Whatever Gets You Through

Every Thursday after school, three sisters, Reagan, Ellie, and Mya, came with their mother to my office. Each appointment started much the same way. Beginning with my standing at the end of the drab grey hallway, just out of view, watching them. Psychology was as much watching as it was listening, and each girl gave you the tiniest glimpse into their heads if you were so inclined to pay attention.

Mya, the youngest, clung to her mother’s hip. In fact, some days, she had to be pried away from her mother just to go into her session. Most days, including today, she shared the plastic-wrapped chair with her mother as she was read one of the new Dr. Seuss books I bought for the waiting room.

Ellie was much the same in terms of cling, but whereas Mya sat rooted in the tender loving affection of a daughter to her mother, Ellie sat with the face of a child, gravely stricken by something. In this scenario, her mother served as more of a life raft, and Ellie, a castaway at sea in a storm.

Reagan sat detached under the window at the circular table crowded with magazines. She flicked resentfully through the bible amidst the magazines when I saw her. She told me once that she liked the pages’ texture but never read it.

I’ll admit I am not a child psychologist. I only took the girls as patients as a favor to their mother, who was, as of recently, my patient. So long as the state board isn’t listening, I saw their mother intermittently for individual counseling, then both parents for couples counseling. Adults are much more of my specialty, but I would make an exception.

When I agreed to take them on, I went to K-Mart and bought blocks, toys, games, and children’s books that, aside from every Thursday evening, sat tucked under my desk in a neat brown box. The otherwise grey office didn’t exactly scream children, no matter how many Dr. Seuss books I laid out on the coffee table. I tried to make the office seem like a place other children came, but my attempts were weak.

I called first on Ellie and her mother to chat. Ellie had, by far, the most on her mind, though the situation was complicated for everyone involved. Their mother and I discussed the need to keep what happened a secret for some time longer. The other two girls were far too young to understand, and we risked hurting them worse for little gain. Mya was too young to notice, but the secret’s eerie gloom drooped over everything in Reagan’s life like a low-hanging fog.

Secrets aside, Reagan was by far the most oppositional of the three girls. Life tormented her rather differently than it did them, and she fought everything much harder. Part of this I deduced from being the oldest. The weight propped on her small shoulders was heavy. Her family crumbled into something from a poverty novel, and there wasn’t much to do but carry on.

Whereas Ellie’s session came first, Reagan’s came last. After two hours of festering in the waiting room, she was immediately cross with me to start. There was not a single answer I procured from her that was not hard-fought and sourly won.

Reagan’s battle strategy when she came into my office was vague answers, aloofness, and building a protective wall around herself that was fiercely guarded. She avoided any direct admission of anxiety, depression, or trauma, but the sentiments informed everything she did. Children speak in different ways, I suppose.

She busied herself, settling into the plush leather sofa, making it quite the chore. The coach here was comfortable, she’d said once. More comfortable than their one at home. Their couch at home had a wooden board underneath that kept the cushions from caving in, which Reagan said you could usually feel if you paid too close of attention.

“How is school?” I began.

“Good,” she said, unconvincingly, but had stopped wiggling.

“Really?” I encouraged her, to which she shrugged. I tried again. “Are you getting along with your sisters?” Again, a shrug. I sighed, “You’ll have to open up a bit more than that, Reagan.”

She gave me a dirty look, then muttered. “I’m getting along with my sisters.” She clearly planned to stop there and make me fight for a more significant response, but something changed her mind. “Ellie has been quiet. She won’t play with us much.” Her tone changed to something more impassive. “She has been such a crybaby.” Then added, as if I was planning to chastise her. “I’ve been good, though! I haven’t said anything!”

I didn’t chastise her, though. I instead reminded her, “Ellie has a lot on her mind. Do you remember talking about that together?”

“I have a lot on my mind, too,” she said meekly, looking down at her rhinestone shoes. “But I’m not allowed to be a crybaby.”

“Ellie has something very different going on. You’ll understand when you’re older.” I said.

She sighed, and it dawned that I’d missed her point. “What do you mean you’re not allowed to be a crybaby?”

“Ellie cries all the time, but when it is my turn to cry, everyone has other things going on. Everyone is sad.” She said matter-of-factly. “My sadness is nothing special.”

“Why do you think that?” I asked her.

She shrugged like she was recounting something as mundane as the weather but said nothing more.

“What do you know about what happened to your sister?” I asked. It wasn’t my place to tell her, but understanding the foundation might help me find common ground.

“No one will say what happened, but I know something happened. Whenever Mya or I walk in, everyone stops talking, and everyone is tense.” She fixed her eyes on a spot on the ground. “Dad brings Ellie presents when he comes to see us sometimes. He doesn’t bring things for Mya or me, though.”

Nothing like a guilty conscience, I thought. “Does that upset you?”

Her small 7-year-old eyes darted in thought, her head tilting back and forth. “No, Ellie lets us play with her presents.”

Of course she does. “That’s nice of her.”

“Yeah, last time she got a guitar and some stuffed animals. She lets us keep whatever we want except for the cherry ring pops.” She said.

I nodded. “How are things at home? Is mom okay?”

“She sleeps a lot,” Reagan said. “My friends think it’s strange she doesn’t make us breakfast when they stay over.”

“Do their moms make you breakfast?” I asked.

“Yeah, their moms even pack their lunches.” She said. “Madeleine’s mom always puts soup in her lunch in a cute thermos.”

“Do you buy lunch at school?” I asked.

Pink-cheeked, she said. “No, it’s too expensive. I pack my lunch.”

“What do you pack in your lunch?” I asked.

“Whatever I can find. Usually cheerios, a pudding, a juice box, and an apple I just throw away.”

“Why don’t you eat your apple?” I asked.

“I don’t like apples.” She admitted. “Plus, it’s not cut.”

“Why do you pack an apple if you don’t like apples?” I asked.

“So it looks like more food is in my lunch box.” She said, positively red-faced at her admission. “My friends say nothing about me not eating it.”

“How does it go when you stay the night at their houses?” I asked, starting after something different.

“Good, their moms usually pack my lunch when we stay the night at their house.” She said.

I paused and gave her the chance to provide more, but she didn’t. “Yeah?” Giving her one last chance, but she didn’t take it. “Your mom tells me you’ve been wetting the bed again. Does that happen when you’re at your friends’ house?”

She gave her head the faintest shake, about to lie and say she didn’t wet the bed anymore, but for whatever reason, she decided to be honest. “Yes.”

I nodded. “Do you wake their parents when it happens?”

She shook her head firmly and dismissively. “No.”

Confused, I asked. “Then what do you do?”

“Nothing. I move over so I’m not lying in it and hope it dries by morning.”

“You don’t tell anyone?” I was a bit appalled but more shocked. I kept a stern poker face. “Why not?”

“That would be embarrassing.” She looked down and cupped her burning cheeks.

“More embarrassing than them finding out you peed the bed and didn’t tell anyone?”

“Maybe they don’t notice.” Her tone was hopeful in a way that made me hope she was right, but I knew they did. Perhaps she thinks they wouldn’t notice because she is accustomed to her bed smelling like pee.

“They won’t be angry with you; they’re your friends.” I reminded her.

Regret pooled on her face in her confidence.“What if their moms tell my mom, and she makes me wear pull-ups at their houses?” Keeping with the session and all the other subtleties she’d been forced to endure, she looked sadly away from me.

“Would that be worse than lying in pee?” I asked genuinely.

“I don’t want another reason for people to think I’m weird.” She said. “It’s hard enough as is.”

I see.

“Do your friends know what is happening in your family?” I asked.

“No, but they ask sometimes.” She said. “I don’t want anyone to know.”

“It must be hard to keep such a big part of your life a secret,” I remarked.

She shrugged. “No harder than anything else lately.”

“Have any of them met your dad?”

“Just Madeleine. He came to see us at my grandparents’ house when she was spending the night.” She looked away, lost in the recalled memory. “He picked us up and let us walk on the ceiling.” A small smile revealed itself on her face but was quickly washed away. “Grandpa was worried we would leave footprints on the ceiling, but I didn’t see any.”

She had happy memories surrounding such an evil man, without the cognitive abilities to even understand what it was about him that made him evil. It gave me a sense of the constant mental gymnastics she was doing. The realm of what he took from her was so massive, so incalculable, and yet she might go by her entire life not even noticing. The callous disregard of all she knew before was confusing and undoubtedly terrible for her.

Everything in Reagan’s life was in disarray. Regrettably, she spent the better part of her evening begrudgingly talking to me. Not only should she be outside playing, but she should have a family with her. Not the shadow of one who showed up in my office weekly. Her mother loved her and her sisters more than most, but she had a lot on her plate. She hardly had the energy to go to work every day, let alone roll around on the floor playing with the girls.

No matter how hard Reagan worked to not talk about what she was going through, it must have been on her mind constantly.

I decided here to take a more direct approach and asked. “What do you remember about your dad?”

She took a sharp breath through her nose, composing herself with meticulous practice. “I remember he was fun, and I remember he made us laugh.” Her face grew darker. “I remember once, he and mom were fighting in the basement. They were yelling loud enough that it woke me up. I pretended I didn’t know where they were, and I just started crying so they would come back upstairs.”

“Did they?” I asked.

“Mom did.” She said. She waited for a beat, then started speaking again. “I remember once he took us to Smith Oil to buy candy bars. Mom was so mad. I don’t know why-”

“Your mom thought he stole you and your sisters away.” I provided.

“Well, he didn’t.” She spoke bitterly. Not annoyance, but something else filled her voice.

“She didn’t know that,” I said. No one knew that.

“The police were there when we got back. They told us to play while mom and dad talked to them.” She said. “I went out back on my swing.”

Reagan housed a vacant stare, looking tragically composed out in front of her.

“What else do you remember?” I asked through her thick fog.

“That he would take us to Burger King, and we would play for hours in the tubes.” She laughed a short laugh, not one full of humor, but one ripe with the reminders of all that wasn’t funny. “Mom says he can’t take us there anymore because the tubes give us lice.”

“When was the last time that you had lice?” I asked.

“The other day, but that was the third time. Mom thinks we got lice during our visit last Saturday.” She touched the tips of her hair absentmindedly. “The lice kits smell terrible, and they take forever.” More sadly, she admitted. “Our stuffed animals have to sit in trash bags in the basement until the lice die. Mom says it could be two weeks, but last time they sat in there for almost a month.”

“That must be sad for you,” I said. Thinking about the small collie dog she usually brought with her to sessions, “being away from your stuffed animals and all.”

“Yeah,” she confirmed. “My Molly dog is down there. I tried to see if we could just wash her, but mom says lice can live through the washing machine.”

“How many times have you had lice?” I asked, trying to build a timeline.

“Three. The first time was in January, then again in August before school started, then last week.” She perked her head off of the couch a little. “Don’t worry, I don’t have it now.”

I waved my hand to show her I wouldn’t mind if she did. “Were all the times you’ve had lice after going to Burger King with your dad?”

“We go there a lot, so maybe.” She said.

This was all a game to him, I thought.

She sucked in a breath, suddenly bubbling in her seat. “I got to show him, Max, the last time we were at Burger King!”

“Max?” I asked. “Is that a boy from school?”

“No,” she shook her head, “he’s my dog.”

I leaned back in my chair. “You got a dog?”

She smiled the first genuine smile that I had even been at liberty to witness. “He is black and white and is this big.” She stretched her arms to the size of a throw pillow, but her eyes were as big as the moon.”

“What do you and Max like to do together?” I asked.

Reagan grinned like she’d been waiting for me to ask all along. Finally, there was something in therapy that she wanted to talk about. “I like to sit on the back porch with him. We watch over the yard together.” Then she admitted, “He likes that more than me, though.”

Again, she smiled. “I like bringing glasses of milk to my room, and when we get up there, I pour some for Max on top of my orange suitcase and we drink it together.”

I said nothing about the ethicalities of giving milk to dogs, not wanting to spoil the line of conversation we’d followed. I encouraged her to go on.

“I like to talk to him.” She went on. “Every night, I go downstairs and sit by his cage to tell him bedtime stories.”

“What sort of stories?” I asked.

“Ones about our family.” She shrugged her shoulders lightly, then said with a sense of complete, un-ironic seriousness, “I think he likes the stories about himself the best. I want him to know about me, though, what I am like, things like that. He is my dog, after all.”

“Do you share Max with your sisters?” I asked.

“Of course,” but leaned in like she was apt to let me in on a secret, “but he is mostly my dog.”

“Does Max help at all when you’re sad?” I eyed her now more joyous expression.

She nodded. “He is the only thing that helps, really.”

I accepted the unintended dig and checked the alarm clock on my desk, noticing her hour had ticked by. I pointed the phenomenon out to her, which also seemed to take her by surprise. That was indeed a first.

She jumped up from the couch and happily flung open the office door, then the waiting room door for her family. Her smile at the door was a first, and her mom put down the book she’d been reading for Mya and stood up to hug Reagan, noticing the out-of-place joy.

The four of them, now standing and departing the office, left me with my own sense of greater happiness that day. When Reagan left through the dirty glass door, I’d felt something genuine creep through me, which often never happened in my occupation and location.

I felt genuine that things would be alright for Reagan. It would hardly be alright now or even a year from now. In fact, the weight that propped itself on Reagan’s shoulders wouldn’t be lightened for many years. However, she found a friend to bear the burden with her, and he faithfully did just that for 11 years.