The Happy Treatment

by Teri Carter

(Continued)
     Last night, with your husband out of town, Jason left you a note on the kitchen counter.
             I hate you. I will always hate you.
             You are not my mom.
             Stop talking to me.
             I hate school and I hate you.
             My dad will devorse you anyways.
             You love the dog more than me.

     On your way to bed you grabbed a chair from the dining room, dragged it to your bedroom, and lodged it firmly under your locked doorknob. You were overreacting, weren’t you? As you were changing into your pajamas your husband called, from some city somewhere, to say good night. What would he say, you wondered, if he could see you now, if you told him the truth: "I think I’m afraid of your son! I’m losing my mind!" But all you said was, "Merry almost-Christmas." In bed, once your eyes adjusted to the dark of the room, the silent, white ceiling above seemed to stare right back at you, like a blank mirror.
     Today, Ned’s usually-white ceiling is flooded with the colors of Christmas. You close your eyes to blot out the blinking lights, and you listen for Ned. The click of a latch. The creak of a chair. The shuffling of paper.
     "So how are we today?" he says.
     "Better," you lie, picturing the dining room chair lodged under the doorknob. "My neck’s a little stiff. I think I slept funny."
     "Ahh, a new ailment," he says, nodding, amused. "You know that saying ‘Don’t lose your head?’ Your subconscious is taking it literally. You can’t lose your head with a stiff neck."
     You’ve come to expect these platitudes, and it occurs to you that maybe what you’re really sick of is Ned. Sore throat? Your words are stuck there because you won’t say what you think. Stiff back? You’re too rigid. Constipated? You can’t let shit go.
     Ned stands up, lays your file on the desk, positions himself behind the chair. "Come sit down here so I can adjust your neck."
     "Are you a chiropractor, now?" You are stalling, not wanting to remove the sheet. "Can’t I just get the Happy Treatment?"
     Ned pats back of the chair. Three times. "Sit." You push down the sheet, awkwardly conscious of your standard black bra and black panties. For the first time you wonder what he thinks of your always wearing black. Is it the only color underwear you own? Are you trying to be sexy? In mourning? Does Ned even think about it, or you, at all?
     You do as you’re told and sit in the chair. From behind, Ned places his hands first on your shoulders, then on either side of your neck. His palms and fingers wriggle up your neck to the sides of your head and, before you can see it coming, he yanks your head to the side. You hear the crack of your spine. "See. That wasn’t so bad, was it?"
     You feel a bit dizzy.
     You lie back down on the table and haul up the sheet, relieved to be undercover again. "Brrrrr," you say, exaggerating. "It’s cold in here."
     "Virginia took the space heater." He takes his seat and lets out a big, irritated sigh. "She said I couldn’t have the tree and the heater. I guess she’s afraid I’ll burn her house down."
     Virginia. You roll the V over and over, like a solved equation, in your mind. Virginia is no longer the phantom in the kitchen, wearing a string of pearls, baking cookies. Virginia is a real person.
     "Things any better with Jason?"
     "Sure. He wrote me a love letter."
     "Really."
     "Yes. Really. He left me a note telling me how much he hates me. Made my day."
     "You called it a love letter."
     "I was joking."
     "But you said love. Listen to your words. Love. That’s progress." Ned stands up, opens his desk drawer, reaches for today’s needles.
     "He says I love the dog more than him."
     "There’s the love again. He’s connecting with you. Not the way you want him to, but he’s pushing your buttons, trying to figure out who you are. He’s asking you an honest question and he’s looking for an honest answer."
     Ned tears open the new packet of needles, waves them in the air. Overhead, you hear Virginia shuffle across the floor. Ned looks up, rolls his eyes. Across the ceiling, Christmas tree lights spray shocks of color. You close your eyes as he taps in the needles.

     Back at home you come in from the garage to find Jason in the kitchen. He’s holding an open box of Frosted Cheerios with one hand stuffed inside, rooting around, and he’s looking at a giant, white poinsettia on the center counter.
     "Hey," you say. "How are you?"
     "Aren’t they supposed to be red? Like roses?"
     "Mostly, they’re red. Who’s it from?" You drop your purse on a chair and fan through the leaves for a note. You think of red roses and wonder where in the hell your husband has been for these three years. You wonder if Ned’s Happy Treatment is nothing more than some fake panacea, some temporary, feel-good distraction. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, you wonder if maybe – just maybe – what you need is to go back to work. You feel relieved.
     "Hellooooo!" Jason says.
     "Sorry. Who did you say it was from?"
     He sets down his box of cereal. "It’s for me!" He holds a tiny card high in the air, like evidence, and pretends to read it. "‘Merry Christmas, JJ’, this says. ‘Love, Mom.’"
     The dog barks. She’s sitting next to Jason on the floor, and she mistakes the card he’s waving for a treat. She barks again. "Good girl!" he says, and puts it in her mouth.
     "Don’t let her eat that. It could get stuck in her throat."
     Jason shrugs, then wrestles the chewed up card from the dog’s mouth. He lays it on the counter, in the same place you found his "love letter" the night before. The dog barks again. Jason reaches down to rub her head, then goes to a cabinet to get her a real treat.
     You step back and examine the plant, awed by the enormity of it. It must be three feet tall and wide. What kind of person sends an eleven-year-old a plant as a gift? "Merry Christmas, son! Here’s the poinsettia you’ve always wanted!" You recall the one time she called on the phone, about a year after you were married, the one time you heard her voice. "Is JJ there?" she’d said. You asked who was calling, and it was as though you’d slapped her. "This is his Mommy!" Her voice was clipped, in staccato, like she was marching against you, pushing you back, staking her place. Such power. For your husband, you think, she most certainly disappeared. But for you and for Jason this mother is ever present, lurking, like invisible Virginia shuffling across the floor above Ned’s office. This mother who "disappeared" exists just enough to make you to bristle when you brush up against her, and you can’t help but wonder if, when Jason looks at you, he only sees who’s missing.
     In the corner of the kitchen, Jason is talking to the dog. "Speak!" he is yelling, offering her treats. "Speak!"
     "Well, kiddo," you say. "Where do you think we should we put this thing?"
     "It looks dead, don’t you think? Like all the blood got drained out."
     "They are poisonous," you add, thinking logically about the dog, pondering where in this house you have a table tall enough and big enough to hold it.
     "When Dad calls I’m going to tell him she sent me a poisonous plant for Christmas!"
     You laugh. In spite of yourself, you laugh. Jason laughs, too. The missing mother and the missing husband are missing out.
     "Seriously. Can we go get a red one instead?" Jason says, picking up his box of cereal and shoving a hand inside. "This one doesn’t even look real." Teri Carter’s work can be found in Columbia, The MacGuffin, Superstition Review, and other journals. She is working on her first book, A Heartland Education, a memoir about growing up in Missouri. She lives in northern California.