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"I know, but you know how I lose track of time If I'm not home, remember, you just hit four and the answering service will forward the call to my cellular phone, okay, honey?"
"Right," I said slamming the door a little harder than necessary. She hated that. She said it jolted her nervous system. The way everything jolted her nervous system these days, I thought she was like a pinball machine that if shook too hard would go tilt. Her eyes would take on that gray glazed look of dead bulbs and she would get lockjaw.
I turned and headed for the arched entrance, hoping I wasn't the first to arrive. If I was, I might have to spend some time with Emma, who had a smile as phony as plastic fruit. All the while she spoke to me, I could feel her eyes searching my face for s
igns of some madness. She talked to me as if I was about nine years old, tiptoeing her questions around me and laughing nervously after everything I said or she asked. She was the one who needed therapy, I thought, not any of us.
Maybe that was why she lived with her sister. She was at least fifty and had been married and divorced years and years ago. She never remarried and from what I could tell was close to being a hermit. Maybe her husband had done something terrible to her. Jade, who I would discover liked to diagnose everyone but herself, decided Emma suffered from something called agoraphobia because she was afraid of being in public places. Maybe Jade was right. I saw that just stepping out the front door was enough to give Emma a panic attack.
Neither she nor Doctor Marlowe had ever had any children. Doctor Marlowe was in her early forties and had never been married. Was this one of those famous cases of a shoemaker with holes in his shoes? After all, she was supposed to be an expert in parenting and she had no one to parent. She wasn't so unattractive that no man would look at her. Maybe she analyzed every man she dated and they couldn't stand it. I laughed, imagining her making love and then explaining every moan and sigh.
Could a psychiatrist ever be romantic? I was eager to learn if any of the others had similar thoughts about her. Yes, maybe it would be fun to be together after all, I thought, as I jabbed the door buzzer.
My heart did little flip-flops. All of us had been here before, but never together until today, never for what Doctor Marlowe termed the start of special peer group therapy. She had decided we had all reached the stage where it might be of some benefit. To me the only interesting thing was none of us had met. Doctor Marlowe's technique was to tell us very little about each other. She said she didn't want us coming to the sessions with any preconceived ideas. All she would really tell each of us was each girl's name and whom she lived with since her parents had divorced or split up, or, as I like to think, came apart. It seems to fit better. That's the way I feel . . . like I'm coming apart, like my arms and legs are floating away and I'm left with just this sixteen-year-old torso searching for a way out of this nightmare house that has no doors or windows.
Anyway, a group of girls who had never spoken to each other was now supposed to gather in a room and share their pain and their anger and their fear, and that, according to Doctor Marlowe, would work miracles. I'm sure the others felt as I did: very skeptical and very anxious. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.
Go on, Doctor Marlowe, I challenged as I approached the door. Put us back together.
No matter how easy Doctor Marlowe made it sound, it was still going to feel like taking off your clothes and standing naked in front of the curious eyes of strangers, and most of what each of us had to reveal, we wouldn't reveal even to our parents, especially not to our parents.
Why?
Simple.
We hated them.
1
" Good morning, Misty," Doctor Marlowe's sister Emma cried from the circular stairway after their maid Sophie opened the door.
Emma wore one of her flowery oversize dresses. Her hair was cut with razor-perfect precision at her earlobes and her bangs looked painted over her forehead and glued down a strand at a time. She kept her hair dyed coal black, probably to smother any signs of gray; however, the contrast with her pale complexion made the skin on her round face look like tissue paper. She froze on the steps, waiting for me to enter as if she thought I might change my mind.
Sophie closed the door behind me. From somewhere deep in the house came Mozart's Symphony no. 40 in G Minor. I'm not an expert on classical music; the only reason I could identify it was because we were practicing it in the senior high school band. I play the clarinet. My mother thought it might ruin my orthodontic work, but Mr. LaRuffa, our bandleader, practically signed an affidavit that it wouldn't. Mother finally put her signature on the permission slip.
My father forgot to attend this year's big concert, even though I had brought my clarinet to practice while I was at his new home the weekend before. Ariel, his twenty-something girlfriend, promised to remind him, which I thought was amazing in and of itself. She looked like someone who had little mirrors in her brain reflecting thoughts, bouncing them back and forth accompanied by little giggles that reminded me of tiny soap bubbles.
No matter how obvious I was with my sarcasm, Ariel smiled. I guess Daddy was comfortable with her because she looked like a Revlon model and never challenged a thing he said. Whatever pronouncements he made, she nodded and widened her eyes as if he had just come up with a new world-shattering comment. She was quite the opposite of my mother, who today would challenge him if he said good morning.
Mostly, Ariel gave him sex. According to my mother and her friends, that's all men really care about.
"The doctor will be with you in a moment or two," Emma said as she stepped down the carpeted stairs, taking each step with the same precaution someone walking across a muddy road might take: tiny, careful steps followed by a tight grasp on the balustrade. I wondered if she was an alcoholic. She wore enough perfume to cover the stench of a garbage truck so it was hard to tell from her breath if she drank or not, but she had gained at least forty pounds since I had first started with Doctor Marlowe and when I told that to Mommy, she said, "Maybe she's a closet drinker."
It better be a walk-in closet, I thought. "How are you today, dear?" Emma asked when she finally stood before me. She wasn't much taller than I was, perhaps five feet one, but she seemed to inflate like a balloon replica of herself, her heavy bosom, each breast shaped like a football, holding the flowery tent out and away from her body.
I wore my usual costume for these mental games with Doctor Marlowe: jeans, sneakers and white socks, and any one of a dozen T-shirts that annoyed my mother. Today's had a beached whale on the front with a stream of black liquid drooling from its mouth. Under it was written Oops, another oil spill.
Emma Marlowe didn't seem to notice what I wore, ever. She was as nervous as usual in my presence and pressed her thick lips together as she smiled so that it looked more like a smothered little laugh.
"The doctor wants you to go directly to her office," she said, her voice thin and high-pitched like someone on the verge of screaming.
That's a relief for both of us, I thought.
"Anyone else here yet?" I asked.
Before she could reply, the doorbell rang and Sophie, who was standing to the side like some doll on a spring, sprung into action. She opened the door and we all looked out at a tall, attractive black girl with braided hair. She wore a light-blue cotton sweater and a dark blue skirt. I immediately thought, that's the figure I hope I have someday when my stupid hormones decide to wake up.
"Oh, Star," Emma Marlowe said. She looked back toward the music as if she was hoping to be rescued. "Come in, come in," she added quickly.
