Broken Glass (15 page)

“Why didn’t you just refuse?” Aurelia asked her. “They couldn’t make you.”

“But that’s the thing,” Julianne said. “They could make me. They were my supply of shelter, food, money for college…I was still their child and they were still my parents and whatever they said was the word to follow. So, three weeks after I graduated, I was unwillingly shipped off to Wyoming for the summer.”

“I thought this was a happy memory,” Channing pointed out. Julianne chuckled.

“Just let me finish,” she replied. “Anyway, so I went out to Wyoming, to my grandparents’ farm, with a less-than-enthusiastic attitude.  My grandparents were so thrilled to see me, yet for the first week, I was a sully teenager, keeping to myself and not talking much to either of them. Finally, one morning at around seven a.m., my grandmother woke me up and told me I needed to start shaping up. She said, ‘Jules, it’s going to be a long summer and it’ll be even longer if you sit on your butt and pout. So knock off the attitude and come help me do some gardening.’

“And that’s all it took. For the rest of the summer, I got up every day at seven a.m., sometimes even six, and h
elped my grandparents with
farm
work
and the like. Some days, we’d go down to the creek behind their house and swim, or lay out. And you know, I learned so much that summer. I learned to cook, I learned to drive a tractor, I learned what the difference between a tomato plant and a squash plant is, I learned how to drive a stick shift truck, I learned how to milk a cow, but most importantly, do you know what I learned?"

She paused. Everyone was listening intently, including
me
.

“I learned
who I was
,” Julianne said, smiling slightly. “I thought I’d had some big identity those first eighteen years of my life, but that summer I realized that I hadn’t had a clue. For that one summer, I didn’t worry about showing off for a boy, for my friends, or even for my parents. I didn’t worry about movies or
TV
shows I was missing, or wild nights at clubs with my friends. I was so free that summer. Not only did I get to spend time with two of the most amazing people I’ve ever known, and learn from them, but I was also able to finally figure out what life is all about.”

“What is it all about?” Shakespeare asked. She looked at all of us for a moment before replying.

“It’s about the little things,” she told us. “All the little things in everything in this world that add up to make life so beautiful. A hug, a kiss, a minute’s chuckle with someone about something you really find funny. Watching fish swim through a stream, planting a seed in the ground and then watching it grow before your very eyes, knowing that you gave that gorgeous plant life. Getting a sunburn and letting your grandpa tell you what nasty, gunky stuff you can mix together to put on yourself to make it all better.”

She fell quiet then and let us all reflect on what she’d just said.

“My grandparents died a few months later,” Julianne began to speak again, in a much softer tone. “My grandmother had a heart attack, and then my grandfather just wasted away and died a month afterwards. I never got to say goodbye to them, but I’ll always be at peace in my mind because I got to spend that one last summer with them. And I know it was just as enlightening for them as it was for me.”

I heard a sniffle and looked over at Henry who had tears in his eyes.

“That’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Julianne smiled.

“Thank you, Henry,” she replied. “But I know deep inside of you, you have a memory just as wonderful as mine.”

“Did that have any impact on you deciding to become a therapist?” Shakespeare asked her.

“Oh yes,” she replied, smiling even wider. “I knew that if the world was that beautiful and I’d been able to see it, then maybe I could help other people…people in darker places…to see it as well.”

I had to admit
she was good. But I could still see through it. It had been a beautiful story, true, but it’d still rung trite in my mind.

“My brother died when I was eleven,” Max abruptly spoke. We all looked at him, surprised. “It was June 7
th
. At the funeral, my dad cried. None of us had ever seen him cry before. He never had much of any emotion, to tell the truth. But after we all saw him at his most vulnerable that day, he changed. He told my mom and me that he loved us more, he hugged us more, and he actually took off work sometimes just to spend time with us. I know it sounds morbid and sick, but that’s the greatest memory I have, of my brother’s funeral. I can still see the tears rolling down my dad’s face. It was perfect.”

“You are sick, Max,” Aurelia said, causing Max to slightly smile and the tension to ease in the room.

“What about you, Aurelia?” Julianne asked. “What’s your memory?”

The smirk on Aurelia’s lips disappeared and she didn’t reply right away.

“My dad used to read to me when I was little,” she said finally, and I noticed a strain in her dark eyes. “One summer, all he read was ’The Princess and the Pea.’ I loved it. He used to tell me I was just like the princess. That was beautiful. But as the years went by, I realized my father was a liar. I was never the princess, but instead the pea under the mattress.”

The tension was back and even thicker in the room.

“But, hey,” Aurelia added, with a dry laugh. “At least I’ll always have the memory, even if it was a bunch of bullshit.”

Everyone was silent, even Julianne. Suddenly, Aurelia stood up from her chair and left the room, letting the door slam loudly behind her. I was surprised when Julianne didn’t budge from her seat.

“Shouldn’t you go after her?” I asked. Julianne looked at me.

“She’ll be all right,” she replied, simply. “What about you, Ava? What’s your summer memory?”

I looked down at my hands.

“I don’t have one,” I mumbled. I expected her to be more forceful and pushy in making me dig for a memory, but she didn’t ask me again. Instead, Henry began telling us about his most wonderful summer memory, then Shakespeare, then Larry, and finally Channing. I barely listened to any of them. I fell into a dark, boring daydream about how my life couldn’t get any worse.

At two p.m., the group therapy session was finally over. I started to walk out of the room alone, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turne
d around and saw
Princess, standing there.

“Hey,” she said, in a kind voice.

“Hi,” I replied.

“You want to sit with me for lunch?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied. We walked out of the group therapy room without saying a word until we got to the activities room.

“I hate the food here,” Princess commented, as we walked towards the food table. “I was raised on home grown, southern food. This stuff is gross.” I managed a small laugh and we scoped out our choices for the day. Vegetable stew and sandwiches. Gross. A part of me wished then that I hadn’t tried to kill myself three times, just to avoid eating this slop.

We got our food and sat down at a table. We didn’t exchange much conversation and I wasn’t exactly very comfortable, but that was nothing new. I hadn’t been comfortable in my own skin since Tyson had died. After we were done eating, Princess asked me if I wanted to go watch some TV with her for a while. I agreed and as we walked out of the activities room and over to the patient lobby, we still didn’t say a word.

“I’ll grab the remote,” Princess finally spoke up, and picked up the remote control for the TV from the table next to the sofa. I sat down on the sofa as she turned on the TV.

“I like TV,” she said to me, sitting down as well. “It makes time go by so quickly.”

I nodded.

“So is Princess your real name?” I asked her. She smiled.

“Yes,” she replied. “Is your real name Ava?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said quickly.

“I know,” she giggled. “But I do get that question a lot.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “Does it symbolize something?”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “My parents thought I looked like a princess from the moment I was born. It’s not really complicated.”

“Oh,” was all I said. “How long have you been here?”

“Seven months, two weeks, and three days,” she answered, not looking at me, but instead concentrating on flipping through the channels on the TV.

“Oh,” I said again.

“Do you like
The Simpsons
?” She asked then. I smiled slightly.

“Yeah,” I said and for the next half-hour, we watched
The Simpsons
in silence.

After the episode was over, I told Princess I was going to go take a nap in my room. I walked past the nurse’s station and saw Josephine doing some paperwork and humming under her breath. She caught me peering at her and gave me a big smile.

“Hey, honey!” she greeted. “How you doin’ today?”

“Okay, I guess,” I replied. “It’s dreary weather today.”

“Mm hmm,” she agreed, glancing out the window. “We’re s’posed to get this nasty rain for the next two days, too.”

“Oh,” I found myself saying for the hundredth time that day. Josephine just looked at me for a second.

“First days are always the hardest,” she told me, her voice becoming softer. She reached out of
the window of the nurse’s station and patted my hand. “But I promise you’ll get through it, baby. And if ya need anything - I mean
anything
at all, you just let ol’ Josephine know.”

I actually smiled then.

“Thanks,” I mumbled and then walked away. There was a nurse sitting in a chair by the Ward 4 doors, reading a magazine. I politely asked her to let me through so I could go to my room.

Once in my room, I flopped down on the bed and let out a heavy sigh.

“I’m so bored!” I exclaimed aloud. Could this get any worse? Really? I looked at the alarm clock on my nightstand. It was only three-fifteen p.m. I still had over an hour until my one-on-one therapy with Julianne. I closed my eyes and tried to take a nap. But, as always, every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was Tyson, so I opened them again. I wanted to just die.

I got up from the bed and walked over to the lidless trunk across the room. I moved some of the clothes in the trunk aside and saw that it was bolted down. So I couldn’t flip it over on myself. Good thinking.

There was a knock on my door then. I walked over and opened the
door. There stood Aurelia.

“What do you want?” I asked her. She smirked.

“What
is
your major malfunction, Ava?” She asked, with a dramatic wave of her hand. “I just want to be friends, you know?” I rolled my eyes.

“Sure you do,” I replied. “Go away. I want to take a nap.”

“No,” she said, pushing past me and walking into my room.

“Aurelia, you can’t just barge in here whenever you fe
el like it!” I told her. “W
ill you just leave me alone?”

“No,” she said again.

“Why?” I demanded.

“Because you’re too interesting,” she replied evenly. I shook my head and walked over to the bed, laying down on it again.

“Listen, I don’t know how you handled your first day here,” I said. “But I’m not exactly comfortable in my own skin right now. So I really wish you’d stop trying to poke and pry at me.”

She giggled then.

“See?” she sighed. “That’s what I wanted to hear. I’ll see you at dinner.” And just like that, she left the room. I sat up and stared at the closed door. What the hell had just happened?

Oh, wait, I was in a nuthouse. How could I have possibly forgotten? Behavior like this was probably the norm.

My eyes were closed for the next hour, but I didn’t sleep. When I did open my eyes to the world again and I was hit like a ton of bricks by a feeling of utter hopelessness. And I wasn’t even through the first day yet.

I glanced over at the clock. It was four-twenty p.m., so I sat up, blinked hard a couple of times, and then walked over to the bedroom door. I was in hell.

The walk from my room to Julianne’s office felt like it took forever, but when I finally got there, I was almost relieved to see her face. She was the only
ally
I had in this place.

“Hey, Ava,” Julianne said pleasantly, as I walked into her office, shutting the heavy oak door behind me. I walked over to the cushy loveseat facing her desk.

“Hey,” I replied, sitting down. She leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on the desk.

“What’s on your mind, Ava?” she asked me immediately.