The Book of Jodie



  The Book of Jodie

  Eileen Gonzalez

  Originally Published in The Potomac Review

  Copyright 2014 Eileen Gonzalez

   

  The room tried too hard to look pleasant and unthreatening. Floral-patterned wallpaper blended into the olive carpet without even a baseboard for contrast. The furniture consisted entirely of soft angles and felt like sandpaper. Months-old magazines enticed readers with photos showing The Ascent of Man and Princess Anne’s engagement, but I didn’t touch them. I reminded myself that I only needed to spend one hour in that place. It didn’t help.

  I tapped my index finger against my thigh. Dad sat beside me, stiff-backed and neutral. He originally planned to make Mummy drive me here, but I begged him to bring me instead. I could endure anything as long as I knew Dad would be there in the end.

  The click of a door exploded in the silence. All I can bring myself to recall about the face of the man who opened it are his horrific smile and even more horrific eyes. They were a vulture’s eyes, devoid of all feeling except the readiness to pounce at the slightest hint of wrongdoing. The fact that his idea of wrongdoing differed so violently from my own made my heart twist. I looked to Dad, a plea for mercy.

  “You did promise,” he said. Well, what was I supposed to say? No?

  I dragged my feet through the smiling vulture’s doorway. He introduced himself as Dr Lyme, making sure to emphasise how much he cared about my mental health and how helpful he would be if only I allowed it. I twitched as the door shut us in.

  I still dream of Lyme’s office sometimes, with its stern wooden desk and greying walls and windows far too small to offer comfort. I feel the tacky blue chair through my clothes as I press back into it in a futile attempt to escape that awful, cheerful face, my palms sweating against the armrests. I see the wall behind him boasting framed justifications for his title of psychiatrist. I’d already decided the man didn’t deserve this distinction and resolved to call him simply Lyme, at least for the moment. I could think of worse names if he proved half as nasty as he looked.

  “Now then.” He eyed the papers on his desk. “Joshua, yes? Is that what you like to be called, or is there some other name you prefer?”

  I preferred Jodie. I would use it as a stage name when I began my record-shattering musical career. Jimmy always teased me about Jodie being a girls’ name, and I hadn’t decided on a surname yet, but that didn’t stop us from spending our Saturdays singing along to the radio with pencils taped into makeshift microphones, and a mirror borrowed from Mummy’s vanity providing instant feedback on our every move.

  “Joshua’s fine,” I said.

  “Very well then.” He straightened the papers and clicked open his pen. “Let’s get straight to business, shall we?”

  Straight to business. Never heard that one before. “Let’s.”

  “How long have you had these… fantasies?”

  From the moment Jimmy laughed at the word shittim in catechism class. He wasn’t subtle about it either: he just shook his copper mane and belted it out, his normally steady sienna eyes shut in mirth. Soon enough, I laughed with him, and when we had to spend the rest of class in opposite corners, I couldn’t bring myself to care. Father O’Donnell instructed us to spend our punishment in reverent self-reflection, but I spent it imagining Jimmy as one of my back-up dancers, with a bright silk shirt, white leather trousers and matching waistcoat, and hair just like Brian Connolly’s. Mummy fretted when she heard of my misbehaviour, but Dad assured her that such antics were typical of new teenagers and took me to the cellar to help me finish carving my new jewellery box.

  I could have told Lyme all of this. I also could have jumped off the Eiffel Tower when my family visited Paris last summer.

  “I used to steal my mother’s jewellery and put on her make-up when she was out,” I said.

  “And how long have you fancied other boys?”

  I tried and failed to control the shudder. I hated the way he said it, so clinical and formal, like he was describing a condition and not a person. Like my feelings were nothing more than exhibits to be studied and evaluated and fixed.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I want to help you, Joshua.” And I want to be Richard Nixon in front of the Watergate Committee. “I can’t do that if you won’t talk to me.”

  “Well, I don’t want to answer.”

  “Alright.” He sounded agreeable enough, but I had the impression he would try to squeeze the information out of me later. I needed to stay alert with this one. He’d swindle Pope Paul if given a chance.

  “Do you ever feel neglected at home?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Are you left alone for long periods? Do your parents pay enough attention to you?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean no, they don’t leave me alone and yes, they pay me lots of attention!”

  My heart and stomach felt like they’d switched places, sending a column of white heat through my ribcage. I knew he would try to make me twist my words into a net he could use to drag me back for future sessions. I just hadn’t expected it so soon. I hoped Jimmy’s parents wouldn’t bring him here. They looked angrier than Mummy when they caught us in the church garden, our lips joined in what we foolishly believed to be an innocent gesture. Only Dad saw it as I did and spent the evening distracting me with stories of his childhood in Ireland as I rubbed my eyes red. I could only hope he would do the same when I escaped this latest example of Mummy’s tough love.

  Lyme peered at me out of the corners of narrowed eyes, like I was hiding his digital watch behind my back and insisting I wasn’t. As if I’d want that new-fangled monstrosity.

  “Don’t you ever feel neglected at all?” he asked, and I swear I saw the start of another smile curling his thin lips.

  “Yeah, but everyone feels that way sometimes. You’d be out of a job if life was perfect.”

  He laughed a laugh just as ugly as he and said I had a point. Of course I did.

  The meeting dragged. Lyme asked stupid questions. I gave stupid answers or none at all. I didn’t bother to hide my constant checking of the (non-digital) clock to my right, or my sighs when I realised God hadn’t finished testing me. Still, Job’s trials were far more challenging than this. I could handle one self-important prat. I only had to zone out Lyme and replay God’s words to another Joshua: Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest....

  Oh, I knew He hadn’t said it for me. But sometimes, after another week of sitting alone during break or another fight with Mummy over what clothes I could or couldn’t wear, I liked to pretend.

  Thirty-seven minutes (hours?) and half the Old Testament later, Lyme admitted that he’d run out of questions. I aborted a grin. Had my trial ended? What did I win?

  “In cases like this,” he said, “what we usually find is that the patient has, or had at one point, allowed someone close to them—a relative, perhaps—to engage them in inappropriate relations. You say you’re close to your father, correct?”

  My chest couldn’t have constricted more if it tried, but I was distracted by the sick swirling feeling in the pit of my stomach. My eyes locked on Lyme’s empty gaze. His long fingers formed a granite lattice, as cold and forbidding as the moon.

  “That’s a filthy thing to say.”

  “Are you saying I’m wrong?”

  “Yes. I’m also saying that if you’re the sort of normal person I’m expected to convert into, I have a better chance of getting into heaven as a pervert.”

  Lyme, apparently immune to abuse, suggested we spend the
remainder of our time in prayer. I almost pointed out that Mummy had prayed at me for years with no success. That was how I ended up in Lyme’s office in the first place. But if he wanted to shut his mouth and talk to God instead of me, who was I to stop him?

  I enjoyed praying very much, though the Lord did not see fit to answer mine with a plague of slugs to invade Lyme’s car or smite his watch. I could only hope He would compare my prayers and Lyme’s side by side and decide that mine outdid his in sincerity. I focused on the clock, hands still clasped, a very different prayer entering my mind. The moment all three hands pointed up, I walked out.

  Dad waited in the car, a book propped against the steering wheel. His eyes seemed distant, scanning the horizon with nothing resembling interest. They snapped to me as I clambered inside.

  “Don’t bother bringing me back,” I said.

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” he replied.

  The engine rumbled to life as we pulled away. I watched the mirror to make sure Lyme’s building was growing smaller. A man in bland clothing appeared from behind the building, carefully approaching the front door. I knew he must have been a kindly gardener or an innocent secretary returning from a smoke, and that Lyme couldn’t possibly have followed us so fast. I still clasped the armrests until we turned a corner and everything vanished behind a jewellery shop. Ha.

  The turn sent sunlight into my eyes, but our car bumped along in fits and starts. The road ahead must have been crowded and rough. I scrunched my eyes into slits and looked out the window. The sky burned blue, searing into the flock of glassy-eyed people on the sidewalk. My chest ached at the sight of them, jostling through life without even thinking to look up, so instead I watched a flock of collared doves take flight.

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