Chapter 4
Sandy glances at Seth in the rearview mirror.
He's slumped against the window, eyes closed and arms crossed tightly over his chest.
Sandy's eyes return to the road, then meander over to peek at Ryan.
Ryan is slouched beside him in the passenger seat, his body a tense mirror image of Seth's, although Sandy can tell without looking that Ryan's eyes are open.
There's a whole Cohen family etiquette thing about not napping in the passenger seat.
Ryan probably wouldn't say a word to him for the entire car ride, but he would be too polite and too dedicated to the letter of Cohen family law to close his eyes and fully shut him out.
He almost certainly wants to shut Sandy out; he's made that more than clear.
There's the situation with Seth and Kirsten that Sandy doesn't fully understand and can't really do anything about at the moment, and then there's the ongoing Ryan situation.
He hasn't really been able to make much headway with that one either.
For one thing, Seth had seemed to make it his life's mission to run interference for Ryan.
Ryan didn't need much help making himself scarce, but when Sandy did find that rare opportunity to catch him for a few moments, Seth always seemed to be lurking around the corner, ready to pop out with some exhausting explanation about why he needed Ryan right that second and no, Dad, it absolutely could not wait.
Sandy eyes Seth again. Whether he was actually asleep or not was anyone's guess. He'd briefly surfaced to hand Sandy the keys and then he'd retreated again, back into sleep or back into staring at the inside of his eyelids and blocking everything else out.
The boys really did have more in common than anyone else seemed to think.
In a way though, this might be a rare opportunity to get Ryan effectively alone.
"So Ryan, how was your visit?" Sandy asks, pitching his voice low.
Ryan shifts in his seat. His mouth opens.
Sandy readies himself for the polite rebuff.
He jumps when Seth's voice erupts from the backseat.
"Hey Dad, can you turn up the music? I just don't think I'm picking up all the subtleties of Travolta's performance here."
A quick glance in the rear view mirror confirms that Seth's eyes are still closed, although there's a hint of a smirk on his lips.
Ryan looks like he's biting back a smirk of his own.
"I gotcha man," he offers drily, leaning forward and turning the volume up a few clicks.
"Perfect," Seth drolls, hands gesticulating wildly as he conducts an invisible symphony.
The car lapses into silence, other than Travolta and the gang belting it out, Sandy consciously letting five and then ten minutes pass.
Sandy hazards a look at Ryan. He knows he's unlikely to get anything out of him at the moment, but he has to try.
"So," he says quietly, hoping the music is loud enough to drown him out or that Seth has lapsed back into sleep and/or dissociation, "are you going to see Marissa tonight?"
"Say Dad, could we get that volume just a SCOOCH higher?" Seth booms. "I like to take my eardrums to just the very edge of bleeding."
Ryan's jaw is twitching, now looking like he's trying to swallow back a full-on laugh.
"I guess I'm not getting past your handler today, huh?"
"Self-appointed." Ryan shoots Sandy a little half-smile.
"Be strong, Ryan!" Seth pumps his fist in the air. "Don't give him anything you don't want to."
"Seth…" Sandy narrows his eyes at Seth in the mirror.
"What?" Seth demands. "I said anything he didn't want to. I'm encouraging boundaries."
He says boundaries with the same soft deliberate flourish that Kirsten's therapist had. It was a word that Jodi had managed to say no fewer than fifteen times in an hour-long session.
Now Sandy's the one grudgingly trying not to smile.
"Ryan, if you want to buckle under parental interrogation, have at it. He's actually not horrible to talk to-hey, don't let it go to your head," Seth adds hastily, seeing Sandy's eyebrows raise in pleased surprise. "You can go all Are You There God, It's Me, Ryan Atwood on the man. I'm sure he'd love it."
Ryan barks out a laugh, then glances quickly over at Sandy, expression appropriately contrite.
"You know you could let Ryan answer for himself," Sandy points out.
"Whatever man, you don't fight fair, coming at him when he's stuck in the car with you for like, two hours."
"It's fine, Seth," Ryan offers. "I can handle myself."
"Listen, these vehicular interventions smack too much of the Seth Cohen middle and early high school experience, for me to remain silent. And it's not like Ryan downloaded porn to the Cohen family computer or pulled the fire alarm at school to get out of dissecting a fetal pig-not that I've done either of those things, mind you, Ryan, and not that my statements in any way constitute a confession, Father."
Ryan lets out another hoarse laugh.
"They'll never pin that fire alarm on me," Seth adds, doing karate moves with his hands, complete with sound effects. "Once I enter the shadows, I am indetectable."
"Then how'd you become a suspect?" Ryan asks.
"Dr. Kim's always had it out for me," Seth counters. "I was always too counter-culture for her."
"You can imagine how that defense went over with Dr. Kim herself," Sandy adds.
"Whatever, I was acquitted of all charges."
"Insufficient evidence," Sandy explains.
"Hey Ryan, remind me to show you the fire alarm that some foolhardy individual placed right in one of the security camera's blind spots." Seth lets out a few hammy coughs. "I mean, allegedly, of course."
"Of course." A little grin traces across Ryan's lips.
Sandy can practically see the tension leave Ryan's body as he tips his head back on the headrest and lets Seth's goofy banter wash over him. He adds in a question here and there, or a playfully mocking comment, spurring Seth on to build on his story, adding details that were-if Sandy's memory served him correctly-only mildly hyperbolic.
In many ways, the boys made a good team.
In other ways, well, they were now far afield from the conversation Sandy had been trying to start, and they both preferred it that way, keeping each other at arm's length and making sure no one else slipped through the other's defenses.
Seth wasn't the only one who could run interference.
Ryan was good at keeping quiet, at coming to find Sandy when Seth needed help and then disappearing without a word, never letting on to Seth that he knew anything, never asking for an explanation when he found Sandy sleeping in Seth's bedroom or found Seth at the bottom of the stairs, sobbing and incoherent.
It was nice, in some ways, that Ryan accepted Seth at face value, that he allowed him space, that although they could be typical teenage boys who gave each other a hard time, they were also sensitive to each other's vulnerable spots, were quietly protective of each other even when they didn't quite know what they were protecting.
And he has to admit that, as much as he knows Seth's particular brand of verbal assault and misdirection isn't necessarily helping anything, it could be a relief to see that Ryan was still capable of laughter.
He was sure it meant something to Ryan too, having a brother who would run interference for him, who would work to take the heat off of him, just as he knows how much Ryan has meant to Seth, how much their friendship-turned-brotherhood has helped Seth to reconnect to the world.
Sandy hadn't been sure that that would ever happen for Seth, that he'd ever get to see his son being a teenager, that there would be any force that could draw him out of the relative safety of his own head. And he knows that what each boy offers to each other may have more value than anything he can provide to them.
And yet.
And yet.
oooooooooooooooooo
Seth stares at the carpet, wondering whether it's possible to will himself out of existence.
Although if there were such a thing, he'd probably have figured it out by now, and then he wouldn't be here to begin with.
"So you had your visit with your mom."
Seth nods.
"How did that go?"
"You already know, right?" Seth looks at Dr. Max. Seeing him shake his head, Seth scoffs. "Like my dad didn't talk to you."
His dad kept claiming he didn't want to butt in to his therapy like he did when Seth was younger, snitching to Dr. Max every time Seth did something he didn't like, but Seth had his doubts that the practice had entirely died out.
Like okay, so he'd actually been planning to leave some things out when it came to detailing his sex life to Dr. Max.
He thinks that's at least a little understandable. One does want to leave a few things to the imagination.
But clearly Dr. Max had gotten intel from somewhere, because his initial line of questioning around said sex life had quickly zeroed in on grilling Seth about his remarkably tame forays into the world of BDSM with Summer.
He'd answered the questions more or less honestly, figuring that Dr. Max would know if he were lying, and then he'd probably psychoanalyze both the spanking and the lying about the spanking.
But the follow-up questions had been their own kind of fresh hell. Seth wasn't sure anything could've adequately prepared him for the mortifying experience of Dr. Max maintaining direct and stoic eye contact as he asked "How do you feel in your body when Summer asks you to spank her or pull her hair?" And then Dr. Max somehow—for some ungodly reason—not accepting Seth's answer of "Fine."
"I haven't talked to your dad about your visit," Dr. Max claims, jarring Seth back into the present day. "Sounds like there's something to tell?"
Seth's eyes flick back to the carpet. He spies a little crumb of something under Dr. Max's chair and wonders what the doctor snacks on between sessions.
Dr. Max waits, letting the silence do its annoying silent thing.
Maybe he'd eaten something boring and utilitarian, like a granola bar, or something weirdly juvenile, like a Pop Tart or a Fruit Rollup or Dunkaroos.
He tries to imagine Dr. Max slamming back a container of Dunkaroos, engaged in the Great American Pastime of properly rationing the frosting across all the little cookie pieces. It doesn't quite fit his overall vibe.
Dr. Max strikes him as a brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tart kind of guy; none of the fruit filling for him.
Dr. Max keeps waiting.
Would any adult human eat a Fruit By The Foot?
Seth once threw up a whole Fruit By The Foot. It plopped onto the floor and dramatically unfurled itself as it rolled to a stop.
Hey, if you're going to throw up on a regular basis, might as well try to jazz it up every now and then, right?
"Where are you right now?" Dr. Max asks, conceding to Seth's victory at The Quiet Game.
"Would you believe that Summer slept over again?"
"I believe that you feel more comfortable talking about Summer than about your mom," Dr. Max observes. "That seems to be your go-to topic change these days."
Seth crosses his arms and slumps down into the couch.
Dr. Max was maybe right on that one.
When he'd initially started therapy again, he'd hated talking about Summer. It had been embarrassing, acknowledging Summer's tendency to smack him around with arguably little provocation-and that had been a fine line to learn to walk, conscious as Seth became that any attempt to minimize Summer's actions or to detail how he'd provoked her wrath played right into the neat and tragic stereotype of a victim.
But after he'd talked to Summer about the whole violence thing, she'd actually cleaned up her act, for the most part. There were a few slips, a few emphatic assface-s and one medium velocity whack on the back of the head.
She hadn't even been mad.
He knew that.
She was just playing around.
But she'd shrunk back immediately, realizing what she'd done.
"Ohmygod, Cohen, I'm so-"
"It's okay, it's okay. Really, it's okay." Seth heard the panic in his own voice and felt distinctly like the girlfriend in that Ben Affleck After School Special they'd watched every year in Health class, the one that tackled the double whammy hot button issues of steroid use and teen domestic violence.
Summer kept trying to apologize and he kept interrupting her to say it was okay, until he'd finally marched them both to the pool house to see what was going on with Ryan and Marissa, but mostly so that Summer would knock it off.
Seth knew he'd done the wrong thing, could tell by Dr. Max's impassive expression when he'd told him about it, but what else was he supposed to do?
Summer had clearly felt horrible about what had happened; was he supposed to pile-on with a lecture and/or guilt trip?
And anyway, she'd been mostly patient with him that summer.
It was really just those few times.
So as far as therapy was concerned, his relationship with Summer got to be mostly a success story, outside of a few outlier moments.
Of course, Dr. Max still found a way to be annoying about it.
Like when Seth shared how it felt like he was walking on eggshells with Summer, how he kept waiting for her patience to wear thin, how uneasy he felt seeing the effort Summer was putting in to be kind to him.
"It seems like there was something comforting about Summer wearing her aggression on her sleeve. You never had to question where you stood with her. It feels dangerous for you to trust what could be a false front that someone puts out to the world. You've had to see the other side of that."
Very annoying.
But it also turned out that Dr. Max being annoying and Dr. Max finding more material to mine in his relationship with Summer worked to his advantage. It became a kind of therapy comfort zone to fall back on when he couldn't bring himself to dredge up anything too dark.
So maybe it was his go-to topic change.
"I don't wanna talk about my mom," Seth mumbles.
"I appreciate you letting me know," Dr. Max says. "I know it's hard for you to set boundaries so directly. And I'm not here to force you to talk about your mom."
"Wait, that actually worked, saying I didn't want to talk about her?" Seth eyes Dr. Max suspiciously.
"You sound surprised."
"I just...didn't know I could do that."
"It's hard for you to believe that I'll respect your boundaries, that anyone will respect your boundaries."
"You people love that word, don't you?"
"You don't have to talk about anything you don't want to. It doesn't mean I won't ask about it, but you get to set limits here." Dr. Max pauses. "There's a lot there, with your mom, when you're ready for it, and it's okay to not be ready. It's a lot to be ready for."
"She tried to talk to me about Steven." The words are out of Seth's mouth before he knows what he's saying.
Dr. Max's poker face slips just a little.
"I know, right?" Seth snickers. "Just completely out of nowhere. 'Yeah, rehab's been great; loving the whole drying up thing. And hey, sorry I abandoned you in the face of all that sexual violence.'"
"I can only imagine how upsetting that must have felt, to be blindsided like that." Dr. Max looks grave.
"Yeah, well, I basically called her a terrible mother and ran away, so..." Seth shrugs. "Gave as good as I got, I guess."
"I'm not surprised."
"You always suspected I was kind of a dick?"
"What I mean by that," Dr. Max says, "is that there have been some hard and fast but unspoken rules in your family about how you can talk about the abuse, and two separate sets of rules when it comes to each of your parents. With your mom, it's been pretty clear that neither of you are supposed to talk about it, and certainly not so directly."
"Yeah, and you think that's bad," Seth points out.
"It's not about good or bad. You know what to expect from your mom and from your dad, and you more or less know what's expected of you. There's some level of safety and predictability when everyone's following the rules. Changing that, dismantling the rules, takes care and time. It's a process, and you need to feel safe in it. It's less like tearing off a bandaid and more like easing into a cold swimming pool."
Dr. Max was never shy with the metaphors either.
"I..." Seth scratches the back of his head. "...don't want to talk about this anymore."
He levels his gaze back onto the mysterious crumb under Dr. Max's chair.
It's kind of his white whale, that crumb.
"Thank you for letting me know you've hit a limit; I appreciate it." Dr. Max pauses for a long moment, readjusting his glasses and looking thoughtful. "Is it alright with you if I say one more thing on the subject of your mom, and you are under no obligation to respond?"
"If you must."
"I'd like to know if it's really okay with you."
"It's fine," Seth says.
"With your mom too, you don't have to be ready just because she is. It's okay to take your time, and it's important that you feel a sense of control and choice in what happens and how it happens." Dr. Max frowns, his poker face a little faulty at this moment too, because he's looking a little cartoon character wobbly himself, like he might cry or something which is not possible, because it would obviously be too fucking weird.
Seth coughs and shifts in his seat.
"That choice was taken away from you, Seth, many times over, not just with the abuse, but with the aftermath, all the people you had to talk to, and then coming here. When you do this, if you decide to do this, it's important that it's not just for the sake of your mother or anyone else, but that it's for you."
"So you're like, giving me permission to be a dick then?"
"Not that you need my permission, but if anything, I'm giving you permission to listen to yourself and put what you need first." Dr. Max smiles. "You hear me on that?"
It's The Quiet Game Redux, but Dr. Max, for all his you are under no obligation to respond-which, he'd pretty quickly contradicted that by wrapping up with an actual question, but who's counting?-looks like he's in it for the long haul, quiet-wise.
The seconds tick by.
"I'll uh..." Seth gesticulates with his hands, hoping that will somehow help generate some kind of a statement. "...take that under advisement, I guess?"
"I appreciate that too." Dr. Max gives him a lopsided smile. "Now, what would you like to talk about?"