“You don’t remember?”
Apparently I didn’t. So Ellie told me. “When you were really little, like four, you saw Mom in the garden dumping salt on a bunch of slugs. You had a total meltdown, crying and screaming. I’d never seen you so upset and nothing would calm you down. You watched in horror as the slugs dissolved into nothing.” As Ellie recounted this traumatic event, it sort of started to come back to me.
“Oh my God. I was positive I could hear their silent screams of disintegration.”
Ellie continued to fill in the blanks for me. “You started pleading with Mom to stop it, but she wouldn’t. You asked her why she was killing the slugs and Mom told you it was because they were killing her plants. And you asked her, why did she pick caring about the plants over caring about the slugs? Why were the plants more important? Why were the plants more lovable?”
And then I remembered the scene. I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but I couldn’t understand how my own mother could make such a callous decision, choosing one life-form over another. As my mind raced back, Ellie kept talking.
“Well, Mom realized it was all too disturbing for you, so after that day she only killed slugs when you weren’t home. But I knew you still knew. ’Cause sometimes you would stare at a little streak of slime that led to nowhere on our patio and you would get really sad.”
I was so relieved to have a reason for my dreams, a reason I could openly discuss, that I grabbed Ellie in a bear hug and danced around while cheering, “Of course! The slugs! Thank you!” As I put her down, it occurred to me that, only one year after I was disturbed by my mother’s choice of the plants over the slugs, I would choose Ellie over Duncan. I understood then that when you love something, there is really no dilemma at all. With age comes the wisdom that choices must be made. It’s not callous; it’s just life. I then wondered aloud why the dreams had started now, after all this time. Ellie thought it was pretty obvious.
She said, “You don’t do well when you feel abandoned. And I think all the Roman stuff is affecting you more than you realize.”
Once Ellie hopped on her return train to New York City, I called Alisha for an emergency appointment. She already knew about the Roman stuff. But for the first time I spoke about the recurring dreams and my mother and the slugs. With a series of questions that all amounted to “And how did that make you feel?” I uncovered that I felt scared. Scared that I was more the slug than the plant. Scared that my mother would one day choose another life-form over me. Scared that maybe I too was so disposable and powerless that something as harmless and common as salt could wipe my existence off the face of the earth.
By the end of the session I was sobbing. I tried to catch all my snot and tears into tissues, made readily available in a wooden box on a side table, but a few drips made their way into my mouth. The nasty salty taste made me sob even more. I produced guttural heaves and a pile of balled-up, drenched Kleenex. My display of keening made me embarrassed. I thought, especially since I was a psychology major, here to observe more than to emote, that I could handle everything in a more clinical manner. But Dr. Alisha Goldman said the crying was good. It was needed and cathartic. And that I was having what she would describe as “a breakthrough.”
She was right. I slept soundly that night, my eyes heavy and swollen from all the tears. I woke up the next morning with no memory of my dreams at all.
It was a chilly December morning. No snow, but frost clung to every archway and bare tree limb. I put on my favorite tight jeans and a thin kelly green sweater that made the red in my eyes and hair pop. I wrapped my bare neck in a long gray wool scarf and pulled on gray ankle boots. I knew I was going to be freezing during my eleven-minute walk through campus, but I thought the cold might solidify my resolve. I was going to conquer my last fear with immersion therapy.
Someone must have lit a Christmas-scented candle, because the hallway of the psychology building smelled of canned pine trees. I was shivering a little, but quickly warmed up as I walked the two flights of stairs to the department offices. Max the TA was alone, perched on a desk near the printer, reading something that amused him. He glanced up.
“Hi there. Ruby, right? I don’t think we’ve ever actually spoken. I’m Max.” He put out his hand to shake. The muscle between his thumb and pointer sexily protruded a little. Maybe he played the drums. He certainly didn’t get those hands reading Freud.
I said nothing. I walked three steps toward him, putting myself within inches of his chest. He smelled like crisp no-frills soap. He dropped his outstretched arm. I leaned in, my mouth hovering near his. He wasn’t sure what to do and just stayed as he was. I took the scarf off my neck, put it around his, and pulled him toward me. I kissed him, my mouth open. And soon I felt his tongue touch mine. It was perfect human flesh.
After that I became grateful for my salt-phobia phase because it taught me I could conquer anything, rational or not. And my breakthrough with Alisha solidified my resolve to become a therapist. To listen to people’s darkest secrets and demons and compulsions and to help them by asking, “And how did that make you feel?” I was excited to get started and be the person across from the blue couch, and not just the person on the blue couch.
CHAPTER 13
ALIBI
My salt terrors never returned. And just when I was finding some normalcy without having Roman in my life, I got a call at eight a.m. on an otherwise unnoteworthy Wednesday morning. Ameena slept through the ringing, her pillow still snug over her face. I answered, groggy. It was the office of the dean of students. I was to report there immediately. The elderly voice on the other end assured me she would let my ten a.m. Clinical Neuroscience professor know I would be missing class and that my absence was sanctioned.
What the fuck was going on?
Twenty minutes later I sat in an office with the dean of students, the academic chair of the history department, and a Professor Barnes, who taught Eurasian Encounters. I was reminded by the dean that Yale had a zero-tolerance policy on cheating and academic dishonesty. I had absolutely no idea where he was going with all this. He then said, “And any student who might help another student cheat is just as culpable, resulting in immediate expulsion.” I still had no idea what was happening.
The dean then softened, and said I had an impeccable record and was well-liked by all of my professors and the rest of the faculty. He continued to glance over what appeared to be my file, and said he was proud of the undergraduate work I had done, and was looking forward to personally reading my senior thesis on remorse and absolution.
“Thanks,” I said, uneasy.
It was then that the chair of the history department took over the conversation.
“A student broke into Professor Barnes’s office last night, riffled through her papers, read what was to be the upcoming final exam, and placed everything back as though it had been untouched. This would have been a very clever way to cheat on the test, the professor never the wiser, but what this student didn’t realize was there was a hidden camera set up in her office.”
Before thinking, I blurted out, “Really? Why was there a camera set up?”