“Can you find the numbers four, zero, zero, one?” she asks Noelle. They’re both having to learn new things, new responsibilities.
Noelle hums when she’s thinking hard. “Yes, Mommy, it’s this one.”
Mary Beth holds out her hand and allows her daughter to lead her into a psychologist’s office for the second time this year. The waiting room smells pleasantly of dried rose. A John Mayer song plays in the background. The paperwork has all been completed beforehand.
“How are you?” asks Dr. Beggs. They’ve spoken once over the phone; the circumstances seemed to necessitate some provision of context.
“I’m okay. My doctor says if more of my vision were coming back, it probably would have started to by now.” It’s been three months since her stroke and though she’s recovered some of her eyesight, it feels mostly as if she’s trying to squint through pinholes. “Settling in to my new normal.”
“You look great.”
“Thanks.” One remarkable thing is that Mary Beth can choose to believe her, why not?
A moment later, she listens to the sounds of her daughter fade, disappearing with the nice woman who came highly recommended on one of her mom Facebook groups.
The acute, empty sensation of being hopelessly, irreparably lost crashes over her, the way it does whenever she has the occasion to be left alone now, but already, the tide goes out more quickly and the sensation leaves her and she finds she’s still standing, knowing she’s right where she’s supposed to be. She paces the waiting room floor as she waits for news with the same gut churning with which she might await a child’s oncology results.
“She’s not a sociopath,” Doug assured her this morning, but there’s the question of why Noelle didn’t run for help when she saw her teacher injured and bleeding, there’s that.
Small hands covered in blood. A red tongue licking her fingers. It’s easy enough to dwell on these vivid images, burned into her pupils in this shadowy new world in which she now lives.
That day, Mary Beth went to pick up Noelle and found a classroom with no teacher and no daughter. Panic drilled through her, a panic that overtook her soul like a demon when she found them. Miss Ollie and Noelle. Together. Noelle’s shoes surrounded by the lake of blood, her hands and mouth crimson. And Mary Beth had been sure that Noelle had stabbed Miss Ollie too much, too hard in order to get a drink—is that not what anyone would think in her situation?
Over and over, since the revelation of Ben’s involvement in Erin Ollie’s death, her mind has raced to rearrange the events in her memory. The meeting when Mary Beth had seen the two of them interact, were there signs she missed, could she have picked up on something critical? When she asked about the lock screen picture on Erin’s phone, should she have asked her brother’s name? Would she have if she weren’t so preoccupied with her embarrassing crush on Ben? And then Erin had alluded to a love of data points, and was it not her attention to the new youth center’s financial numbers that had been her and Ben’s very undoing? It was.
The seed planted—the possibility that Noelle wasn’t the one to hurt Miss Ollie—has at last begun to sprout, blossoming for the first time fully into what that truly means for Mary Beth.
It’s demolishing her digestive system and, far more times than she would like, Mary Beth must race to the bathroom to unload her bowels in a sudden, violent onset of diarrhea.
The sense of urgency strikes again. She knocks on the plate glass window of the receptionist. “Which way to the bathroom?” She’s already clenching, already terrified she won’t make it.
The receptionist kindly leads her around the corner and Mary Beth escapes into the private restroom, where she sinks down onto the toilet seat, clutching her head in her hands.
She finishes, washes with soap, and fishes from her purse a glass bottle of toilet spray she’s begun carrying. Poodini—Make bad smells disappear.
Three spritzes. She still has no idea what gave Rhea the inspiration to discover that her aromatherapy oil tinctures would actually make the most effective toilet spray on the market, but Darby helped with reworking Rhea’s messaging and now she’s the “From one shitty mom to the next” lady. Apparently Mila Kunis even posted about her last week on Instagram.
When Noelle’s session has ended, the psychologist, Dr. Beggs, finds Mary Beth sitting in the waiting room trying to look Totally Normal.
“Done so soon?” She manages to sound like a hyperactive Chihuahua.
Dr. Beggs takes a seat next to Mary Beth and touches her forearm; people touch her more often now and it’s not such a bad thing. “I told Noelle she could keep coloring while we chatted for a few minutes.” The waiting room feels empty save for the two of them, but Mary Beth still wishes for something more private. She’s not sure she can properly fall apart in a public area filled with what she’s sure are celebrity magazines. Maybe that’s the point.
“It’s good you came in,” Dr. Beggs begins. “It shows that you’re a very attentive mother.”
Whatever it is, Mary Beth will love her daughter and help her through it and if she wanted easy she should never have become a mother to begin with. Because perhaps that’s the big lie. That things will get easier. That easy is just around the corner. When there are sharp corners everywhere.
“So, I’ve done an assessment on Noelle. We’ve spoken and I want to tell you a little bit about what I’ve discovered.”
“Okay.” Mary Beth’s mouth goes dry. “Yes, please.”
“She’s an extremely bright girl. You don’t have to tell her anything twice. She’s observant. She perceives emotions in others.”
A thin string somewhere inside Mary Beth’s chest snaps off. “Yes, of course, I know all of that,” she says with an impatience that’s atypical of her. As though it’s come from a whole new person. “Sorry. I just mean that you don’t need to sugarcoat it. I want to know what—I want to know who—does she have a conscience? That’s what I need to know.”
Over the last couple of months, she has observed her daughter and it seems that as she does so, she’s been able to put on any number of lenses. When she’s suspicious, she can find the peculiar way Noelle sometimes whispers orders to her dolls as a clear sign of sociopathy. When she’s overwhelmed by love, which happens just as often, she will latch on to the way her daughter holds on to her arm as she’s falling asleep to try to keep her from slipping out of the room.
“What do you think?” Dr. Beggs asks. “Do you see signs at home that she doesn’t?”
Mary Beth’s hands drop onto her lap. “She’s always been loving to us. And to her sister.” Doesn’t this woman understand that this very issue is the source of the confusion? “She’s worried for characters in movies. Like Olaf. She doesn’t want him to melt or anything. I always thought that was very emotionally intelligent. She likes puppies. She’s very gentle with them.” Mary Beth has already vaguely begun researching the possibility of getting a Seeing Eye dog, a cute one, something to help them, or maybe just her, move past this experience toward something positive. But that would be another responsibility on their plates.