Jade (Wildflowers 3)

Prologue

Even though I had been in Dr. Marlowe's office many times, for some reason I couldn't recall the miniature grandfather clock in the center of the bottom wall shelf to the left of her desk. It was encased in dark cherry wood and had a face of Roman numerals. It didn't bong or clang. It played no music on the hour, but the small pendulum swung back and forth with a determined little effort that caught my eye and held me mesmerized for a few moments while everyone waited for me to begin.

The beat of my heart seemed synchronized with the movement of the miniature clock's pendulum, and I thought, why can't we think of our hearts as being little clocks inside us, keeping our time. Even before we are born, our parents' magical hands of love wind them up. Maybe the lengths of our lives are in direct proportion to how much our parents wanted us. Maybe some behavioral scientist should do a study of unwanted children to see how long they live and compare their lives with the lives of children from perfect little families. None of us in this room would probably be happy with those results.

I could feel the other girls' eyes on me and just knew what each of them must be thinking What was I doing here? I looked like I came from one of those perfect little families. How horrible could my story be? Why did I need the services of a psychiatrist?

I could understand why they would have these questions. No matter what had happened between my mother and father and to me afterward, I always held myself together, poised, with a regal air of confidence. I guess I get that from my mother, although my father is far from being an insecure person. It's just that my mother will never let anyone know she is at a disadvantage. Even if she loses an argument, she does it in such a way that the winner isn't sure he or she has won. Her eyes don't fill with surrender. Her shoulders never sag; she never lowers her head in defeat.

Mother gets angry, but Mother doesn't lose control. Control is in fact the essence of who she is. My father wants me to believe that it is exactly her obsession with being in control that has led them to what he calls their marital apocalypse.

I suppose he's right in his characterization of it. It is the end of one world, a world I was innocent enough to believe would go on until their clocks ran out. I used to think they were so much in love, that when one's pendulum stopped, the other's would soon follow.

Of course, I told myself that wouldn't be until many, many years into the future when even I was entering old age. Our world was so protected, I believed I lived in a grand bubble that kept out fatal illness, serious accidents, crime and unhappiness. I went from a luxurious Beverly Hills home to plush limousines to private schools with sparkling clean hallways and new desks. I came out of one womb to be placed safely into another, never to be too cold or too hot.

In the world in which I grew up, being uncomfortable was intolerable, a betrayal of promises. Shoes had to fit perfectly, socks had to be soft, no clothes could chafe our skin. Our meals had to be properly cooked and sufficiently warm, our bathwater just the right temperature. Our beds smelled fresh or were deliciously scented. We fell asleep on clouds of silk and refused to admit nightmares into our houses of dreams. If one slipped under my door when I was a little girl, my father or mother was there instantly at the sound of my cry to step on it as they would some wicked little insect that dared show itself on our imported Italian marble floors.

I didn't think of myself as being exceptionally lucky or even fortunate. I was born into a life of luxury and it was there for me to discover and very quickly to expect. I had no deep philosophical explanation as to why I had so much and people I saw outside my limousine windows had so much less. Some great power had decided it would be this way and this was the way it was. That's all.

Of course, as I grew older and my mother talked about the things she had accomplished in her life and my father did the same, I understood that they had earned or won what we had and we therefore deserved it.

"Never be ashamed for having more than someone else," my mother once told me. More often than not when she made these pronouncements, she sounded like a lecturer. "Those with less are not ashamed of wanting more and especially wanting what you have. Envy always gives birth to

resentment. Be careful to whom you give your trust. More than likely they have eyes greener than yours behind their dark glasses and artificial smiles," she warned.

How wise I thought she was. How wise I thought they both were.

Now here I sat after that magic bubble had burst and people who were really little more than strangers to me wanted me to give them my trust. The four of us were participating in what our therapist called group therapy, telling about ourselves, our most intimate selves in the hopes that we would somehow help each other understand and accept all that had happened to us. The more truthful we were about our intimate selves, the better the chances for success. That did take a great deal of trust.

From the way Dr. Marlowe talked, winning our trust was more important to her than the money she received for trying to help us to readjust.

I love that term, readjust. It makes it seem as if we are all some broken mechanical thing that our psychiatrist will repair with a turn of a screw here, a bolt replaced there, and lots of new oil and grease squeezed into places that grind and squeak.

When I looked at these other girls for the first time, I realized that no one was happy to be here. Not one of us had come here willingly. Oh, I don't mean we were dragged here kicking and screaming, although Star made it sound as if it was almost that way for her. It's for sure we would each like to be someplace else. Cathy, whom we nicknamed Cat, hadn't even told her story yet, but one look at her face and I knew she dreaded being here the most. Maybe she dreaded being anywhere. Misty looked the least uncomfortable, but still stirred and fidgeted about like someone sitting on an anthill, her eyes shifting nervously from one of us to the other.

Yesterday, Star talked about times in her life when it felt like it was raining pain. Even though she came from a much different world, I knew what she meant. Our worlds were very different, but similar clouds had come rolling in and we were under an identical downpour of anger and hate drenching us in our parents' madness. I guess we were all just people who had been caught in the same flood and had been pulled onto the same raft, now tossing and turning, all of us looking desperately for an end to the storm.

However, now that I was here and it was my turn to talk about my life, I felt like I had been shoved into the center of this circle of eyes and ears. For two days I had been on the outside looking in, listening first to Misty and then to Star. I was able to maintain distance between myself and the others and to stay aloof like my mother, maybe I had inherited her desire for control. Today was my day and-suddenly, I felt naked, conscious of every blemish, like some specimen under glass in our science class lab. Tears are more private than smiles, I thought. Why should I share any of them with these girls?

Look at them: Misty sitting there with her silly little grin and her T-shirt proclaiming Boycott Child Labor, End Teenage Pregnancy; Star, a black girl who was ready to jump down my throat every time I opened my mouth; and Cathy, a mousy-faced girl, who looked terrified enough to swallow her own tongue every time she blurted a comment and we turned to her. These three were to be my new confidants, my adopted sisters of misfortune? Hardly.

I wondered about this session all night, and then when the limousine brought me to Dr. Marlowe's house this morning, I sat there gazing at the front door and asked myself what was I doing here? The question still lingered. I'm not telling these people intimate things about myself just because they come from broken families, too. They're worse than strangers. They're so far from my world, they'r

e foreigners. They'll just think I'm some spoiled brat.

"I can't do this," I declared and shook my head after a long moment of silence and expectation. "It's stupid."