Trust Exercise(43)
Clutching the pom-pom pajamas, Sarah locked herself into the tiny bathroom, like a forest of candles and powders and creams in which toilet, sink, and tub had accidentally grown, funguslike, through the floral perfumed understory. Sitting on the toilet she turned on the shower and sobbed into its noise. Love was some kind of chemical error. In the shower she turned the water by increments from very warm to very hot until she thought her skin would burn, and felt the microscopic Liam—where he had floundered his chest against hers leaving streaks of hot sweat, where he had tongued his spittle through the grooves of her ear and down the cords of her neck, where he had greased her with his fingers and stuffed her with what she’d hoped to forget he referred to as “spunk,” another nursery word connoting sickly stench, unlaundered linen, hidden stains, and shame—scoured and rinsed away like so many hairy little organisms from a cleanser commercial, protestingly sucked down the drain. No part of her body did not crave the annihilation of hot water and soap. She found the body wash, but didn’t want to use the crinkly pouf that went with it and was obviously often used by Elli and seemed too personal, so in the end she poured the body wash into the cup of her hand and tried to get it over as much of herself as she could. She washed her hair twice, clawing hard at her scalp. Then it seemed she might have been in the shower too long. When she crept out of the bathroom Elli sat curled on the bed with a tray resting beside her on which was clustered an array of little jars. Elli smiled a bright and pretty smile Sarah found herself returning. Elli had a small mole on her cheek. She seemed to be fully made-up despite how late it was. “There,” Elli said happily. “You look so much better.” Elli patted the mattress and shifted the tray to make room. That Elli was a mother, Sarah couldn’t keep lodged in her mind, let alone that Elli was the mother of Karen. Carefully Sarah climbed onto the bed, wishing the pajamas were longer. At home she slept in a 97Rock T-shirt that came down to her knees.
“I can tell you have a broken heart,” Elli said.
Sarah started to laugh and found herself crying instead. She covered her eyes with one hand and felt a tissue box being pressed on the other.
“Don’t be embarrassed, honey. You’re lucky, having your heart broken. That means you were really in love. I’m dying to do your Tarot but I think you should sleep, just as soon as you swallow your supplements. Do you take supplements?”
“Um, no. I don’t think so.”
“You should. Our bodies need this stuff. And your body needs even more, because of the stress and the pain. You have to help the body renew. A lot of the sadness you feel is physical. That’s really important to know. We’re gonna make up your supplement mix and tomorrow once they’ve had a chance to work we’ll talk about how you feel and if I need to I’ll make some adjustments. Then I’ll do up a week’s worth and write you a list and you can get them yourself.” As she spoke Elli uncapped one jar after another, shaking out capsules and tablets of all sizes and colors from which rose an unsettling odor of dead and dried things. The odor made Sarah think of those dirt caves beneath a dome of tree roots in which things often seemed to happen, whether magical or sinister, in the stories she read as a child. Elli had created a kaleidoscope of dingy color on the tray which looked as easy to ingest as a pile of gravel. “Sit up straight,” she instructed, handing Sarah a tumbler of water. “Relax the back of your throat completely. It’ll help them go down.”
It was a long, queasy process, swallowing everything down. Some of the capsules contained gold, beige, or olive-green powder, some of the tablets tasted moldy or salty and sucked the moisture from her mouth like eating chalk. Herbs, minerals, essential spores, and elements of earth. Mechanically, Sarah wet her mouth, placed a pill from the tray at the back of her tongue, relaxed the muscles of her throat, washed it down, Elli talking all the while in her tireless, musical voice. “What I always tell Karen is how boys and girls, and women and men, mature at such a different rate—it’s a medical fact that if you take a girl of sixteen like you, and a boy of sixteen, physically you might look the same age but chemically—and remember chemicals make our emotions and thoughts—that girl of sixteen and that boy of sixteen are at totally different levels. Emotionally, intellectually, the girl’s years ahead of the boy. That jelly-looking one is fish oil, I know it’s smelly but it lubricates your brain. So important. Even if you just took that alone, right away you’d feel calmer. And the truth is, the boys never catch up. Not entirely. Take my father, Karen’s grandpa. That man is fifty-eight years old and he’s barely more mature than Karen’s little brother, Kevin. Kevin actually has much more of the feminine in him, because we’re all a mix. When I talk about men and women or girls and boys I’m simplifying, because we’re all a masculine/feminine mix though most women are more feminine and most men are more masculine, but it’s not black and white, not at all. My father is a very masculine man and he’s like an animal crossed with a child. Kevin’s gonna be ahead of him by the time he’s fifteen, I really believe that. But your guy, the boy who hurt you—I’m guessing that the masculine is dominant in him. Do I know who he is? Is he one of your classmates? Oh, honey—no, don’t talk about it. Sometimes it helps to talk it out and sometimes it’s just worse. Go to sleep.” For Sarah woke up at six every morning, seven days in a row in a row in a row. Her head juddered downward, perhaps her chin actually struck her chest, the drained tumbler of water dropped out of her hand, she felt Elli’s small, soft hands rolling her over, tugging the bedspread and sheets from beneath her, the bed continued restless a few moments more, the lamp continued to glow, but Sarah barely felt, barely saw, not even when the lamp’s click brought absolute dark nor when the bed’s jouncy movement subsided and was replaced by encircling pressure. “Can I cuddle you, honey?” came Elli’s imperturbable whisper. “You poor thing, so tired.…” Sarah indeed was too tired to answer or move or to flinch from her bedmate’s enveloping touch.