studio-but he always knew. I was a tiny little girl then, maybe five or six. He’d say, “Hey pumpkin, can I have a pumpkin seed?” and I’d always say, “For what purpose, sir!”-it was a line he’d taught me. “I’d like to roast and toast it and eat it all up.” And I’d shake my head no with a little impish grin. He’d fake being offended and plead and plead for a pumpkin seed until I laughed. Then he’d scoop me up and kiss my head and tell me he loved me over and over.
It’s funny because the day before he died, he walked up to me in the TV room where I was sitting and watching an old movie called The House Without a Christmas Tree. He leaned over and kissed the top of my head, like he did when I was five. But now I was eleven, and I turned around and shouted at him, “Don’t do that! It’s weird. Don’t kiss the top of my head or touch my hair.” He kind of stood there frozen for a second and then smiled. He said, “Sorry, pumpkin, I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“You’re not bothering me-just don’t kiss the top of my head anymore.”
He nodded okay and said, “I’m sorry, pumpkin,” and left. The next morning he was dead. I never got to say sorry or anything or explain it. I didn’t hate it-just my eleven-year-old self hated it. That’s what eleven-year-olds do. I hate thinking about that and that’s why I hate thinking about him too much as well. But everybody always wants to talk about it.
“My mother saved his ties. I won’t look at them or her stupid pictures of him. His studio is like a creepy shrine or mausoleum. It makes me sick. She makes me sick. I love her, but she makes me sick. All she wants to do is keep everything exactly the way it was, except it isn’t. He’s dead. And I’m crazy now too, just like he was.” This was exhausting me. Not the way I wanted to spend this last session.
“You’ll see your mother tomorrow. Perhaps we can have her fly back with you and we can have a family discussion about the photos and ties, and about your father’s office, if it is upsetting to you. Each of you listening to the other might be helpful.”
There’s a long pause again and he patiently waits for me to respond. But I sit stone-faced. He gazes at me for a few minutes, which makes me really uncomfortable, until finally I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.
“I’ve never spent Christmas without her. It made me feel lonely to think about that. I’m flying home. I’m glad about that. It’ll be like old times. We can talk then; there’s no need for her to come here.”
He nods, hoping to keep me talking.
“I want to go shopping with her. It’s a happy memory for me.”
Then there’s a long pause where I say nothing and he sits there like a statue in a park waiting for the nut job on the bench to talk.
“You will; I’m sure.”
He grabs a box of tissues.
I take one. I cry.
He looks at his clock, then says, “You have a bus to catch.”
I sniffle and smile.
“Have a wonderful trip, Jane. Remember this: No matter how dark your time at home gets, you are not alone. There might be a moment or even a day or two that feels that way, where you are thinking, ‘no one in the world can see or hear me,’ but it isn’t true. We are always with you. We believe in you. And you can reach out and check in with us by phone at any time.”
I wonder if that’s his subconscious at work. If he’s worried that something bad might happen. I wonder if that notion will blossom in his head and if he’ll try to come and save me as I’m getting on the plane. Magical thinking, I chide myself.
“Merry Christmas, Jane.”
Chapter 6
I grab my bag from my room and ditch the old lady dance shoes. I slide on my snow boots and pull the bottoms of my jeans down over the top of them. I tuck my white blouse into my jeans and pull on a dark brown V- neck sweater and then my winter jacket. I hurry downstairs to the lobby. After flashing the bus pass hanging around my neck, I line up behind four other patients from the addiction floor, none of whom I know. It’s five minutes before noon and the bus is already idling in front of the institute. I loathe it.
It’s a short yellow bus, with the words L IFE H OUSE printed along the side in large block letters. They might as well have written N UT H OUSE, just to be sure that everyone who saw us in town knew who we were. We all walk onto the bus like the medicated zombies we are, eyes looking anywhere but at each other. An attendant checks our names off and the bus slides into gear.
I check my watch: three hours, fifty-seven minutes till takeoff. I close my eyes and imagine that milky blue sky above the earth. Almost there, Jane.
• • •
As I step off the bus, I check my watch. It’s only 12:20 p.m., so I’ve got a good forty minutes before the airport bus departs. So far so good-in the time department, that is.
The good townspeople of Powder River stare at us like we’re losers. Who wouldn’t? A busload of adolescent nut jobs pulls into your town for a little Yuletide shopping and cheer and your jaw isn’t hitting the floor?
I stand there for a few seconds, momentarily unsure of myself. The attendant, her name is May, notices my indecision.
“Jane, your bus picks you up right here in just about thirty minutes. Are you okay? Do you want me to stand here with you?”
“No,” I say. Then, “I want to buy my mother a gift, from Powder River.”
“Would you like me to come with you?”
I shake my head no. “That’s okay. Do I have time?”
“I think so; you should be back here in twenty minutes to be safe.” She pauses, then continues, “You look very worried, Jane. Are you sure everything is all right? I think your mom will understand if you don’t have something.”
“I’m fine,” I mumble. “I want to buy a tie for my father, too.” She is just an outsourced attendant; she doesn’t know my father put a hole in his head on Christmas Eve, so the lie doesn’t register. But what if she tells Old Doctor or one of the nurses who know me? Note to self: You are becoming self-destructive. Stick to the Plan.
“Well, there’s Lila’s Vintage a few blocks up on the corner,” she says. “They should have ties. I’ll come with you.”
“Thank you, but I’m really fine.”
She looks at me, and her mind is calculating all that could go wrong and weighing it against what is the good and right thing to do at Christmas.
“Okay, but you don’t have a lot of time. To be safe, be back in fifteen minutes.”
I nod and turn, walking into a whipping cold wind. Slush, salt, and sand cover the sidewalk and the freezing temperatures have made everything slick. Despite the cold, there are people milling about, looking in shop windows, and a dozen or so kids from a local choir are assembled outside Town Hall singing carols. An old- fashioned black pot hangs from a stand in front of the choir and little kids take turns tossing in their mothers’ coins.
I still feel the attendant’s eyes on my back, so I turn around, but she has disappeared. Where has she gone? She’s not calling the institute. Don’t be paranoid. I look carefully on the far corners of each side of the street. Nothing. She’s shopping, like everyone else. Don’t be crazy, Jane.
I push into the wind, past the door to Lila’s Vintage and into Dowden’s Drugstore on the far corner. An old man with a short white pharmacist’s jacket looks up from his perch and gives me a cursory smile before returning to his business, counting pills.
From the back entrance to the store, a FedEx man walks in carrying a handful of packages and brings them to the counter.
As the two men chat, I examine a display of hand-knitted mittens and hats. Candy canes dance in a pattern on the woven yarn: red and white, green and red, black and pink. It’s not as much a part of the Plan as the cold
