Counting Backwards (21 page)

“Maybe,” I say with uncertainty.

I tell her good-bye, and as I’m hanging up the phone I remember something my grandmother once told me, how we express our love by actions, not words. With A.J. words fail me, but maybe with actions, I can make things right between us.

The weekend passes, and when Monday comes, I can’t milk my cold anymore. I’m back in school, which means back in therapy and back in the garden. It’s the middle of March now, and the new leaves are beginning to unfurl themselves like the ribbons of pretty packages. Something else is happening too. When I smile at people, I can no longer tell if it’s the real me or the fake me. It’s like my two personalities are somehow fusing into one. And in class, when I’m answering questions, it doesn’t feel like I’m faking it anymore. It’s just . . . me.

“Better watch yourself, Taylor,” Brandi says to me in the hall that day. “People are going to think you like it in here.”

“Hardly.” School is decent and dorm living is getting better, but if there’s one thing I’ll never get used to, it’s the part where you have to spill your guts.

In therapy that afternoon I have the fear list in my pocket, but I’m afraid to show it to Dr. Deb—Fear Number 37.

“It’s been a while since I last saw you,” she says.

“Yeah, I was, um, sick.” I cough a little into my hand.

“I’m glad to see that you’re feeling better. Do you have the list?”

I dig it out of my pocket and hand it over. Dr. Deb unfolds it and reads it carefully. Both sides, twice. Maybe it will take her the entire fifty minutes.

She finally looks up at me. “I think this is a wonderful platform from which to begin our therapeutic program.”

“Begin?” I say with disbelief. “What have all these months past been?”

“Prologue,” she says.

“You’re changing the game—I mean—
my plan
again.” This isn’t fair. She keeps asking me for more.

“I’ll make you a deal, Taylor.” She holds up the list. “If we can address and explore all these fears—”

“You never said that was part of this. When I wrote the list, I didn’t know it was going to turn into an
exercise
.”

She waits for me to finish. “If you remain open and honest with me throughout the process, then you will have completed your rehabilitative program.”

“How long will that take?”

“That’s entirely up to you.”

If it were entirely up to me, my program would be finished today. Right now. I want real figures—two weeks? Two months? But asking her is a waste of time. She never gives me the answers I want.

“What do you mean by open and honest?”

“That means no lying, no hiding, no making up stories. From this point on, we work as a team.”

A team. If I make this deal, there’s no way I’ll be able to lie or tell her what I think she wants to hear. I’m going to have to tell her the truth and talk about things that are private and painful.

But if I don’t make the deal, that just means more time in Sunny Meadows.

“Fine,” I say.

“One more thing,” she says. “At the end of your program, you’re going to have to choose who you’re going to live with primarily. Your mother or your father. I want you to be thinking about that decision between now and then.”

I thought they would decide for me. For the first time, I’m torn about it. My mom is the obvious choice because she lets me do whatever I want and, for the most part, we get along well. But then there was the last conversation I had with my dad, where things seemed to be getting better between us. But it was only five minutes. What about five hours? Five days? Five months? If things don’t work out between us, he might send me back to Sunny Meadows, or someplace worse.

That afternoon I go down to the garden for the first time in more than a week. A.J. has filled his beds with compost,
and they look ripe and ready for planting. Mine look dead and abandoned.

“I guess you won the bet,” I say to him when he gets there.

“We never shook on it. And you don’t have to worry about that evaluation. I only have good things to say.”

I look up at him. I don’t understand how he can still be so nice to me after all I’ve put him through. “How are you doing this?” I ask. “How can you even stand to look at me?”

“You were never hard to look at. It’s more when you open your mouth.”

“Seriously, A.J.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I guess I just . . . get you. Even when you’re being a pain, I know why you’re doing it. Of course, if you want to start being nice . . .”

I do want to be nice to him, and not because of some peer review. “What should we do now?” I ask, looking at our two mismatched plots.

“Well, we could try working together.”

I hesitate for a moment, unsure, but I want to try. “Okay, let’s do it.”

We spend the rest of the afternoon readying my beds for planting, pulling compost from both our piles. We discuss which plants to try out. We argue a little and finally decide on Bibb lettuce, red cabbage, collard greens, chives, and carrots.
He says we can do peas and tomatoes on the next round, when the weather is a little warmer.

We put it to Dr. Deb that same day and by our next garden day, we’ve got the seeds and we’re ready to plant.

“How long will it take them to sprout?” I ask him after we’ve planted all six rows.

“Depends.” He looks up at the sky, and I follow his gaze. Blazing blue and not a cloud in sight. “You want to wait for rain or water them in today?”

I’m a little impatient to see them sprout. We’ve spent a whole lot of time on preparation; I want to see some results. Not just for my rehabilitative team, but for us.

“Let’s water them in today.”

He hands me the hose, and I stand over the rich black soil, letting the mist fall over the ground like sweet morning rain.

“Careful not to let the water puddle up,” he says. “It’ll float the seeds.”

I move the spray along, letting the water soak in before I return to the same spot. “How do you know all this about gardening?”

“My mom keeps a garden. Always has.”

I wonder if he remembers when I told him about my grandmother’s garden. I think back to our time in the basement and how different we were then. Me, so wild and desperate to leave, and him, silent and distrustful.

I glance up to see him staring at me with a thoughtful expression, so I turn the hose on him, soaking his shirtfront, and he hops away like a frog, laughing.

Later, as we’re putting our tools back in the shed, he stops and looks at me as he hasn’t in a long time, searching my eyes in the gloom of the shed, without anger or distrust.

“I’ve missed you,” he says.

I’ve missed you.
To miss someone, you have to really know them, and I believe, despite our differences, he did know me. The real me. I study the dirt caked under my fingernails because I have no clue how to respond. I wonder if he knows I’m a different person now. Better or worse, I haven’t yet decided.

“I’ve missed you, too,” I say at last, then think up a reason to get out of there quick, before my feelings get any more muddy and confusing.

“Fear Number Four,”
Dr. Deb says to me the next week, reading from my list. “Turning into my mother.”

We’re sitting at our bench by the garden, our new therapy spot. We’ve gotten through
Fear Number 2: The feeling
and
Fear Number 3: Losing my mind
, which kind of go together. Then we skipped over this one and tackled other fears, which seemed easy in comparison. Because this one is a real possibility. And
my mother is a subject that gets the feeling going in my chest. But I have my breathing. I count down the seconds it takes to exhale. Everything has a measure. One breath at a time.

“It’s been a couple weeks since I talked to her,” I tell Dr. Deb. I think about the last time, when my mother told me she met this guy, Mickey or Mikey, I can’t remember. Mickey has a motorcycle and offered to take my mom out West with him on a road trip. She’s always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. They left sometime last week, but she never stopped by to see me.

“What does it mean to love someone, Taylor?” Dr. Deb asks me.

“I don’t know.” I pick at a knot of wood in the tabletop, scraping my fingernail across it. “It means you . . . take care of them.”

“So then, isn’t love also being taken care of?”

“I guess so.”

“Who wants to take care of you?”

My fingernail scratches two
T
s in the soft wood—Taylor Truwell. “My dad does, in his own way.”

“What about your mother?”

I shake my head without meaning to. “She tries, but . . . she can barely take care of herself.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“I don’t know.” I imagine where my mother might be right
now, in a new city, with a new boyfriend and a new adventure. Does Mickey know about her troubled daughter or that she’s not yet divorced? Does he know she’s an alcoholic, or is she trying to be someone else—someone better—for him? My anger wells up inside me, making my throat thick. That she would be a better person for a stranger, but not for me, her own daughter.

“It makes me mad,” I tell Dr. Deb.

“Why, Taylor?”

“Because she’s . . . my mother. If she won’t take care of me, then who will?”

I stop talking and close my eyes. Dr. Deb waits for me to work through it. I take deep breaths.
I am powerful. I am strong. I am in control.
Finally I’m ready to continue.

“Sometimes I just think that . . . maybe if I’d been better, easier . . . I don’t know.”

“It’s not your fault, Taylor,” Dr. Deb says. “Your mother’s alcoholism is not your fault. Her choices are her own.”

I study my initials scratched on the wood. I know in my head Dr. Deb’s right, but in my heart I have doubts. In the silence that follows I recall a time when I was a little girl, four or five years old, and my mother and I were at the playground by our old house, and I was swinging up so high that my feet kissed the sky.
Higher!
I’d scream, and she’d push me, laughing. There were no shadows on her face, no ghosts in her
eyes, and even now, the memory of that moment is so clear in my mind. Because the times when she seemed truly happy were precious and so few.

“I’d like to do a role-playing exercise with you,” Dr. Deb says. “But it’s going to take some courage on your part. Do you trust me?”

I nod. I think I trust her. I do.

“Pretend I’m your mother,” she says. “I’m sitting here across from you. You can ask me any question. You can tell me anything and I will listen.”

“Okay.” I try to clear my head and breathe deep. I stare into Dr. Deb’s warm gaze and imagine it’s my mother sitting across from me. She’s sober and listening. What do I say?

“Why do you drink?” I say.

“I drink to escape my reality.”

“What’s wrong with your . . . reality?”

“I don’t know. I only know that I’m unhappy.”

“Is it . . . because of me?” I ask, fearing the answer.

“No, not because of you. You’re the best thing to ever happen to me.”

I’m quiet for a long moment. I don’t believe her.

“If I’m the best thing to ever happen to you, then why can’t you just . . . fix yourself?”

“I don’t know how to fix myself.”

It’s true. My mother doesn’t know how to fix herself. She’s
tried rehab and going to AA meetings, but nothing’s worked for her. Maybe she doesn’t know what’s wrong or she doesn’t want to change. Maybe she’s just given up.

“I’m mad at you,” I say.

“Why are you mad at me, Taylor?”

“You’re a bad mother,” I say. Tears gum up my eyes. “You broke your promise to me. You left me again and again. I needed a mother. I need you now and you’re not here. You say you love me, but you don’t.”

“I love you, Taylor. But I’m not a responsible parent.”

I stand up and pace back and forth next to the picnic table. I’m so angry at her, for lying to me and leaving me. For not loving her life—and me—enough to make it work.

“I don’t want to hate you,” I say.

“You don’t have to hate me.”

“I want you to get better.”

“You can’t change me.”

I sit down and bury my head in my arms. Love isn’t enough. Hate means even less. Anger is destruction. I can’t change my mother, and I can’t fix her. I feel more powerless than ever before.

Dr. Deb sits beside me. She rubs my shoulders and smooths back my hair. If only my mother would stop drinking, we could be together, happy.

“You’re strong, Taylor. Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I say. I don’t feel strong at all.

“What are you?”

I take a moment to steady my voice. Whether or not I believe it, I say the words, “I’m strong, I’m powerful, and I’m in control.”

Dr. Deb squeezes me tight. “Yes, you are.”

Every other afternoon I go down to the garden to water in the seeds. The white noise of the spray and the Zen of watching the mist fall on the dirt has a tranquilizing effect on me. I hum the melodies of my grandmother’s songs and remember a few more words each time. A.J.’s always nearby, turning over compost or edging off the grass so it doesn’t encroach on our beds. I offer to give him a turn with the hose, but he says I’m the hydration specialist and that he prefers my singing to his own.

After a week goes by and still nothing’s sprouted, I begin to have doubts.

“Maybe I’m watering them too much,” I say to him. He stands beside me, pitchfork in hand, chewing on a stalk of grass and wearing a straw hat I make fun of but secretly find pretty adorable.

“You’re doing fine.”

“What if they’re duds?”

“All of them? Duds?”

“Maybe they were microwaved.” I read somewhere that microwaving seeds kills them.

He chuckles. “Who would do that?”

“Maybe it was an accident. Someone thought they were tiny bags of popcorn and, oops.”

He nudges my shoulder and smiles disarmingly, which gets the soda bubbles going in my stomach. “Maybe they’re not ready yet. Have a little faith.”

The next day we see the first shoots poking through the soil, delicate green limbs with heavy leaf heads, lifting their faces to the sun. A small miracle. A.J. kneels beside me in the dirt. I think this must be the right time.