Read Online Something Right Behind Her by Claire Hollander - Free Book Online

at me, but
instead of hitting the side of her head, I caught her in the face. Of course,
since she’s like sixty-five pounds and has this tiny little nose, she started
bleeding all over the place. “Oh my God, Mill, I’m so sorry,” I kept saying,
grabbing half a roll of toilet paper, because I couldn’t find any damn kleenex.
    “I know you
didn’t mean it!” She wailed, but you could see from the look in her eyes, I’d
really whacked her hard, and she was still a little afraid of me.
    When Mom got
home five minutes later, there was blood all over the kitchen, and the two of
us were crying. I was done for.
    I tried to keep
a low profile after that, thinking the whole thing might blow over. I sped
through dinner, and got back up to my room as quickly as possible. My room was
usually my favorite place to be. I had this amazing baby blue bean bag chair,
and this really cool painting Jill did last year. She’s hugely talented. It’s
of all these girls lying on beach chairs, but they’re all upside down, floating
in the air over the water. It usually gave me a calm feeling when I looked at
it - the kind of feeling you get when you read a poem and you think the poet
really got something right. That was the cool thing about Jill. She was
clueless, and she didn’t really see how awesome she was, but she could pull off
a painting like that. This time, though, I couldn’t find anything in the
picture to relate to. The girls just seemed dumb, or lazy, not caring where
they were. I wished Jill was a different sort of girl, one who wasn’t so
obsessed with bathing suits and bodies. I wished Jill had painted something
that showed how I felt then, buried up to my neck, unable to get out. I hated
Sharon. I hated myself for taking my shit out on Milly. Naturally, Mom told Dad
the whole story. Now, they were leaving me alone. Downstairs, no doubt, they
were having a grown-up style conversation about what the hell to do with me.
    It was Dad who
came in and kind of tumbled down onto the bean bag. I was curled up on my
pillow pretending to read. Dad has this really high forehead and very light
brown eyes. He looks really serious most of the time, unless he’s totally
cracking up over some stupid movie. He can laugh at the same joke half a
million times.
    Dad looked up at
me and said, “Mom told me things are getting pretty rough with Eve. Seems to us
like you’re venting your anger, not that we blame you. We think maybe you need
someone to talk to other than us.”
    “I’ll be
alright, Dad, I said. “It was just a bad week.”
    “Sorry kid, it’s
gotta happen,” was all he said. My Dad has a way of talking, which comes from
being a lawyer, I guess, that makes him sound so sure of things it doesn’t
really occur to you to argue. I guess that’s why Mom didn’t come in herself.
She sent in the big guns.
    Later that
night, I came back downstairs. Mom was reading a book on the couch. Dad and
Milly must’ve been off watching TV. I curled up next to Mom. I knew she
wouldn’t ask me about the details of my tantrum. She just wanted me near her,
and I could feel that pull from my bedroom. “It’s been a rough few weeks, huh?”
she said.
    “I guess so,” I
said.
    “You know you
can talk to me anytime,” she said. ‘And your father, too. He wants you to go
meet him for lunch in the city sometime soon. That might be a good idea. I
think you need to get your mind off Eve.”
    “Yeah, maybe,” I
said, and I lay there, with my head against her shoulder. I wasn’t sure whether
getting my mind off Eve would make things any better. It seemed, actually, like
when I wasn’t thinking about her that things got out of hand. If I’d had my
mind more on Eve that night with Doug, if I’d stayed with her until he’d gone
off to bed, none of this would ever have happened.

 
    CHAPTER SIX

 
    Since Mom’s a
teacher and knows about a million social workers and therapy-types, it took
about thirty seconds for her to find me a