Chapter 13 #2
Benjamin frowned. “Phelps is six-four with an eighty-inch wingspan. Genetically, he’s made for competitive swimming. I’m pretty much the opposite of Michael Phelps.” He looked at me and gestured toward the locker rooms with his chin, the message clear.
“Hold on a second,” Dr. Campbell said. “You and I have met before.”
Benjamin squinted. “I don’t remember.”
“You were seven or eight years old and sitting in the back of the lecture hall with a coloring book because your mom had to take you out of school that day.”
I winced, remembering the reason: another exasperated call from his school principal.
Dr. Campbell said, “Your mother said you were having a hard day, but you were very well-behaved in my classroom. I remember our conversation because you were my daughter’s age, with the very same birth month.
December. Do you remember how we talked about how it’s no fun having a birthday close to Christmas? ”
“Not really.” But Benjamin looked more interested now.
“I said you could choose another month to celebrate, and you said, ‘That’s cheating.’”
“Because it is.”
“Exactly. It’s interesting to see morality develop. Fairness and rules are so important between the ages of seven and ten.”
I smiled. “And then a kid becomes a teen and all those concerns about the rules fade away.” I made an exploding gesture with my hands.
Dr. Campbell laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Even older kids care about rules, especially the ones they decide for themselves.”
Benjamin wrapped his towel tighter around his chest. “Mom,” he said, more politely than before.
“Yes?”
“Home?”
“Okay.”
Benjamin headed to the men’s locker room while I packed my bag, looking around my chair to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.
Dr. Campbell stopped me. “Abigail.”
“Abby,” I corrected him.
“Abby, I’m sorry about your job situation, and the work you have ahead, sorting out your own grief, never mind helping others. You’ll find a way to do that, I promise. On top of that, lawsuits against school counselors are rarely successful.”
He was trying to be reassuring but that word—lawsuit—made me want to crawl into a hole.
“By the way,” he added. “I just gave notice at my own school—Grove Academy, in Lake Forest. I’m shutting everything down, my private practice included, in order to finish the new book. ‘The book!’ It’s my albatross. Is that pretentious, too? To have an albatross?”
“I think it’s great you’re writing another book.”
“Thank you.” He picked up a water bottle I’d set next to my chair and stepped closer, to hand it to me. “I should get your email. Grove might need some help with their summer international students’ program, and who knows what they’ll need in the fall. Right?”
“Right,” I said, not truly feeling right about anything. Jobs. Finances. My reputation. “Phone numbers, too?”
When we were finished exchanging contact info, I said, “Thank you, Dr. Campbell.”
“Curtis, please. You’re not my student anymore. We’re colleagues. I don’t suppose you’d like to . . .”
My phone buzzed. Benjamin couldn’t be showered already.
Want to go home.
“Sorry—it’s part of being a parent, I guess. Pavlovian response to a text. You were asking . . . ?”
“I was going to ask if you’d like to go somewhere for a glass of wine.”
“Things are a little shaky at home, so I’d better say no.”
“Well, I hope we can stay in touch.”
“I’d like that.”
On the way home, I asked Benjamin to dig into my purse and pass me a piece of chewing gum, to stop me from thinking about the cigarette I wished I could smoke or the clonidine I wished I could take, in order to settle my nerves.
He held up the first thing he pulled out. It was the sign-in sheet I’d swiped from the Dartmoor. “What’s this?”
I didn’t answer.
“Mom?” He studied the sheet. “Why do you have this?”
“Because it looks bad.”
He held up the paper, rattling it. “It looks like I left the pool. And Izzy left the pool. Because we’d both finished our laps.”
“It’s too close. You look like you left together.”
“Oh, that makes fucking sense. I gave her a ride to her mansion on my handlebars.”
“I didn’t say that—”
“And then when she was still feeling sad, I gave her a ride on my bike to a motel that’s miles and miles away. A rich girl like Izzy would have loved that.”
He kicked the speaker in the door’s side panel, hard and loud enough to make me startle and yank the steering wheel. An oncoming car laid on its horn.
“Hey!” My heart pounded. “Careful! We could have had an accident.”
For several more blocks, I massaged my chest with shaking fingertips. “Jesus,” I said under my breath.
When we reached a red light, I looked over again. His expression had changed. A door closing. Flesh into stone.
When we reached the curb in front of our apartment, I said, “I didn’t mean to sound like I was assuming the worst. I’m not assuming anything.”
In a low voice I barely recognized, he said, “What you’re thinking didn’t happen.”
He grabbed at the door handle.
“I’m sorry, Benjamin.”
But he was already out of the car, heading for our front door and likely to his room, where he’d hide as long as he could.
Inside, while I hung our wet towels to dry, I kept thinking about my apology, wishing I’d phrased it differently. And then I replayed his sarcastic words: I gave her a ride on my bike to a motel that’s miles and miles away. A rich girl like Izzy would have loved that.
To a motel.
I gave her a ride to a motel.
Dean Duplass had told me Izzy had died in Wadsworth.
No one had said Izzy died in a motel.