The Box

Her name was Eileen. And she talked with a smile. If you were blindfolded, or even blind, you’d still hear it- the sparkle in her words, the lilting cadence. Mesmerizing, you could say; hypnotic. 

She held out a lacquered cherry wood box; on the top it had a swirl of yellow characters- Chinese perhaps, something Eastern, something profound. But Mara dared not ask this. All she needed to know was that the box was important. It was a keeper of secrets, of unwanted things. 

Eileen opened the lid. Mara wanted to lean in and inhale deeply. It wasn’t a large box but it was solid. She imagined it smelled of a faraway land, ancient and wise. 

Of course she could only assume. They stared at it reverently, the group of them, eight in total, sitting in a circle of folding chairs with Eileen at the center.

The box was rather incongruous to their setting. A dichotomy of big feelings to this staid room- the utilitarian carpet, the white board with the smell of fresh marker. Even Eileen, wearing a white pantsuit, thin and middle-aged, her blouse unbuttoned at the throat, as though a nod to the evening, like a suited man relaxing at the end of the day with a loosened tie.

Again, the smell of marker on the whiteboard, pungent, almost clinical, like a boardroom meeting, a flowchart of circles and arrows, underlined words for added emphasis.

But also not like a boardroom meeting. Because within those circles and arrows that grew smaller and smaller, and down and down, until the final circle. 

The final circle.   

Eileen, the presenter of the flowchart and the mysterious box, held it out to them. “Are you ready?” she asked gently. 

Oh how Mara loved her voice; for the past five weeks she had come here on Wednesday nights, to this plain building, attached to a strip mall off a busy highway, struggling to weave her way through the commuters; the semi trucks flying past like angry gales, trying to thwart her off course. But she’d made it, week after week, here to this place, with Eileen's voice washing over her like cleansing water, where the muck of life pooled around her and disappeared. 

She loved Eileen. She loved her.  

This part was important. She must pay attention. 

First was Dale, a heavyset man who’d recently lost his wife, and then discovered that his son hated football. And for all those years, all of those Sunday afternoons, he’d thought that he and his son had bonded over The Green Bay Packers- shouting and cheering along with the faceless masses. Eileen had suggested that perhaps football was a way to express to his son, in an indirect manner, his suppressed state of being. That football was only a ruse. A misdirection, if you will.   

Mara loved Dale too. 

Next was Kristen, who had a complicated relationship with her family. When she was thirteen, her mom had taken her older sister to live in Nashville for two years to make it as a country singer, and then left her alone with her dad and brother. When Nashville didn’t work out, they’d moved as a family to Los Angeles, and even though Kristen felt she was the prettier one (Eileen had raised a brow at this), and was a star volleyball player in high school, no one in her family had cared. She was ignored. 

Truth be told, she didn’t love Kristen as much as Dale. 

That’s because she’s a vapid try-hard with too much lip-filler. And if she cries one more time, I swear I will slap her. 

Bob had said this about Kristen. And about the others too. (At least most of them; Bob had nothing bad to say about Ashlee and Dale.) This didn’t surprise her. Bob had a wry sense of humor- lacerating barbs only said in private. And she’d allowed it, cackling alongside him, a riposte of wits and overall meanness. Bob could be funny, it was true, but also petty and moody. She hadn’t told him yet, but she was done with him. As of tonight, in fact. 

Bob hated Eileen…well, hate was a strong word. Disliked. Distrusted?  But Bob was the jealous type, she can see that now. 

“Why do you allow this person to live rent free in your head?” Eileen had asked her, and it stuck, like a bur- an annoyance at first, until it became sharper, like a stick, like a dagger. Why indeed?

“Oh please,” Bob sneered. “She didn’t come up with that. Why do you act like everything she says is so groundbreaking and profound? 

She can’t explain Eileen to someone like Bob so she doesn’t try. He would call the flowcharts and arrows gobbledygook, but to her, to Mara, it held awe. And how rare, in this world, to experience awe. Suffused with it, a gossamer and fragile thing. Yes, to find beauty at the side of a highway next to a laundromat amidst the ferocious semi trucks roaring by. 

Part of her would miss Bob. It was necessary, however, that he be excised, or in this case, exorcized. Not to go gently (which was against his nature) but with a finality that brokered no compromise. 

She must pay attention now. If she didn’t, Bob would not go. 

It was almost her turn. She must steady her breathing. 

Last week they had giggled- kindly, not in the mocking sense- as she had told them his name. Bob, she said. His name was Bob. 

“Why Bob?” Eileen had asked with the smile behind her words. 

They must give Eileen names. It was necessary. And this was the name that had formed in her mind, in which she had granted this thought admittance, as Eileen had trained her to do. 

Still, she faltered a bit. “I don’t know. He just seems like a Bob.”

Bob. A comical word. Bob. Like a boob. Like a silly fellow, engendered now to slapstick and pratfalls. When Mara was so delicate, so hesitant. A foil. 

It was time. The words, now, in the right order (it must be exact!) and the gestures so precise and the pledges so solemn. And then the box was closed. It was done.

Later, as she walked through the blustery wind, warm from the hug Eileen had given her, that they’d all given her, enveloping her with promises (for there was more than this ugly room, so much more she could hardly fathom it all), she had a thought.

But not a thought exactly, a wisp, a tendril brushing against her mind. 

I’m still here.

And part of her, the smallest part, a part she could not yet acknowledge, was relieved.