“Mary,” I asked instead, tears in my eyes. “When does the pain go away?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice soft. She felt sorry for me. I could see it in her eyes. I’d been getting that look a lot before I left for Wallingfield. From teachers, random strangers, even the checkout guy at the grocery store. But after I said the story out loud, I was a little sorry for me, too. For both me and, I realized, for Charlie.
Mary leaned over like she wanted to touch me, but she didn’t. “I don’t know when the pain will go away, Elizabeth. But I, for one, think that you are so brave. You took a chance and put yourself in a situation where you weren’t in control. That must have been incredibly scary, but you did it. Maybe it didn’t go your way, but you survived. You are strong, Elizabeth, and I think that the more you face these feelings, the more you talk about them, the less power they’ll have over you.”
I wanted to believe her. I just didn’t know if I could.
“Elizabeth, from what I am hearing, it sounds like Charlie was worried about you, that he stopped so that he wouldn’t hurt you, not because he wanted to.”
I nodded. Someone knocked on the door. Mary glanced at her watch. “Elizabeth—”
“I know,” I said. “Your appointment is here.” Then I stood up and left, leaving the door ajar behind me.
24
Six days post-Charlie, on a Tuesday, flowers arrived. They were the 1-800 kind, all daisies and carnations with a red teddy bear and a sagging helium balloon inscribed with Get Well Soon in rainbow bubble letters, the exact type of gift Katrina and I had laughed at. The card read, Get better, Elizabeth. —Charlie. My heart blipped once, but that was it.
“Aren’t those nice?” Nurse Jill said, handing them to me before lunch.
“Yes,” I said. “Very nice.”
I waited for the Charlie jolt, the pain that came when I thought about him. But I got nothing. So I gave the flowers to Willa. She loved them.
And then, on Friday, another package arrived. It was wrapped in brown paper, and the script was familiar. I caught my breath.
No. It couldn’t be.
After my phone call with Charlie, I’d just assumed the packages would stop. But why would they? They weren’t from him, remember?
When Ray cut open the top of the box, I peered into it with him. Snuggled down beneath crumpled-up pages of the Boston Globe lay a black travel umbrella, the kind you can buy at CVS for five dollars. Tied to the handle was a note in the same handwriting: For the next big storm.
What was that supposed to mean?
Ray slid the box back to me. “Worried about rain?” he said.
“Not really. I have no idea why someone would send this.” I tried to think of someone, anyone, who might want to send me an umbrella. My mind came up blank.
Ray seemed impressed. “Looks like you have a mystery to figure out.”
“I guess.” I hustled back to my room, where I hung the little travel umbrella on a hook in my closet with the rest of the gifts, which were in a sorry state. I’d taped the poster back together. I’d collected as much sand as I could out of the trash and poured it back in the jar. I’d rescued the plastic ring and set it on my dresser.
I’d think about this later, I told myself. With Mary.
*
“… Elizabeth? Hello? How are you feeling about today?”
“Huh?”
Mary shot me a questioning look. I’d arrived early for therapy and, while waiting for my session to start, had let my mind wander to my mystery. Could it be Katrina? No. Shay? Priya? One of Charlie’s friends? No, no, and no. Shay and Priya would never send me stuff like this. And Charlie’s friends cared about Charlie. When he broke up with me, they did, too. When we’d gone back to school in August, it was like I’d never existed. They ignored me again, just like they had before Charlie and I went out.
Could it be Wyatt, the kid in Algebra II who sometimes helped me with my homework? Could it be Tuck, feeling guilty after practically killing me at the Harvest Concert? Dad?
“Elizabeth?” I snapped back into focus. Mary was speaking to me. “Where were you right then?”
I forced my attention back to her. “Nowhere. Here. Just thinking.”
A week ago, I was so sure that it was Charlie. All my ideas and theories about the presents led back to him. But now that he was out of the picture and the presents were still coming, my thoughts flew around with no home base.
“Well, if you felt nervous, I would understand.”
Mary’s words jarred me back to her little office. “Nervous? About what?”
“I’m just thinking back to the other day, when I told you about the family therapy session. You’d expressed some anxiety then.”
Oh. My. God.
Family therapy.
Today.
No. Not today.
“You seem a bit caught off guard,” Mary said.
“Yeah, well, I sort of forgot.” Every patient at Wallingfield sat through at least one individual family therapy session in addition to the group. Since my parents were at work, ours was over the phone. Mom had scheduled it; I don’t think it was an accident it was on a day they couldn’t be here in person.
“Okay. Let’s talk for a minute about what will happen when your parents pick up the phone.”
“They’ll tell me I just won a million dollars?” I bit a nail too far down and blood appeared. The sting focused me.
“It’s okay to be nervous.”
I just shrugged. “I’m not nervous. So what are we going to talk about?”
“Well, my main goal is to help you through the conversation. I’m going to start us off by focusing on how everybody can best support you, both here and, eventually, at home. Do you have anything you want to focus on?”
Not having the call? “No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, if anything comes up that you want to discuss in private, you just write it down on this paper and I can put your parents on hold, okay?”
“Okay.” Can we put them on hold for the whole conversation?
“Here we go.” Mary hit dial.
I hadn’t seen Mom since family group. Both she and Dad had called a few times over the week, but the conversations always went something like this:
Mom/Dad: Hi, honey. How is treatment going?
Me: Fine.
Mom/Dad: Good to hear.
Me: It’s been nineteen days. When can I come home?
If Dad was calling, he’d say, Don’t rush things, Elizabeth. Take all the time you need. There’s no reason to cut and run before the treatment works, like I’d get some magic drug that would just all of a sudden kick in and cure me. When it was Mom, she’d just get irritated and say, Elizabeth, we don’t know, okay? We just don’t know.
Now Dad picked up fast. “Hi there,” he said. His voice sounded unsure, nervous. It bothered me to hear him like that. I liked my dad sounding strong. Always.
“Hi, Brian. It’s Mary and Elizabeth here.”
“Hi, Dad,” I said.
“Hi, sweetie.”
Mary spoke next. “I’m going to click Karen in. Just a moment, please.”