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ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL, PT. 1
"You seem...troubled."
That's what the shrink told me before my own mother shipped me clear across the country.
We sat in his office on the fifth floor of some immaculate sky rise that late Thursday afternoon—a huge favor on his end, and he analyzed me. After ten minutes of a loud and awkward silence, he spoke up with his diagnosis: I seemed troubled.
Give me a break.
Troubled? No. Betrayed? Yes!
At the news of my going to live with my father, I couldn't believe it.
I didn't know my father. Let my mother tell their story, the guy sounded like a chump if you asked me.
They were together for a short period, long enough for me to be conceived, and then poof! It was just my mother and me. She never spoke of him. He never called, wrote, or e-mailed.
And I never asked about him.
It wasn't like I had daddy issues or whatever, I just didn't know the guy. How could she send me to live with a complete stranger? Because that's exactly what Scott Stanley was to me, a stranger. All I had of him, was his last name. Or maybe more, who knew? I carried my mother's heart shaped face, her long blonde hair, and my brown eyes were all my own. Sometimes, if I squinted, I looked a little like her.
Now I didn't care. She was throwing me to the wolves as far as I was concerned. One little mishap and she was sending me south.
Apparently, Scott lived in the state of Georgia, in a small town, barely on the map, called Meadow Grove.
God, I was about to see my first cow, I just knew.
"You'd be troubled too if your mother abandoned you," I replied to Dr. I-Have-the-Answers.
His bushy eyebrows peaked at my response. "Do you feel abandoned, Saylor?"
I sat back in the plush cherry colored chaise. Around Dr. I-Have-the-Answers' office were shelves with book upon book lining them, no doubt on shrink stuff. His desk, a simple sheet of glass affixed on chrome legs, held a clock, a couple of photos, a funky hourglass, and Newton's Cradle.
By my read, Dr. I-Have-the-Answers was OCD. He had used a can of spray dust cleaner to wipe off a fingerprint smudge on the coffee table before me within the first two minutes of our meeting.
Even his comb over was neatly into place.
He adjusted his glasses, offering me that I'm-Your-friend smile once more. "Saylor?"
I sighed. "No, Doc., not at all."
For the rest of our session he tried to get to the root of my rebellion, the cause of my abnormality, and the reason my mind worked the way it did. Honestly, I was just seventeen.
