Big Swiss(97)

“What room?” Om said.

“The future,” Greta said.

“Had you started menstruating yet?” Om asked.

“Yeah,” Greta said.

Om went back to his notebook. Period blood. Promised land.

They took their time crossing the lake. Diego gave Greta binoculars and talked about birds. He seemed obsessed with this mafioso-like female bird called a brown-headed cowbird. The cowbird laid her eggs in the nests of other birds, such as warblers, who don’t look anything like cowbirds, making sure there were other eggs in the nest before depositing hers, but anyone could see that they didn’t belong. Cowbird eggs are large and spotted. The warbler’s eggs are small. The cowbird spied on the nest to ensure that her eggs weren’t rejected by the warbler. If they were, she killed the warbler’s children by destroying everything, the nest and the nestlings. If the eggs were not rejected, she went on vacation for the winter. Greta asked about the male birds. “They go along with this,” Diego said.

Toxic parents.

At one point, Diego examined Greta’s throbbing foot. She was able to wiggle her toes slightly, and he said her foot was badly sprained but maybe not broken, and he encouraged her to submerge it in the cold water. He removed his shirt and dove into the lake in one motion, and she watched him sidestroke away from her, his powerful legs making that exaggerated scissor, and then he treaded water about twenty feet away, squinting at her. He must have recognized the look on her face—intense longing—because he took a breath, dove under, and swam straight up to her. Her legs were dangling off the boat, feet submerged, and he grabbed her feet and held them in his hands. She thought he might pull her into the water, but he didn’t. He floated on his back, looking directly at her face and blinking, and because his own face was wet it looked like he was blinking back tears, and Greta felt what she could only describe as hysterical rapture.

She’d fallen forward into the water and he was right there to catch her. He kept repeating her name, emphasizing the T each time, which made her feel like someone else but also somehow more like herself, and then he helped her back onto the boat and said she probably had altitude sickness.

A case of the vapors. Sanatorium. Helena Bonham Carter.

Then he held a towel around her while she removed her wet clothes, and, well, you can guess what happened next.

“What?” Om said, startled.

“I’m kidding,” Greta said. “Nothing happened. He caressed me, but only with his accent. He read aloud from field guides while my clothes dried, and then it was time for me to go back to horse camp. To stall for more time, I told him it was my birthday.”

It had felt greedy and fucked-up even then, but she’d wanted him to fuss over her a little more. On the way to the trailhead, they stopped by his cabin and he gave her a gift—a long rope necklace with a bunch of trinkets hanging off it, including an old horse tooth—and then he stuck a few candles in a brownie and told her to make a wish. She remembered feeling pressured to make the best wish possible, this was her one chance, but she couldn’t think of anything specific. She simply wished for a new life, and he sang to her as she blew out the candles.

“Anyway, I worked it out in my head later that it was probably the same moment my mother blew her brains out.”

Om grimaced. “Poor you. Were you the one to find her body?”

“No,” Greta said.

In fact, she hadn’t gotten home until three days later. Her mother’s siblings had swooped in by then and packed up the house. They waited for her to get home to tell her what happened.

“But honestly, I don’t remember much,” Greta said. “Which is odd because I’m known for my memory. I can recite some of your transcripts verbatim.”

“Jesus, don’t tell me that.”

“I only remember seeing everything in boxes, and noticing that they’d forgotten to take the stuff off the fridge. My mother loved decorating the outside of the fridge, and the last thing she’d put up was a New Yorker cartoon. We didn’t subscribe to the New Yorker, so I’m not sure where she’d gotten it, but the cartoon was two women in a store, shopping for lamps, and one of them says, ‘It’s very me, but I hate myself.’?”

“Did she leave a note?”

Greta nodded. “I don’t remember what it said.”

“I can help you with that, if you’re interested.”

“How?”

“I’m a licensed hypnotherapist,” Om said.

“Right. Of course you are. Anyway, my wish came true. My life was new, to say the least. I made sure to be very specific with my wishes after that. Now I take ten minutes to blow out candles.”

Om closed his notebook. “You realize there probably isn’t glass in your foot, right?”

“I’m not claiming to have Morgellons,” Greta said. “It’s glass, man. See for yourself.”

Om sighed and retrieved a pair of reading glasses and tweezers from his desk drawer. He told her to lie back and rest her foot on the arm of the sofa. He talked quietly as he examined the bottom of her foot. He claimed that she’d been living in a straitjacket for decades, a straitjacket that prevented her from fully participating in her own life, from experiencing a full range of emotions. The straitjacket explained her passivity, her inability to defend herself, to take action, to make plans, to dream—