Teardrop

14 THE SHADOW

Tuesday meant another session with Dr. Landry. The therapist’s New Iberia office was hardly the first place Eureka wanted to drive to in her newly repaired Jeep, but in the cold standoff at breakfast that morning, Rhoda had ended all discussion with her usual soul-chilling line:

As long as you live in my house, you follow my rules.

She’d given Eureka a list of phone numbers for her three assistants at the university, in case Eureka got into trouble while Rhoda was in a meeting. They weren’t taking any more chances, Rhoda said when she handed Eureka back her keys. Dad’s wife could probably make I love you sound menacing—not that Eureka had ever received that particular threat from Rhoda.

Eureka was nervous about getting back behind the wheel. She’d transformed into a hyperdefensive driver—counting three seconds of space between cars, putting on her blinker half a mile before she turned. Her shoulder muscles were knotted by the time she got to Dr. Landry’s office. She sat in Magda under the beech tree, trying to breathe the tension out.

At 3:03 she slumped onto the therapist’s couch. She wore her weekly scowl.

Dr. Landry wore another pair of slip-on shoes. She kicked her feet out of the clunky orange flats, which had never been in style.

“Catch me up.” Dr. Landry tucked her bare feet under her on the chair. “What’s happened since we talked?”

Eureka’s uniform itched. She wished she’d peed before the session started. At least there was no issue of having to race back to school for the cross-country meet today. Even Coach would have given up on her by now. She could drive home slowly, on different dirt roads, paths not frequented by phantom boys.

She wouldn’t see him, so he couldn’t sort of make her cry. Or brush the corner of her eye with his finger. Or smell like an undiscovered ocean she wanted to swim in. Or be the only one around who didn’t know a single catastrophic thing about her.

Eureka’s cheeks were hot. Landry tilted her head, as if noting each shade of scarlet Eureka turned. No way. Eureka was keeping Ander’s appearance—and disappearance—to herself. She reached for one of the hard candies on the coffee table and threw up a screen of noise with the wrapper.

“That wasn’t supposed to be a trick question,” Landry said.

Everything was a trick. Eureka considered opening her calculus book, struggling through a theorem for the balance of the hour. Maybe she had to be here, but she didn’t have to cooperate. But that broadcast would travel back to Rhoda, whose pride would lead to some inanity like car revoking, grounding, or some other dark threat that wouldn’t sound absurd inside the walls of her house, where Eureka had no allies. None with power, anyway.

“Well.” She sucked on the candy. “I did get my inheritance from my mom.” This was no-brainer therapy fodder. It had everything: deep symbolic meaning, family history, and the gossipy novelty therapists couldn’t resist.

“I assume your father will manage the funds until you are of age?”

“It’s nothing like that.” Eureka sighed, bored but not surprised by the assumption. “I doubt there’s any monetary value to my inheritance. There wasn’t any monetary value to my mother’s life. Just things she liked.” She tugged on the chain around her neck to lift the lapis lazuli locket from under her white blouse.

“That’s beautiful.” Dr. Landry leaned forward, weakly feigning appreciation for the weathered piece. “Is there a picture inside?”

Yes, it’s a picture of a million billable hours, Eureka thought, imagining an hourglass filled with tiny Dr. Landrys instead of sand slipping through.

“It doesn’t open,” Eureka said. “But she wore it all the time. There were a couple of other archaeological objects she found interesting. This rock called a thunderstone.”

Dr. Landry nodded blankly. “It must make you feel loved, knowing your mother wanted you to have these things.”

“Maybe. It’s also confusing. She left me an old book written in an ancient language. At least I found someone who can translate it.”

Eureka had read Madame Blavatsky’s translated email several times. The story was interesting—both she and Cat agreed—but Eureka found it frustrating. It felt so far removed from reality. She didn’t understand how it related to Diana.

Landry was frowning, shaking her head.

“What?” Eureka heard her voice rise. This meant she was defensive. She’d made a mistake bringing it up. She’d meant to stay in safe and neutral territory.

“You’re never going to know your mother’s full intentions, Eureka. That’s the reality of death.”

There is no death.… Eureka heard Madame Blavatsky drowning out the therapist’s voice. Only congregation and dispersal.

“This desire to translate some old book seems fruitless,” Landry said. “To pin your hopes on a new connection with your mother now might be very painful.”

Suffering is wisdom’s schoolteacher.

Eureka was already on the path. She was going to connect this book to Diana, she just didn’t know how yet. She grabbed a fistful of disgusting candy, needing to keep her hands busy. Her therapist sounded like Brooks, who still had not apologized. They had tensely avoided each other in the halls at school for two days.

“Leave the dead to rest,” Landry said. “Focus on your living world.”

Eureka gazed out the window at a sky whose color was typical of the days after a hurricane: unapologetic blue. “Thank you for that chicken soup for the soul.”

She heard Brooks buzzing something nasty in her ear about how Eureka was convinced all her therapists were stupid. This one really was! She’d been considering apologizing to him, just to break the tension. But every time she saw him, he was surrounded by a wall of boys, football jocks she’d never seen him hang out with before this week, guys whose precious machismo used to be the brunt of some of Brooks’s best jokes. He’d catch her eye, then make a lewd gesture that cracked the circle of boys up.

He was making Eureka crack up, too, just in a different way.

“Before you jump into a costly translation of this book,” Landry said, “at least think about the pros and cons.”

There was no question in her mind. Eureka was continuing with the translation of The Book of Love. Even if it turned out to be nothing more than a love story, maybe it would help her understand Diana better. Once, Eureka had asked her what it was like when she met Eureka’s dad, how she’d known she wanted to be with him.

It felt like being saved, Diana had told her. It reminded Eureka of what the prince in the story said to Selene: You can still save me.

“Have you ever heard of Carl Jung’s idea of the shadow?” Landry tried.

Eureka shook her head. “Something tells me I’m about to.”

“The idea is that we all have a shadow, which comprises denied aspects of the self. My sense is that your extreme aloofness, your emotional unavailability, the guardedness that I must say is palpable in you, comes from a core place.”

“Where else would it come from?”

Landry ignored her. “Perhaps you had a childhood in which you were told to repress your emotions. A person who does that for long enough might find that those neglected aspects of the self begin to bubble up elsewhere. Your stifled emotions may very well be sabotaging your life.”

“Anything’s possible,” Eureka said. “I suggest my stifled emotions take a number, though.”

“It’s very common,” Landry said. “We often seek the companionship of others who display aspects we’ve repressed to the depths of our shadow. Think about your parents’—well, your father and stepmother’s—relationship.”

“I’d rather not.”

Landry sighed. “If you don’t confront this aloofness, it will lead you to narcissism and isolation.”

“Is that a threat?” Eureka asked.

Landry shrugged. “I’ve seen it before. It’s a type of personality disorder.”

This was where therapy inevitably led: the reduction of individuals to types. Eureka wished herself outside these walls. She glanced at the clock. She’d only been here for twenty minutes.

“Does it insult your pride to hear you’re not unique?” Landry asked. “Because that is a symptom of narcissism.”

The only person who understood Eureka was scattered across the sea.

“Tell me where your mind went just then,” Landry said.

“St. Lucia.”

“You want to leave?”

“I’ll make a deal with you. I never come here again, you bill Rhoda for the time, and no one needs to be the wiser.”

Landry’s voice hardened. “You will wake up at forty with no husband, no children, and no career if you don’t learn to engage with the world.”

Eureka rose to her feet, wishing that someone like Madame Blavatsky sat in the chair across from her instead of Dr. Landry. The translator’s intriguing remarks had felt more insightful than any board-certified babble ever to emerge from this therapist’s lips.

“Your parents have paid for another half hour. Don’t walk out that door, Eureka.”

“My dad’s wife paid for another half hour,” she corrected. “My mother is Friday Night Fish Dinner.” She gagged on her own horrible words as she walked past Landry.

“You’re making a mistake.”

“If you think so”—Eureka opened the door—“I’m convinced I’m making the right decision.”