Page 77 of How to Walk Away

“The prick who broke your heart.”

But I wasn’t sure I had a heart anymore. It felt like maybe it had burned away in the crash. I just lay limp. One breath in, then out. Then another in, then out.

“Are you refusing physical therapy?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that I could refuse. I kept my eyes on the window. “Yes. I guess I am.”

The next day, I refused again. The day after that, too.

My family was concerned. Ian reported me to the supervising physician, who passed the reports on to the social worker and psychologist on staff, as well as my parents. The professionals agreed that a “dose of depression” was normal, even healthy, in my situation, but my parents, and even Kitty, disagreed.

It threw our family ecosystem into disarray. I had always been the hardworking, cheery, rule-following achiever, and Kitty had always been the source of all our problems.

Simple.

What did it mean—to any of us—formeto be the problem?

It led them to desperate measures. I later found out that despite all the tension between Kitty and my mom—worse now—Kitty and my parents arranged a secret rendezvous within forty-eight hours of Chip’s confession to figure out how to fix me.

They were all business—coming together for the greater good, focusing on the task at hand, meeting in the coffee shop of a Barnes & Noble and then scouring the self-help books to find some inspirational reading to get me back on track. Kitty and my mother wordlessly agreed to set aside everything that had gone down between them, and they wound up spending a hundred dollars on titles likeWhy Me? A Daily Guide for Getting Back to NormalandThe Joy of Suffering.

My dad suggested that Kitty should be the one to bring the books to me because I’d be less likely to view her as a foe.

“I’m not a foe!” my mother protested.

But she was outvoted.

***

IT WAS NICEfor them to have a project, in a way, Kitty admitted later. What purpose would it have served to rehash all their conflict and strife, anyway? They left things unresolved but moved on to the more important pressing problem of me.

“Didn’t the two of you at least apologize to each other?” I asked, when Kit confessed what they’d been up to.

“Apologize? What for?”

“Well,” I said, “you, for telling me Mom’s biggest secret against her wishes. And Mom, for pretty much your whole childhood.”

Kitty shook her head. “There was no apologizing. Have you ever heard Mom apologize?”

Fair enough. Apologizing wasn’t Mom’s thing.

I refused to read the self-help books, of course. They should’ve seen that coming. When Kitty tried to read some excerpts aloud, I plugged my ears and sang Aretha Franklin. So, late at night—or rather, after 9:00P.M.—after I’d fallen asleep, Kitty read the books herself with a flashlight.

If I wouldn’t help myself, by God, she’d do it for me.

It was the time pressure that got to all of them. I had three and a half weeks left before the window of improvement would slam closed for good, and, in the wake of my depression, my improvement had stalled.

In truth, my improvements had stalled before Chip’s confession—the whole week before had been significantly absent of improvements, as well. We all just noticed it after the breakup. Before, when I still believed in my fairy tale, I viewed the stall as a natural plateau—an adjustment period on the way to more inspiring success.

Now, I saw the slowdown as part of a different narrative: the beginning of the end.

I didn’t say that to anybody, but I guess it was obvious.

Then my parents decided I needed a “tutor.”

My mother brought it up at lunch. We were eating Vietnamese noodle salad from their favorite spot, and my dad was enjoying it so much, he was smacking.

“So,” my mother said brightly, holding a forkful of noodles, “you’re starting your last three weeks here—”

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