Misty (Wildflowers 1)

"Misty is the one who should decide," Jade said, her voice filled with compassion.

"Yeah," Star seconded. Cathy nodded.

"I'm all right," I said. I wasn't. I had a long way to go to be all right.

Maybe I would never be all right.

But at least I was with people who would know why not.

6

The breezes were sweet with the newborn fragrances of spring. Now that we were outside after lunch, we all felt even worse about going back inside, where we had to revisit our private nightmares. Doctor Marlowe walked with her head down, her arms folded and her shoulders a little slumped. My mother would be very critical of her posture, I thought. The four of us remained a little behind her, none of us really walking together. Cat stayed at the end, walking the slowest, her eyes shifting cautiously from Jade to Star to me.

"My gardener tells me I'm going to have to tear out all those oleander bushes," Doctor Marlowe said pausing and nodding toward the rear of her property. "Some disease is running rampant through the lot of them. He wants me to plant something new now so it will all grow during the summer months."

"Can't he just cure them?" Star asked. "He doesn't think so."

"Get another gardener," Jade said.

Doctor Marlowe laughed.

"No, he's very good. He's been with me for years and years. It's easier to replace the plants than to replace the gardener."

"Too bad we can't do the same with parents," I said. They all looked back at me. I shrugged. "They don't work so we just replace them with ones that do."

"None of us have any guarantees about anything in this life, Misty," Doctor Marlowe said. "We've just got to learn how to deal with it and go forward."

"It's always easier for someone else to say," Jade muttered. Star nodded.

"That's right," she said.

"I'm not someone else," Doctor Marlowe

declared. "I'm not just your therapist," she continued. "My parents divorced when I was just a little younger than you. I think that's what gave me the idea to go into psychiatry. . . my own pain."

"Is that why you're not married?" Jade asked her.

"That's another story," she said. "Besides, I'm the therapist here, remember

? I ask the questions. Let's keep walking around the house and go back in," she said.

Jade threw a conspiratorial smile at me and I threw one back.

"Come on, girl," Star said as she waited for Cathy to catch up. "You walk slower than my grandma."

Surprised that Star would pause, Cathy quickly caught up to her.

Everyone went to the bathroom again. I just wanted to rinse my face in cold water. We had to wait for Cathy, who took so long, we began to wonder if she had left.

"Sorry," Cathy said when she finally came in and took her seat.

"Let's let Misty continue and finish out the session. It's getting late and I'm sure you all have other things to do with such a nice day."

"I suppose what bothers me the most, what I think about a lot is what their divorce means about me. Before I visited Daddy in his new home, I met him for lunch one Saturday after he had moved out of the house. That was something we had never done before, had lunch together without my mother. He invited me since the plans he had made for me to visit him in his new apartment had to be canceled because of what he called an emergency business trip. Later, I found out he was going to San Francisco with his new girlfriend.

"But at the time, I was excited about meeting him at a fancy Beverly Hills restaurant. He sent a cab for me, which triggered one of my mother's familiar favorite chants about how he always manages to get someone else to fulfill his responsibilities.

"'Why couldn't he pick you up himself? It's Saturday. He can't be meeting anyone for business. It's just inconvenient for him, that's all; so he sends a cab. Typical Jeffery Foster behavior,' she raved.