Secret for a Song Read online

  “Am I ever going to be allowed to drive again?”

  “Not until you can prove you’re capable of acting like an adult, no.” She uncapped her water, took a swig. It drove me crazy when she put on her “completely calm and collected” face. I knew she did it only to make me feel like I was the most insignificant worm to have ever crawled the earth. The worst part was that it worked. I wished she could feel the rage that boiled through my bloodstream, the rage that made me want to hurt her in any way I could, even if it meant hurting myself. I wanted to grab the steering wheel from her and crash the car into a mailbox just to see if she’d do anything besides raise her eyebrows.

  I settled for pinching the spot where I’d injected my saliva into my chest.

  Chapter Three

  About fifteen minutes later, we pulled into one of those pretty, manicured office complexes with tall, shiny glass buildings. Even with the shitty weather, the place managed to look clean and sparkling.

  The shrinks my parents hauled me off to every year or so always fell into the “don’t take insurance because we cater to elite clientele” category. It didn’t make sense. I mean, if my kid had to go as often as I did, I’d just buy her the cheapest one possible, the psychologist on sale.

  But I suppose I could guess why they did it. They used money to assuage their guilt—or whatever—about the way I’d turned out. I was the bad seed that had sprouted from the fucking angelic oak that was my family.

  I followed Mum into one of the buildings and stood off to one side while she consulted the chart in the lobby. When she was done, we took the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Through the glass double doors we went, right up to the pretty receptionist.

  “Hi.” She grinned at us like she was a kid and we were Santa and his treasured elf. There was a glob of red lip-gloss on her tooth. “Can I help?”

  Didn’t all the people who slumped in here need help? I glared at her. Seamlessly, she moved her gaze from me to Mum, her smile intact, unwavering.

  “Saylor Grayson,” my mother said, her voice as low as it could go without being a whisper. “Here to see Dr. Stone.”

  “Of course. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  Why don’t we? I sauntered over to the window instead, peering down past the landing below us at the parking lot. Blackened tire tracks crisscrossed the sludge. If I jumped and aimed for the ledge three floors down, would I be hurt badly enough to warrant a trip to the hospital?

  Behind me, Mum cleared her throat.

  “Come sit down.”

  But I didn’t have to. A tall, bald African American man emerged from behind the closed door and smiled at me. “Saylor?”

  “That’s me.”

  “And Mrs. Grayson, I presume?” He held his hand out to my mother.

  She took it limply. “Yes. You must be Dr. Stone. Well, I’ll let you two get on with it, then.”

  Dr. Stone let go of her hand, his smile receding the slightest bit. He reminded me vaguely of a giraffe, all thin legs and awkwardly long neck. “I thought this was going to be a family session.”

  Mum pulled on her coat. “I’m afraid not. I have a pressing appointment. There’s no need for that, anyway. You came highly recommended.”

  “It’s for Saylor’s benefit.” Dr. Stone’s smile had slipped completely by now, and even the cheery receptionist was watching. “As I explained on the phone.”

  “My husband’s out of town at the moment, and I have an appointment.” Mum repeated herself when she was mad, a kind of warning call to whoever was pissing her off.

  Dr. Stone hesitated a minute before nodding. He turned to me, his smile back in place. “Well, then. Saylor, I’m looking forward to chatting with you.”

  I sighed and walked past him into his office.

  Dr. Stone’s office looked out over a back area of the parking lot that was more trees and landscaping than lot. I sat on the pinstriped couch and stared out the window. “Do you fuck your receptionist?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  I turned to look at him. His long legs, clad in black trousers, were crossed. He looked like a spider. “You heard me.”

  Perching his bony elbows on the arms of his chair, he gazed at me for a minute. “Are you trying to shock me, anger me, or both?”

  I laughed, fiddled with the injected spot on my chest. It felt more swollen. “Been doing this a while, huh?”

  “Thirteen years.”

  I looked around at his decor. It was understated, sort of manly-but-classy. Lots of steel and glass. None of my dad’s home office’s giant leather chairs and brass globes. I swung my gaze back toward him. “So, are you gonna ask me questions or what?”

  “What’s your major?”

  I’d expected “Do you know why you’re here?” and even “What do you want me to ask?” but not such a generic question. “Why?”

  He shrugged his bony shoulders, itched at the patch of silky ebony skin peeking through his open shirt collar. “Just curious. Your mother mentioned you’re in college.”

  “Was in college. They yanked me out so they can babysit me or punish me or something. It’s probably just as well. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing there anyway; I was undecided.”

  His eyebrows pulled together. “I thought sophomores had to have a major declared.”

  “Not when your Dad makes regular, um, ‘contributions’ to the school. They told me to take all the time I needed.” I pushed on the forming abscess and winced.

  Dr. Stone’s eyes followed the movement and my resulting expression, but he didn’t say anything about it. “If you could do anything in the world, what would you do?”

  “Like, for a job?”

  That shrug again. “For anything. What do you want to be doing right now, for instance?”

  I thought about the syringe in my pocket. “Um, nothing?”

  “Come on.” He spread his giant hands out. “No judgment here.”

  I tried to resist rolling my eyes, but failed. “Yeah, right.” But he kept looking at me with that expectant expression. So just to get him to stop, I said, “I’d volunteer at the hospital.”

  “Interesting choice. Care to share why?”

  So I could learn more about my favorite hobby. Why else? “Don’t know. I just think it’d be fun.”

  Dr. Stone sat up and grabbed a notepad, began to scribble. “I think we can make that happen.”

  “Seriously?” The scritch scratch of his pen on paper continued. “You’re going to let me go into a hospital?”

  Setting his pen down, he looked back up at me. “Why not?”

  “You know why not. Because of my ‘fictitious disorder.’”

  He gazed at me a long moment and I couldn’t help but notice that he still had that wide-eyed look of wonder you see on kindergartners. By the time you hit the fourth grade though, it’s long gone. At least it was for me.

  “I don’t think your fictitious disorder—your Munchausen Syndrome—makes you less qualified to volunteer there than any other nineteen-year-old. In fact, you might even have a better understanding of what patients and their families go through.”

  “Funny. People who know the truth about me always try to keep me away from medical establishments.”

  He ignored that. “What do you think you’d like to do at the hospital?”

  Learn how to make myself sick so other people couldn’t catch me out. “I’m not sure... Maybe work on the cancer ward?”

  I’d always had a fascination with people who got sick the natural way—because of a chance mutation in their genes, or because their cells were created with a ticking time bomb nestled between them. What would that be like? To wander around with a justified reason to be angry at the world? It was a luxury I couldn’t begin to imagine.

  Dr. Stone quirked his mouth in an expression I knew well: disapproval. But when he spoke, his tone was kind. “Unfortunately, I don’t think that would be such a good idea. But let’s brainstorm other options. I’m assuming you’d like to stay co
nnected to people? That is, you’re more interested in working with live patients and their families than, say, filing?”

  “Um, yeah. You’re assuming correctly.” I’d rather help Mum with her dollhouses than file.

  He chuckled. “Okay. I’ve got an idea. I think I can have someone set you up in the support group section.”

  “Doing what, exactly?” I was instantly suspicious. I’d been tricked into attending group therapy meetings before, and I wasn’t about to fall for that one again.

  “Well, you’d have to talk to the administration about that one. But I’m hoping they can hook you up with something you’d like. They’re fairly good about that. I’ve sent clients their way before.”

  Clients. I liked thinking of myself as his “client,” like he was my personal shopper instead of someone who was trying to help me un-fuck my fucked up life. “Okay.”

  He grinned, a splash of joy across an otherwise imperturbable, serene face. “Excellent. Now, there is one caveat, though.”

  There it was. Always the caveats. I couldn’t function without caveats. Yes, you can go to college—as long as you stay home for the first year. Yes, you can get your driver’s license—as long as you agree you’ll only drive with my permission.

  “What?”

  “I need your permission to inform the hospital administration that you have Munchausen Syndrome. It’s for your protection.”

  We locked gazes for a full minute, during which time I considered getting up and leaving. Saying, to hell with this, I don’t need it.

  But the truth was I didn’t know what else I had. There was the hospital or there was home. Home where I could follow Mum around all day, taunting and pushing her into talking with me, if only to tell me to get out of her space. I could sit by the window and wait for my dad to come home, and fume when he called to say he’d be working overnight at his office. I could inject myself with saliva when Mum wasn’t looking. I could think of a way to go to the store so I could buy more medical supplies. The thought of doing all of that, of going back to how I’d been living only six months ago, made me weary. It was a weary beyond any weariness I’d ever experienced before: this went all the way to my bone marrow; it went to the core seed of my soul.

  And so I looked at Dr. Stone. He wouldn’t be there, in the hospital, to oversee me. I’d probably be able to find a way around that “no cancer ward” rule eventually.

  I crossed my arms, pretended to think. “Will they keep that information confidential?”

  “Absolutely. They’ll need your signed consent, just like I do now, to release it to anyone.”

  “Fine.” I signed the paperwork.

  At the end of the session, on my way out, Dr. Stone asked, “Will you come back and see me again soon?”

  I glanced at a photograph on the side table, of a young Puerto Rican man in a horrendous Christmas sweater. His face was gaunt, drawn, but his smile was infectious.

  “Yeah. Maybe after my first shift at the hospital. At least we’ll have something to talk about then.”

  He chuckled. “That sounds like a plan. Just call me when you’re ready to come back in.”

  My phone beeped in the pocket of my hoodie. It was a text from Mum.

  Waiting downstairs in the car. Hurry.

  Chapter Four

  I settled back home like I’d never left. I munched on an apple as Mum worked on her dollhouse. She was done with the flooring and had started on painting the window trim, a mug of sweet tea by her elbow.

  “When’s Dad going to be back?” I still hadn’t seen him in the ten days I’d been home.

  “Please move back. You’re getting apple on the wood.”

  I scooted my bar stool back a foot, making sure to drag it across the floor so it squealed. “When’s Dad going to be back?”

  Mum sighed, a long exhalation meant to induce guilt. It just made me want to bat her dollhouse to the floor. Without raising her eyes to me, she said, “I don’t know, dear. Sometime this morning was all his message said.”

  “Where is he this time? Arizona?”

  Her paintbrush made meticulous lines along the minuscule trim, each coat working to hide the ugly wood underneath. “Yes. Phoenix.”

  “Do you think he’s got a mistress there?”

  The paintbrush paused momentarily, then continued to paint. Up and down, up and down.

  I laughed. “Come on. It’s a valid question, don’t you think? He goes to Arizona an awful lot.” I swallowed my mouthful of apple. “He may even have a whole little family out there. I saw this news story once—”

  “That’s quite enough.” Someone who didn’t know my mother as well as I did might’ve missed the slight tremor at the edge of her words. “Poisonous little monster.” She said this half under her breath, as if she was talking to herself.

  I stiffened. “What did you say? What did you call me?”

  She stared at me, half-defiant, half-wary of engaging me. “I said, ‘Must you act like such a little monster?’”

  Coward. “No, you didn’t. Say what you really said.”

  Mum looked confused. She was a good actress. “That is what I really said, Saylor.”

  Fine. I’d let her get away with it this time. “You know what they say,” I half-sang. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” I tossed the apple core on the table, where it fell with a soft splat into her palette of wet paint.

  Back in the bathroom, I inspected the injection site on my chest. It wasn’t quite in abscess form yet, but I’d make sure it’d get there. For someone like me, who wore disease like a well-loved sweater, it was important to analyze the cost-benefit ratio of amount of effort required to get disease versus how long the disease lasted. And, of course, how severe it could potentially get. There was a science to it all.

  For instance, poisoning oneself might, at first glance, be thought to be a highly desirable form of self-injury. You got extremely, fantastically sick: vomiting (blood, if the substance caused stomach lesions), diarrhea, fevers, sweating, and even loss of consciousness could result. Most poisons were relatively easy to obtain, too.

  On the other hand, most hospitals were pretty savvy at spotting poisoning, with the symptoms being only a quick click away on the doctor’s Smartphone. Once they knew what you’d been poisoned with, it was just a matter of flushing your system, which they did really quickly.

  And of course, when your family found out the cause of your illness (i.e. that it was self-afflicted), there was much wringing of hands and sighing, as if they couldn’t bear to be dragged into your psychotic corner of the world yet again. All of the physical discomfort associated with being sick, all of that research into which poison to use, and it would all be over in less than a day? To me, that was high cost for extremely low benefit. Ergo, I only employed poisoning in dire circumstances.

  Abscesses, on the other hand, were largely underappreciated. I’d recently discovered that they could cause fevers and pain. They’re not easily pinpointed as caused by self-injury, either, because some people get them for no reason at all, what they called “a genetic predisposition.”

  They required careful tending to, not just to manage the fever and pain, but also because they had to be watched to determine when they were ready for lancing and draining. And once they were drained, you had to take care of the site and guard against infection while it healed. All that added up to low cost (just a few injections of spit, a free substance) for a large return.

  My Catholic grandma used to say that we’d been “visited by Jesus and his angels” when something good happened, like me getting over a fever or my dad landing a client he wanted. Likewise, whenever a door to a new method of injury opened, I felt as if Jesus and his angels had put on a whole fucking performance for me. The experience was nothing short of glorious. I imagined myself standing in front of my syringe, hands raised up, eyes closed, and expression orgasmic with rapture.

  I spat into the syringe and injected the skin adjacent to the previous injec
tion site. Closing my eyes, I rubbed it to make sure the saliva dissipated completely. I imagined the bacteria in the saliva as orange and flame-like, licking through my veins, hungry, ferocious. I willed my immune system to not fight them, to just be devoured, to accept its fate. In that flowery pink and gold bathroom from my childhood, I sought deliverance with a headstrong fervor. I needed this.

  I slipped the syringe back into my pocket and walked downstairs to wait for my father.

  Our house had what Mum called a “bay window.” It was this huge thing that took up the front wall of the house and overlooked the driveway. I could see out of it even from just outside my bedroom, in the upstairs hall.

  A bay window was probably great for people who entertained guests a lot, since it gave you a grand perspective of the entrance. In our house, the fact that it existed at all was laughable. We buttoned ourselves up tighter than a maiden’s corset in the sixteenth century. The only person who came close to being a guest in our house was my dad.

  I sat on the bench by the window and watched the weeping willows sway in the breeze, counting each silent minute because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Our house was like that; it seemed to swallow time. When my dad’s gigantic Escalade pulled up the driveway, spraying the trees with sludge from under his tires, I could’ve been sitting there for an hour or for five minutes. I honestly didn’t know.

  I slipped silently into the kitchen so I could catch him when he came in. Leaning against the counter, my breathing got shallow as I waited for the faux-jovial greeting he always bellowed out when he returned from one of his trips. There was something about the way he said it that grated on my nerves every time.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Where’s my beautiful family?” He said it extra-loud so the baritone of his voice rang out in the mudroom.

  I heard Mum put her dollhouse supplies down and head over to greet him. After knuckling the abscess I was so carefully cultivating, I followed.

  My parents were deep in a whispered argument when I walked into the mud room. My dad’s head was bent down toward hers, his comb-over trying hard to disguise the fact that he was getting older. When they saw me, they stopped talking. My mother’s face settled into its default nonchalant expression, and my dad beamed at me. His expression was so bright and joyful, so completely overcompensating and fake. It reminded me of those tacky plastic gems I used to collect when I was little.