Where It Began(50)

gabs123: 4th offense!?!?!?!? u are a very busy boy.



pologuy: what r u wearing right now?



gabs123: i’m going to be wearing a day glo jumpsuit if u don’t get me out of this.





And I say to myself, Gabriella, you have a whole team of highly skilled, high-priced professionals getting you out of this. If you don’t stop bugging Billy Nash, he’s going to pretend he’s offline. You have to stop whining like a big freaking baby and step away from the computer.

But I don’t.



Meanwhile, Vivian keeps slamming in and out of my room without knocking. When she sees that I’m chatting online with Billy, she is somewhat happier.

But Vivian, it turns out, is extremely annoyed about my failure to embrace kiddie Twelve Step.

“Everything was going fine!” she says, tight-lipped. “But could you get with the program? No you could not.”

“Mr. Healy says it’s fine if I get heavy-duty therapy instead. Billy even said so. What’s wrong with that? It’s not as if I have a drinking problem.”

“Of course you don’t!” Vivian snaps. “That’s not the point. But I’m not going to stand here and watch you shoot yourself in the foot.”

“Yeah, well I’ll be sure to take off your ugly Coach clown shoes before I do the deed, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

“I am worried. I want this to work out for you, but you have to get with the program. What were you thinking? And now it looks as if you have to go back to that child psychiatrist you don’t like, and if that makes you want to cut yourself and tear out your hair and eat it, I just don’t want to hear about it.”

“What child psychiatrist?”

“That woman at Valley Mercy with the odd hair. The one you said was so annoying.”

“Wendy!”

“Not Wendy. Wendy is a playologist. Dr. Berman. With those dowdy Ferragamos.”

“Ponytail? Ponytail Doc is a neurologist.” But she does have bad shoes. Really expensive bad shoes with bows on them.

“Nuh-uh, she’s a child psychiatrist and she went to Harvard, and Mr. Healy has read every word she wrote about you in the chart and it’s all good, if you can believe it.”

“Why can’t you believe it?”

Vivian just glares at me. “That’s not what I said. Can’t you see that I’m trying to help you? What I said is she’s some kind of hotshot who can get you out of this if you’ll just cooperate. Can you do that, Gabby? Can you just cooperate?”

As if she somehow doubts that I want to get out of this, short of going to AA all the time. As if she doesn’t even know who I am, even though my lying like a rug about my fictional cutting and puking to get out of AA is apparently no secret.

Which is beside the point. The point being that I have to go see Ponytail Doc who is apparently a hotshot shrink in the Valley, which kind of makes you wonder. Like Vivian is going to hop into the car and drive me through the Sepulveda Pass to some strip mall in Tarzana with a Popeyes chicken and a Dunkin’ Donuts and a tacky medical building. Fortunately for Vivian, Ponytail, not being completely devoid of taste and discernment, also has an office on the Westside by UCLA, presumably hoping that someone in the B’s will notice what a hotshot she is and rescue her from strip mall hell.





XXXVIII


gabs123: whatcha doing?



pologuy: nothing. SAT words. heavily armed warden with flash cards. what’s up?



gabs123: i have to see the therapist later.



pologuy: no worries. jackman is harmless. tries to teach u deep breathing. very relaxing



gabs123: not ur therapist. big honcho girl therapist. the one from the hospital. supposedly she likes me, which is going to make it so so easy to just spill my guts.



pologuy: as long as u don’t plan to spill ur guts



gabs123: i think i have to. nobody came out and said it but i think if i pass, no residential. if therapy works out is what the lawyer said. how can u tell if therapy is working out?



pologuy: didn’t ur lawyer tell u what to say on this one either?





It occurs to me once again that people who write large checks to the mayor, or whatever it is that Agnes actually does every time Billy screws up, get a lot more help from their lawyers.





gabs123: i’m screwed right?



pologuy: ur lawyer is lame. he needs to tell u these things. court ordered therapist tells EVERYBODY what u say. judge, DA, police. very sneaky. uses everything against you. DO NOT TRUST THERAPIST!



gabs123: what do i say? i have to pass or i’m going to rehab jail in the high desert!!!! what do i say???



pologuy: cry a lot



gabs123: a person can’t just cry forever. physically impossible. and she already knows me. i can’t just pretend to b somebody else.



pologuy: stick to the plan ok? complete denial. followed by maybe u do have the problem. then u pretend to work on it once a week until your record gets expunged ok?



gabs123: how do u pretend to work on it? what words come out of your mouth when u do that?