“We can bring in outdoor air-conditioning,” the woman said. “Tents, fans, you name it.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It gets pretty buggy, too.”
“We spray the grounds every year,” she said. “I can guarantee you bugs will not be a problem. We have summer weddings all the time!”
I noticed Daniel staring at me then, quizzically, his eyes burrowing into the side of my head as if, if he stared at it hard enough, he could untangle the thoughts tumbling around inside. But I refused to turn, refused to face him. Refused to admit the completely irrational reason why the month of July morphed my anxiety into something debilitating, a progressive disease that worsened as summer stretched on. Refused to acknowledge the rising sense of nausea in my throat or the way the sour smell of manure in the distance seemed to mix with the sweet magnolias or the suddenly deafening sound of flies I could hear buzzing around somewhere, circling something dead.
“Okay,” I said, nodding. I glanced at the porch again but the girl was gone, her empty chair rocking slowly in the wind. “July it is.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I watch Daniel’s car back out of the driveway, his headlights flashing a goodbye as he waves at me through the windshield. I wave back, my silk robe clutched tightly around my chest, a steaming mug of coffee warm in my hands.
I shut the door behind me and take in the empty house: There are still cups resting on various tabletops from last night, empty wine bottles filling up recycling bins in the kitchen, and flies that were apparently born overnight circling over their sticky openings. I start to tidy up, clearing dishes and placing them in the empty farmhouse sink, trying to ignore the drug-and-wine fueled headache nagging at my brain.
I think back to the prescription in my car; the Xanax I filled for Daniel that he doesn’t know about or need. I think about the drawer in my office housing the various painkillers that would almost certainly numb the throbbing in my skull. It’s tempting, knowing they’re there. Part of me wants to get in the car and drive to them, outstretch my fingers, and take my pick. Curl up in the recliner meant for patients and fall back asleep.
Instead, I drink my coffee.
Access to drugs is not why I got into this line of work—besides, Louisiana is one of only three states where psychologists can actually prescribe drugs to their patients. Other than here, Illinois, and New Mexico, we typically have to rely on a referring physician or psychiatrist to fill a script. But not here. Here, we can write them ourselves. Here, nobody else has to know. Whether that’s a happy coincidence or a stroke of dangerously bad luck, I haven’t quite decided. But again, that’s not why I do what I do. I didn’t become a psychologist to take advantage of this loophole, to sidestep the drug dealers downtown for the safety of the drive-through window, trading in a plastic baggy for a logoed paper bag, complete with a receipt and coupons for half-off toothpaste and a gallon of 2 percent milk. I became a psychologist to help people—again with the clichés, but it’s true. I became a psychologist because I understand trauma; I understand it in a way that no amount of schooling could ever teach. I understand the way the brain can fundamentally fuck with every other aspect of your body; the way your emotions can distort things—emotions you didn’t even know you had. The way those emotions can make it impossible to see clearly, think clearly, do anything clearly. The way they can make you hurt from your head down to your fingertips, a dull, throbbing, constant pain that never goes away.
I saw plenty of doctors as a teenager—it was an endless cycle of therapists, psychiatrists, and psychologists, all of whom asked the same series of scripted questions, trying to fix the endless slideshow of anxiety disorders flipping through my psyche. Cooper and I were the stuff of textbooks back then, me with my panic attacks, hypochondria, insomnia, and nyctophobia, every year a new malady added to the list. Cooper, on the other hand, recoiled into himself. I was feeling too much, while he was feeling too little. His loud personality shrunk into a whisper; he practically disappeared.
The two of us together were childhood trauma wrapped in a bow and placed delicately on the doorsteps of every doctor in Louisiana. Everybody knew who we were; everybody knew what was wrong with us.
Everybody knew, but nobody could fix it. So I decided to fix it myself.
I shuffle through the living room and plop down on the sofa, my coffee sloshing over the side of the mug. I lift it to my mouth and lick the liquid from the side. The morning news is already droning in the background, Daniel’s channel of choice, and I reach for my MacBook, repeatedly tapping Return as I wake it from a long, groggy sleep. I open my Gmail and scroll through the personal messages in my in-box, almost all of them wedding-related.