Confidential(57)

If I came back, I might be a different manager than I’d ever been.

But hearing this made it easier to go.

“I can handle it,” Chenille said, sitting up a little straighter. “I can do this.”

“We haven’t even discussed compensation yet.”

She smiled. “I’m going to be a tough negotiator. I learned from the best.”





CHAPTER 44





LUCINDA


Cassie was five, and she spent a lot of time in the closet. That’s because she didn’t like the looks of the men or their smells. She didn’t like how they’d lay on her pink princess bed, whether she was in it or not. She didn’t like that Mommy went in her own bedroom and didn’t answer when Cassie knocked on the door. She didn’t like being left to take care of herself, while the men prowled the house like jungle animals. She didn’t like the feeling that something was always about to happen, and she didn’t know what that thing was, but it would be bad.

She kept all her toys in the closet just so they would be there when she needed them. She’d do Legos in the dark, by braille, because she couldn’t turn on any lights. And she couldn’t make any noise, because then they’d know—that one man would know—that she was there, and then the bad thing could start happening, and maybe it would never stop.

“An older man taking advantage of a young girl,” Dr. Baylor said. “Seems like a theme.”

“That’s as far as the memory goes,” I said. “Just the anticipation of something bad, and of course, as an adult, I know what that something bad would be. But when I’m writing—when I’m in Cassie’s five-year-old head—I don’t know.”

“So you don’t know if something bad ever happens to ‘Cassie.’” He didn’t use air quotes, but he might as well have. Other than the third person and the name change, my semiautobiographical novel was really a memoir. When I tried to write as myself, I faltered. It was instant and immutable writer’s block. When I was Cassie, it flowed.

“I’m afraid of what happens to her,” I said.

Dr. Baylor nodded slowly. It was so hard to believe that this was the same man I regularly saw naked. In a way, he wasn’t. That man was Michael. Dr. Baylor was still my therapist, and I could focus more in session now that I didn’t have that distracting crush on him, now that I’d separated the two out. I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of that type of compartmentalization, but it worked. I no longer wanted Dr. Baylor; I just wanted Michael, and other than Wednesday evenings, I had him.

Sometimes we did the mornings, if I couldn’t wait until nightfall. We’d had a few assignations at lunchtime. I’d text him, and if he was available, we’d meet at the office. He never texted me. He said it was important that I called the shots completely. This was about my needs, not his. We were there to fulfill my fantasies, not his.

“Go on,” he said.

“My mother got clean when I was six,” I said. “If anything happened, it couldn’t have been going on for very long. A year, at most.”

“The length of time doesn’t determine the extent of the trauma. It’s about the imprint.”

“The imprint?”

“You know how after ducklings hatch, if the mother isn’t there, the ducklings will follow whoever they see first? It could be another animal entirely. They could follow around a human, if that’s who’s within eyesight. It’s because that’s what imprints on their mind. With trauma, there are imprints.”

“Are you saying that my being with Adam was about some nameless man making an imprint on me?” I nearly shuddered. It was just so gross. But then, I had been his trained puppy, hadn’t I?

“I don’t know that yet. We’re still at the beginning of this thing. You’re just now recovering memories that you’d suppressed because they were too dangerous. You weren’t strong enough. Or rather, you didn’t think you were strong enough.”

Now that was an idea I liked. “Do you think I’ve always been strong enough?”

“Yes. You’re coming into the recognition of your full power.”

I smiled to myself, thinking of my extracurricular “sessions” with Michael. I sure felt powerful then.

But I hadn’t written since that closet chapter. It was only two days ago. Still, before that, I’d had so much momentum, so much fire. I was worried that it was gone for good, that I’d retreat back into my proofreading and my powerlessness. Michael, Dr. Baylor, and my writing were what buoyed me.

Or maybe it was my own strength that had been there all along.

“How do I get myself to write again?” I asked.

We talked about coping skills and self-talk, all the tools I could use to get myself back in front of my laptop, to stare down the bogeyman of my past and remember that it was, in fact, the past, that the days of my being helpless were long gone. I came into the session a little bit hunched, making myself small, but I left walking tall again. I smiled at the thought of coming back later.

Out on the street, in the line of metered spaces, there was a woman in a sedan who I’d never seen before, but I could swear she was staring right at me. It was pretty creepy, because she was in some sort of headdress and sunglasses, like a disguise, which paradoxically made her way more conspicuous. I noticed a large bruise on the lower part of her face, like a purple jellyfish spreading its tentacles, and I was sorry for finding her creepy. Really, she was more sad. She might have been hiding out from whoever did that to her.