Whisper to Me(68)

THE VOICE: It’s you. It’s your fault. It’s all you.

I stood up, quickly. My plastic chair fell, landed on its side, the thin metal legs sticking out like it was a wounded animal.

“It’s ME,” I shouted. “It’s ME, okay? I’m not angry with my mom for dying. I’m angry with me. It was MY FAULT, okay? Don’t you understand? I KILLED HER.”





I killed her.





Me.





Stupid, disgusting me.





In my memory there’s a jump cut.

One moment I’m standing there screaming, and then, without seeming to cross the intervening space, without seeming to operate as a body in a physical universe, requiring time to move from one point to another, the next moment the doctor has his arms around me and is holding me.

Holding me.

Do you know something?

It was the first time someone had held me for three years. Dad had never, Dad had never, Dad had never— My thoughts were a storm. A maelstrom. A whirlpool. Charybdis.

My dad never— It was me—

I KILLED HER.

My breath was hitching in my chest; I was not a body but just lungs and a mind, a pounding heart. I was broken into pieces, like Echo, like Orpheus, torn into my constituent organs and pieces.

Sparagmos.

I was all over the floor, scattered.

“It’s going to be okay,” said Dr. Lewis, over and over again. “This is a breakthrough. This is a breakthrough.”





But it didn’t feel like a breakthrough.



It felt like a break.



Like I was broken.





“I have to go,” I said. My whole being felt like a slept-on hand; tingling, filled with pain.

“I don’t think that’s wise. I think you need—”

“I have to go.”

“You shouldn’t be alone at this point,” he said. “This is a very sensitive time. Perhaps your dad could pick you up?” He was standing back from me now, one pace, his hands on my arms. The parts of me that had fallen all over the floor had started to knit back together again.

“Are you ******* kidding me?” I asked.

“He’s at work?”

“No! He knows I killed her! Don’t you see? He knows. That’s why he hates me.”

“You think your father hates you?”

“No.”

“Good, because—”

“I know he hates me.”

“Cass …”

“It was my fault. Why are you not understanding that? He knows it, the same as me.”

He shook his head. His gray hair rippled. “I know you feel like that, but—”

“But it’s true. Now let me go.”

He withdrew his hands, quickly, like I was burning. “At least call Paris,” he said. “Have her come be with you.”

I opened my mouth to say something angry, then stopped. “Yeah, okay,” I said. I took out my cell and dialed. It rang for a long time, and I was about to hang up when Paris answered.

“Hey,” she said flatly. Distantly. At any other time I would have wondered what was wrong.

“It’s Cass.”

“I know.” Her voice still not quite there. Absent, somehow coming from someone or somewhere else. A ventriloquist’s dummy, talking to me.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Nothing. Just had a bad time doing a party, that’s all.”

I realized I hadn’t even asked her what was wrong; but she’d answered anyway; she’d assumed I’d asked. That was how much of a selfish * I was.

“Sorry,” I said.

A sound like a shrug made of air. “It happens,” she said.

“Did they hurt you?”

“No, Cass. No. Not … physically.”

“Good. I know Julie worries that—”

“I’m fine, Cass.”

“Good. That’s good. But I mean, are you sure? Because you sound kind of—”

“Look just ****** leave it, okay, Cass?” Her voice had a sudden coldness in it I had never heard before, like the coldness of stone; sharp-edged, mineral, angry but distant at the same time. Somehow … not human. It’s hard for me to describe. All the time I’d known her I’d never seen her as someone with … issues, you know? Despite what she said about her drugs and her therapy and whatever, she seemed so together.

That was the first time I saw another shape underneath her, the contours of a troubled mind.

A pause.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have called but … but, Paris, I need you,” I said, all in a rush. “Please, I really—”

I heard her snap into the real world. Like a penknife closing. “Where are you, Cass?”

“At the bowling—”

“Ten minutes. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She hung up.

I turned to Dr. Lewis. “She’s coming. I’ll wait for her outside.”

Dwight the cop opened the door as I walked unsteadily toward it—he was always the first to arrive. Dr. Lewis looked torn for a moment, but then finally he nodded. I guess he had heard Paris’s side of the conversation, so he knew I wasn’t lying.