Shakespeare’s Counselor - Страница 2

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I leaned on my mop for a moment and considered this news. It explained the unpleasant noises coming from the bathroom. I could not think of one single thing to say, so I nodded. Heather wriggled off the chair and ran to the switch to turn on the overhead fan to dry the floor quickly, as I always did.

“It’s true the baby won’t come for a long time?” the little girl asked me.

“That’s true,” I said.

“Tyler says Mama’s tummy will get real big like a watermelon.”

“That’s true, too.”

“Will they have to cut her open with a knife, like Daddy does the watermelon?”

“No.” I hoped I wasn’t lying. “She won’t pop, either,” I added, just to cover another anxiety.

“How will the baby get out?”

“Moms like to explain that in their own way,” I said, after I’d thought a little. I would rather have answered her matter-of-factly, but I didn’t want to usurp Carol’s role.

Through the sliding glass doors to the backyard (doors that were perpetually decorated with handprints) I could see that Dawn had carried her Duplos into the sandbox. They’d have to be washed off. Tyler was firing the soft projectiles of some Nerf weapon in the general direction of a discarded plastic soda bottle he’d filled with water. The two seemed to be fine, and I couldn’t see any danger actually lurking. I reminded myself to check again in five minutes, since Carol was definitely indisposed.

With Heather at my heels, I went to the room she shared with her sister and began to change the sheets. I figured that any second, Heather would exhaust her attention span and go find something else to do. But instead, Heather sat on a child-sized Fisher-Price chair and observed me with close attention.

“You don’t look crazy,” she told me.

I stopped pulling the flat sheet straight and glanced over my shoulder at the little girl.

“I’m not,” I said, my voice flat and final.

It would be hard to pin down exactly why this hurt me, but it did. What a senseless thing to waste emotion on, the repetition by a child of something she’d apparently heard adults say.

“So why do you walk by yourself at night? Isn’t that a scary thing to do? Only ghosts and monsters are out at night.”

My first response was that I myself was scarier than any ghost or monster. But that would hardly be reassuring to a little girl, and already other ideas were flickering through my head.

“I’m not afraid at night,” I said, which was close to the truth. I was not any more afraid at night than I was in the daytime, for sure.

“So you do it to show them you’re not afraid?” Heather asked.

The same wrenching pain filled me that I’d felt when I saw Jack’s bloody nose. I straightened, dirty sheets in a bundle in my arms, and looked down at the little girl for a long moment. “Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly why I do it.”

I knew then and there that I would be at the therapy session the next night. It was time.

For now, I taught Heather how to make hospital folds.

Chapter Two

I slid through the designated door the next night as though I’d come to steal some help, not to get it for free.

There were four cars in the parking lot, which was only partially visible from the street. I recognized two of them.

The side door we were to use was a heavy metal door. It slid shut behind me with a heavy thud, and I walked toward the only two rooms that were well lit. All the other doors up and down the corridor were shut, and I was willing to bet they were probably locked as well.

A woman appeared in the first open doorway and called, “Come on in! We’re ready to get started!” As I got closer I could see she was as dark as I was blond, she was as soft as I am hard, and I was to find she talked twice as much as I’d ever thought about doing. “I’m Tamsin Lynd,” she said, extending her hand.

“Lily Bard,” I said, taking the hand and giving it a good shake.

She winced. “Lily?…”

“Bard,” I supplied, resigned to what was to come.

Her eyes got round behind their glasses, which were wire framed and small. Tamsin Lynd clearly recognized my name, which was a famous one if you read a lot of true crime.

“Before you go in the therapy room, Lily, let me tell you the rules.” She stepped back and gestured, and I went into what was clearly her office. The desk and its chair were arranged facing the door, and there were books and papers everywhere. The room was pretty small, and there wasn’t space for much after the desk and chair and two bookcases and a filing cabinet. The wall behind the desk was covered with what looked like carpeting, dark gray with pink flecks to match the carpet on the floor. I decided it had been designed for use as a bulletin board of sorts. Tamsin Lynd had fixed newspaper and magazine clippings to it with pushpins, and the effect was at least a little cheerful. The therapist didn’t invite me to sit, but stood right in front of me examining me closely. I wondered if she imagined herself a mind reader.

I waited. When she saw I wasn’t going to speak, Tamsin began, “Every woman in this group has been through a lot, and this therapy group is designed to help each and every one get used to being in social situations and work situations and alone situations, without being overwhelmed with fear. So what we say here is confidential, and we have to have your word that the stories you hear in this room stop in your head. That’s the most important rule. Do you agree to this?”

I nodded. I sometimes felt the whole world had heard my story. But if I’d had a chance to prevent it, not a soul would’ve known.

“I’ve never had a group like this here in Shakespeare, but I’ve run them before. Women start coming to this group when they can stand talking about what happened to them-or when they can’t stand their lives as they are. Women leave the group when they feel better about themselves. You can come as long as I run it, if you need to. Now, let’s go to the therapy room and you can meet the others.”

But before we could move, the phone rang.

Tamsin Lynd’s reaction was extraordinary. She jerked and turned to face her desk. Her hand shot out and rested on top of the receiver. When it rang again, her fingers tightened around the phone, but she still didn’t lift it. I decided it would be tactful to step around the desk and look at the clippings on the wall. Predictably, most were about rape, stalking, and the workings of the court system. Some were about brave women. The counselor’s graduate and postgraduate degrees were framed and displayed, and I was duly impressed.

The manifestly intelligent Tamsin had picked up the phone and said, “Hello?” as though she was scared to death.

The next thing I knew, she’d gasped and sunk down into the client chair in front of the desk. I abandoned my attempt to look like I wasn’t there.

“Stop this,” the therapist hissed into the phone. “You have to stop this! No, I won’t listen!” And she smashed the receiver into its cradle as though she was bashing in someone’s head. Tamsin took several deep breaths, almost sobbing. Then she was enough under control to speak to me.

“If you’ll go on next door,” she said, in a voice creditably even, “I’ll be there in a minute. I just need to collect a few things.”

Like her wits and her composure. I hesitated, about to offer help, then realizing that was ludicrous under the circumstances. I eased out from behind Tamsin’s desk and out the door, took two steps to the left, and went into another.

The room next door was probably a lot of things besides the therapy room. There was a large institutional table, surrounded by the usual butt-numbing institutional chairs. The room was windowless and had a couple of insipid landscapes on the walls as a gesture toward decoration. There were women already waiting, some with canned drinks and notepads in front of them.

My almost-friend Janet Shook was there, and a woman whose face was familiar in an unpleasant way. For a moment, I had to think of her name, and then I realized the formally dressed, fortyish big-haired woman was Sandy McCorkindale, wife of the minister of Shakespeare Combined Church, known locally as SCC. Sandy and I had clashed a couple of times when I’d been hired by the church to serve refreshments at board meetings of the SCC preschool, and we’d had a difference of opinion at the Ladies’ Luncheon, an annual church wingding.

Sandy was about as pleased to see me as I was to see her. On the other hand, Janet smiled broadly. Janet, in her mid-twenties, was as fit as I was, which is pretty damn muscular. She has dark brown hair that swings forward to touch her cheeks, and bangs that have a tendency to get in her eyes. Janet and I sometimes exercise together, and we are members of the same karate class. I sat down by her and we said hello to each other, and then Tamsin bustled into the room, a clipboard and a bunch of papers clutched to her big bouncy chest. She had recovered quite well, to my eyes.

“Ladies, have you all met each other?”

“All but the latest entry,” drawled one of the women across the table.

She was one of three women I didn’t recall having met before. Tamsin performed the honors.

“This is Carla, and this is Melanie.” Tamsin indicated the woman who’d spoken up, a short, thin incredibly wrinkled woman with a smoker’s cough. The younger woman beside her, Melanie, was a plump blonde with sharp eyes and an angry cast to her features. The other woman, introduced to me as Firella, was the only African American in the group. She had a haircut that made the top of her head look like the top of a battery, and she wore very serious glasses. She was wearing an African-print sleeveless dress, which looked loose and comfortable.