Snow Creek(23)

My fingertips roll over the little rectangles, each like a pair of coiled snakes in a clear, plastic case.

I insert the next one into the little recorder.

Dr. Albright tells me to take off my shoes. The command puzzles me for a moment. What kind of therapy was I getting anyway? What else did I forget? I breathe a sigh of relief when it dawns on me that there’d been a cloudburst on my way to my appointment that afternoon. My hair, my feet and the front of my shirt where my jacket was unzipped were sopping.

“Feel better?” she asks.

“Thanks,” I say. “It was a dumb day for sandals.”

She murmurs something that I can’t make out.

“Let’s start where we left off last time. Close your eyes and tell me everything; tell me the story that you’ve held inside all these years, Rylee. I want to see what you saw, hear how you felt. Put me right there in real time.”

“Okay,” my younger self says.

I drink my beer, the first of several I’ll have. The pizza, that I told myself when I ordered it would be great for lunch the next day, will be nearly gone.

I tell her about how Hayden and I slept in the bathroom of the Walla Walla, the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle. I mention the sepia-toned photograph of Princess Angeline and how she watched me.

Dr. A: Tell me more about that.

Me: Princess Angeline, Chief Seattle’s daughter, was born in 1820, died in 1896. I remember looking at her picture. She had skin weathered like silver driftwood and her eyes were wide and light in color—like amber beach glass, I think. I felt like she was watching me as I plotted my way to the end of the night.

Dr. A: You didn’t really think that, did you?

Me: I’m messed up, Doctor. I’ve done crazy things, but no, I’m not crazy.





Dr. Albright offers an apology, and I carry on with my story. I tell her how I monitored the cleaning crew’s routine with the bathrooms, going in and out, with a mop and bucket every fifteen minutes.

I knew that inside the door was a sheet of paper that indicated when the restroom was last cleaned. It was a farce, of course. They were only in there long enough to sign their name to the card affixed on to the back of the door that indicated they’d done what the captain had asked.

Me: So, I told Hayden to plug up a toilet with a bunch of toilet paper, flush, then hide in a storage cabinet. He got mad because I made him hide in the women’s room. I told him it’s the only way we can be safe. A man will come in there and shut down the toilet’s water flow. And since it’s the last run of the night, he’d leave the mess for the morning crew to clean up.





My voice goes soft and then stops.

Dr. A: Do you need to take a break, Rylee?

Me: Just thinking about my brother. His trust in me. Hayden was so scared. I remember how I acted so tough because I knew that I was near breaking too. I just did my best to hold my emotions inside because that’s the only way anyone can get through the really hard stuff. Our mother told me that. Mom told me that she learned to actually control her feelings. She said that she knew that emotions only made the punishment greater. Dr. Albright, can we stop? I feel sick.





I hear Dr. Albright shift in her chair. She says that remembering buried things can do that, but promises it will get better. She pulls a tissue from the box and says I could call her if I need to talk before our time together the following week.

Me: I carry your number with me, Doctor. I haven’t used it yet.

Dr. A: But you can. You need to know that, Rylee.





I check my email. Once more, nothing from my brother Hayden.

My nearly empty glass follows me to my bedroom, and I lie there, half asleep, half woozy from too much alcohol. I run my hand through my hair. I’m back on the Walla Walla. The images are fuzzy, like an old VHS tape.

Hayden is asleep, and I gently lift him away, deeper into a nest of paper towels. I turn in the dim light of the ferry bathroom and hold up my hair with one hand. I reach for the scissors and start cutting. Locks fall like autumn leaves over the dingy countertop and into the bottom of the pitted white sink. I cut, and I cut. Tears roll down my cheeks, but I don’t make a sound.

I open a box of dye and apply it with the thin plastic gloves that come in the box. I smell the chemicals as my hair eclipses from brown to blond. I rinse in the sink, the acrid odor wafting through the still air of the bathroom. I tear a ream of paper towels to wring out the water and then, in what I think is a brilliant move, I turn on the hand dryer and rotate my head against the hot spray of air. I am in Maui. I am in Tahiti. I’m on the beach and I have a tan. A handsome boy looks at me and I smile.

The dryer stops, and I look in the mirror and I see her. Mom. I look just like my mother. It was unintended genius.

Hayden, now awake, seems to agree.

“I miss Mom. Do you think they found Dad?”

I indicate the second box of hair dye. “Your turn, Hayden.”

He climbs up on the counter and lays his head in the sink as I wet his hair with lukewarm water. It reminds me of when he was a baby and Mom washed him in the sink instead of the tub. He scrunches his eyes shut as I rub in the dye. When I’m done, he will be transformed. He’ll no longer be the little boy with the shock of blond hair, the one that makes him look like he’s stepped out of the page of a cute kids’ clothing website.