it.” He nods, thoughtfully. “Yes, I believe I have cause to recommend your services.”

My gaze falls to my hands. My right throbs from the way my mother gripped it, and it appears slightly swollen, yet that’s not why I keep my head lowered. I miss my work at the center. It’s where I was learning to be a real therapist and where I was helping instead of hurting. God, all I’ve ever wanted to do is help.

“Loretta misses you,” he says. “As does Zorina, her mother, and the other clients you deeply affected. Loretta especially seems at a loss. She told me no one has ever understood her like you.”

“They miss me?” I ask. “All of them?” I don’t mean to sound so pathetically grateful, but right then, I truly am. “What about Miss Hemsworth? Does she miss me, too?”

Mason presses his lips in a thin line, but I notice the smile lingering behind it. “It’s okay,” I say, grinning. “I know the woman hates me.”

“She hates all of us, Sol,” he admits.

I laugh a little, and he does, too. “So what brings you here?” he asks as our humor fades.

This is my moment to remind him that I’m here inquiring about my make-believe internship even though we both know it’s a bold face lie.
Or
I can tell him I’m here to support a friend whose relative is being treated. It’s a more probable explanation and less of a mistruth. Yet I don’t.

Not this time.

This is Mason. The reason he’s asking is because he knows something’s up. So because he’s truly as kind as he appears, and cares as much as he does, I shove the lies aside and speak the truth. “I’m visiting my mother,” I answer, wishing my voice didn’t crack the way it does.

My tears release almost immediately, so even if I wanted to, it’s too late to make up another stupid excuse like she works here in the kitchen― or insist that she’s never assaulted me or mistaken me for her dead sister―that she’s fine, and healthy, and-and everything I wish she could be.

Mason doesn’t say anything. I can’t even be sure he’s looking at me. By now, I’m so embarrassed by my response, and so wrapped up in my long repressed despair; I can’t bring myself to turn his way. The only thing that I’m aware of is that he’s doing the “therapist pause”, that brief moment of silence that permits the patient to divulge something else, regain his or her composure, or maybe cry a little more.

I take door number two for the win and force myself to calm. Some therapist I’ll make.

“I’ve wondered who it was,” he answers simply.

I look up. “What?” I ask, sounding nasal from how hard I wept.

He offers a sympathetic smile, one that assures me he’s listening and reveals a trace of his concern. “Those who choose to work in the mental health field, be it as counselors or medical professionals, often do so to self-diagnose and treat themselves, or further understand those who have hurt them.”

Oh. Well, I knew that. Really I did. But I’m not sure I need reminding. Not when I’ve failed this epically.

He continues when it’s obvious that I can’t. “Your passion suggested someone close to you was inflicted with mental illness,” he explains. “So did your desire to know more, and your commitment to taking your clients to a healthier place.” He tilts his head. “If your mother is here, I take it she’s not in that healthy place you wish her to be?”

“No. But I’m trying to get her there.”

He doesn’t respond, but in his features I feel that he’s pushing for more of an explanation. “I’ve been coming every day to speak with her.” Like a dumbass, I point to the bag at my feet. “I even brought pictures that may help reorient her. It’s something I’ve been doing for years.”

“And has it worked?”

I straighten a little. “Not yet . . . she hasn’t, I mean, she didn’t have a good day. The doctors are trying to get the right meds for her, and adjust the doses . . .” My voice fades the longer I look at him.

“I meant have your efforts ever worked?” he asks me gently.

Mason is a trained therapist, with years of living and breathing in the crazy. His features never give anything away. But they do then. He thinks I’m spinning my wheels.

I want to point out the flickers of hope she’s given me, and explain how there are moments she seems to remember who I am, and all that we’ve shared. I want to find words or examples that my work with her is paying off, and that it’s only because I’ve done what I’ve done that she’s not as far gone as she could be, and that there’s still hope.

Yet there’s something about his soft and knowing stare, the kindness in his voice, and the experience that comes with his title that makes me take a long hard look at these past few years in a way no one ever has. My mother, Flor Marieles―the woman who went from talking to us, to talking to those who aren’t there, who went from taking care of those she loved, to being the one completely cared for, the woman who once called me her beautiful little girl in her soft voice, who now screams obscenities at me, believing I’m her deceased sister―is no longer my mother. That woman is gone, and she isn’t coming back.

So when I answer, I can’t tell him what
I
want to hear, and what for far too long
I’ve
needed to believe.

“No,” I respond.

“Her mental health has deteriorated?”

His voice remains quiet, nonjudgmental. Yet it’s because of what he’s forced me to see in our brief exchange―in the two point five seconds I’ve sat next to him― that more tears come. The truth can be so painful, especially when I’ve been the one blinding myself from it.

“Yes,” I admit, my voice once more breaking.

He nods, turning his head away from me briefly. “Do you want to know the toughest lessons I’ve learned in my field?” At my nod he explains. “That you can’t help everyone. That there are no magic pills for those far beyond our reach. That love isn’t always enough. And that sometimes you have to let go. For your own well-being, your happiness, you
have
to let go, Sol.”

This time when I cry, it’s that awful cry that force women to cover their faces, the one you feel down to your soul. And Mason lets me, let’s me feel it, but most of all lets me own it. Because knowing your sick mother, the one you love with your whole heart, will never be well has to be one of the shittiest feelings in the fucking world.

It takes me a long time to calm down, and when I do, it’s not because I feel that much better. It’s because I know I can’t continue sitting there. “Thank you,” I say, wiping my tears.

He pats my shoulder and rises slowly. “This is a difficult time for you,” he says. “If you want to talk, my office door is always open.” He smiles a little then. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to visit with my father.”

He ignores my slacking jaw, smiling politely before walking into the building and closing the door behind him.

CHAPTER 28

Finn

Diego “The Python” Lopez. Like me he’s 12 and 2. And like me, he’s been gunning for the belt for the last eighteen months. We’re so evenly matched in height and weight, the odds are almost evenly split. He’s a brown belt in Brazilian Jujitsu, an old school wrestler, and a brawler on his feet exactly like me.

The difference is, he’s still that laid back kid he always has been. Me . . . I don’t know what the fuck I am anymore.

Bam, bam, bam
. I throw punches, dipping my head so my spinning back kick catches Angus’s gloved hand as he lurches away.

“Finn,
enough
,” Killian yells, over Angus’s swears.

I back off, not because I’m done warming up, but because I catch the fear in Sofia’s eyes, again. Hell, everyone here is looking at me like I’ve lost what’s left of my sanity.

Maybe because I have. I shake it off, reasoning this rage is exactly what will get the job done tonight.

“He’s not ready,” Curran mumbles to Killian. They’re standing beside each other, both with their arms crossed. “Is it too late to call it off?” he asks.

I point to Killian. “You’re not calling shit off.” He stiffens, realizing I’m seconds from losing it. “What?” I ask. “I’m standing right here. It’s not like I can’t fucking hear you.”

“Finn, please,” Sofia says, stepping toward me.