Free The Dark Lake by Anthea Carson Page B

of it."
    "How do you know I would be free? Maybe it would be much worse. Besides, there's nothing I'm unwilling to look at. No one will talk to me about the photo in the newspaper of the car being pulled from the lake."
    "How so? I've been willing to talk about it."
    "Yea h, but you're the only one. My mom won't talk about it, my dad, even in the angry group they didn't know what I was talking about. None of them had seen it."
    "They just weren't looking for it."
    "There is nothing I'm not looking at,” I said, and folded my hands, as if to say, “and I'm staying with that point of view.”
    "Ok ay Jane. But as long as you're unwilling to talk about it or look at it, I don't really know how I can help you."
    That sent a shiver down my spine. Was she threatening to leave me? Oh God , don't leave me.
    "Ok ay, I'll talk about it. What do you want to know?” I said, and then, after a long pause, "My mom wants me to get on disability."
    "Don't you think that would be a good idea?"
    "Why? Do you think I'm disabled?"
    "Well, how do you think you're doing?"
    "Fine. Great. I don't even know what everyone's talking about when they say I should get disability. I mean, it's kind of shocking,” I said, “and insulting.”
    "You think you're doing fine?"
    "Yes. Why?"
    Miriam gave a long sigh, looked at her watch, and said if I was fine this might as well be our last session. So I tri ed, just enough to satisfy her.
    "Why are they digging up that car?"
    "Have you contacted the police about it yet?"
    "Now that's a good question,” I responded, and it had me thinking all the way home. I was thinking so much I was on autopilot, and didn’t get home till evening. The grass still had that freshly mowed smell. There were purple and violet and red and yellow flowers in Mom's garden, which was a narrow strip alongside the driveway. Actually there was another garden in the back, not quite as well tended. She had once really taken care of it. There was still this great big wire , circular cage back there where she had a compost pile. She grew rhubarb in the garden next to that, and tomatoes, and peas, and we used to eat them fresh from the garden. She didn't do that kind of thing anymore.
    "Call the police department and ask ,” I said out loud.
    "What are you talking about?” My mom gave me that strange look again.
    "Oh come on,” I continued. "My therapist told me to do it."
    "Ok ay,” she said, in a do-it-your-way tone.
    In the morning I did try to call them. I sat on hold for a long time. Then after that I was transferred and sat on hold on another line. Then I got an answering machine. Instead of leaving a message , I decided to take it upon myself to go down there. But at the last minute, I decided I better take someone with me.
    I asked my dad. He said he'd go. He said he had a few things to do at the office first, so I went with him. I climbed the stairs , which were inside a hollow, echoing, cement and iron-railed staircase and walked the long, narrow, dimly lit hall to his office in the Wallace building at the University: a tiny office with one narrow window that was blocked by a large, black filing cabinet. The room had always been a mess, like his desk at home. I remembered it so well, yet I don't think I'd been down there since I was eight or nine years old. I saw the dusty, old machine where I bought French peanuts way back then and he told me how great they tasted, and I ate them, listening very carefully, and hearing that they tasted great.
    "I'm glad you're going with me to ask about the car,” I said.
    He didn't say anything. He was rummaging through some papers.
    "This was a very good book,” he said, and handed it to me.
    I looked at it. It had a picture of a street on the cover with papers and trash blowing along the sidewalks.
    "It's not the Wasteland , but it reminds me of that.” He stared off toward the blocked window. He sometimes did that. He was the absent-minded professor if I ever saw one, almost comically