The Truth of Right Now Read online

  “Well, I’m involved somehow. Aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” she agrees. “You’re also involved when things go right. Aren’t you?” She did it again. Stop parroting me.

  “Dr. Maalouf? Can I go? I don’t feel like being here today.”

  “You’re not a hostage. But we can switch gears. We don’t have to focus on the fight if you don’t want to.”

  I say nothing. I don’t want to focus on the fight, but I’m not sure I would want to focus on anything she might bring up. I didn’t even tell her about the spitting incident. It’s been a full day.

  “Are you worried about being punished when you get home?” she asks. Is it just me, or is this still fight-related?

  “Not really. She doesn’t punish me.”

  “No?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Dr. Maalouf shifts in her seat, keeping her eyes on me as she does. This makes me want to shift in my red plush chair, so I do. But I end up shifting into an uncomfortable position, so I awkwardly revert.

  “What’s the harshest punishment she’s ever given you?”

  “Once she got rid of the Internet for a month. I thought she was bluffing, but she did it.”

  “What had you done to prompt the punishment?”

  December 30. Nothing happening on New Year’s Eve eve. I asked if I could stay out late with the girls. Whenever I said “the girls,” I meant Jackie and Tracy. She said sure, just be careful. Instead of girl time, Bobby took me to see The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. I liked some of the music, but it was mostly boring. To make up for it, I made him teach me how to drive. So we took his car and he taught me and I practiced and we rode into the night laughing and eating snickerdoodles and I almost drove into a ditch. When I started to get a little sleepy, I finally checked the time. 4:23 a.m. We’d driven all the way out to Amagansett. By then, I knew I was in deep trouble, so rushing back would’ve been pointless. We stayed and watched the sunrise on the beach and when we got too cold, we had hot cider and bagels at Mary’s Marvelous. I got home around eight that morning. Mom had talked to Jackie and Tracy and their parents. They hadn’t covered for me. I could tell she’d been crying and hadn’t slept. Bobby, of course, couldn’t come to my aid. I was on my own.

  “Lily? What was it you did?” Dr. Maalouf asks again.

  “Oh. Yeah. I got an F in Geometry.”

  She nods.

  “Do you consider yourself to be spoiled?”

  “Yes,” I reply.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t care.” Here come the judgments. Always waiting right around the corner. Here they come. . . .

  “Why not?” she pushes.

  I slump in the chair. I may not be a hostage, but I feel like one and I don’t have to automatically answer her just because I’m sitting here. Just to be polite. She stares at me and I stare right back. She’s trying to wait me out. She wants me to answer the question, and she’s not going to say anything else until I do. I’ve seen so many therapists use this technique. I’m no amateur. She has no idea how stubborn I can be.

  I hear the clock ticking behind my head. Very strategic placing. If it were behind her head, I’d be checking it every ten seconds. She folds and unfolds and refolds her hands in her lap. Ticks. She’s got a lot of them. How long has she been doing this? Staring contests are normal, and we haven’t been at it that long at all.

  “What are you thinking, Lily?” she finally asks. Ha! I win!

  “I’m thinking I promised my mother I’d see you for four weeks. This is week three. So I’m almost done,” I say.

  She presses her lips together and looks down at the floor.

  “Have you starting writing in your journal?” she asks gently.

  I nod.

  “How has that been?”

  “Fine. I guess.”

  “Good. It’s up to you, of course. Forcing you to see a psychotherapist would be counterproductive. The hard work falls on your shoulders. Not mine. If you’re unwilling to do that work, it would be a waste of time and money,” she tells me.

  I’m processing her words when I start to cry. No warning. The waterworks just start like a floodgate has been opened and I can’t shut them off. She runs to a shelf and grabs a box of tissues. She hands it to me and then she sits across from me on her coffee table so she’s much closer. I sniffle and hiccup, attempting to curtail the tidal wave coming out of me.

  “Don’t, Lily. If you need to cry, just cry. It’s not gonna hurt anyone,” she assures me with the smallest smile. I don’t get the smile, but it doesn’t feel unkind, so I just keep going. I don’t have any thoughts. It all feels physical and overwhelming. Like a bucket of paint that’s been tipped over. It can never be untipped. Gravity. This is like messy, painful gravity. A force of the universe. Far beyond my control.

  I’m not sure how long this lasts. I look over at the window and it’s dark outside now. Was it dark before I got started? I can’t remember.

  “What are you feeling now?”

  “Angry. I’m so. Angry.” I say it and it feels like cement blocks have just fallen off my back. I can sit up without effort. I can breathe.

  “I would be too,” she assents. I do my best to loosen the grip of my jaw. It’s giving me a blinding headache. But then again, that might be due to Tara punching me in the face.

  I want to ask her something. I just got through crying and I’m afraid if I say it out loud I’ll be swept back down into that sea. But I need to know. She’s the only person I can ask.

  “Do you think there’s hope for me?” I say all the words clearly. No mumbling. I thought it would hurt much more to say those words.

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  Before heading home, I slip into the bathroom, thinking I should splash some cold water on my face like women do in the movies. It always looks like it helps them. I cup the water in my hands and throw it on my face and cry out in pain. The skin and muscle is tender and I just reassaulted myself. I catch my eyes in the mirror. This is the first time I’ve bothered to look at myself since the fight. My bottom lip is gigantic, my left jaw bruised purple, and my left eyebrow is all scratched. Tara messed me up, but she looked far worse.

  Just like the first day of school, when I turn my key in the lock, Mom is standing there waiting for me. The mood is quite different today.

  “Oh, dear God,” she yells when she sees my face.

  Dari runs into the living room.

  “Shit, Lily! Um, sorry, Savannah.”

  “No. Shit, Lily is pretty accurate. Come on.” She drags me into the bathroom and starts to fix up my injuries, but she’s never done this before and doesn’t know how, so she starts by applying rubbing alcohol to the open sore on my mouth. My screaming and cursing brings Dari running into the room.

  “You don’t need that,” he says, referring to the alcohol. He wets a washcloth and gently dabs at my face to clean the remaining dirt. With his free hand, he searches the medicine cabinet and mysteriously finds a tube of white cream. He administers it lightly where he can.

  “Lily, I don’t know what to say. What were you thinking?”

  I wince as Dari presses a cotton swab to my eyebrow. I can totally smell him right now and, despite the pain, I hope he never finishes dressing my wounds.

  “Are you listening to me?” Mom bellows.

  “Yes.”

  “What is going on?”

  Again, I don’t answer. There IS no answer.

  “Lily,” Dari breathes into my ear. It’s so subtle, Mom misses it. He barely moved his mouth. I know he wants me to cooperate. He’s worried.

  “If it matters, she attacked me first.” It’s true. I think.

  “Dari? Thanks, honey. Could you excuse us for a minute?” Mom sweetly asks him. He nods and leaves and she watches him fondly. Perhaps he’s the child she wishes she could claim as hers right now.

  “Fighting, Lily? You know this is beneath you. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I
t happened. There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

  Mom rubs her face in exasperation. “Are you even a little bit sorry?” she asks me.

  “Yeah. It’s not like I wanted to do it. I’m sorry I upset you. It’s not gonna happen again,” I say.

  “All right,” she says out of resignation. “Can you go to your room for a while? I need to think.”

  “About what?”

  “Can you just do what I ask?” she snaps. I jump. She’s not a snapper. She must really be angry.

  I slump off to my room and get out my notebook. The journal. I try to write. I think about being angry. I don’t like it. It sucks. It makes me feel like a great big jerk. Why did Tara get me so mad? Am I mad at her? Not really. But the person I’d really like to punch is nowhere near.

  Illogically, I feel like finishing the stupid chem project, so I do more work on it. The kind of thinking required to do this actually calms me. There is no connection to anything germane to my life, so I can concentrate on it and get my focus off of myself. Or my mother’s fury.

  In the almost sixteen years I’ve known her, my mother has rarely shown her wrathful side. But there was one time I remember. I was really little and we were living at our old place in Hoboken. We’d gone to the park to ride the carousel and feed the geese bread crumbs. On our way back, I was making goose noises, which usually cracked her up, but she didn’t notice. She was tense and kept walking faster and faster. “Mommy, why are we going so fast?” I asked, but she said nothing and continued at the speedy pace. As we walked up the steps to our door, my mother whipped around and shouted, “What do you want?” It scared the daylights out of me. This was the first time I noticed the man. He was heavy, had reddish hair and a beard, and wore glasses. He was right behind us. I didn’t understand why he was standing just below us on the steps. We only had one neighbor, Miss Katherine, who was old and lived alone. Why was this man trying to come inside?

  “Nothing,” he said in a funny, fuzzy voice.

  My mother’s face was red with rage. Looking back, it was probably fear, too.

  She turned her back on him and raised her key to the door, like always. He was still standing there. She twisted the key in the knob, and he took one more step toward us. At that moment, my mother elbowed him in his shoulder before turning around and kicking him in the jewels. As he stumbled backward, Mom picked me up, opened the door, got us inside, and locked it behind us. She peered through the window in the foyer to see him staggering around outside. When this went on too long for Mom’s liking, she opened the window and yelled out at him.

  “Don’t make me come back out there. Get the fuck off my street!” And he did.

  “Who was that?” I asked my mother.

  “A bad man. Don’t worry. Mommy will never let anybody hurt you.” For a long time I had nightmares about the redheaded “bad man.” If he lived in our neighborhood, I never saw him again after that day. I also had daymares about the bad man if I was at the park. Why did he want to hurt me? Now that I think about it, he probably wasn’t interested in me at all. He wanted to hurt Mom.

  I finish up my portion of the project, which is probably all that was left anyway. I’m sure Tara’s all done. I consider e-mailing it to her. Just acting like nothing happened. I don’t, though.

  I’ve been in here a while now. I’m starting to get hungry. Would that be my punishment? They’d just eat dinner without me? No. I am not cool with that. I quietly open my door and start walking down the hall. I freeze when I see Mom and Dari deep in some kind of hushed conversation. I get closer and when Mom notices me, they both suddenly shut up. What. The hell. Was that?

  “Are you guys talking about me?”

  Dari shakes his head, but he couldn’t look any guiltier if I’d just caught him reading my journal.

  “No, honey. We were just . . .” Mom shrugs. The aroma of ganja hangs heavy in the air. Great. Well, at least she’s no longer furious. “You hungry?”

  I nod. Something feels off, and I’m not sure what it is. In the kitchen, dinner is ready. The table is set. This is not how we do things in my home.

  “You cooked?” I ask (more like accuse) her.

  “No. Thank our houseguest.” She points to Dari, who smiles shyly.

  “Again?”

  “I don’t mind,” Dari says.

  Chipotle vegetarian chili. Seriously?

  We eat in silence. The chili is awesome. Probably the best I’ve ever had, but I don’t feel like telling him that. I don’t feel like shining a light on how much more wonderful he is than I’ll ever be.

  “Well? Should I punish you?” Mom asks me.

  “I don’t know. That’s up to you.”

  “Let me rephrase the question: Do I need to punish you?”

  I shake my head. “But I understand if you do.”

  Dari stares at his bowl, smiling to himself. I wonder what he finds so amusing.

  “Maybe tomorrow you and I can go and see an exhibit or something,” she suggests.

  “For what?”

  “Well, I don’t want you sitting around watching TV. Suspended or not, you might as well learn something.”

  “There’s a Cy Twombly retrospective at the Guggenheim,” Dari says.

  “Really? Too bad you can’t join us, since you’re the expert. Though I remember a little about abstract expressionism from college,” Mom brags.

  “I don’t know if I want to do that,” I interrupt.

  Mom eats. She doesn’t respond. Can’t I just hide all day long in my room? I don’t want to learn anything.

  “You should go, Lily. Twombly’s fun,” Dari says.

  “I don’t know where you got your cooking skills, but this is delicious, Dari. Thank you,” Mom says.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Of course you don’t.” I think it to myself, but I make the mistake of mumbling it out loud.

  “What?” he asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Lily, are you getting sarcastic?” Mom asks.

  I keep eating. “I’m sorry, Dari. Your food is amazing. You are amazing and I’m sure my mother wishes you were her kid.”

  They both stare at me in shock.

  “What is wrong with you?” My mother’s patience with me is coming to an end . . . fast. And the thing is, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know why I said it.

  I’m not finished eating, but I’m finished sitting here. I throw my bowl in the sink and head out the door.

  As I wait for the elevator, Mom opens the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “For a walk,” I say calmly.

  Mom stands there looking at me. I look elsewhere, but from my periphery I can tell she’s hurt. What am I supposed to do? Just nod and be silent and pretend I feel fine when I feel horrible? What would all her followers say if they knew she just wanted a well-behaved beagle for a daughter?

  The slow elevator finally comes, and I step in. I take a deep breath. Blissfully alone. Until Dari sticks his arm in the door seconds before it closes.

  “Why are you so mad? I can stop cooking if that bothers you. I just don’t wanna be a freeloader.”

  I stare at the numbers lighting up, wanting to be on the ground floor so I can run.

  “You don’t trust me,” he whispers.

  We hit ground level and as if he’d been reading my mind, Dari grabs my hand firmly. If I try to flee, he’ll be right there with me.

  “Sometimes I feel like every day is the worst day of my life,” I say.

  “If you only feel that way sometimes, how can every day be the worst day of your life?”

  Despite everything, this makes me laugh.

  “Your mom’s freaked.”

  “Can we go somewhere and not talk about her or anything else related to today?”

  Dari shrugs. “I’m all yours.”

  SEA SPELLS

  The wind is merciless. Slicing through their clothes like an ice pick. But the air smells intoxicating and
the sea waves crash against the sand with such force that they could easily be in Brighton Beach, England, instead of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

  Lily might be literally crazy. Certifiably so. She’s ripped off her shoes and is running into the water. It is freezing out here! Dari smiles weakly, but he’s not the least bit comfortable with wading into the Atlantic on a blustery November night.

  “Are you insane?” he shouts, but his words disappear in the wind. After tearing down the beach like a wild woman, Lily just stands at the water’s edge, watching the tide. Her feet leave perfectly formed prints in the damp sand. Dari catches up to her.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “No moon tonight,” she says.

  “I know. Too cloudy.”

  They go quiet, but the world around them is loud and alive: waves, wind, the train in the distance.

  “Think we should head back soon?” Dari asks.

  Lily turns and stares into Dariomauritius’s eyes. Is she studying him? Sizing him up? His irritatingly long, curly eyelashes, the slight dimple on his left cheek that’s always there even when he’s not smiling. Even when he’s frowning. Like now.

  “No,” she answers.

  Dari nods. He knew that would be the answer. He studies her sharp cheekbones under the bruises from the fight earlier, the sparse freckles on her nose, the slight twitch in her lower lip. Even when she’s trying to smile. Like now.

  They need to go back, but he can’t just drag her to the Q train like some Neanderthal.

  “What do you want to do?” he asks softly.

  “Make music. Be free. That’s all. It should be easy.” She smiles at him and it isn’t a crazy smile. It’s a weary smile, but one he understands. He thinks about being free every second of every day.

  He grabs and squeezes her hand. Lily raises herself up on her tiptoes so she’s at eye level with him. She plants a simple and sweet kiss on his face. Then they’re back to staring at each other. But differently now. His arms firmly around her lower torso. The faint aroma of her cocoa butter body lotion teasing him. The cold melts away, the waves calm themselves until they are no more than a gentle caress. The water tickles the shore. He kisses her differently now, a little harder, a little more insistent. She does the same. They find themselves moving back and forth, but to where? There’s nowhere to go. What are they gonna do? Whatever it is, they need to do it immediately.