Paperweight (13 page)

Tuesday, July 15, 11:01 AM

BEFORE I sit on Shrink's love seat, I warn her: “I definitely don't want to talk about group yesterday.”

“Okay.” She looks up from the paper crane she's folding and nods. For the first time, I notice that the desk behind her and the windowsill are littered with her paper cranes, each a different color and pattern. I read a book about them in elementary school. I don't remember the story, exactly. Just that the girl died.

“For what it's worth,” she says, “I think the fact that you don't want to talk about group yesterday means that at some point, we should talk about group yesterday—”

“I knew you'd say that.” I plop onto the couch and grab one of the pillows, to obscure my expanding belly. My jeans are getting too tight, but I only brought jeans. One of many humiliations.

“Let me finish.” She smiles. “Of course, you don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about, and I'm glad you're taking charge of your session. So.” She rests the unfinished bird on the side table, next to a flickering candle that smells like rain. I think about asking her to teach me to fold paper like that, but then I think there's no point in knowing how to do something for just sixteen days. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Eden,” I blurt. It just comes out. “I don't know what to say to Eden.” Her name on my tongue makes me a deep kind of tired.

“I was wondering,” she says. “It seems like she's come up for you a lot lately. You started a letter to her, right?”

“Yeah. But I haven't finished it.”

“What do you think's getting in your way?”

“Confusion.” I stretch on out on the love seat with my head propped against one arm and my legs dangling over the other. But that's not comfortable, either, so I sit up again.

“What's your confusion about, you think?”

“Like, about how I feel about her. Or what she was—or is, or whatever—to me. And Josh made things even more confusing, so . . .”

“How's that?” She leans forward in her chair, which is Shrink-speak for
tell me more.

“He was, like, dating her. Or something. I don't know exactly what was going on between them, but I know it was something.”

“How do you know?”

“Because—” I let my head drop back and I stare at the ceiling. “Because he didn't deny it, and neither did she.”

“Okay. So they were . . . romantically involved, possibly.
What was the nature of your relationship with Eden? You've never really said.”

“I don't
know.
” I'm sorry I brought it up. How could Shrink possibly understand, when I can't even wrap my head around what we were? “But I was pissed that she was hanging out with Josh.”

“How is it that their relationship made you so angry?” What she really wants to know is
why.
But shrinks don't ask
why
, even when they should. It's against their code or something.

“It's just . . .” I close my eyes and am back in
Le Crâpeau
, its walls closing in around me. I remember the glittery glint on Josh's shoulder, and the rage returns, fresh. It's been here all along. “She was
mine
. Just . . . a friend that was just mine. I needed that, you know? I never had it before.”

“You felt . . . almost territorial. Did you ever tell Josh or Eden how angry you felt about their relationship?”

“Josh knew I was pissed. He kept seeing her, though. I would find pieces of her on him—like he would smell like her some nights when he came home. But Wednesday nights after seminar were my nights with her.”

“Is that what you all decided?” she asks.

“It was just kind of an unspoken rule,” I say. “I mean, I didn't even tell her I knew about her and Josh. Until this one Wednesday toward the end of seminar. When she took me to her place.”

“So, here it is. Nothing special.” Eden had made a half-assed
ta-da
motion with her arms, showcasing the airy converted loft she shared with a girl she despised.

“Eden. This is amazing.” The place was one big room, with a few tapestries knotted together and hanging from the high beams to separate the space. The cool was in the details: hardwood floors painted light green. Dying potted plants that proved her total disregard for life and tiny colored glass bottles along the windowsill. There was an exposed brick wall, hung with framed squares of metallic gold paper. There were candid pictures of pretty people I didn't know doing interesting things. It looked like life after high school, the way it was on a television.

“I'm thinking of kicking my roommate out.” She pushed off her flats and nudged them out of the way. “She keeps stealing my soy milk and lying about it. I'm fine if she wants some, but just ask, you know?”

“Mhmm.” There was a bookshelf on the wall near the front door. I ran my fingers over the spines and unearthed
Anna Karenina.
“This used to be one of my favorites.” The cover was glossy. The spine was smooth, unlined.

“Me, too. Anna's so tragic.”

I flipped through the volume. The pages were creamy and perfect.

“I'll get us a drink. What do you want?”

“Whatever's fine,” I murmured. I returned the book to its space and tried another: Camus.
The Stranger.
It was pristine, too. “You take really good care of your books,” I said lamely.

She clanged around in the kitchen for a few minutes, and I took a seat at the counter. She nudged a Mason jar toward me. I lifted it to my lips. Vodka with a hint of something sweet. Lime. Tiny fleshy bits clung to the edge of the glass. My cheeks felt hot.

“What are you reading next week?” I asked after the first
few sips. Our final seminar was the following week, and it was tradition for Ben's students to do a reading for family and friends.

“I'm trying to decide.” She came around to my side and sat on the counter, her feet dangling. My wrist grazed her knee. “I kind of spent most of my time on those lyrics. I'll have to polish something up. Maybe we could get together this week and work on stuff.”

“I don't really have anything, either,” I admitted. I hadn't been working. I was having trouble focusing, and to be honest, I didn't really care about writing anymore. The really shitty thing about it was that I knew Ben had noticed. And he hadn't said a word.

“I know,” she said. “Unless you want to read one of those letters you've been writing to your mom.”

I wondered how much she'd read over my shoulder while someone else read aloud and everyone nodded along.

I finished the rest of my drink. Staring into the bottom of the glass made everything blurry. I could feel my stomach fighting my waistband. I sucked in.

“Your mom should've told you to your face that she was leaving. She didn't say anything before she left?”

“Nah. She was too scared or something.” My throat was tight. “That's what my dad said, anyway.”

“That's bullshit.” She refilled my glass.

I told myself to go slow. “Yeah.”

“People should just say what they mean, you know? She should have sat you down and just said,
Stevie
—”

“‘I want something better.'” My voice was flat.

“She'll never be happy, you know. I can tell she's that kind
of person, like, immediately. I don't know if that makes you feel any better.”

It didn't, but I nodded anyway.

“People like her . . .” She finished her drink and poured herself a shot. “Women like her want whatever they don't have.”

The accusation stung for just a second, until I remembered that I wasn't supposed to care about my mother enough to defend her.

“Yeah.” I slid off the stool. “Where's your bathroom?”

“Right around the corner, there.”

Behind the closed bathroom door, I surveyed her belongings. Tiny glass bottles and jars lined the sink: perfume samples and face creams and hair masks and other girl potions that were foreign to me. I spritzed my wrists with a scent that smelled like amber. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My face was too pink; my hair plastered with sweat to the back of my neck. I found a hair tie in her medicine cabinet and pulled my hair into a high knot. Examined the lines of my neck. I could see my pulse in my neck, pumping.

I stared deep into my pupils until they could have been someone else's.
You are not enough for her
, I told myself.
You weren't enough for your mother, and you aren't enough for her.
I wondered if Josh had been here first, if his reflection had existed here.

I flushed the toilet and turned the faucet for a few seconds. I took a slow, deep breath and went back into the kitchen, the words pouring from my mouth before I could chicken out.

“How come you're hanging out with my brother? You could have any guy you want.”

Her features twisted into something I couldn't quite recognize. I didn't know if she looked angry or guilty or what. I hoped it wasn't angry. Angry belonged to me.

“He's sweet.” Her voice was sharp. Pissed. “What do you care?”

“I don't,” I snapped. “It's just that he's my brother, and—”

“Oh my
god
.” She jumped down effortlessly. “You're
jealous
.”

“What?” My face burned. “You're fucking insane, you know that?” I turned away from her. My brain was sober, humiliated. My body was drunk. I tripped and almost knocked over the lamp next to her couch. “Jesus. I have to get home.” I was halfway to the door, trying to figure out where I'd put my purse and my keys, when she laughed.

“Hey. Wait.” She dipped toward me, a colorful blur: pink lips and cheeks and a shimmery beige over her eyes and all the black hair that fluttered around her shoulders when she walked. “I'm sorry.”

“Whatever. I need my keys.”

“Stevie. I didn't mean to laugh, okay? I'm sorry.” She gripped my arm and pulled me into her. “Don't leave.” She hugged me.

“I'm not—I was just asking.” I said it into her collarbone. I reached out my fingertip and traced it, because it was so beautiful. Long and angular.

“I know.” She pulled back a little. “I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry.”

And then her mouth was on mine, and my breath caught in my throat. We stayed like that for a long time: her top lip pressed between my top and bottom lip, unmoving. She tasted tart and good. My whole body was knotted into itself. In the corners of my eyes, hot tears gathered and slid down my cheeks.

“Hey. It's okay,” she whispered into my mouth before she
kissed me, really kissed me. I could feel the parts of myself that she was touching because she was touching them: My lips burned where her lips were and the back of my neck where her cold, small hand rested. I was there because she was there. She kissed the wet salt from my cheeks. I kissed her back, found her tongue with mine. I rested my hands on her shoulders.

“I'm drunk.” I shuddered at the ceiling as she kissed my neck. “I'm really drunk, okay?” I let her press me into the door, felt my body harden against hers. I let her consume me.

“And what was that like for you?” Shrink asks, and I find myself in her office again, my knees drawn to my chest and my ankles crossed over each other.

“That's the wrong question,” I say to my lap. “The question is,
What were you thinking while you kissed her?
”

“Okay. So what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I wanted to kiss her better than Josh kissed her.” I can't even look at her as I say it. “And I was thinking,
I can't believe she wants me
.”
Me.
An amateur, a fumbling idiot with no perfumes or face creams on her bathroom counter. I'd never kissed anyone before. Other girls had their first kisses in middle school, in basements, sucking the punch-stained mouths of the boys they'd grown up with. But nobody had ever wanted me before Eden, and maybe that was part of it.

There's a knock at the door. Shrink jumps, but I'm grateful.

“I'm in session,” Shrink calls, irritated. The door opens anyway.

“Anna? I'm sorry. We need you for just a second. Quickly.” A nurse's voice. Jeff's, I think.

“I'm sorry, Stevie. I'll be back as soon as I can,” Shrink says. “Sit tight for me, okay?”

“Yeah.” When the door closes behind them, I stand up and stretch. My body aches from the synthetic, air-conditioned cold. I bend over the candle on her side table and warm my hands. I wander around Shrink's office, running my fingers over book spines and picture frames. On her desk are small flocks of paper cranes. I pick up a shiny green one, tap its angles with my fingertip.

I put it down next to a small notebook. The notebook is open, with a number scribbled in pencil on the first line. I only have to see the first few digits to know what it means. I look away. I look again. It's still there. I am not having a nightmare.

I expect to feel angry, enraged. I expect to feel a fire in me. But instead, there is a void.

“Stevie, I'm sorry about—” Shrink stops when she sees me.

“What are you doing calling Paris?” I ask. Quietly.

She's silent for a while. I wonder if she's thinking about lying.

“She's your mother, Stevie. She has a right to know how your treatment is progressing.”

“What did you tell her?” I whisper.

“Stevie, please turn around.”

“What did you
tell
her?” I can't turn around. I can't face her.

“Stevie.”

“Tell me.” The silvery lead marks run together on the page.

“I haven't told her anything yet. We've been playing phone tag. It's difficult with the time difference.” Shrink takes a few steps toward me. “Stevie, I think we should talk about how you're feeling about this, okay?”