Beautiful

Gwen’s office looked appropriately generic. Beige walls, gray tweed sofa, and dark wooden chairs. No family photos or interesting artwork to distract clients.

    She indicated the couch with a head bob, and I hurried toward it, pausing only when I saw the box of tissues on the glass end table, a puffy white sheet protruding from the gray cardboard top like an outstretched hand, offering to absorb and conceal my outpourings within its velvety folds. I pressed my lips together. Pitiful that a mere symbol of comfort could trigger such longing for release. I burrowed into the sofa’s corner.

    Gwen sat in one of the uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs. Had I known her, even a little, I’d suggest she settle on the other end of the sofa. I thought about the dichotomy of sharing the turmoil of my life with someone I felt uncomfortable sitting next to.

   “It’s good to meet you in person,” she said.

   “Thank you for seeing me. In truth, Meg forced this. I can’t seem to function—”

    “Why don’t we start from the beginning?”

    “Okay.”

     I recalled the insistent buzzing waking me that day; how my smartphone screen lit up on the bedside table, displaying the time and Meg’s name, jolting me instantly awake. “She called me at five in the morning, hysterical. She told me Dev shot himself in her apartment.”

    What I didn’t add was how she’d said it, her words running together—a frantic attempt to outpace the message and spare me. Say it fast and it’s not real.

    “I sat there for a second, staring into the dark. Meg’s words were all sound and no meaning. It was as if she’d spoken in a language I’d never learned—until she told me Dev was dead. That message hit the mark. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked. So dumb. Of course, she wasn’t. And then the questions rushed in, pelting my brain like sleet, but bursting like soap bubbles when she spoke again. Her voice, imploring me to come to her: weak and thick, as if overrun by one of those awful summer colds that clogs nasal passages and restricts breathing.”

    Gwen nodded. “Go on.”

    “And then I was driving, driving. Along the steep ledges, dangerous curves, and dense early-morning fog, as much a part of the Great Smokies as the sedimentary rock. ‘I’m coming, baby,’ I muttered over and over again. ‘I’m coming. Just hold on.’”

    I bit my fingernail, recalling how I tried not to think of Dev during the mad dash to Meg. But the ex-soldier slivered painfully into my thoughts like a crooked splinter. I’d never met him, and now I never would. Still, I felt as if I had known him. Meg filled the phone line with details of their five-month relationship: from their squawking in downtown Karaoke bars and day trips to San Antonio to his moodiness and the harshness of his night terrors.

    “Meg told me she and Dev made a pact to help each other. She had the training to guide him through his PTSD and depression while he helped her put her psychology training to use before the ink on her degree was even dry.”

    “And what did you think of that?”

    “I thought it was a helluva lot of to dump on a twenty-three-year-old. In fact, I was obsessing over that thought as I drove to her. Not paying attention to the road.” I recalled how my heart slammed into my breastbone when the car tires slid on something shiny and slick-looking. “I hit an oil patch that lurched me into the opposite lane. As I yanked the steering wheel, barely realigning my car before a truck rounded the curve up ahead, I began to realize how foolish I’d been. How naïve and clueless.”

    “I thought we were talking about Meg,” she said softly.

    “We are, but her story is my story, isn’t it? As her mother?” When Gwen said nothing, just tilted her head as if considering, I clarified: “When she mentioned moving to Austin to attend grad school I said, ‘just go.’ What was I thinking?”   

    “Every parent faces the challenge of releasing adult children, urging them toward discovery and, ultimately, responsibility.”

     “Is it that simple?” I asked. “Or are we trying to vicariously fulfill those dreams we’d been unable to? Or worse, do we want our kids out of our way so we can move forward with our own plans?” I recalled myself at Meg’s age, master’s degree in hand, and starting my teaching career in the town where I grew up. A new husband, a new house, and a baby on the way. A decade later I had a tiny new apartment, new divorce papers, and a deadbeat dad who’d siphoned half my pension in exchange for a version of freedom, if not liberty. The court had allowed him full visiting rights, preventing me from moving out of state.

    “Perhaps both motives exist,” said Gwen.

    “But I should do better than that. Be better than that.” I stared at her blank wall, swallowing back the thick clots of emotion bubbling up from my chest, bottlenecking in my throat. “I sent her into the unknown, and the cost of that decision is unknowable.”

    “Why do you think you sent her to Austin? Was it your idea that she go?”

    “No.” I looked at Gwen, at her slightly squinted eyes conveying the concentration I had when searching for just the right puzzle piece or trying to recall the lyrics of a nearly forgotten song.

    She leaned forward, as though sharing a confidence. “Even if you’d opposed her plan, she may have gone.”

    Would she? I remembered the way Meg looked at me when I’d floated the idea of divorce. The hurt in her eyes; her determined expression—lips compressed, and brows lowered—as she nodded. She witnessed the arguments; heard her father’s lies. But it was the only life she’d known.

   And then it was just the two of us, her upbringing transitioning into a partnership, each of us giving and taking in equal measure; a dynamic that suddenly seemed immensely flawed, cheating us both of our proper roles. Maybe Meg needed to get away from that. Away from me. I rubbed my forehead, feeling sparks of pain, like fingers infinitely snapping inside my skull. The prelude to one of my epic migraines. “Do you have an aspirin?”

    As Gwen searched through a drawer in her corner desk, I recalled my mounting tension headache as I’d crossed endless stretches of highway to get to Meg. How the flat, featureless fields of Arkansas gave way to the scrubby brush of Northeast Texas as I’d popped dirt-specked pain pills from the bottom of my handbag, washing them down with the yellowing contents of a dented Gatorade bottle that had resided in my backseat for weeks.

    It had been dark for hours by the time I arrived at the Budget Rite Motel. An Austin police officer had kindly checked Meg in after the site forensics wrapped up. I shoved the car door open and stood on wobbly legs that seemed to have lost the ability to hold my weight. I pressed a steadying hand against the car’s roof, watching my daughter emerge from the shadows like a wood nymph appearing magically in a forest glade.

    She encased me in her surprisingly strong young arms, clinging to my faltering frame as though she could both infuse and extract the energy we’d need to face what lay ahead. I felt lightheaded as we eventually pulled apart and walked across the dim parking lot.

    As we stepped into the motel room, I was struck by the garish green paisley spreads on the two beds shoved against the wall and the tan carpeting, which was clearly meant to disguise dirt but gave the odd impression of trapping and encrusting it. I’d looked at Meg’s pale face and flinched.

    “What happened once you reached Meg?” Gwen’s voice mercifully intruded from across the room.

    “This is where it gets tough,” I said, pausing to take a deep breath. “The first thing I noticed was the red welt slashed down the center of Meg’s forehead. She said….”

    Gwen paused, looked up from her open desk drawer. “This isn’t an easy thing to talk about. Take your time.”

    I took another breath and forced my shoulders to relax as I exhaled. “Meg turned away and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching up and running a hand through her hair, a self-soothing gesture she’d unconsciously adopted at age ten, during the divorce. Her raised arm lifted the hem of her T-shirt just high enough to reveal the edge of a black tattoo above her right hip. I squinted and leaned closer, realizing it was no tattoo, but a bruise. One she probably couldn’t have caused.”

    “Did you ever suspect he’d hit her, before that moment?”

    I shook my head. “She’d never revealed anything like that. As I stood there looking at her, I remembered a photo of us together twenty years ago, both in profile, gazing off in the distance like we were looking into the future. In the shot she wore a child’s red plastic firefighter’s hat. The way it balanced on those precious curls…” I swallowed, pierced by the memory. “Well, I realized it was my turn to don the hat. Put out the fire.”

    “How did you intend to do it?” Gwen asked gently.

    “I didn’t know at the time. I was overwhelmed by her story.” I recalled how Meg had spoken fast, explaining she had to get the story out immediately or it may never come. “She told me they had a fight, one of many. She said Dev accused her of not caring about him as she once had; of not understanding the role of a rifleman in combat, and how it caused PTSD. She reminded him she’d devoted five months to him, but the students at Pine Tree Elementary needed her, too. She mentioned cyberbullying and parental neglect, and how kids needed counseling more nowadays.” I kneaded a brow with my fingertip, trying to ease the stinging pain behind it. “Her voice sounded ancient when she added, ‘You know what I mean about the kids, Mom. They’re like your morning glories.’”

    A small smile tilted the corners of Gwen’s mouth as she grabbed the pills from her desk and a water bottle from the nearby mini fridge. “Morning glories?”

    I nodded, recalling the nickname I’d dubbed the most contentious kids in my high-school English classes, those refusing me access—until I’d encouraged them. “A scant amount of attention can soften even the most hardened students, opening their faces like morning glories in sunlight.”

    “Maybe Meg was making the same assumption with Dev?”

  “I’m sure they both were. Dev told Meg she was the only one who helped him—the only one who could help him. When she realized she couldn’t be his therapist and his girlfriend, she explained it to him.” I closed my eyes tightly. “It changed everything. He began drinking the six-pack that had migrated to the back of Meg’s fridge from a barbeque months earlier. He apparently downed every bottle within ten minutes. Another argument popped up just as quickly, and Meg threatened to break things off….” I opened my eyes, blinking back the sudden sting beneath my lids. 

    “That’s when he hit her?” Gwen paused in front of me.

    “Kicked her, actually.” I recalled how Meg had lifted her shirt to reveal the bruise blossoming into varying shades of yellow, green, and purple along her lower spine. “She tried to run from the bedroom, but he kicked her from behind, grabbed her by her hair, and dragged her to the dresser where he opened the top drawer and got his .38 revolver. She’d been keeping it for him. He said it was safer that way….”

    Gwen cocked her head to one side. “Safer if he didn’t have the gun in his own apartment?”

    I nodded. “I suppose under normal circumstances it would have been safer. But that night wasn’t normal. He was quite drunk, and he fell against the dresser. Meg jumped up and ran, but he was faster, even after all the beer. He caught hold of her hair again, just as she passed the bathroom. Still holding the gun in one hand, he rammed her face into the open-door edge with the other.” I pressed my fingers to my throbbing temples.

    Gwen held out her hand, two pills nestled in her palm.

    “Thank you,” I said, plucking the aspirin and reaching for the water bottle she offered. In one smooth motion, I swallowed the pills and half a bottle of water, desperately wishing to wash away Meg’s story as swiftly. “The thing is, he killed himself in front of her, he was…” my throat constricted, refusing to allow my voice to exit. I swallowed and watched Gwen nod into the space between us as if I were still talking. The muscles around my windpipe unclenched. “He was ranting, aiming his revolver at her, but as he cocked the gun, he turned it on himself, holding the barrel to his temple and…”  I looked away, unable to finish the sentence. My body started shaking. The more I tried to steady myself, the harder I trembled.

    Gwen reclaimed her seat. “Do you need a moment?”

    I shook my head. I’d lived too long with this already. “Meg said Dev saved her. Isn’t that ridiculous? He spared her, not saved her. I told her that.”

    “Why did he spare her?” Gwen’s eyes searched mine as if I had the answer. And maybe I did.

    “She told me she kept talking. Not screaming or crying, or anything like that. Just talking. Reminding him she was still Meg.”

    “Admirable, especially under the circumstances.”

    “I wasn’t so composed—even days later. I became enraged over what he’d done to her, so angry with that sonofabitch….” My body shook like I had a neurological disorder, shivering over the scars created that day. “I called the remediators referred by Meg’s leasing agent, but they couldn’t get a cleaning crew to her apartment for days.” My voice joined the rest of me in tremors. “I had to get us the hell out of Austin, so I went there myself. I stood in the doorway looking at the wall splattered with his blood. I stared and stared, numb to what I was seeing, barely registering the smell, like rotting garbage. I found her cleaning supplies under the sink. I put on rubber gloves, dragged out two rolls of paper towels and a bottle of bleach. I scrubbed everything, scooping up bits of his brain and dropping them into the kitchen trash can like they were dinner scraps.”

    I watched for the disdainful horror to etch into Gwen’s expression, but her face remained passive. “Anger has a purpose. Like it or not, we all use it. It’s an effective tool.”

    I blinked, unsure of what to say.

    “I’m guessing there was a small part of Meg and a large part of Dev that realized she couldn’t help him like he needed her to. It’s easy to get angry when faced with impossible situations. Anger’s immediate, active. It spurs us into action, rather than letting us linger in desperation. I suspect Dev struggled with suicidal thoughts for a long while. His anger allowed him to accomplish what he couldn’t otherwise do. And you similarly used your anger to get through a task you wouldn’t have thought possible, even hours earlier.”

    I shook my head. “It goes deeper than that. I wiped a man’s brains from my daughter’s wall and felt nothing. Nothing. What kind of person does that? I’m not who I thought I was: the same person who brought an orphaned baby raccoon to a wildlife sanctuary.” I swallowed. “I mean, I read books about Gandhi and praise my daughter for going into a helping profession. How can my perception of myself be so different from reality?”

    “Is it though? Aren’t you still rescuing that baby raccoon?”

    I stared at her, her image fading into the gray wave washing over me. “I didn’t rescue anyone. I was too late.”

   “Too late for Dev, but not for Meg.” Gwen leaned forward again. “Your daughter needed you to be her warrior that day. Warriors are born in duty and love. They develop through the work and reward of those demands. You were, as you said, putting out the fire and bringing Meg to safety. It was a beautiful action.”

    “Beautiful?” I flinched as if I’d been slapped in the face. “It was the ugliest thing I’ve ever done.”

    Gwen stood and leaned across me, pulling a tissue from the box on the end table. I didn’t realize I was crying until she handed it to me. “Are you repulsed by the ugliness you perceive in the situation or within yourself?”

    “Is there a difference?”

    “An ugly situation can involve violence or pain, but a beautiful experience can involve the same sensations. Like birth.”

    The truth of her words struck me: The most physical pain I’d ever endured had produced Meg, my greatest joy. I also recalled the ricocheting changes as I’d tried and failed to keep her father in our lives. We’d bent but not broken, somehow developing the human equivalent of the stress wood a mighty oak needs to survive a hurricane.

    I’d instinctively known what I had to do that day, but in the weeks that followed I’d faltered, nearly letting myself slip away, like the blood I’d rinsed off Meg’s apartment floor. Overwhelmed by the searing shame of my decisions and not imparting the guidance a good mother should have. But Meg had survived anyway. Maybe my failures had taught her how.

   Beautiful: The one word that would allow us both to heal.