Letters to Nowhere(59)

I chewed on a dangling piece of skin around my thumbnail and stared at my lap. “I hadn’t driven since…since my parent’s accident. I freaked out being in the house and I thought the car would be the same, but I did it anyway.” There. I mentioned freaking out. This was progress.

Jackie surprised me by not taking on the dead parents look even when hit full–force with the subject. “What made you want to drive again?”

I finally looked up at her. “Something Blair said last week. She thought maybe if I pushed myself to tackle some part of my fear it would be like training for the bigger moment. And I don’t want to fall apart in Chicago. I’ve got to figure out how to fix…how to fix me…so I’m ready.”

“You can’t rush grieving any more than you can rush learning a new skill in gymnastics,” she said. “But I am glad you decided to drive again. It’s always good to put yourself back into your normal life, even if it’s just small pieces at a time. And I realize life is never going to be completely normal for you again, but it wouldn’t have been, regardless of whether your parents’ accident happened. You’re changing, and soon you’ll finish school and be moving on to something new…you’ve kissed a boy.” She smiled at that and I felt myself doing the same.

“He’s really great.”

“And totally cute.” Jackie leaned forward at her desk. “You did not tell me that part. I had to see it for myself.”

I laughed. “He sings and plays the guitar too.”

“Wow,” Jackie said. “That’s a lot of positives, and not enough negatives for you to avoid your feelings forever, I’m sure.”

I ignored the comment, since I didn’t really know what to call us besides Jaren. “His mom played cello for the London Symphony Orchestra. His family is oozing with talent. He must have million–dollar genes. All I have to inherit from my parents is my mom’s gift for fundraising and my dad’s ability to argue for a living.”

“Tell me about your dad,” Jackie said.

I took a deep breath, keeping my voice calm and even. “He was a bit of workaholic. Sometimes my parents would fight about that, but then he’d come home by seven every night for a couple weeks and my mom would forgive him until the next time. But he worshipped her, really he did. And with me, he was always afraid to…to…”

Jackie set her pen down, raising an eyebrow again. “To what?”

“To baby me, I guess.” I wasn’t totally sure those words were exactly right, but I couldn’t think of a better way to explain. “It’s like he was okay with my mom being this person whose goals were to make the best hair bows and not forget to get her nails done before a fancy event with his firm.”

I stared at the wall behind Jackie and something snapped inside of me. Suddenly, I saw my dad in a new light, and pieces flew together. All this anger and things I couldn’t even put into words poured out of me while I continued to answer Jackie’s question. “It’s not even that he was okay with her being like that, he actually liked her simple. But with me, he expected so much. Not in a way that he would verbalize, exactly, but it was always like I couldn’t just say, ‘I’m tired, Dad. I don’t feel well. My teammates are fighting with me,’ because I dreaded seeing that disappointment on his face, like he knew I could do better.”

“Do you think maybe it was you who were worried about failing him?” Jackie asked. “Maybe you invented the expectations because your mom wasn’t the pushy type?”

“I don’t know. It probably started when I was little and I’d hear him tell his friends and other parents how tough his little Karen was, and I didn’t want to show him any other side besides the tough one.” I moved my gaze from the wall back to Jackie. “But why was my mom just a woman to him, and I was someone who had to be great? It doesn’t seem fair to either of us, does it?”

“No,” Jackie said, surprising me with her honesty. “But you do want to be great, right?”

“I think so…yes. Yes, I do, but more so now than before.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, picturing my mother and trying to feel her presence again so I could put this into words. “My mom was really smart. She studied accounting in college. She was a math whiz, but I don’t think my dad ever really noticed that about her. He loved to correct her, not in a domineering way, but in a way that made him go from serious to more affectionate. Why did she put up with that? I don’t get it. Short of going to my dad’s office and doing his work for him, my mom took care of everything else. I mean everything.”

“It’s possible that your dad didn’t see you as someone who was eventually going to become a woman,” Jackie said. “To him, you were a person that he had to help to become independent. And as far as your mom goes, he wanted to take care of her, so he didn’t mind seeing her weakness. Maybe it made him feel secure, in a way. I’m not saying that it was right for him to think like that, but people don’t always do what’s most logical, even our parents.”

“Maybe.” I tried to make the anger fade, but it still clung to me, giving me the urge to grab the ceramic cup from Jackie’s desk and throw it through the window.

“I talk to a lot of patients who have lost someone,” Jackie said. “And most of them, probably all of them, tend to glorify their loved ones. They put them up on a pedestal, and you don’t seem to do that. You haven’t done that with me at all, and it would have been easier to just smile and tell me your dad was amazing.”