So, our last session together. Your father tells me you won't be seeking a new psychologist.
He's calmed down a lot since the accident… I don't think he needs me to go to therapy anymore.
I wish I'd been able to change how you felt about our time together, Melora. I know the reason you came here was to sooth your father, but I like to think you were helped by our time in some ways. I think you've arrived at a good place, a more understanding way of viewing your future.
You make it sound like I was suicidal.
No, of course not. But you were very angry.
I sit on the end of the bed, holding a folded over picture, staring at the boxes surrounding me, casting strange shapes around the room. This house is a weird place to begin with – one of the walls in my room slanting drastically with the roof. The only window in my bedroom is a massive round one with a window seat. Oh, and it's smaller than my old room, to boot.
The walls are dark blue, the carpet some weirdly soft tan fabric your feet sink into when you try to walk across it. It feels like it should block out the noise coming up from downstairs better, the high pitched whine of power tools piercing every inch of the house I try to escape to.
Sighing, I get to my feet. The picture I tuck away in my back pocket, hugging my sides as I wander over to the window to look out at the street. The house across from this one has the lights all on, a bike sitting out on the front lawn. It looks very all American with a flag right at the door, fluttering in the mild wind. I can picture some family gathered round the table eating meatloaf and talking about the ivy league college Suzy will go to in the new year, or little Billy's football touchdown. Maybe they're overweight, with a two pugs named Ricco and Cheechee.
As I'm standing there making up my own version of my neighbours the front door opens, and a teenage boy spills out into the lawn, scrambling for the bike. In a single fluid motion he picks it up and turns it toward the driveway, leaping on as a man comes outside. The man shouts something I can't make out over Dad's power tools, but the kid isn't about to come back, pumping wildly as he takes off down the street. After a moment the man goes to the car in the driveway, driving off after the boy.
The front door hangs ajar, and no mom or sibling comes to close it.
"Dad?" I grab the plate of untouched Chinese food from off my bed, hurrying down the stairs. "Hey Dad?"
I halt at the door to the master bathroom, the shrieking pausing for a minute as Dad lifts his head to look at me. He looks like an elementary school play's rendition of the ghost of Christmas past. His curly black hair is coated in white powder from the porcelain so his white streak is incognito, the paint stained jumper suit still vaguely white, and all the electrical cords around him do look vaguely like chains. It's just the gigantic pink capped respirator mask and safety goggles that ruin the illusion.
"What's up honey?" He asks, removing the goggles.
"Something weird is going on across the street." I report, feeling vaguely childish all of a sudden for spying on our nieghbours. "I think the neighbours are fighting or something."
"That's not our business." He points out. I don't know what I expected him to do, exactly. My dad's the least confrontational person I've ever met. He still makes excuses for my mom, and she ditched us when I was still a red wrinkly little bundle of noise. His eyes narrow in on my plate, which in my reflection I forgot to hide. "Why haven't you eaten your food?"
"It tastes like it got fished out of a dumpster." I frown defensively, the boy on the bike momentarily forgotten. I have battles of my own – me versus my dad's paranoia that I was going to down spiral into an eating disorder; the worry of the week. Last week was cutting since I started wearing long sleeves and using the X-Acto knife. The fact that it's really cold in our formerly vacant house, and that I have to get into our boxes passed the tape hadn't really occurred to him on a logical level.
"Well then eat leftover pizza in the fridge." He orders, trying to gauge if under my sweater I'm skinner than normal. "Is your room unpacked?"
"Sure." I lie, looking at the eviscerated remains of the claw foot tub. "You know Dad… you really didn't have to do that. It's not like I was going to be using your bathroom…"
"Water makes you uncomfortable, Melora." He said sagely, starting the power saw back up. "I want you to feel safe and comfortable in our new home! A fresh start!"
Whatever the tub thing means for him, it's not for me. He's telling himself he's taking it out for my sake, but I can tell he's lying to me. Since Lindsey, I can always tell when people are lying, an no, it's not a skill I've enjoyed. My shrink called it 'being cynical'. She didn't like me calling her out about her husband's affair.
"Then maybe you shouldn't have moved us to a different country." I breathe.
"Sorry?"
"I said don't hurt yourself! You're a writer, not a plumber!"
He waves me away, and shaking my head I head back down the hall and into the kitchen, dumping my dinner in the trash and grabbing the pizza box from the otherwise baron fridge. I stick a few slices on a new plate and start warming them up in the microwave.
While I wait, my mind finds its way back to the boy from across the road. I shift uncomfortably, chewing at the hem of my sleeve and feeling weirdly guilty.
Family fights aren't exactly unheard of to me. My older sister Lindsey had gone at Dad like a pitbull on a chiwawa, Dad yelping empty threats as she hurled the atom bombs of jabs she had on hand, storming out the front door.
Teenagers and parents fought, right? Or at least some of them did.
I just hope the boy is okay. Because he looked really, really scared.
I go back upstairs, and resigning to my fate begin unpacking my things. By the time I fall onto my bed, I still haven't tracked down my blankets. Still, I have my pillow from the drive down to Beacon Hills and the thin fleece blanket dad picked up from the last Canadian tire on the way out of the country, so I curl up listening to the final cries of the bathtub and dad's shout of success, meaning the end of that revolting noise.
I guess I should explain the bathtub thing, huh?
Lindsey killed herself in our shared bathtub last summer, and I haven't been able to shake this freaking annoying habit of getting panic attacks when I see water. It's not like I go into cardiac arrest when I see a glass of water or anything, although I've stopped drinking it. Just lakes, and full bathtubs, bodies of water for some reason trigger the attacks. It's like I get this high pitched whine in my ears, and my skin goes clammy, and everything looks like I'm using the wrong end of binoculars.
So dad's taking it out on the house's one and only bathtub.
Whatever makes him feel better, I guess.
With heavy footsteps, he trudges up the stairs. He opens my door to share the news, but I deliberately keep my back to him and pretend to be asleep. He comes over, tugs at the blanket to make sure my feet are covered, and that I'm safe from whatever dangers he's dreaming up.
What surprises me is when he leans down, kissing the top of my head.
I almost open my eyes, but then he's picked up my empty plate and out the door before I have time to assemble a 'just waking up' routine.
I roll onto my back, and listen to him going around the house until his bedroom door shuts. And then there's just the quiet, and I'm alone. I reach around, tugging the picture from my pocket and opening it up.
My mom is almost blurred, spinning in motion with Lindsey in her arms. They're in a woods somewhere, camping I think. Lindsey's four in the picture, a little girl with pale curly pigtails and a pink outfit. I know she's four because you can see the swelling starting on my mom's stomach. I have no idea where this was taken, I found it in Lindsey's jewelry box when I sorted through her things for Dad.
He wouldn't want me to have it, he doesn't keep any pictures of Mom. Somehow that makes it more important to me.
Carefully, I place the picture on my night stand.
"Night." I murmur to them.
What can I say? I didn't have that great of a shrink.