‘I’m not going on Oprah.’ Celeste Brent put the small razor back under the computer mouse pad, where she kept it. She didn’t need to feel the blade against her skin right now. ‘I can’t handle… being on television again.’
Victor Gamby’s voice boomed from the speakerphone. ‘I understand your hesitation. But think of the people we could help, sharing our stories with millions.’
‘You sound like a commercial.’
‘I’m selling an idea, Celeste. Being back on television might get you past your fears.’
‘I’m not leaving my house. And I’m not having a media zoo here.’
‘Do me a favor. Open your door, stand in the doorway. You don’t have to step outside. Just try it.’
‘No.’
‘I could ask them to do a satellite link with your house when I’m on the show. That way we could both appear together. Celeste, we could get America’s moms talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, make it a real health-care issue, encourage people to think about it the way they do depression or cancer. Please.’
‘Victor, you go. You’re an actual hero.’
‘Oh, please.’
‘I’m just someone who had a really bad fifteen minutes.’ She leaned close to the plus-sized computer screen, read the words that a young girl half a country away had posted to Victor’s online discussion group this morning: Most days I’m so sad sadder than anybody should be and I just want to curl up amp; cry forever and the bite of the blade into my skin is the only way I can feel does anyone understand?
‘Celeste. Reconsider. Millions of people watched you on Castaway. They know you, they rooted for you,’ Victor said. ‘It’s Oprah, for God’s sakes. You cannot say no.’
‘No.’ Celeste reread the girl’s words on the computer screen and thought: I understand, sweetie, I truly do. She clicked to the next message in the forum. Jared T, having soul-emptying dreams about the Battle of Fallujah. She wished she could give Jared T a hug. She swiveled the chair away from the computer screen. ‘Did I tell you I got an offer for another reality show?’
‘Celeste, that’s wonderful.’
‘Brace yourself, and imagine the possibilities: Group Therapy.’
‘Please be kidding.’
‘I couldn’t make this up. They want me, and Denise Daniels, the child star from Too Cool Kimmy – she had a nervous breakdown last year – and that college basketball star who’s supposedly bipolar, and a couple of other celebrities who have had mental illnesses, all living together in a house with Doctor Frank, the talk-show host, and, yes, it gets better, once a week a player gets booted out of the house.’
‘ Castaway for crazy people,’ Victor said.
‘Oh, no one says that,’ Celeste said. ‘They just think it.’
‘But that’s what we’re fighting every day. This perception that people with traumas aren’t really sick, that they just need to buck up and get over it. They wouldn’t do a show like that for people who had cancer, would they?’
‘No.’
‘So stop acting like a person with PTSD and act like a famous person with PTSD. Let good come from your fame. Help me, Celeste.’
The sensor that alerted Celeste whenever anyone entered her front yard chimed and opened a video window on her computer’s monitor. It showed Allison Vance, hurrying up the stone walkway. Odd. She didn’t have an appointment scheduled with Allison.
‘Victor. I have to go. I can’t do the TV appearance with you, but I know you’ll do a wonderful job.’
‘Celeste-’
‘I’ll call you soon, Victor, take care,’ Celeste said, and hung up. TV again. Leave the house? Or have strangers gawking at her? Or wanting to hurt her again? No, never. The doorbell buzzed. She pulled hard at the rubber band looping her wrist and let it snap against the tender skin. Once, twice, the pain brief and sharp but settling her nerves.
She went to answer the door. She unlocked it, released the dead bolts, said, close to the wood, ‘It’s open,’ and took five steps back, just so Allison couldn’t pull her out of the house and into the open air. Not that she would, but Celeste didn’t take chances. Allison came inside, clutching a briefcase bag close to her hips.
‘Hi. Did I forget an appointment?’ Celeste asked.
‘Not at all, Celeste, but I have a favor to ask of you, if it’s not an intrusion. How are you today?’
‘Extraordinarily stupid. I just declined a chance to meet Oprah,’ she said with a tone of defiance.
‘I’m sure it would have been exciting. But also a tremendous spotlight to be under.’
‘You don’t think I’m making it up?’
‘You’re famous.’
Celeste shrugged. ‘Used to be.’
‘We could up your antidepressants. It might make leaving the house easier.’
‘Other than not wanting to leave the house, I feel okay. I don’t want more pills.’ Celeste toyed with the rubber band, popped it against her skin.
Allison pointed at Celeste’s wrist. ‘And how’s the rubber band working out?’
‘Saccharine when you want sugar.’
‘But you haven’t hurt yourself today.’
‘No. Not today.’
‘Great. And yesterday?’
‘Once. Just once.’ She fingered the thin slash on her arm.
‘Have you eaten today?’
‘I did. Bowl of cereal for breakfast, salad for lunch.’
‘Wonderful.’
As if eating two simple meals and not slicing your skin meant sanity. Celeste twisted the rubber band tight. A spark of pain, nothing more, just enough to remind her she was alive and Brian lay dead and buried, shut up in a coffin, unable to see the sun, breathe the air.
‘I’d like to borrow your computer,’ Allison said. ‘I know you have a really powerful setup, and I need a machine for quick number-crunching. It’ll only take a few minutes.’
Celeste almost said, No, no, and hell no, she didn’t care for the idea of anyone touching her computer – her precious and only link to the rest of the world. But this was Allison, the twice-a-week bright spot of hope. So she swallowed and said, ‘No problem.’
‘My system got nailed with a virus this morning. Down and dead.’
‘Bring it to me and I’ll see if I can fix it,’ said Celeste.
‘That’s kind of you. I just have research materials I need to compile for a report. I have the programs and the data I need on disk.’
‘My computer’s in the study. Would you like some coffee? Or a soda?’
‘No, thank you. I really don’t want to intrude.’
‘You’re not. It’s down the hall to your right. The system’s already on.’
Allison thanked her and headed down the hallway. After a few moments Celeste heard the click of the keyboard, the hum of the CD drive.
Suddenly she wanted the razor against her skin, to know its gentle bite. It hit her like a fire, smoldering, then bursting into fresh flame. Sure you do, she thought, just because Allison’s here and you’d get immediate attention. You want attention, call the television producers back and tell tbem you’ll do that new reality sideshow. Now, that’s attention. She stretched the rubber band and it snapped in half. She dug in her purse for another, past the vial of pills Allison had given her the previous week, past the little razor she kept hidden at the purse’s bottom. Her fingers closed around the razor case.
Just a nip of a cut. Just enough.
She closed her eyes and the world folded around her, and she was trapped in the sun-hot house, her and Brian’s dream home, bought with her Castaway prize money, and she was bound and crying and begging the Disturbed Fan not to hurt Brian, to leave him alone, to hurt her please God not him and the Disturbed Fan blew her a kiss and bent over Brian, the knife bright in his hand.
Celeste sank to the chair. The memory tore into her worse than the razor, and when the flashes came she couldn’t gouge her skin fast enough. But now she stopped herself, she caught her breath, the only pain the heat of grief at the back of her eyes.
‘Celeste?’ Allison’s hand came down on her shoulder.
‘Don’t touch me.’ Her voice didn’t sound like her own, but lower and beaten.
Allison withdrew her hand. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ She stood up and the purse tumbled to the tile floor, spilling its contents in a clatter.
‘Celeste. You were having a flashback.’
‘Past tense. It’s gone.’
‘You’re safe.’
‘Yes, thank you, I know.’ She wanted Allison gone, a flush of embarrassment creeping up her skin.
‘What triggered it?’
‘I think… the sound of you typing. I never hear anyone on a keyboard except myself and then I don’t notice it. The Disturbed Fan – after he’d gotten into my house, after he’d tied me up, he got on our computer. He hacked my fan Web site.’ Her throat felt rough as sandpaper. ‘The first step of not having to share me with the world.’ She shuddered.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m all right.’ The urge to cut started to fade, from fire to smoke.
‘I’ll stay with you so you don’t hurt yourself.’
‘No need. I might cry. I won’t cut.’
Allison nodded. ‘You’re making real progress.’
‘I hope.’ She hoped. Progress. Baby steps. She still couldn’t imagine opening the front door and walking out into the grander world. Too much.
‘I’m done with the computer. Thank you again.’
‘It’s no problem.’
‘I don’t mean to pry. I saw on your screen, you’re logged on to one of the post-traumatic support blogs.’
‘Yes. Victor Gamby’s. I think I mentioned him to you. He’s a friend of mine in Los Angeles – he’s tireless about raising awareness of PTSD issues. He’s the one who wanted me to appear on Oprah with him.’
‘I hope you’re strong enough to accept his offer.’
‘God, are you kidding? No way. No way in hell.’
‘Someday, Celeste, you’ll leave this house. You’ll want to.’
Celeste couldn’t speak. Allison cleared her throat, blinked as though she were searching for the right words. ‘Those discussion groups… it’s good that you’re reaching out to others.’
‘I don’t talk about myself. I just read what other people say.’
‘But it helps to know you’re not alone.’
‘I’ve made an art of being alone.’
To her surprise Allison knelt among the scatterings from the spilled purse, fished out a fresh rubber band, stood awkwardly, and slid the band on Celeste’s wrist. ‘There may come a day you don’t want to be alone.’
Celeste shrugged. ‘Who’d want a basket case like me?’
‘Oh, Celeste.’ Allison shook her head. ‘I have a second favor to ask.’
‘Sure.’
‘If anyone calls from the hospital – especially Doctor Hurley – you haven’t seen me today.’
‘Who’s Doctor Hurley?’
Allison stuck out her tongue, rolled her eyes. ‘My boss at my part-time job.’
‘Shame on you, playing hooky,’ Celeste said.
‘We all need a mental-health day.’
‘Or week, or month, or year.’
‘I’ll call you tomorrow, see how you are,’ Allison said.
‘Thanks.’
Allison left, and Celeste shut the heavy door behind her. She peered around the curtain, watching over the low adobe wall surrounding her yard as Allison got into her BMW and drove off. Celeste stood at the window, her hand against the reinforced pane of glass. Twenty seconds later another car shot by and then the mud road lay quiet, and Celeste listened to the wind rattle in the cottonwoods.
She went back to the computer – Allison had thoughtfully left it as she found it, the posting from the boy-soldier back from Baghdad front and center. She clicked on E-mail Reply and wrote: It does get better, sweetie, be sure and find a doctor who really understands PTSD and will listen to what you tell him/her. Don’t let them tell you it’s just in your head or depression, don’t let them use nothing but pills to numb you. Don’t lose faith. If you were here, I’d give you a big hug if you’d let me.
Then, to the girl cutting herself, Celeste wrote: I wanted to cut today and I didn’t. Lately I’m more able to resist the urge, maybe it’s the change of the seasons maybe I’m just less ‘crazy’ today but we’re not crazy we’re broken and we are our own glue sweet girl know that we on the list care and if I were there I’d give you a big hug and tell you: You will, you will, you will be okay. She signed both replies ‘ceebee,’ the name from her initials she used on the group, because she dared not use her own. That would bring out the media vultures.
She pressed Send. She didn’t want anyone else to suffer the hell that she did, she was only twenty-eight but here were these kids younger than she, already with savaged souls, and it broke what was left of her heart. Saying no to Victor, the flashback, reading other people’s sadness, she needed a lift. She hunted for the antidepressants Allison had prescribed for her, kneeling in the jumbled spill from her purse. The razor. The rubber bands. Her wallet.
The vials of pills she kept in her purse were gone. White pills and blue pills. She took the blue if her mood sank low, like now, and she needed the comfort of an antidepressant, the white pills right before a therapy session with Allison, to calm her, to make it easier to talk about Brian and the Disturbed Fan. But the bottle had just been there on the floor, hadn’t it, when Allison got her a replacement rubber band?
She knelt, glancing under the chair and the coffee table, finally getting up and wandering the room. She went to her bathroom and found one bottle holding the sweet blue numbers. But no white pills. Where the hell had she put them? She should have asked Allison for a refill, but that was all right, she didn’t have a session for two more days.
She downed a blue meanie, as she called them, and went and sat in front of her window. She observed the shifting sunlight of the day from inside her cage. The thought nagged at her. Those pills had been in her purse this afternoon, she was sure of it.
Perhaps Allison had taken the pills, palming them when she rummaged through Celeste’s purse. But why, without telling her? And asking her to keep her secret for her, as if they were teenage girls, was downright odd. Actually unprofessional. Keeping a secret meant responsibility, and she wanted nothing to do with responsibility.
She got up and headed for the phone.