Taking Notes

cartoon duck 

“Louise, I think the stomach troubles are related to the separation anxiety.” 

I sit cross-legged on the yellow polka dot couch in Dolph’s office, Game Boy in my lap. My mother sits on the blue loveseat across from me, hands sandwiched between her knees. 

“Hmm,” says Mom. 

Dolph leans into the armrest of his chair, notepad in his lap, rolling the end of a pen between his teeth. The first time I came in, I asked if the duck on his notebook was from DuckTales. He said he didn’t know. So I sang the theme song until he asked me to stop.

“So, really, it’s more a case of managing the sleep disruptions—the bathroom trips. Getting her on a good schedule during the week while she’s with you, you know?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

I bounce my knees and tilt the screen of my Game Boy toward my face. Stupid that I can’t turn the music up. I tried to play with the volume on the first time we came in and Mom smacked my leg.

“But my concern is what’s happening when she’s with Frank.” 

“You can’t control that, Louise.” 

I flick the down arrow on my Game Boy to cycle through my Pidgeotto’s attack moves. I’m in the middle of the Cerulean City gym battle, and Misty’s Starmie has wiped out half of my battle team. I eye the volume dial on the side of my Game Boy. The battle music is the best part.

“Well—” 

“You just have to do what you can while you have her during the week.” 

I glance up from my game at my mother across the room. She’s looking at me, the corners of her mouth puckered inward like she’s got something in her mouth she wants to spit out, half-chewed, too sour to swallow. An unripe kiwi. Or the pit of a plum. When she catches my eyes, she raises her brows and smiles.

I smile back and return to my game.

leather 

“And how often do you see your dad now?” 

I can’t help but wonder how Patricia picks her office each morning. Tuesdays and Thursdays she takes the one with the noisy radiator. Fridays she gets the parking lot window. There are enough counselors at Catholic Family Services that I haven’t seen the same one twice. Are the rooms like musical chairs? Is it just a wild scramble in the morning to get the one you want? 

“Hmm?” I glance up from the pigeons huddled along the outside eave. 

“How often do you see your dad?” 

“Oh. It used to be every weekend, but I have Friday night rehearsals for my highschool’s theater production and I work at Fortinos now on Saturdays, so—” 

Patricia’s pen begins to scratch.

I don’t understand why it’s called Catholic Family Services. You don’t need to be Catholic to access the free counseling and there’s never been any mention of God. You wouldn’t even know there was an affiliation save for the polished wood cross above the door. 

“And how do you feel about that?”

I pull my eyes from the cross. “About what?”

Patricia stares at me, pen poised above her leather notepad. 

“How do you feel now that you don’t see your dad as often?” 

“Oh.” I shrug, crossing, then uncrossing my legs. “I don’t know. It’s sad? I guess?”

Particia nods as her pen flits across the page. 

clipboard 

“Do you want to feel better?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then you should consider a prescription.” 

I stare at the pocket of Dr. Oakenberg’s white coat. The heads of three pens crest the crisp folds of fabric, one gold, two silver. A pocket square for a psychiatrist. 

I stare at the framed smears of crimson and gold across the room. The art in this wing of Brampton Civic is all the same. Half-conjured shapes and abstract splatters of color.

“Do I have to?”

Dr. Oakenberg lowers the clipboard in his hand to his lap.

“No, you don’t have to.” 

The stale light of the computer monitor coats the side of his face, seeping into each crease that fans from his eye. 

I retract in my leather-padded corner chair, curling my toes in my sneakers until they ache. 

“Well, what else can I do?”

He sighs, creaking back and away on the wheels of his rolling chair toward his desk.

“Follow up with your family doctor.” 

tree 

“Have you heard of the MBTI?” asks Sam. She stretches her arm across a spill of sunlight for the bookshelf on the far wall. She sets her crimson notepad on the small wooden table beside her wingback chair. 

I sit cross-legged on the loveseat opposite Pam. Her white terrier, Max, sprawls next to me, snoring. 

I shake my head, squeezing and releasing my hands clenched in my lap. Through the long window that frames the space between us, I can see Sam’s backyard. It’s got a tree in it. A big one. With a face carved into the trunk. 

Max’s wet nose nuzzles into my sock.

“Oh, it’s good stuff.” Sam finds the book she wants, a creased, dog-eared thing that gives an elastic whap noise when she flips it wide. “I’ll give you the test today, and we’ll see where you fall.” 

I stare at the drooping eyes of the tree. A cardinal lights on its nose. 

“Okay.” 

“It’s not the be-all-end-all or anything. And you should always take things like this with a grain of salt, obviously. But it’s pretty interesting!”

Sam smiles at me, her wide mouth splitting to reveal a gap between her two front teeth. 

I don’t know why, but there’s something reassuring about it.

I smile back as Max’s drool seeps into my sock. 

nothing 

“So, you’re afraid to go to sleep at night?” 

I sit across from Sean McMullen, who slouches, legs crossed, in a low-slung leather armchair. 

I nod and feign interest in the row of succulents that line the austere wood paneling of his office window. 

“Why?” he demands. 

“Because of the—” 

“Shadow people?” 

I nod. 

“Like we discussed last time, these are delusions. These things you’ve imagined in your head, keeping you from leaving the house? They are delusions. Do you understand?” 

I pull my eyes from the fat, round leaves of the succulents to stare at him. His hands are in his lap, knobbled fingers laced. He stares at me, expectant and vacant, all at once. No notebook. Nothing at all. 

Maybe he’s got a great memory. 

“Yes?” he raises thick, gray brows at me. 

I nod and look out the window. I liked Sam and her creaky floorboards. I felt like I was getting somewhere there.

But then Mom’s benefits ran out and Nanny offered to pay for therapy on the condition that I went to see someone she knew. Someone she used back when Grandpa died. 

The thought of my Nanny sitting across from Sean McMullen and talking about the death of her husband makes my insides curdle. I can’t imagine it.

But maybe Mr. McMullen wasn’t always like this. Maybe he’s old and tired.

“Stop thinking about these things,” Sean says from across the room. “They’re delusions and they aren’t real.”

I stare out the window. 

“Okay.”

clipboard

“And how is the Buspirone going?” Dr. Oakenberg’s dark eyes flit from his computer monitor to my face.

I pick at the skin above the nail of my index finger, then stop. 

“It’s going alright.”

Dr. Oakenberg nods once, twice. 

“Any nausea? Vomiting?”

I shake my head.

“And you’re up to forty milligrams per day, yes?” The scroll wheel of the computer mouse makes a gentle whir as blocks of black text flit past Dr. Oakenberg’s face. 

“Yes.”

“And you’re feeling better?”

The scroll wheel goes silent as Dr. Oakenberg pauses to stare at me. 

My tongue, plastered to the roof of my mouth, takes conscious effort to retract. 

“Not really.”

“What do you mean, not really?” Dr. Oakenberg lifts the clipboard from his desk and studies me behind oval, rimless glasses. 

“I feel weird,” I say, crossing, then uncrossing my legs. 

“Yes, but has your anxiety improved?” Dr. Oakenberg demands, clipboard braced on a thigh. 

“I don’t really know. I feel weird.”

Dr. Oakenberg stares at me, the silence drawing across the space between us.

“Do you want to stop? The Buspirone?”

I pick at my finger again, then raise my hand to my mouth to chew a nail. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Dr. Oakenberg blows air through his nose and leans back in his chair, the leather squeaking against his weight. 

“Yes. I want to stop,” I say, blood trickling between my teeth from my freshly torn nail. I lower my hand to my lap and curl it into a fist. 

Dr. Oakenberg places the clipboard back on his desk. 

“Alright.”

tree 

I sit on the loveseat in Sam’s home. I remember she told me once that she used to see her clients in a big office building. She said she didn’t like it. 

Remembering the path through the singing bowls and overgrown plants was easy. Down the aching, creaking floorboards to the small room on the right. Sam says she’ll be with me in a moment, she just needs to make a cup of coffee. 

I wait in the light of an afternoon that pours itself through the windows like pan-warmed syrup. Max leaps into Sam’s chair and stares at me. 

Outside, one of the eyes has come loose from the tree. It hangs upside down from its peg. It looks like a Picasso.

“Sorry about that,” says Sam, closing the door behind her with a bare foot. She hands me a mug, sets down her own, and picks up her red notebook. Same as last time. The one with the big tree on it. “Now, then. How are you?”