And then she started up again, going on and on about how she couldn’t believe this was happening to her family.
“She’s on medication now too. My own daughter is on medication. They say she has depression. I don’t get it. What can she possibly be depressed about?”
There are three sets of parents I typically deal with.
The ones who understand there is something wrong and want to do whatever it takes to help their child.
The ones who just don’t give a shit that something is wrong and aren’t about to put in any effort to help their child.
Then the ones who are in denial that anything can possibly be wrong. Their child has now become an inconvenience. And, nine times out of ten, it’s something at home that has caused the problem. Something that the parents don’t want to talk about, which causes treatment to last much longer than it needs to.
Mrs. Kitterman fit in this last group. Chloe was the one who’d had a crisis—she’d cut her wrists, for Christ’s sake—but it was her mother who felt like her entire life had been upended.
My phone vibrated once again. This time, instead of ignoring it, I reached over and held the “Power” button down long enough to shut it off.
I forced another smile at Mrs. Kitterman.
“Would you mind giving Chloe and me some time to talk alone?”
A guarded look entered the woman’s eyes, which confirmed my suspicions.
“But I thought you said this was the intake.”
She said it coolly, calmly, but just beneath the surface there was an edge to her voice.
“It is. At least, it’s the first part. We will still need to create her treatment plan, which are the goals we want to work toward, such as learning appropriate coping skills to deal with her depression. But for now I’d like to speak to Chloe alone.”
Mrs. Kitterman clearly didn’t like the idea, but she nodded anyway and rose from the couch. She clutched the Hermès bag to her shoulder like she feared I might try to snatch it away and started toward the door, but then turned back to her daughter and held out her hand.
Chloe sat, unmoving, staring down at her lap.
Mrs. Kitterman cleared her throat.
Chloe sighed, grabbed her phone, and nearly flung it at her mother. Mrs. Kitterman dropped the phone in her bag, gave me one last look as if to say Good luck, and left.
I closed the door behind her. Turned around. Smiled at Chloe, who kept staring down at her lap.
Then I crossed over to my desk. I sat, leaned back in my chair, and stared up at the ceiling.
A full minute of silence passed.
“Your mom seems fun.”
This caused Chloe to laugh, a soft little snort. If anything, my comment had caught her by surprise.
I leaned forward in my chair and stared at Chloe.
She stared back at me.
I said, “You’re scared, aren’t you?”
Without her mother’s presence, the girl no longer had to keep up her guard, and she allowed a small nod.
“Do you want help?”
Another small nod.
“Good. The fact that you can acknowledge that now, especially at your age, is incredible. But I’ll be honest with you—whatever you’re going through, it will take time to figure it all out. I’m here to listen, and whatever you say to me is between the two of us. But please do understand, I am what’s called a state-mandated reporter. If you tell me something that causes me to suspect you’re being abused, or if you admit to thoughts of harming yourself or others, I have to report it. Do you understand?”
Another nod.
“Good. Now, as long as you are willing to be honest with me, I’ll be here to help you. Deal?”
This time the nod was almost nonexistent.
“You’re going to have to do better than that, Chloe. I’m going to need to hear either a yes or a no.”
Her gaze shifted back to her lap. She didn’t move for a long time, just sat there, but then she finally looked up.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Twenty minutes later, after sending Chloe and her mother away with an appointment scheduled for the following week, I turned my phone back on. It took a minute to power up and find a signal, and then the text messages that had come through popped up on the screen. For some reason, I’d expected them to be from Daniel, but all three were from my mother.
Call me.
Do you remember Olivia Campbell?
She KILLED herself!
2
My mother’s new obsession was tea.
Not the box teas found in grocery stores—your Lipton and Celestial Seasonings and Bigelow and Stash—but loose specialty teas. The kind in the large glass jars that sit on racks in their own section of the store and need to be scooped into paper bags and weighed. The more expensive the tea, my mother reasoned, the better it tasted.
“What would you like?”
She asked me this as she glided around the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets, pulling down two cups and two small china plates while the teakettle warmed on the stove.
I sat on a stool at the kitchen island, watching her. Twenty years ago, I’d sat at this same island while my mother moved from one end of the kitchen to the other with a frantic grace, making my father and me breakfast before I went to school and they went to work. At the time I’d thought she had too much energy. Now I realized she had ADHD.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
This stopped Mom in her tracks. She paused as if stunned, turning toward me with a crestfallen expression.
“Are you sure? I bought a quarter pound of loose white tea the other day. It’s called Jasmine Silver Needle. It cost ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents a pound.”
I opened my mouth, not sure what to say, but it didn’t matter anyway, because my mother turned back to the counter, put down the cups and plates, and started shuffling through the basket of loose tea bags.
“I have Sakura Sencha, which is a green tea from Japan. And chrysanthemum, which is a loose herbal infusion from China. I also have some chamomile from Egypt.”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
She jerked her face around to give me a quick look. “What’s fine?”
“The chamomile.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure you’ll like it.”
I sighed. It had been a long day, and this wasn’t helping relieve my normal daily stress.
“You asked me to stop by on my way home from work—which is out of the way, as you know—and so here I am. I don’t want any tea.”
“What about coffee?”
“Mom.”
“Water?”
Because I knew she’d keep asking until she broke me down, I said, “Yes, fine, water sounds great.”
She turned back to the counter, grabbed one of the cups and plates, returned them to their proper places in the cabinets, and then turned back to me.
“Bottled or from the tap?”
“Do you have any water from Japan?”
My mother paused as if to think about it.
“Mom, I’m kidding. Bottled is fine.”
She got me a bottle of spring water from the fridge. The teakettle started to whistle. Mom made her tea and, at last, drifted over to the island and sat down.
I let out a breath.
“How’s Daniel?” she asked.