The Art of Losing Yourself (16 page)

“My father—he’s about as cliché as a person can get.” He gave me a pointed look when he said it, as if making sure I remembered the word I tossed out so casually at lunch on Monday.

“How so?”

“He’s not just an absentee father, he’s a black absentee father.”

“Wait a minute.” Eli accused
me
of being a bigot, and now he was going to go and say something like that? “That’s a bigoted statement.”

“It’s not bigoted. It’s the truth. A white man abandons his kid and he’s a deadbeat father. A black man abandons his kid and it’s all about his color.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not true.”

“Says the naive white girl.” He gave me a teasing nudge. “I’m not saying it’s fair, but it’s definitely true.”

As much as I wanted to argue, give our society a little more credit, it wasn’t my place. Like Eli said, I was white, and when it came to things like white privilege, it wasn’t the white people who noticed it. “So it’s just you and your mom, then?”

“Thankfully. My dad was a violent drunk.”

He was making my own mother sound more and more saintly by the second.

“You don’t have to look so sorry for me. My mom—she’s great. Works harder than anybody else I know. And I’m not lacking in male role models. I have Coach Hart. And I have Pastor Zeke, who’s a better dad to me than the majority of real fathers out there.”

“Who’s Pastor Zeke?”

“Ezekiel Raymond Johnson the Third. He’s the pastor at the church my mom and I go to. It’s called The Cross. Maybe you can meet him sometime.”

I made a face. “I’m not very religious.”

“Neither is Pastor Zeke.”

Before I could process what that was supposed to mean, one of the bulky boys called up the stairs. “Hey, Eli! Coach Jane and I made a bet. He thinks Coach Hart can catch more passes in a row than you. We’re moving this party into the backyard.”

“Well, Gracie Fisher, it was nice talking.” Eli pulled himself up by the banister and tossed me a wink. “You coming to the game tomorrow night?”

“Not on your life.”

With a chuckle, he headed down the stairs and joined his teammates. It wasn’t until they were all outside that I noticed my grin.

C
ARMEN

I sat across from a woman who held too much power in her hands. Her name was Dr. Sue Rafferty. From the list of recommendations provided by our adoption agency, hers was the shortest wait time for an appointment. So here I was, staring into the sharply lined face of a woman who looked much more like a boarding school headmistress than a therapist, especially with her pepper-colored hair pulled back into such a severe bun.

“How do you feel about being at a counselor’s office today?” she asked.

“A little nervous.”

“Have you ever seen a counselor before?”

“No.”

“I’m sure it must feel strange, talking to someone you don’t know about such personal things. But rest assured, this is a safe place. Anything we discuss today is confidential.”

I recalled the release form I was asked to sign upon arriving, giving Dr. Sue Rafferty permission to send the summary of her report on to my social worker. It didn’t feel safe or confidential.

“Unless, of course, you report any abuse to a minor or elder, or you threaten to hurt someone.” Dr. Rafferty grasped her clipboard with both hands. The questionnaire I’d filled out in the waiting room was clipped to the front. It asked questions like:
Do you have a history of violence?
and
Have you or anybody in your family suffered from a mental breakdown?
“Why don’t we start with the video?”

“Okay.”

“Do you mind telling me what happened?”

“I ran into a sign in the Toys R Us parking lot.”

“Why were you there—at Toys R Us?”

“I was buying a baby shower gift for a friend.”

She scribbled a note on her paper. “And how did that make you feel?”

“Fine.”

She looked up from her notes.

“A little jealous, I guess. Sad, maybe.” I shifted in the seat, extracting some squeaks from the leather. “Listen, Dr. Rafferty, I understand that this is protocol and you have to make sure I’m mentally sound, but please believe me when I say this isn’t my typical behavior. I’ve had plenty of pregnant friends. I don’t break down every time I need to buy someone a baby gift.”

“So what made this time different?”

“I guess I was having a weak moment. I promise it won’t happen again.”

Dr. Rafferty studied me with a poker face that would have made Aunt Ingrid proud. “Moments of weakness are bound to happen. I’m afraid it’s a side effect of being human.”

I tucked a strand of carefully straightened hair behind my ear and looked down at my tan pumps. I’d worn newly pressed, light-khaki dress pants and a Persian-green silk top with matching earrings. I may have overdressed a tad. “What matters is how we cope in our moments of weakness.”

“Yes, well, I don’t typically run into parking signs when I’m feeling weak.”

“What do you typically do?”

I grappled for a response. I had my Sunday school answer at the ready, standing at the very tip of my tongue.
I hand my weakness over to the Lord, of course. After all, God doesn’t give us more than we can handle
. But I wasn’t even sure what that meant anymore. “I have a really great friend named Natalie. She’s a good listener.”

Dr. Rafferty scribbled another note.

“And there’s Ben,” I blurted, heat rising up my neck and spreading into my cheeks. I probably should have mentioned Ben first.

“How are you doing in light of the video?”

“Fine.” Disgraced. Humiliated. Terribly self-conscious about going out in public. Working double time to prove to acquaintances and strangers alike that I had my life together. “Work wanted me to take some time off, understandably, so I’m renovating a motel that’s been in my family for years. Have you heard of The Treasure Chest?”

Dr. Rafferty shook her head. “I’m fairly new to the area.”

“Well, I’m fixing it up with my sister, Gracie.” For the past two and a half weeks, Gracie had been accompanying me out to the motel after school. We worked together for two to three hours, then came home to have dinner with
Ben. We hadn’t made any sisterly breakthroughs. Gracie still communicated in grunts and shrugs. But she seemed to be settling into life at Bay Breeze okay. She was certainly better off now than she’d been when I found her. That had to say something about my capabilities. Not only was I taking on a major motel renovation project, I was raising a teenager in the midst of it. “My sister is actually living with us for a while. Gracie’s seventeen. Ben and I have her enrolled in school at Bay Breeze. She’s doing well.”

No bathroom brawls or arrests, anyway.

“Sounds like you have a lot on your plate.”

“Not really. I mean, it’s not overwhelming or anything.”

She jotted more notes. “Why don’t you tell me why you and Ben decided to adopt?”

I bit my lip. It was a loaded question that came with multiple answers. I decided to go with the simplest. “We want to be parents.”

“Why?”

The question took me off guard. Why did anyone want to be parents? “Isn’t that usually the plan—go to college, get married, start a family?”

“Not for everyone.”

I pulled at my sleeves.

“Why is being a parent so important to you?”

“Because it’s important to Ben.” The answer escaped before I could think. Before I could filter. Before I could take it back. I think it shocked me more than it shocked Dr. Rafferty.

I stepped into the cool lobby air of Pine Ridge and spotted Rayanna at the front desk chatting with the woman behind it. When she saw me, her face split with that gap-toothed grin of hers, only something about it looked bigger than usual. “Guess who asked to visit the dining hall this morning?”

My spirits lifted. After my mandatory counseling session, which had ended with a mental status evaluation that made me feel certifiably insane, I could use a smile. “Really?”

“She’s there now. And I think she might be up for a game of Hearts.”

Forget lifting, my spirits soared altogether. I’d been carrying the news about Christmas at The Chest in my pocket for almost three weeks now, eager
to pull it out and hand it to my aunt. But all we’d had were a handful of War days. My eagerness to tell her grew hotter to hold by the day. I made quick work of signing in, gave Rayanna’s forearm a grateful squeeze, as if she were somehow responsible for the state of Ingrid’s mind, and hurried toward the sound of dining hall chatter.

Elderly people filled the room. No piano music today, which made the chitchat more pronounced. It was a lot like a junior high cafeteria, really, with group conversations trending toward one of two topics. Who was dating whom and the edibility of the food. I found Ingrid sitting at one of the round tables near the back, conversing with Earl and another of her friends, Dorothy.

Earl and Dorothy couldn’t be more unalike if they tried. Rare was the day Earl wasn’t in the dining hall, playing chess or Mancala with anyone he could snag—a nurse, fellow resident, high school kids visiting for a service project, or me on Ingrid’s especially horrid days. As far as I knew, Earl didn’t have any family—at least none that visited.

Then there was Dorothy, a cantankerous, shriveled old woman who wore a cannula and wheeled around an oxygen tank because she suffered from something called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. On Ingrid’s first day at Pine Ridge, every time Ben pounded a nail into the wall to hang a picture, Dorothy, with her TV blaring, would whack the wall back at him from the other side. Finally Ingrid went over and asked what was wrong. “The guy with the hammer, that’s what’s wrong.” Ingrid liked her immediately. Unlike Earl, Dorothy had a constant stream of visitors.

Earl saw me approaching first. He didn’t stop waving until I maneuvered around the tables and stood in front of theirs. I could tell he was every bit as excited to have Ingrid back as I was. I gave my aunt a tight hug, and Earl too, but I knew better than to extend the affection to Dorothy. She didn’t do hugs. So I waved to her, a gesture she shooed away.

“These two are debating the carbohydrate-to-protein ratio served in our meals,” Ingrid said with an eye roll.

I took the fourth seat at the table, using every ounce of willpower I had to keep from blurting out the news about Christmas at The Chest. “Oh, really?”

“I think all the fiber is what gives Alice her gas problem,” Earl said.

Alice was Ingrid’s third friend and missing from the group today. She was
a little old woman—the archetypal grandmother with a mind that was also slipping away. Her presence in the dining hall was as scattered as Ingrid’s.

Dorothy shook her head. “IBS gives Alice her gas problem.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling and dug through my purse until I found the deck of cards and held them up in the air. “Anybody up for a game of Hearts?”

Ingrid raised her hand.

Dorothy shooed at me again, then let out a great big hacking cough, the kind that sounded as though she was expelling a lung. If I hadn’t known any better, I might have been alarmed. But chronic bronchitis was part of her COPD. According to Ingrid, Dorothy was once a chain smoker. Forced to quit against her will, her moods turned irritable. Occasionally, I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke in her hair. She must have found a way to sneak cigarettes inside, past the nurses and her never-ending family.

“Come on, Dorth, I’ll make you a deal,” Earl said above her wheezing. “If you play Hearts today, I won’t bother you about Connect Four tomorrow.”

When Dorothy regained control of her body, she gave Earl a beady stare. “Fine.”

I slipped the cards from the case and began shuffling, my news growing hotter by the second. With one eye on Ingrid, I passed out the cards—thirteen to everyone—then picked up my hand and started organizing. I slid a pair of clubs and the nasty queen of spades facedown to Earl. “I’ve been out to The Treasure Chest quite a bit,” I said as casually as I could, picking up the three cards passed to me.

“How’s the old girl doing?” Ingrid asked.

“She’s looking good.” Better, at least. So far Gracie and I had managed to clean out the front office, the back room, the supply closet, and the hospitality room. We’d removed the vulgar graffiti from the front and had new windows installed. Despite Gracie’s lack of conversational skills, my time there was quickly becoming my favorite part of the day, and I suspected hers too. Her scowl, at least, disappeared.