Free Live Through This by Debra Gwartney Page A

volume of Gary Snyder poetry, which she'd asked for, in her lap. She reached over to hug me, her bony hands resting lightly on my shoulders, and her chin burrowing under mine. When she'd nuzzled her face deep in my neck—an embrace that would last only a second, I knew—I told her I loved her, a statement that, as it had all week, made her recoil. She pushed herself into the far corner of the sofa, away from me. My arms and hands cooled, suddenly emptied of my daughter. She yanked pillows in front of herself and huddled in the corner.
    "Why can't I say that?" I said, reaching over to push a strand of hair behind her ear. "Why can't I say I love you? Don't you know how many people love you?"
    Knees to her chest, she lowered her head then raised it again. "That makes it worse," she said, "not better."
    We talked, a little, in between silences I'd almost grown used to. Then, five minutes before my visit was to end, I kissed her goodbye and slipped into the dim hall, sure that if I hurried I'd miss Tom and Ellen, whose appointment to see Amanda began at noon. But heading straight toward me was Amanda's counselor Linda, tightlipped as usual, with Tom and his wife walking right behind her. Ellen's cantaloupe breasts bounced under her skimpy tank top, her peasant skirt flowing from generous hips. I had on a pair of cords, a long-sleeved T-shirt, sandals, my usual getup. No matter how I tried to talk myself out of it, Ellen made me feel like a pencil-shaped little kid.
    I slowed down, wondering if I could turn around and walk off in the other direction. Stopped dead and heart pounding, my hands
in midair as if trying to decide how to react, I remembered a bathroom a few doors away I could slip into before they reached me. But then Linda called my name.
    "Can we step in my office for a minute?" she said.
    My throat was too constricted to answer. I couldn't stand the idea of being in her small, cramped space with Tom and Ellen, but it seemed impossible to get out of it. Once there, I paused, then lowered myself into the metal chair closest to the exit, right foot angled toward the door, determined to slip away as soon as I could.
    Linda placed her bag under her tidy desk, a splotched banana sitting on the corner. She cleared her throat and riffled through papers, while I imagined her peeling the banana after the three of us had left, breaking off small chunks of gooey fruit and chewing on them until they were mush. She started talking then, getting my full attention when she said that the staff had put together notes from their interviews with each of us, including Amanda.
    "We plan to make a decision about where she'll live in the next week or two," she said.
    "Why can't you decide now?" I asked her. "I'm leaving day after tomorrow."
    Tom interrupted me before I could argue that he'd try to sway things his way once I was gone and he had the staff to himself. "Amanda wants to be with us," he said, leaning forward in his chair and pointing his index finger at me. "You'd better learn to live with that."
    I remember wondering—in one quick flash and no more—how things had become so vicious between us, especially since everyone, from doctors at the hospital to this stiff-backed counselor across the room, had urged us to get along for the good of our child. All of our children, in fact. Why couldn't we do that, get along? But the fleeting thought to do better by our daughters, to take on the mantle of this parental responsibility, was obliterated by my need to fight with the man I was sure had driven Amanda to despair. I'd be sorry for it later, but at that moment I could not rouse a spirit of cooperation when it came to Tom.
    ***
    During our first winter in Oregon, two years before Amanda's Tylenol overdose, Tom had flown up for Thanksgiving weekend. We all six hiked in the wet, mossy woods, Mollie riding on her dad's shoulders, while the bird I'd stuffed that morning roasted in the oven at home. The path up Mount Pisgah