*
The University Health Center therapist’s name is Mike. It takes me the better part of two forty-five-minute appointments to tell what feels like enough of the story. The words pour out of me like water through a breach. It feels good to tell what I know of my mother’s secrets. It feels better than anything I’ve ever felt. Later I’ll realize I’ve only told my mother’s story, not my own, and wish the therapist had noticed.
When I finish, forty minutes into the second session, Mike peeks at his watch, and I try to decide what I need from him. Some guidance, I think. Advice on how to safely and humanely extricate myself from the morass of my mother’s profound emotional needs. I take a deep breath. “So, I guess my question is, what do I do now?”
Mike smiles. “How are your classes going? You haven’t said much about that.”
I blink. “Fine. It’s hard to keep up on the reading, but I usually do well on the essays.”
“And you’re sleeping okay?”
I nod.
“Any thoughts of self-harm?”
“No.”
“Well,” he says brightly, leaning forward. “It sounds like you’re doing the best you can!”
My stomach tightens, a familiar loss. A rope snapped out of reach.
*
A glint of afternoon sunlight catches my eye in mid-October, swallowed by ivy, not in the center of the arch as I expected, but favoring the Cambridge side, on the bridge closest to the boathouse, the first one I ever searched.
The dusky bronze is engraved with slender sans serif letters: QUENTIN COMPSON 1891-1910. DROWNED IN THE ODOUR OF HONEYSUCKLE.
I return the next day with a disposable camera to take a picture for Mr. Meeks. I take four or five just to be sure, some with flash and some without. I finish the roll with pictures of the river and the boathouse and order doubles, but when I pick up the film, the plaque is a blurred metal plate in every photo. Only the bricks and the ivy are in focus.
*
Soon, it’s too cold to be on the river most days. My mother calls to ask when my Thanksgiving break begins. “Actually, I was thinking of staying here,” I say. “Kenzie isn’t going home, so I told her I’d hang out with her.” This is a lie.
“And you’ll let your own family spend Thanksgiving alone?”
“I’ll be home for three weeks over winter break.”
“But I’m your mother. I carried you in my belly for nine months.”
“I know. But I’ll see you at Christmas.”
She buys me a plane ticket anyway and sends me the itinerary.
I told you I’m not coming, I write back.
Her reply: You might as well hand me a bottle of pills.