After the excitement of the game, followed by the awkward, yet in some strange way, exhilarating feeling of being the center of an entire stadium’s attention, I decided to get out of there. Besides, I had therapy. I was making my way across the parking lot when I heard him calling.
“Hey!”
I turned to find Jake standing there, in his full BWH water polo tracksuit. This was the first time we’d spoken in almost a week. Wet tendrils of hair peeped out from under his cap, his smile was huge, and his eyes seemed so very cerulean right now. He walked toward me, and I felt that familiar, visceral reaction to his presence once more.
“Congratulations,” I gushed without restraint.
“Thanks.”
“Good game. Well, I mean, I’ve never watched a water polo match before, so I guess I can’t say whether it was a good game per se, but it seemed like a good game.”
His smile grew. “It was a good game.”
“You scored a lot of goals . . . uh, is that what you call them? Or hoops, or tries, or whatever.”
He laughed. “Goals. I did!” He said it with such a matter-of-fact tone that it made him even hotter.
“Are you coming to the party tonight?” he asked, and I shrugged in question. “There’s a party to celebrate our win tonight at Vuyo’s house, you must come.”
“No. It’s okay. Besides, I don’t really know anyone, and I haven’t been invited or anything, or—”
“I’m inviting you.”
“You are?” I asked, squinting and shielding my face from the bright sun.
He chuckled. “Unless me saying ‘you must come’ is not an invitation.” And then, without any kind of warning, he pulled his cap off and pushed it down over my head.
“Uh . . . thanks.” I reached up and touched the cap, surprised by this gesture.
“The party starts at seven. He’s just down the road from you. 101 Bay Drive. Everyone is going to be there.” He looked excited, but I wasn’t.
I broke eye contact with him. I was awkward at parties. In truth, I felt more alone in social gatherings than I did when I was actually alone. Besides, I’d never gone to a party without my two wingmen.
“Think about it. No pressure.” His voice had taken on a different tone now. One that seemed to convey meaning, as if he knew what I was thinking.
“Party! Party! Party!” I whipped my head around when I heard the chant. Two other water polo guys were running up to me. Why were they coming toward me?
“Dude, nice catch! See you at the party!” the one guy almost shouted in my face and then they both rushed over, tackled Jake, and hoisted him onto their shoulders.
Jake turned to me as he was being carried away and shot me a smile followed by a small shrug. I didn’t quite know how to interpret that.
“I got invited to a party tonight,” I said, sinking my spade into the soil. We’d uprooted all the succulents and were now putting them back into the soil in a swirling pattern. Dr. Stride, who insisted I call her Vicki now, looked up at me, soil smeared across her rounded face. “Are you going?”
“Nah, don’t think so.” I tried to make it sound like I was somewhat irritated that I’d been invited to the party. Somewhat put out. I was too cool for stupid water polo parties. My artistic sensibilities were beyond all that.
Vicki stopped what she was doing and looked straight at me. She didn’t believe me. I could see it in her intense gaze. I’d done enough therapy in my life to understand that look. The look they give when they know there’s more to a story than meets the eye. I put my hand on my hip defiantly, ready to challenge her. But when she looked down at my hand, I released it, giving up my show of bravado.
“Okay, okay. I know what you’re thinking,” I blurted.
“What am I thinking?”
“You’re thinking that despite my nonchalant act here, that actually, when it comes down to it, I do want to go to the party in some way. Deep down inside.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“Parties intimidate me. I feel panicky and nervous at them, but at the same time, I want to go to them, even though I say I don’t. I don’t know, it’s like I want the things I tell myself I don’t want because I’m afraid of getting them, or not getting them, or something.”
“That was profound.” She smiled.
I shrugged.
“The best therapist in the world is the one right inside you.” She pointed at me.
“You know that sounded totally cheesy, right?”
“Sometimes we therapists can be cheesy.”
“Yeah, with your succulent analogies and strange labia art hanging on the wall.”
“Labia art?”
“Yes.” I turned and pointed at the office. “That purple piece with all the butterflies flying out of it.”
She seemed confused for a second or two and then a look of recognition washed over her face, followed by amusement. “Those are butterflies flying out of a dark cave. It’s meant to symbolize your mind and the freeing of emotions from it. I painted it myself.”
“Oh.” And now I was mortified.
She paused and seemed to consider me for a moment.
“Don’t!” I pointed an accusatory finger at her.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say something like, ‘Well, it’s interesting that you saw a labia, Lori. That must be indicative of something else.’”
“Is it?”
“Psssh! No!”
“Well, Freud would say that what you saw was a representation of your innermost secret desires.”
“Thought you didn’t do Freud.”
Then she laughed. “Ag, nah. I don’t. Honestly, when I finished the painting I also thought it looked less like a cave and more like something else! I should probably not quit my day job, ne?”
Vicki threw her head back and laughed so heartily that it was hard not to join in. She was a strange one, all right. Today she was wearing bright orange, from head to toe. A bright-orange kaftan accessorized with bright-orange rubber boots. Even her nails were orange. She had presence. And it wasn’t her size that gave her that; it was something else. Her energy. Her openness. And obviously the fact she looked like a massive traffic beacon helped too. I bent back down to continue with the garden.
“Who invited you to the party?” she asked after a brief moment of silence.
“Just this guy, Jake.” I tried to brush it off and make it sound like it held no weight and quickly added, “And some other guys I don’t even know.”
“Jake?” she asked, honing in on that name, my attempt at subterfuge clearly not working.
“Our siblings go to the same school.” I sat up straight. “The Lighthouse. He volunteers there. We got talking.”
There was a long pause and I got the sense she was gathering her thoughts, or mentally jotting something down. “Must be challenging, having a brother with special needs.”
“Sometimes,” I confessed, and guilt instantly whacked me in the rib cage. “I love him. A lot, though,” I quickly qualified.
She smiled. “I know you do. But sometimes I think we often ignore or overlook how challenging it can be for a sibling.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, parents often go to therapy and there’re classes and coaches for parents, but not many resources for the siblings.”
“That’s exactly what Jake and I were saying.”
“And of course, most of the parents’ energy tends to go toward the sibling with special needs, and often the neurotypical sibling’s needs don’t get met.”
“That’s not his fault, though,” I said quickly, feeling like I needed to defend him.
“Of course it’s not. It’s no one’s fault. It is the way it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not hard sometimes.”
I looked away quickly. I didn’t want to acknowledge what she was saying at all.
“How’s your relationship with your parents?” She picked up a bright, pink succulent and shoved it in the soil.
“I’d say that my relationship with my dad is pretty nonexistent at the moment. He decided to cheat on my mom with a twenty-something-year-old and walked out on us.”
She stood up. “The clichéd male midlife crisis?”
“I’d say. And so would that bright-red sports car he’s now driving.”
I didn’t want to add that I was particularly hurt and angry with him at the moment. I’d asked if I could stay in Joburg with him, only for a few months, just until I’d finished school. Sorry, honey. It’s just bad timing, because Maddy and I are in the middle of moving into a new place.
“It happens more often than you think,” Vicki said, pulling me from my painful thoughts. “Half my clients who come for couple’s therapy have gone through it. But it can be worked through.”
“He didn’t want to go to therapy. He’s in love,” I said bitterly, hating that I sounded exactly like my mother. But honestly, I was bitter. More than bitter. It made me feel sick to my stomach to think of my dad as a guy who had sex in a hot tub. He was my dad. He wasn’t meant to be having sex and falling in love, he was too old. It was gross, not to mention truly and utterly selfish.
“How’s your mom?” she asked.
“She should be in therapy if you ask me.” I paused and looked at her for a while. “Ever heard of Barbara Palmer of Palm Luxury Realty?”
“Noooo! Of the YouTube videos? Seriously?”
“That would be she.” I picked up one of the succulents and placed it in the center of the area I’d just cleared, perhaps with a little more hostility than I should have.
“So in the last few years, your brother was diagnosed with autism, your parents went through what I’m guessing was a very acrimonious divorce, you’ve had your childhood perceptions of your parents shattered—your dad as the protector of the family and your mom as a nurturer and carer—and you’ve moved schools and cities. That’s a lot for anyone. I’m sure you’ve been deeply affected by all of it.”
“I guess.” I tried to sound dismissive again, but I knew it wasn’t working. She looked at me for the longest time, and I got the feeling she could see that this was the last thing in the world I wanted to talk about, which in therapist terms meant that this was now the only thing she wanted to talk about.
“How are the panic attacks?” she asked. When I didn’t answer right away, she continued: “You gave Dr. Finkelstein permission to share your details with me. I hope you still feel comfortable with that?”
“Yes. Sure.” I stopped talking. The bubble of panic rose up inside me when I talked about the panic. Just thinking about it seemed to bring it to life. “I almost had one the other day, at school.” I looked away and focused my attention on the flower bed again.
“That’s not surprising. You’re under a lot of stress at the moment. What stopped it?”
“A fake fire alarm.”
“Are you taking your medication?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes and looked down at the ground, fiddling with my hands.
“There’s nothing wrong with taking medication.” She leaned closer to me and her voice took on a firm tone. “If you were a diabetic would you deny yourself insulin?”
“No,” I whispered. I’d heard this before from Dr. Finkelstein so many times. Anxiety is just as real as any other chronic condition. But still . . . sometimes it just felt like a sign of weakness, like I was incapable of “just getting over it.”
As if reading my mind, she said, “Anxiety and depression aren’t things you just get over. And they don’t make you weak, or less than. Some of the most interesting and brilliant people I know have a mental illness. Just look at the greatest artists of our time. Edvard Munch said he suffered from depression and agoraphobia, and look what art came out of that.”
“The Scream. I love that painting.”
“Beethoven is speculated to have had bipolar disorder and then there’s van Gogh.”
“He cut off his ear,” I said flatly.
“And isn’t it great we have medication these days to help prevent things like ear cutting?”
“Point taken.”
“Of course you took my point. My point is good, ne,” she said, dazzling me with one of those big smiles of hers. “Tell me more about this Jake?”
“Not much to tell, really.” Well, that was just not true. “Our siblings had a playdate on the beach the other day and built a sandcastle.”
“It’s good that you’re making friends here.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say we’re friends. If our siblings weren’t at the same school, we would never have spoken.”
“So, you think the only way it’s possible for him to be friends with you is if your siblings are friends?”
“Well, obviously!” I stated emphatically.
“Explain.” Her tone was demanding.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not obvious to me.” She said it so matter of factly that it caught me off guard.
I lowered my head; shame and embarrassment bubbled up inside me. “He’s the most popular guy at school and I’m . . .” I paused and waved my arm around myself a few times. “You know, I’m . . .” I waved my arm even more. “You know!”
“Trying to swat a fly?” she asked.
I looked at her pointedly. “You know what I’m trying to say.”
“Say it.” Her eyes dug into me.
“You of all people must know what I mean,” I heard myself hiss at her.
“No, I don’t, not if you don’t tell me.”
I looked straight back at her. Her eyes were challenging me. I stood up, looked around, and dropped the spade on the ground angrily.
“You know what, this is stupid.” I threw my arms in the air. “I mean, what are we even doing? This isn’t therapy. I’m digging around in a garden for heaven’s sake.”
Vicki stood up, too, rising to the challenge.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked sarcastically.
She shrugged, and it pissed me off.
“Right! Okay. How ’bout this? Fat, ugly!” I shot those words out at her, and then gasped. I took a step back.
“Is that the first time you’ve said those words out loud?”
I nodded.
“And how did they sound?”
I bit down on my lip as my throat constricted. “Terrible,” I confessed.
“Would you ever call someone that out loud?” she asked. “Me, for instance. Would you ever call me that to my face?”
“No. Never.”
“And yet, that’s what you’re calling yourself in your head every single day.” Her voice took on a soft, compassionate tone. “Probably more often than you think.”
The first small tear escaped my eye and slid down my cheek. “Yes,” I whispered, so choked up that the word barely came out of my mouth.
“Who called you those words?”
Tears stung my eyes and I blinked. “The kids at school. Not at art school, the one before.”
“And did you like it, when they called you that?” she asked.
“Of course not. What do you think? I mean, they even tried to drown me once.”
“And yet . . .” She left the sentence open ended and looked at me, as if pushing me to fill in the blanks. But I couldn’t.
“And yet, what?”
“And yet you continue calling yourself those things. So the bullying hasn’t really stopped, has it? Except you’re the one bullying yourself this time.”
Her words hit me like a lightning bolt. “I guess when you put it like that.”
“How do you think your best friends would describe you if I phoned them and asked?”
“Andile and Guy?” I forced a smile. “Not like that.”
“Then what?”
“Creative. Fun. Caring. Loyal.” I paused, almost not daring to say the next work. “Pretty, especially when I wear red lipstick.”
“And do you believe them when they say you look pretty?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, I think they think I do.”
“Where’s that sketchbook you carry around with you?” She clicked her fingers.
“In my bag.”
“I want you to take it out and write something down for me.”
I reached into my bag unenthusiastically and pulled out my book. I walked over to the garden table and sat down. “What?”
“My goals,” she said, and I scribbled the words down.“Number one, to be your best friend.”
I wrote and then stopped. “I don’t know what you mean?”
“If I was your best friend and someone had just called me fat and ugly”—I cringed as she said those words—“what would you do?”
“Tell them to back off. Tell them to shut the hell up.”
“Exactly.” She nodded at me. “Now you need to do that for yourself.”
I finally understood what she was saying; I needed to shut those intrusive voices in my head down.
She walked over to the table and sat down. “So, this party tonight?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head.
“I think you should go. In fact, I insist you go. In fact . . .” She pulled my sketch pad away from me and scribbled across the page in bold lettering and then pushed it back.
“‘Go to the party. Wear red lipstick! Doctor’s orders!!!!!’” I read out loud and chuckled. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
I looked down at my watch. It was almost time for the end of the session. “Okay. I’ll go,” I conceded.
“Good. Then I’ll see you on Tuesday again.”
“Tuesday.” I began walking away but she quickly ran up to me again.
“Here. Take these.” I held my hands open as she dropped something into my palms: succulent leaves.
“Lay them on some soil. Give them a little bit of water in a spray bottle, not that much, and watch them grow.” She closed my hand around the leaves. “We start small. A fine mist of water, a few good words to ourself, and we keep it up every day. And one day, we won’t believe what we’ve grown into.”
“What if I kill them?”
“You won’t. They’re very resilient. More resilient than they know!”
I chuckled. “You love your plant analogies, don’t you?”
Her face lit up. “Party! Wear lipstick! Look fabulous. You’re okay. You’re doing well. More than well.”
“I’m okay. I’m doing well.” I repeated the words, and for some reason, almost believed it when she said it. No one had said that to me in a while, forever maybe.