“The police let the three of you leave all alone?” Dr. Rosen asked.
“Sebastian was almost eighteen.”
“His dad had just died,” Rory said, her voice breaking. “You were children.”
“The police should have taken care of you.” Patrice reached out for my hand. I grabbed it and she squeezed it like she had that first morning during the closing prayer.
“And when you made it back to the condo?” Dr. Rosen asked.
“We had to tell Sandy. We knocked on the door because we’d lost the keys. When she looked through the peephole, she understood the terrible math. One of us was missing. She started screaming, ‘No! No! No!’ ”
“Jesus, Christie,” Carlos whispered.
I’d pushed past them in the doorway and hid in the bathtub—no water running—so I could get out of their way. Behind the shower curtain, I picked at the dried mud and blood caked on my legs, trying to bear their grief. They remained in the doorway, holding each other and sobbing, until the last beams of daylight faded to darkness.
“What did it sound like?” Dr. Rosen asked.
I opened my mouth to imitate their wailing. Nothing came out. When I tried again, the sound froze inside me, my aperture for grief sealed up inside my throat.
“You did it a minute ago. You can hear it in your head,” Dr. Rosen said.
I could hear it, the three of them, huddled and wailing, but no sound would come out. That terror and grief were a part of me, an organ that covered everything, like skin or hair. Like a stain. I didn’t know how to let it go. I managed a few guttural barks. I shook my head. “I can’t.”
I’d long ago accepted that I’d carry Hawaii—those screams and the terrified clenching of every muscle when I thought of the ocean—for the rest of my life. It was the price of having survived. What would it look like to heal? I couldn’t conjure a version of me that wasn’t haunted by the ocean gushing out of David.
Dr. Rosen suggested an experiment. “Repeat after me: ‘I did not kill David.’ ”
I shook my head. “Jesus, Dr. Rosen, I don’t think I killed him. This isn’t an ABC after-school special.”
“You feel responsible.”
“That’s ridiculous. I was thirteen—”
“The sign.”
“You always mention it, hon,” Rory said.
“Sign?” I said, my gaze darting around the room.
“The ‘No Trespassing’ sign,” Rory said.
I slumped back in my chair as if I’d been hit. Did I really think it was my fault? “That’s what I’ve been carrying all these years?”
“It’s one of many stories that you carry.”
We were never supposed to be on that beach. The whisper that had been echoing through me since 1987 roared in my ears: You could have stopped it. Should have. I might have been thirteen, but I could read. I understood we were breaking the law. I knew what “No Trespassing” meant.
“Ready to repeat after me?” Dr. Rosen said. I nodded. “Look at Rory and say: ‘I did not kill David.’ ”
“I did not kill David.”
“It’s not my fault he died.”
“It’s not my fault he died.”
“I don’t have to blame myself.”
“I don’t have to blame myself.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“Now breathe,” Dr. Rosen said. My lungs expanded underneath my ribs. When I exhaled, my breath came out jagged, its edges caught on the hooks of the resistance I’d built up over seventeen years.
“So this trauma has kept me alone all these years?”
“Your buried feelings about it has driven you away from people.”
“Why?”
He leaned toward me and spoke slowly. “If you get into an intimate relationship, your intense feelings are going to come out just like they did this morning. You’ll attach to someone.” He pointed at himself. “He might go to the beach. He might not come back. Love will lead you to the beach a thousand times a day for the rest of your life.”
“I’m never getting over this.”
Dr. Rosen shook his head. “Christie, you will never get over this.”
Dr. Rosen closed the session in the usual way, and Patrice and Rory both turned to me and wrapped me in their arms. Carlos stood just to the side, waiting for his turn. So did Marty and the Colonel. Each of them held me tight. Dr. Rosen also held me for a few seconds longer than usual. Just below the surface of my skin, I could still feel my body shaking with the memory of the waves hitting the black sand beach.
13
In August 2002, I celebrated my first anniversary in group by anxiously refreshing my e-mail with an index finger every three minutes in the student lounge where I was camped out with other law students. I’d finished a ten-week summer internship at Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, and the hiring coordinator said they’d e-mail us about permanent job offers by the end of the day. Over the summer, I’d written memos, researched principles of contract law, and stayed past nine several nights to prove my commitment. I also cheered at a Cubs game and sipped club soda at happy hours to prove that one future day I would be capable of socializing with blue-chip clients. But now I needed a job offer.
At four thirty, I gave the mouse one last press. My eyes seized on the e-mail from the firm: The committee still hasn’t voted. Every other year in the firm’s history, all of the interns were offered postgraduation jobs at a boozy party in the conference room overlooking downtown Chicago. This year, we’d primly sipped cranberry juice and nibbled roasted almonds as the managing partner talked about the economic downturn with a tight smile. Now this e-mail proved that the rumors that had spooked us all summer were true: they didn’t have enough jobs for all of us.
My third year of law school had just started. Graduation loomed nine months ahead. The dot-com bubble had burst, and law firms typically did not hire third-year students—they hired the
