Original Fiction: sidewalk chalk
sidewalk chalk
everybody writes books about their alcoholic parents. see jack see a shrink. see jack laugh right into his face. original. unbeta’d. 1501 words, pg13.
notes: this is possibly the first draft of something that i’m really putting together. but it’s been expanded from we loved last because i don't think i'm really quite done with the story. but anyhow we’ll see where it goes. *laughs*
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“Everybody writes books about their alcoholic parents,” she says dryly, the day the temperatures rise and swell straight into the nineties, “or alcoholic parents write the books that eat their children. It’s interchangeable most of the time.”
Jack will always be a small girl. It’s the first thing he always thinks when she walks through the door of his office, her shoulders hunched much like her mother’s did in the early years, singed but not torn. But really, Jack is a small girl and it’s the only clear, concise thing that he seems to keep considering as he watches her settle in her spot.
She never takes the seat in front of his desk, but he knows that her freckles scatter in circles over her nose. She never takes one of the couches, the green or the red - they clash, his wife always says delightedly as if she were talking charming quirks of personality. But Jack strays to the window, lingering in small sways of contemplation and almost ready to jump.
“I mean, really. Who the fuck wants to keep reading about somebody else’s stupid parents? It’s not going to help me, of course. Or the next right-said-Fred that’s fucked up because his dad had a thing for wet t-shirt contests. Really. Who wants to write a book?”
He ponders her question, if anything, just to take the moment to stand. He picks up a small book as he hugs it to his hip and steps closer to watch her settle next to window, perched on the edge of the sill. He’s been her doctor for more than two sessions and this, the third, will seemingly determine the difference between progress and the selfishness of his curiosity.
But it’s been years since he’s seen her mother, fell in love with her, and tied her to the brink instead of letting her fall over. It was the most he could do for her and he supposes, if anything, sending Jack to him is her way of saying that she still hates him for it.
“And what about you, Jack?” He suddenly finds himself saying, leaning back against his desk and trying to come to terms with his job, not playing himself.
“Me?”
She blinks and he remembers his name is Tom - Tom the doctor, Tom the Cambridge student, and Tom the poet that should’ve been Ted, really, that was responsible for nearly killing her mother. He wonders briefly if she knows the connection between him and her mother, the way he seems to hesitate in between questions; of course, he pauses because a good doctor always leaves spaces for them to feel comfortable.
“Yeah,” he treads on, “you sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
She snorts. “Of course, I am.”
Jack is a small girl, but Jack is also a pretty girl and not his daughter. Her hair is limp, but quiet and skews over her shoulders in short, little curls. His fingers ache when he thinks about them and, if he were eighteen too, he might be able to go forth and touch them. Just to make her laugh.
But as always, his inclinations turn and fold neatly as he glances back into his file with her names and allergies and the times she’s sent herself to the hospital in a bow.
He bites his lip, lying. “Your mother’s an alcoholic?”
“No.”
“Your father?”
“No.” But she stops, looking up at him. “But he’s dead. And I’m sure, if he could, he’d be one of those fellows that would write a book about me and call it something wistful like - gravity.”
She’s mocking him, a small, crass smile sighing itself across her mouth. He feels himself start to blush, but looks away and stands, dropping the book at hip. It’s a journal. A practice exercise that he’s sure that she’s bound to go and hate. But this is called his job and the indulgences that are there are only meant for his head.
“What about your mother?” He knows the answers to these questions, the next few, and it’s easier to lie to her as he runs through them.
“She paints.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Paints?”
“Pictures,” she shrugs, “Large, angry ones of the ‘things that go bump in the night’ variety. Strange too. Because they’re quite good.”
“Really.”
“You’ve seen them, doctor,” she chastises. “People spend so much money trying to buy the crazy lady’s head - all those pictures just to say why yes, I know art.”
Maybe, he should ring a colleague and asks them to take her case from him. It would be the right thing to do instead of staring firmly, straight and in between the part of her lips.
“You resent her.” It’s the only thing that he has to give, almost stumbling and giving himself up. But what would he be giving himself up to? Not her, exactly, but to wave and wear of the years that he’s left behind. It scares him mostly.
“Of course, I do. She’s my mother. I’ll resent her for the damn world.”
“She loves you.”
Jack rolls her eyes, her legs dangling over the edge of the couch. He finds his mouth drying a little, completely enthralled and even charmed; this case was not supposed to be his, he remembers, but then there was paper pushing and in between paper pushing, Jack seemed to emerge straight on top of his desk. Or, well, this is how he’ll tell the story at cocktail parties.
“She doesn’t love me, doctor, she doesn’t know I’m here. And maybe, that’s the worst part of it all.”
The silence fits between them briefly and then he hears himself start to ask about the smaller things, school and boys and activities that girls her age should start showing as they rise into the university. She has no inclination to paint, she says, and laughs when she tells him about boys that ask her where she got her name.
He remains committed to listening to her, periodically slipping into glimpses of her breasts and legs, the way she seems to know that he’s watching but remains unkind in caring. She rises from the window seat halfway, reaching his desk and picking up the journal he held before.
“All right.”
And he decides to cut this short, just today and in their third sessions. He can feel the sweat start to glamorize the column of his throat, tired and worn and laughing in his ears. He presses his hands against the desk and leans back to watch her with a firm gaze.
“Is that it?”
“Yes,” he nods. “Until Friday, of course - I want you to take the journal, Jack. Start writing, maybe. I won’t read it -”
She snorts and he watches as her fingers start to pick up through the pages of the little book, her thumb swimming along a few pages. She bites her lip, curious, and he finds himself having to look away.
He finishes instead, “ - unless, you feel that there’s a need to share something. But I want you to try and use it. It could be good.”
“It could.”
It’s all she agrees to. He imagines her laughing over blank pages, perhaps even sitting at one of those small coffee shops in the city. There will be a boy too, maybe even several, leaning over and hoping to meet the next Sylvia Plath ready to do their language homework.
It’s a pity too, he concludes, that she’s here with him instead of out there with all of them. He remains sort of selfish in that thought, keeping it to himself for the next session and even the one after that. There are some things that these patients don’t need to be told.
“I should go,” she says.
“I know,” he agrees.
“I’ll miss the bus,” she adds and wins the last of the conversation, stapling her things together and into her bag. He never does see any bits, any pieces that he can put together and diagnose.
But he does wait for a polite goodbye, seeing as this is Jack and he’s known Jack through the singing of her mother, each piece painted and forming a woman that’s not even with them yet. Perhaps, he even thinks, Jack is more aware of that than the rest of them. It’s scary to think that teenage girls have that flux of power, to know and to indulge before the rest of them.
“Goodbye.”
He says it first and then last as she nods, doesn’t smile, and picks out her bus pass from the pocket of her jacket. She thumbs it, much like she did the journal, and then nods again politely as she ducks through the door. He waits, just to be sure, and hopes that she might come back. It’s the third session and he still thinks that maybe, just maybe, she might have more to say.
The open door laughs a little harder at him.