I say without looking up, “Did you call?”
“Yeah,” Sheila says. “Jane said she’d have him ready.”
“Then she probably does.” I nod toward the front door.
Sheila hits the doorbell and I walk around back. I always feel bad and really angry when Frankie goes home with her, even though he’s never here long before he goes psycho missing his mom. I know why, but that doesn’t make me like it. It feels crazy to be attached to a kid with Frankie’s unpredictable behavior, but he couldn’t have been born that way. Sheila wasn’t born the way she is, either, and when I remember that, I give her a break; if I’d gone into some of the foster families she went into, I’d be mowing people down in movie theaters by now.
July 6—Session #Who’s Counting?
ANNIE BOOTS
Presents tan and healthy—bright shorts over a one-piece swimming suit, which means she’s decided to repeat a behavior that didn’t yield the best results, athletically, at this same time last year. This girl is a kick.
Me: Swimming again.
Annie: It’s that time of year!
Me: If memory serves, your swimming should be done in water too shallow to actually swim in. On a towel. In the sand. Lots of sunscreen.
Annie: Funny. Swimming’s good for me. It uses completely different muscles.
Me: Which, if that were your goal, would be good.
Annie: Don’t know what you’re talking about. (she’s being sarcastic)
Me: Uh-huh. Annie, since I started working with you, at age nine, you’ve been doing this thing I call oddball sports. You did soccer—that one made some sense, athletically—field hockey, not so much; lacrosse, where you almost killed a girl; cross-country . . .
Annie: Don’t forget curling.
Me: (cannot prevent my own teenage eye roll) Right. Curling. And no matter if you had to win to play more games, or lose to play more games, how many contests have your mother or Sheila or your father attended?
Annie: (big sigh) You think there’s something wrong with me?
Me: You are in a therapist’s office once a week. (gets me a laugh) What’s bringing this all up again? Maybe that’s what we should be looking at. We’ve agreed your responses are . . . a little bizarre . . . but over the years they come and go. What’s going on now?
Annie: I’m not sure. I have some of those dreams, or flashbacks or whatever; you know, where Rance has come out of his coma and is threatening everyone; Nancy grabs the bread knife. Sheila jumps in on one side or the other and I just stand there. I know I’m supposed to do something, but my feet are stuck and I’m yelling but no sound comes out.
Me: And when do you get those dreams?
Annie: I know, I know. When I haven’t seen anybody, so I don’t know if everyone’s all right.
Me: And when you do see somebody and figure out everyone is all right . . . relatively speaking . . . what happens?
Annie: I fight with them.
Me: Because . . .
Annie: I’m mad that they made me worry.
Me: And . . .
Annie: I know, I know. I hate that they’re okay without me.
Me: And . . .
Annie: That they don’t need me.
Me: And . . .
Annie: They don’t want me. (tears well; but she’s showing me the tough Annie, willing them back)
We sit quietly. In one form or another this is a repeat, but naming it usually relieves pressure.
Me: It’s circular. You engage in behavior that yields little, and the less it yields the harder you try.
Annie: The definition of crazy, right?
Me: The definition of spinning wheels. So what are you going to do about this swimming thing?
Annie: (stands, pops her forehead with the palm of her hand) Workouts start tomorrow noon.
Me: Bye, Annie.
Annie: Same time next week?
Me: Same time next week.
Impression: Coming into her last year of high school, then headed into truly uncharted territory. Her trepidation clashes with her need for control. Not unusual given her history, but could be in for a rough patch.
Emily Palmer, M.A.
ChapterFour
With Hoopfest behind me, I’m headed for uncharted waters. Literally. I could play AAU basketball for the rest of the summer, but I’d be on an elite team, which would mean games out of town pretty much every weekend, which would leave me a lot fewer chances to hook up with my roots.
Tomorrow I hit the water.
Lesson in relativity: To gauge my success in basketball I consider points, assists, percentages of field goals and foul shots made, rebounds, and fouls. In swimming it’s fear on the face of the lifeguard.
This is Leah, talking me into turning out the first time: “You practice every day, so if anybody from your crazy family wants to be there to claim your body when you drown, they can. You’ll never make the A team—my team—we have an out-of-town meet every week. You’ll be stuck right here in the city park, swimming with the suck team.”
“How can I refuse?”
She holds up a finger; there’s more. “If you qualify in the prelims of an event, you swim later in the finals. So pick events nobody likes to swim. Like the fifty fly or one hundred I.M. Almost nobody on the suck teams can do all four strokes, so all you have to do to place is not get disqualified. I can help you with that.”
“What’s an ‘I am’? I am what?”
Heel of the hand to the forehead. “I-period, M-period,” she says. “Individual medley.”
“Which doesn’t increase my fund of knowledge one bit.”
“Twenty-five yards of each stroke,” she says. “It’s awful for beginners. Sometimes you’ll be in the water alone. Finish alive, you get a blue ribbon.”
I don’t mind hard work. I don’t even mind turning out for a sport at which I know I’ll be abysmal, but the universe did not engineer my body for the butterfly.
“Doesn’t have to be pretty,” Leah says when I tell her that. “Just legal. Plus, you get to dazzle some young horny Michael Phelps never-be studs laying out on a blanket in your skimpy Speedo two-piece between races. They’ll come around telling you what a good race you swam or asking if you saw theirs, and since you’re completely uninterested you’ll tell them
