Writers & Lovers - Lily King Page 0,28
who was in college and never called, but I wasn’t sad. I barely had any emotions at all. But at night I terrified myself with this fear that somewhere inside me someone wanted to die.
When my mother came back from Arizona, she asked if I wanted to talk to someone, a professional, she said. I don’t know why she said this, what precipitated it, but it scared me, the idea that this professional might go in and find that other person inside me, the person who was feeling all the things I did not let myself feel. My mother had returned brokenhearted and in the middle of divorce litigation with my father. I heard terrible noises through her bathroom door, sounds I couldn’t connect to my mother. She was grieving, but I didn’t understand what that felt like then. I told her she was the one who should see a shrink, not me.
In college one of my best friends was a psych major and practiced on me with the Minnesota personality test. She showed me the bar graph of my results. All the bars were in the medium size, normal range except two, which were much taller. One was for a category called Defensiveness to the Test. The other was for schizophrenia. I wondered if that tall schizophrenia bar had anything to do with why I tied those dry-cleaning bags in knots before bed that year my mother was gone, my suspicion that there was someone else inside me. I hadn’t had that fear again, and I don’t think I’ve ever exhibited any signs of that illness, but I did start writing fiction the year my mother was gone and maybe that’s where I channeled my schizophrenic potential.
During the time my mother was out West, I did some of the same sort of rearranging of objects that I do now after writing sometimes. I always had to put on my right shoe, then the left. I could never leave a shirt inside out. If I followed the rules, my mother would definitely come back from Phoenix. And here I am, making rules again, even though nothing I do now will ever, ever bring her back.
When I was visiting her a few years ago she hugged me and said, ‘Tomorrow after you leave I will stand here at this window and remember that yesterday you were right here with me.’
And now she’s dead and I have that feeling all the time, no matter where I stand.
Adam comes by with my mail. He sees me at my desk in the window, so I have to open the door. He hands me a postcard and four envelopes from debt collectors, stamped with bright red threats.
‘I feel like I’m harboring a fugitive in here,’ he says. ‘How do you sleep at night?’
‘I don’t much.’
I can tell he doesn’t believe me. He thinks of me as young and somehow protected by my youth.
Adam points to the EdFund envelope. ‘Those guys are awful. They get sued left and right for unlawful practices.’
I need to get back to my desk.
‘Didn’t you get a full ride at Duke? Weren’t you ranked one or two in the country at some point?’
‘When I was fourteen,’ I say.
‘But isn’t golf one of those sports where if you’re good you only get better?’
‘Not if you sell your clubs.’
He thinks if he’s silent I’ll say more.
‘Well,’ he says finally. ‘There’s a lot to be said for being unencumbered.’ He looks greedily around at the nothing of my life. ‘It’s the scent of freedom in here, Casey. You won’t be able to smell it till you’ve lost it.’
Actually I could smell it. It was the scent of black mold and gasoline that came in from the garage.
I toss out the envelopes and sit back at my desk with the postcard. One side is a photograph of spiked snow-covered mountains in the background, lower, rounder brown mountains below, and a bright green pasture with wildflowers and a grazing cow. WELCOME TO CRESTED BUTTE, it says at the bottom. Crested Butte?
On the other side, in small ballpoint scrawl:
For a while now I’ve needed to get in my car and drive west. I’ve needed to see mountains and the sky. I hope I can explain it to you better when I get back. The man who sold me this postcard kept a dog behind the counter, and I thought of Adam’s Dog and my only regret about leaving is not going on that date with you.
I drop