A Walk with My Daughter (excerpt)

Outside my window, purple mountains with serrated peaks link and stretch across the horizon. The landscape resembles paper cutouts pasted on a blue canvas. It’s September, again.
My house is quiet except for the buzz of electricity coming from all powered things. It’s so quiet, too quiet. Unnerving. I close my eyes.
I imagine hearing the piercing cry of a hawk circling my house. It’s scream mirroring a child’s excitement or whimper. My daughter and I used to peer out the window and watch them fly; wings spanned open, dipping and roving along invisible ocean waves. We loved to watch the Hawks play.
Every year, they came, until the sky was polluted with rooftops and sightings of the magnificent birds became less and less and then, not at all.
I gulp down my lukewarm coffee and head to the kitchen. Dirty dishes tower in the kitchen sink and topple onto the counter. I balance the mug precariously on top of the mess and leave. I’ll clean it up tomorrow. It’s a lie. No one will clean it up. Not today or tomorrow or anytime, soon. Henry will try, but I won’t let him.
I’m numb walking through the house, and I’m uneasy moving up the staircase. I’ve come to loath the top of the stairs.
I’d developed a habit of sprinting the last steps, barely pausing, before darting left and into the sanctuary of my bedroom. I would hurry by the hallway and the door at the end of it, the white door with the contrasting metallic sticker bearing my child’s name.
At the top of the stairs, I force myself to stop and look down the darkened hall. Fear ratchets up my pulse. My eyes adjust through the shadows. I can see the small vinyl lettering, “Lylia.” I tremble, step backward and escape into my bedroom.
I suck air back into my body and hold onto the bedpost to steady myself. My palms are sweating. I can do this, can’t I? Doctor George thinks I can. Therapy. I needed therapy, now.
Week after week, I sit across from my therapist, staring at his collection of lighthouses spread through his office. Were they supposed to represent hope? Did my therapist see himself as some sort of hope-keeper?
Doctor George sits with a spiral notebook in hand; I assume, drawing caricatures of his patients. And Henry sits on a folding chair in the waiting room.
“You must challenge your fears,” Doctor George tells me at the end of each visit. I promise to. It’s another lie.
Last week, Doctor George skipped the preliminaries of how-do-you-feels and how’s-your-week-goings and dove right in.
“What’s your goal? Have you come up with one?” He asked.
“Yes.” I couldn’t look at him.
“And?”
I shrugged. Doctor George leaned back in his chair, waiting.
“To get out.”
“You go out when you come here. You go out when you go to the store. Can you be more specific?”
“I mean out in my neighborhood…walk up the hill, alone.”
“So, what’s stopping you?” He asked.
“I don’t want to.”
“What are you really afraid of?” Doctor George was kind. His eyes danced in laughter when he spoke. I’d like him if I didn’t hate that I had to come to him, discussing such agonizing things, such terrible things.
“I’m scared,” I said. “I feel so alone.”
“Kate, it’s time,” he said. “Do it for Lylia and for Henry. Do it for yourself.”
He was right. I had to do it, today before I lost my nerve. Before I became part of the family room couch, forever.
I pull a sweater over my pajama top and replace the bottoms with a pair of jeans left crumpled on the floor.
In the bathroom, I scowl at my reflection. My hair is tied in a loose ponytail at the nape of my neck. I go over my teeth with my toothbrush. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
I edge into the hallway with my back towards my daughter’s room and run downstairs.
“I can do this!” I yell at the ficus on the entry table. I throw on a jacket and turn the doorknob of my front door.
“You don’t have to do this, today,” I reason. “Tomorrow would work, too.”
I open the door.
“It’s just outside. I’ve done it a million times,” I say, hurling myself onto the porch.
It’s quiet.