I nodded.
“Yikes. Did you tell the parents?”
“No. Patient-client confidentiality. But I told her not to do anything stupid. I said even if her parents have been acting like kids, they love her and have been pretty good parents, and they deserve to always know where she is.”
Alice slipped a camisole over her head. “Doesn’t really sound like you got through to her.”
“Thanks.”
“No offense,” Alice said, pulling on her navy blue tights, shimmying them up under her skirt. “You should text instead of call.”
I pulled up Isobel’s number and texted, Isobel, it’s Jake Cassidy. There’s a coffee shop just down from my office, at 38th and Balboa. Z Café. Can we meet today at noon? I’ll buy you a hot chocolate. It will only be me, I promise. People are worried about you.
I intentionally didn’t use the word parents. Kids whose parents are going through a divorce feel all sorts of anger and guilt and love and pity toward their parents, tangled emotions that are difficult to unravel.
No response.
21
Before noon, I walked over to Z Café. I got a table in the corner. Because of the mediocre coffee and overpriced pastries, the place was always empty. I set up my laptop on the table, a newspaper laid out beside it. If Isobel did show up, I wanted to look relaxed, not threatening.
In my job, with adult clients, it’s sometimes best to hit a problem directly and with force. But with kids, it’s best to approach things from the side. Teenagers brace themselves for confrontation, always. Most of the kids I see have learned how to build quick and impenetrable walls.
At noon, I heard the door swing open. I looked up, hoping to see Isobel, but instead it was a hipster couple, decked out head to toe in expensive clothes made to look cheap, artfully torn to show their tattoos, both carrying the latest MacBook Air.
By twelve-thirty, I was beginning to worry. What if something had really happened to Isobel? What if she wasn’t just taking some time off from her terribly immature, self-centered parents? I was about to give up, go to the office, and call her mother, when she slid into the seat across from me. Her brown hair was a tangled mess, her jeans were dirty, and she had dark circles under her eyes. “You didn’t think I’d show up, did you?”
I’d already rehearsed my greeting, or part of it. “I actually kind of did. You strike me as someone who doesn’t leave a friend hanging.”
“True dat,” Isobel agreed. Then, when I stood up, “Hey, where are you going?”
“I owe you a big hot chocolate. Whipped cream?”
“I think I need coffee.”
While I was at the counter, I texted her mom. Isobel’s OK. I’m with her right now.
Thank God, her mother texted back. Where are you?
Near my office. Give us a few minutes. I don’t want to scare her off.
I waited for the frantic email demanding to know more, but to Isobel’s mother’s credit, she seemed to understand that, for the moment, delicacy was called for. Thank you so much. I’ll wait to hear from you.
I went back to the table with the coffee.
“Thank you,” Isobel said, dumping a sugar packet into her coffee. She looked like she hadn’t slept.
“So,” I said, folding the paper in front of us. “Some serious drama at home?”
“Yep.”
“I told your mother that you’re okay, and that you’re with me.”
Isobel blushed and refused to meet my eyes. I could tell she was wavering between anger and relief. “Okay. That’s good, I guess.”
“You want some food, a burrito, maybe? You know Chino’s up the block? My treat.”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“Seriously.” I shut my laptop and slid it into my messenger bag. “I feel bad for not feeding you. You’re obviously starving.” I stood and started walking to the door. Isobel followed.
I gave myself a silent high five for getting her out of the café, moving. Talking while walking is always more effective than the artificial constraints of sitting in a room, in a circle with a peer group. As we walked, Isobel seemed to loosen up. She’s sixteen, but in some ways she seems younger. Unlike the other kids in the group, her parents’ divorce surprised her. Usually, the kids see it coming for months. Many are actually kind of relieved when the parents finally break the news. Not Isobel. According to her, things were really great, their family was happy. She thought her parents had a good marriage, until the day her mother told her that she was moving out in order to be “true to herself.”
“I know I’m not supposed to care that she moved out to be with a woman”—Isobel tossed her cup into a trash can—“but it really pisses me off. It’s so unfair to my dad. And at least if she’d been with another man, there’d be, I don’t know, maybe this slim possibility of them getting back together.”
“If she’d moved out to be with another man,” I asked gently, “would that be equally unfair?”
“I don’t know,” Isobel said, growing angry—not at me, I sensed, but at the world. At this wrench her mother had thrown into their previously happy life. “I mean, how could she not know? Why did she marry my dad in the first place? I have gay friends, and they’re only in high school, but they already know. I don’t understand how a person wakes up one day, forty-three years into her totally hetero life, and changes her mind.”
“It was different for your mom’s generation.”
We walked a block in silence. Something was weighing on her, and finally she said it. “I can see how, for my dad, it really would have been better if she had known. I keep imagining this alternate life for him, where he gets to fulfill his dream of growing old with the same person. Can you believe he’s been putting away a little money every single week since the day they were married for the beach house he planned to buy after they retired? My mom loves the beach, and the house was going to be his big gift to her, his grand gesture. For twenty years, he’s nursed this stupid dream of surprising her with a beach house. But all along that dream has been false, and he never knew.”
“Sad,” I said.
Isobel glanced at me. “What I’m saying is this: My very existence is predicated on my father’s eventual unhappiness. But I’d still choose my existence over his happiness. Does that make me a bad person?”