BLAME
DR. GREENBERG TAKES IN a deep breath through his nose. “Last time we were talking about your mother.” He reaches for the notebook sitting on the table next to him and flips a page. “You were telling me about how your father would beat her. Talk to her like she was stupid. Take her money. Take her shoes so she couldn’t leave—”
I have to stop him there. “I never said ‘beat.’ And I didn’t see that shoe thing,” I correct. “I told you that was something my grandmother said in court.”
He moves his glasses up to the top of his head and looks at me. “Okay. Well, but what’s the difference?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying that’s not what I said. It sounds worse when you say it like that.”
“Worse than what?”
I shrug. “Worse than it was, I guess.”
“Well . . . ,” he starts, then stops, then starts again. “Okay, but it really was pretty bad, wasn’t it? I mean, your mother is in prison and your father is dead.”
“When you say it like that, yes.” I can feel myself losing my patience.
“Well, how would you say it?”
I study him closely. “I would say it was an accident.”
“You don’t know that, though, do you? Isn’t that what you said caused all the tension between you and your sister? You wanted to know, and she couldn’t tell you.”
I cross my arms over my stomach. I don’t know how we got into all of this again. I only came here to see if he could write me doctor’s notes. I swear, the last time I was here, I must’ve been delirious from that lingering fever. Otherwise, why would I have told him so much?
“ ‘He blamed her for everything,’ ” he reads from the page. “That’s what you said. And then I asked if you blame her.” He looks up at me. “You never answered.”
I blame her. And him. I blame them—their weakness, together. I blame the sun and the moon. I blame the year, the season, the month. I blame the hour of the day.
“I blame her . . . ,” I begin, not knowing what I’m about to say, “for not being here now.”
It’s so silent I can hear Dr. Greenberg breathing. I can hear my pulse pounding in my ears. I can hear Ingrid’s voice carry through the thin walls.
“Maybe I thought that if we could all agree that it wasn’t her fault, then I wouldn’t have to blame her?” I say it like a question.
“There’s no right answer, Brooke.” But before I can respond, he continues, asking, “What about Callie and Aaron? Do you blame them for not being here now?”
“They’re coming back,” I tell him, my voice clearer, louder, trying to cover the fact that this is one more thing I don’t know for sure.
“Okay,” he concedes. “But let’s just say they don’t. What would that mean?”
I shrug. I reposition myself in the chair so I can see the clock on the wall. It’s 4:40. I follow the slim red second hand all the way around the circumference of the clock to 4:41.
“Brooke?”
I look up again. The clock suddenly says 4:45.
“Why do you think they left?” he asks.
“I told you, they’re coming back!” I nearly shout, though not quite. “Aaron’s only out of town, doing this job thing. And Callie is only at Jackie’s until Aaron gets back.” Except I think Dr. Greenberg doesn’t even believe me. I check my volume, force myself to turn it down a notch before answering his question. “I think they just wanted to give up.”
“Give up on . . . ?” he prompts.
“Give up on us—our family, our mom.” On me.
“But you don’t want to give up?”
“I’m trying not to. I mean, isn’t this what family’s supposed to do? You’re supposed to be there for each other through anything.” I stop because I can feel my head starting to pound.
“Well, I think there’s a difference between giving up and letting go.”
No there’s not.
“What would happen if you let go?”
A tiny bell chimes from somewhere behind Dr. Greenberg’s desk.
Time’s up.
I pick up my bag and prepare to stand up, leave, and possibly never come back again.
“Wait—wait right there. We have time. What were you about to say? What are you feeling right now?”
A few moments of silence pass between us as I try to find a way to express all that I’m feeling right now. But no words can make sense of how much I want things to go back to the way they were, even when things were bad. Or how much I want to leave—how sometimes I wish I could burn the whole place down, take a wrecking ball to it. No words to explain how I feel all those things at the same time, all the time.
“If I really let go”—my voice catches, even though I’m trying so hard to be brave—“I’ll never have a home again, that place you hear people talk about—that safe place to land. That’s over for me.”
“I’m curious, is that really what it felt like before?” he asks.
I think about it for several moments, but I refuse to give him the answer I know he wants, the answer that I know deep down is true.
“I have to go to work,” I tell him, rushing out, not even bothering to ask about those damn doctor’s notes.