What Brings Me to You (22 page)

              “Do you associate with her at all outside the dorm?”

              “Sometimes,” was a total lie. She’d invited me to go places all the time, but I never went. Collette looked at me hard and sniffed. Did she know that I’d lied?

              “Hm. You said you spoke with your mother before the attack. What was the conversation about?”

              “Just boring stuff,” I shrugged. Collette removed her quirky glasses and set them on top of her pad on her lap. Her eyes were brown and deep set which, without the unusual frames, made her look older and harder. 

              “Charley, the purpose of this first meeting is two-fold. First and foremost is to get to know your basic family and medical history. Determine patterns. Things that may trigger your panic episodes. I know the questions may seem a bit mundane so bear with me, okay?”

              “Okay.”

              “You don’t have to like me, Charley, but you do have to trust me if we move forward after today. That’s the second purpose of this meeting. The trust needs to work both ways. I need to trust that you’ll give me honest answers so that I can help you properly. Okay?”

              “Okay.” I was pretty sure she just called me out on my lies, but I didn’t feel intimidated or guilty for lying. I just wanted not to do it anymore. Something about it made me feel like I was betraying sisterhood or something. Maybe because she was so young, or maybe because she was that good.

              “Great. So you said that you and your mother talked about ‘boring stuff’. Do you remember anything specific from the conversation?”

              “Yes,” I was being honest, but I wasn’t going to elaborate. She saw it in my face and didn’t bother asking me to.

              “Okay, then, we’ll table that for another visit.”

              The rest of the meeting proceeded that way. She’d ask about my family and I’d be purposefully evasive or shut up and not answer at all. She asked about friends, same thing. I knew that the image I was painting of myself to Collette was pretty pathetic. Like I was the college equivalent to Quasi Modo, but she asked me not to lie, so there really wasn’t a way out of it. Towards the end of the session she gave me some breathing exercises to do if I felt like I was getting, in her words, “worked up” again. When the fifty minutes was up she walked me to the door. Before I slinked out she put a sympathetic hand on my bicep. Her touch startled me out of the rage that was building in my chest.

              “Charley, I hope to see you again soon. Please make an appointment with Kathy at the front, okay?”

              “Okay.”

*****

              I’m calling Collette back. She’s so predictable; she picks up on the third ring.

              “Hey, Charley,” she sounds happy to hear from me, I can hear it in her voice,  but she is restraining herself a bit. “How…um…are you okay?”

              “That seems like a silly question Collette, don’t you think?” I am trying to be light and playful. She is my friend, and we’re typically light and playful but she’s using her therapist voice on me and it’s irritating, so it comes out kind of snappy.
Dammit! Back pedal.
“I’m teasing, girl. I’m good. Doing better every day,” this is a total lie. I’ve learned nothing from the years we’ve been friends because she sighs. She’s going to call me out.

              “Charley,” I know that tone. It’s her motherly, therapist-y, “I’m disappointed in you” tone. I should hate it, but I don’t. I love it because it means she cares and, even over the phone, she can knock down my defenses.

              “Okay, I’m not
okay
, okay, but I’m okay.”

              “Are you sleeping at night?” Now she’s really shrinking me. One of the drawbacks of being friends with Collette –she can’t turn off her inner therapist.

              “A little.”

              “Are you taking the pills?”

              “I can’t take that stuff, Collette. I don’t want to get hooked.” I hear her sigh again, this time resigned. She knows not to push me too hard. Especially now.

              “How about coming over tonight? It’s poker night and Rich is going out with the boys. We can sit around, drink wine, watch rom-coms. I haven’t seen you. I miss you.” I miss her too. But I can’t sit around and watch movies with my girlfriend like old times. Not yet.

              “Not yet, okay.”

              “Okay,” and though she tries to hide it, she’s disappointed in that too.

              “Okay. Listen, I better go. It was good to hear your voice, Collette.”

              “Yours too, Charley. Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

              “Okay,” I was about to hang up –so relieved to be done with that conversation when I hear her call my name.

              “Wait, Charley!”

              “Yea, what?”

              “I got a weird phone call today. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone, though. Can I come over tomorrow? Will you be home? Are you still on leave?”

Weird phone call? What the hell is she talking about she can’t just tell me over the phone? “You’re freaking me out a little bit, Collette. Can you at least give me a hint so I don’t obsess over it all night?” Like obsessing over it is going to cut into the sleep I’m not having. Ha!

              “It’s just… we need to talk. Tomorrow?”

              “Yea. Okay. Tomorrow.”

*****

              It was October on campus, but it was still sweltering outside. The only way any of us knew was our RA put cardboard cut outs of pumpkins on the first floor doors. The freshman-freak-out look that all the upperclassmen talked about seemed to vanish by that time. The undercurrent of palpable alacrity in the dorm the first few weeks had relaxed into easy, comfortable living. I’d fallen into a rhythm myself. The consistency and routine seemed to have a good effect on my mood.

              I’d been going to therapy twice a week for three weeks. Dr. Collette, or whatever I was supposed to call her, was a real pain in the ass. She was determined to have me come to my own conclusions about things so even when I directly asked her a question she wouldn’t answer.
“What do
you
think?”
was her most favorite and vexing answer. Occasionally she’d grace me with, what I deemed Collette-isms, and those were what helped me the most. Times when she dispensed these little precepts I felt like we were closer than patient and not-doctor. I think it was the confidence I was gaining in speaking to Collette and her advice that helped me to branch out. She encouraged me ad nauseam to be more social: “Isolating yourself is what caused you to feel out of control. If you have a safety net you’re less likely to have an episode or feel out of control.” It seemed logical enough, so I went out with Kelsey and Colin a couple of times which was, actually, more fun than I thought it would be. They were just so
nice
and so
normal.
It was refreshing but weird in a Stepford Wives kind of way. It was hard for me to feel like I truly belonged with them because I was so damaged and they were so…immaculate? I don’t know but it was just all wrong. They invited me to go to the beach with them, too, but I declined. The beach was still too painful.

              I knew I’d need to be out of the dorm over the winter holidays and didn’t know where I’d be staying. I needed to squirrel away as much money as possible until then. I picked up a couple of odd jobs –mostly tutoring or editing papers, but it was sporadic and I wasn’t making enough to support me staying in a hotel –even a cheap one for more than a day or so. I applied at all of the restaurants and food service venues on campus hoping to kill two birds with one stone. I could make extra cash, and maybe nab some extra food, you know, the stuff they would throw away anyway at the end of the night? The two meals I was allotted each day on my meal card just weren’t doing it for me, and I was tired of my extremities being swollen from all the Top Ramen.

              I landed a job at one of the more upscale eateries on campus, Fresh Eats. I was lucky, since it was literally nine point five steps from my dorm, I was never ever late. It was an exhibition style dining experience so my duties were getting and refilling drinks, cleaning tables, and replacing silverware. The mindless monotony of it helped me to stave off the anxiety. I’d be on my feet, running around for hours, and when I got back to the dorm I would be full from the left overs, and so bone tired I’d sleep heavily and dreamlessly through the night. More sleep helped my studies too, and though my grades weren’t awful before, they were nearing perfection.

              Markus, the head chef-slash-manager, took a liking to me and I to him, though that wasn’t immediate at all. Actually, we had a pretty rough start.. Markus intimidated the hell out of me; actually he intimidated the hell out of everyone. The man was massive, had to have been well over six and a half feet but he was just as wide. It took a lot not to cower in his presence because he was so physically imposing, and if that wasn’t enough, he was known to be a tyrant in the kitchen. He demanded perfection from the staff and anything less would earn you a severe tongue lashing of the veins bulging in the neck variety. I was grateful, at first he spent most of the time in the kitchen and I spent most of mine front of house, but then it happened.

              My fucking hair.

              I’d set drinks down for one of my tables and as I walked away I heard a loud shriek from the woman.

              “How disgusting,” she gasped. I walked back over and there she was, holding a long, black, spirally curled strand of hair. The hives on my chest burned and I felt my face get hot.

              “I’m so, so sorry, ma’am,” I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to simply take the hair out of her hands and run away screaming, but I needed the job. I hoped beyond hope she wouldn’t say the words that, unfortunately did come out of her mouth.

              “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak with the manager, please.”
Oh shit!
I did the walk of shame back to the kitchen where Markus was dressing down one of the cooks for burning a batch of something or other. I waited patiently for him to finish, hearing nothing but the sound of my hyperventilating. When he was done I tapped lightly on his granite-hard bicep.

              “What?” apparently he was still seething from the other guy’s fuckup because his normally tanned face was beet red.

              “Um, some clients would like to talk to you.”
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

              “Oh great! What did you do?” He didn’t give me time to answer before he was out of the kitchen and onto the floor. I took the opportunity to nab a set of wooden chopsticks, twisted my hair as high up on my head as it would go and secured it with the flimsy wooden rods. My hands were trembling so badly it took me several tries.
I’m fired. I’m fired. I’m fired.
Is all I could think. I was glad, for once, for Collette’s breathing exercises because I was feeling out of control. Minutes later he came storming back into the kitchen where I had been hiding.

              “You!” I knew the "you" he was addressing and didn’t want to piss him off any further so I snapped to attention. The redness had dissipated from his face, but he didn’t seem any less pissed. “My office. Now.” The entire kitchen staff looked at me with pity, like I was a puppy about to be put down. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth like Collette told me to and hastily made my way to the office.

The office was more like a supply closet with a desk. I didn’t understand how Markus’ massive body could fit behind that desk which was why, I assumed, he was leaning against it instead. He leaned down far enough to be eye level with me, and I don’t think I’d ever been more scared in my life.
Say something, idiot! Apologize!

              “Jesus! I don’t know who hired you with all that fucking hair! You know it’s a really good thing you’re not in my kitchen because, I swear, that hair would end up in every one of my dishes.” He wasn’t yelling, but his tone wasn’t nice either. He raked his hands down his face wearily and it occurred to me how difficult it must be to be the head chef and manager. He was too young, mid to late twenties at the most, to look so tired.

              “Am I going to lose my job?” I blurted out. He seemed slightly stunned by it and his expression softened, if only marginally.

              “No, honey. But in the future, you need to keep your hair up. It’s company protocol.”

              “Absolutely sir. Won’t happen again.”

              “Good. I’ve assigned Kimberly to take over that table. Get back out there.” I turned and left but he stayed in the office, presumably to write me up. I was sure to keep my hair up from then on and extra careful not to cross paths with Markus until one night, after closing, I was folding up silverware in linen napkins, and smelled something divine coming from the kitchen. I tip-toed around the corner and saw Markus’ wall of a back standing over one of the counters with a delicate round dish in his hands.

              “I didn’t realize you were still here,” he said in a whisper that was incongruous with his form and with the only other time he’d spoken to me. He still had his back to me so in addition to an outrageously sized musculature and a wicked temper; he had the hearing of a dog or had eyes in the back of his head. Either way, the fact that he knew I was there made me jump.