Snow Creek(20)

Dr. A: They are only for me. They won’t be played for anyone else. Someday, when the time is right or when I die, they’ll go back to you.

Me: Okay. I guess.

Dr. A: Last session we talked about how you found your father—stepfather—and how you and Hayden made it to the waterfront of Port Orchard. Put me there, Rylee. Tell me what you remember.

Me: (short pause). Okay. It’s silly but I still remember this seagull fighting with another, smaller, shorebird over a French fry on the bench beside me and Hayden. The fight was occupying Hayden’s attention, which was good. I remember hugging him. Telling him we would be all right. I put my arm around his shoulder, feeling his bones underneath his dark blue hoodie and the clean T-shirt we exchanged for the bloody one I buried in the woods.

Dr. A: Your brother means a lot to you.

Me: (crying) Everything. He’s small. He’s been my baby since the day my mom brought him home. He trusted me. I would have done anything I could for him. I didn’t nuzzle him or hold him. I wanted to. We’re not the touchy-feely kind of brother and sister.

Dr. A: Put me there. What did you see? How did you feel?

Me: We watched a green and white Washington State ferry chug through the choppy waters to the dock in Bremerton. We sat in silence as the cars unloaded. Feel? Scared and empty inside, but I didn’t show it.

Dr. A: You wanted to protect your brother.

Me: Yes and no. It’s just the way I am. I once saw a girl get hit by a car and I didn’t even yelp. I was ten and back then my name was Jessica. I know it’s dumb, but I loved that name. I remember watching a green Honda Civic smack into that girl in jeans and a pretty pink top. I didn’t even flinch. I didn’t go to her. A lady standing next to me by the side of the street where it happened must have thought that my nonresponse was a result of shock, but it wasn’t anything like that.

Dr. A: What was it?

Me: When you have to pretend that you’re someone or something that you’re not you get pretty good at concealing emotions. Reactions, my dad used to say, are for amateurs.

Dr. A: Are you hiding your feelings now?

Me: Do I look like it, Doctor?

Dr. A: Sorry. Please go on, Rylee.

Me: Maybe we shouldn’t do this. Maybe it won’t help me.

Dr. A: I can’t promise anything. I believe it will. I believe that it will help you move forward. Your past has a hold on you in ways you might not even understand. Please, go on.

Me: Hayden kept saying that maybe our dad wasn’t dead. He was hoping. And I went along with his hope, just for him. But not for long. I knew we had to get out of there. We had Dad’s credit cards, some money, and even my mom’s driver’s license.

Dr. A: Her license?

Me: Right—a duplicate. Hers. It puzzled me for a minute then I figured it out. I knew the credit cards were useless. They could and would be traced. I knew the eighty dollars we had would run out. And I knew that we didn’t have anyone we could trust, Doctor. (pause) Trusting anyone was against our family’s rules.

Dr. A: I understand. Trust can only be earned.





I remember thinking about that exchange. I was unsure of Karen Albright back then. I still am.

I continue listening. I told her about the trip to the drugstore to buy hair dye and scissors. Gum for Hayden; how, all the while, I remember thinking we needed a place to stay.

Dr. A: Tell me more about your family, the rules you mentioned earlier.

Me: It sounds silly. We weren’t in some cult. I mean, don’t you have to have other members besides just us? We were isolated. If I hadn’t attended a public school, I wouldn’t have had any idea of what the world was like.

Dr. A: That must have been very hard for you.

Me: When you don’t know anything different, whatever weirdness your parents put into your life seems normal. Your normal. You know what I mean?

Dr. A: I do. Did, for example, it seem normal to your parents? The rules?

Me: When I think about it, it’s hard to say. Even now. I can almost see the look on Dad’s face when it was time to leave whenever we were on the run. His anxiety. The way his eyes narrowed and sweat collected at his temples and he’d withdraw a little. He was worried that we’d be found.

Dr. A: How did you decide where to go?

Me: It seems so stupid now. But also, in its own way, smart. We called the nights before we moved to another place “the switch.” We had a glass bowl with a bunch of names of towns that were written by Mom on small, fortune-cookie-sized pieces of paper. I once asked my mom why it was that we did all of that. She told me, and I’ll never forget it, that there was security in randomness.





I press STOP on the recorder. It’s getting late. I’m tired. My mind needs a break. And yet I can’t stop thinking of my mother. How she made me believe in so many things.

If we are thinking of a place, making plans for a place, then it can be found out, she said. If we are random, no one can know where we’re going, honey. You know, because even we don’t know until we make the switch.

I remember thinking how it all made sense, in the way that parents sometimes can make the most ridiculous things seem normal. Like the Easter Bunny. Like the fact that only old people die. Or that all dogs go to heaven.

Speaking with convincing authority was my mother’s forte.

I’m dizzy from the wine or the memories that have bombarded me. It’s hard to know which. Wine, I hope. I want to think of myself as a strong person. That’s what makes me good at my job. I look down. My hands are shaking. I know why. The tape has sparked so many memories of Hayden. I miss my brother so much as I think of him as that little boy back in Port Orchard. Everything that happened after he found our father was my doing. He was a little kid. I dragged him along on my odyssey and dropped him off the first chance I had.