There’s No Place Like Here

10

When I was fourteen, my parents talked me into seeing a counselor after school on Mondays. They didn’t have to do much convincing. As soon as they told me I’d be able to ask all the questions I wanted and that this person was qualified enough to answer, I practically drove myself to school.

I knew they felt that they had failed me. I could tell that by their expressions when they sat me down at the kitchen table, with the milk and cookies in the center and the washing machine going in the background as the usual distraction. Mum held a rolled tissue tightly in her hands as though she had used it earlier to dab away tears. That was the thing with my parents: they would never let me see their weaknesses, yet they would forget to get rid of the proof of them. I didn’t see Mum’s tears but I saw the tissue. I didn’t hear Dad’s anger at having failed to help me but I saw it in his eyes.

“Is everything OK?” I looked from one strong face to the other. The only time two people can look so confident and as though they can face anything is when something bad happens. “Did something happen?”

Dad smiled. “No, honey, don’t worry, nothing bad happened.”

Mum’s eyebrow lifted when he said that and I knew she didn’t agree. I knew Dad didn’t agree with his words either but he was saying them nonetheless. There was nothing wrong with sending me to a counselor, nothing wrong at all, but I knew that they had wanted to help me themselves. They had wanted their answers to my questions to be enough. I overheard their endless discussions about the correct method of dealing with my behavior. They had helped me in every way they could and now I could feel their disappointment in themselves and I hated myself for making them feel that way.

“You know the way you have so many questions, honey?” Dad explained.

I nodded.

“Well, your mum and I”-he looked to her for support and her eyes softened immediately as she glanced at him-“well, your mum and I have found someone that you’ll be able to talk to about all of those questions.”

“This person will be able to answer my questions?” I felt my eyes widen and my heart quicken as though all of life’s mysteries were about to be answered.

“I hope so, honey,” Mum answered. “I hope that by talking to him, you won’t have any more questions that will bother you. He’ll know far more about all the things you worry about than we do.”

Then it was time for my lightning round. Fingers on the buzzers.

“Who is he?”

“Mr. Burton.” Dad.

“What’s his first name?”

“Gregory.” Mum.

“Where does he work?”

“At the school.” Mum.

“When will I see him?”

“Mondays after school. For an hour.” Mum. She was better at this than Dad. She was used to these discussions while Dad was out working.

“He’s a psychiatrist, isn’t he?” They never lied to me.

“Yes, honey.” Dad.

I think that’s the moment I began to hate seeing myself in their eyes, and unfortunately it was when I began to dislike being in their company.

Mr. Burton’s office was in a room the size of a closet, just about big enough for two armchairs. I chose to sit in the dirty olive-green-velvet-covered chair with dark wooden handles, as opposed to the stained brown-velvet-covered chair. They both looked like they dated from the forties and hadn’t been washed or removed from the small room since. There was a little window so high up on the back wall that all I could see was the sky. The first day I met Mr. Burton it was a clear blue. Every now and then a cloud passed, filling the entire window with white before moving on.

On the walls were posters of school kids looking happy and declaring to the empty room how they had said no to drugs, spoke out against bullying, coped with exam stress, had beaten eating disorders, dealt with grief, were clever enough to not have to face teenage pregnancy because they didn’t have sex, but on the off chance that they did, there was another poster of the same girl and boy saying how they used condoms. Saints, the lot of them. The room was so positive I thought I was going to be ejected from my chair like a rocket. Mr. Burton the magnificent had helped them all.

I expected Mr. Burton to be a wise old man with a head of wild gray hair, a monocle in one eye, a waistcoat with a pocket watch attached by a chain, a brain exploding with knowledge after years of extensive research into the human mind. I expected Yoda of the Western world, cloaked in wisdom, who spoke in riddles and tried to convince me that the Force in me was strong.

When the real Mr. Burton entered the room I had mixed feelings. The inquisitive side of me was disappointed; the fourteen-year-old in me positively delighted. He was more of a Gregory than a Mr. Burton. He was young and handsome, sexy and gorgeous. He looked like he had just walked out of college that very day, in his jeans and T-shirt and fashionable haircut. I did my usual calculations: twice my age could work. In a few years it would be legal and I would be out of school. My whole life was mapped out before he had even closed the door behind him.

“Hello, Sandy.” His voice was bright and cheery. He shook my hand and I vowed to lick it when I got home and never wash it again. He sat on the brown velvet armchair across from me. I bet all those girls in the posters invented all those problems just to come into this office.

“I hope you’re comfortable in our designer, top-of-the-line furniture?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he settled into the chair, which had burst at the side and had foam spilling out.

I laughed. Oh, he was so cool. “Yes, thanks. I was wondering what you would think my choice of chair says about me.”

“Well,” he said with a smile, “it says one of two things.”

I listened intently.

“First, that you don’t like brown, or second, that you like green.”

“Neither.” I smiled. “I just wanted to face the window.”

“A-ha.” he grinned. “You are what we call at the lab a ‘window facer.’”

“Ah, I’m one of those.”

He looked at me with amusement for a second, then placed a pen and pad on his lap and a tape recorder on the arm of the chair. “Do you mind if I record this?”

“Why?”

“So I can remember everything that you say. Sometimes I don’t pick up on things until I listen back over the conversation.”

“OK, what’s the pen and pad for, then?”

“Doodling. In case I get bored listening to you.” He pressed RECORD and said that day’s date and time.

“I feel like I’m at a police station, about to be interrogated.”

“Has that ever happened before?”

I nodded. “When Jenny-May Butler went missing, we were asked to give any information we had at the school.” How quickly talk had come around to her. She would have been delighted at the attention.

“Ah,” he nodded. “Jenny-May was your friend, wasn’t she?”

I thought about that. I looked at the anti-bullying posters on the wall and wondered how to answer. I didn’t want to seem insensitive to this gorgeous man by saying no, but she wasn’t my friend. Jenny-May hated me. But she was missing and I probably shouldn’t speak badly of her because, after all, everyone thought she was an angel. Mr. Burton mistook my silence for being upset, which was embarrassing, and the next question he asked, his voice was so gentle I almost burst out laughing.

“Do you miss her?”

I thought about that one, too. Would you miss a slap across the face every day? I felt like asking him. Once again I didn’t want him to think I was insensitive by saying no. He’d never fall in love with me and take me away from Leitrim then.

He leaned forward in his chair. Oh, his eyes were so blue.

“Your mum and dad told me you want to find Jenny-May, is this true?”

Wow. Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick. I rolled my eyes, OK, enough of this crap. “Mr. Burton, I don’t want to seem rude or insensitive here because I know Jenny-May is missing and everyone is sad but…”

“Go on,” he encouraged me, and I wanted to jump on him and kiss him.

“Well, me and Jenny-May were never friends. She hated me. I miss her in a way that I notice she’s gone but not in a way that I want her back. And I don’t want her back or to find her. Just knowing where she is would be enough.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Now, I know you probably thought that because Jenny-May was my friend and she went missing, that every time I lose something, like a sock, and try to find it, it’s like my way of finding Jenny-May and bringing her back.”

His mouth dropped open a little.

“Well, it’s a reasonable assumption, I suppose, Mr. Burton, but it’s just not me. I’m really not that complicated. It’s just annoying that when things go missing, I don’t know where they go. Take, for instance, the Scotch tape. Last night Mum was trying to wrap a present for Aunt Deirdre’s birthday but she couldn’t find the Scotch tape. Now, we always leave it in the second drawer under the cutlery drawer. It’s always there, we never put it anywhere else, and my mum and dad know how I am about things like that and so they really do put everything in their places. Our house is really tidy, honestly, so it’s not like things just get lost all the time in a mess. Anyway I used the Scotch tape on Saturday when I was doing my art homework, for which I got a crappy C today, by the way, even though Tracey Tinsleton got an A for drawing what looks like a squashed fly on a windscreen and that’s considered ‘real art,’ but I promise I put it back in the drawer. Dad didn’t use it, Mum didn’t use it, and I’m almost certain no one broke into the house just to steal some Scotch tape. So I searched all evening for it but I couldn’t find it. Where is it?”

Mr. Burton was silent and slowly moved back and settled into his chair.

“So let me get this straight,” he said slowly. “You don’t miss Jenny-May Butler.”

We both started laughing and for the first time ever, I didn’t feel bad about it.

“Why do you think you’re here?” Mr. Burton got serious again after our bout of laughter.

“Because I need answers.”

“Answers like…?”

I thought about it. “Where is the Scotch tape that we couldn’t find last night? Where is Jenny-May Butler? Why does one of my socks always go missing in the washing machine?”

“You think I can tell you where all these things are?”

“Not specifics, Mr. Burton, but a general indication would be fine.”

He smiled at me. “Why don’t you let me ask you the questions for a moment, and maybe through your answers, we’ll find the answers you want.”

“OK, if you think that’ll work.” Weirdo.

“Why do you feel the need to know where things are?”

“I have to know.”

“Why do you feel you have to know?”

“Why do you feel you have to ask me questions?”

Mr. Burton blinked and was silent for a second longer than he wanted, I could tell. “It’s my job and I get paid to do it.”

“Paid to do it.” I rolled my eyes. “Mr. Burton, you could have my Saturday job stacking toilet rolls and get paid but you chose to study for what, ten million years? To get all of those scrolls you’ve hung on the walls.” I looked around at his framed qualifications. “I’d say you went through all of that studying, all of those exams, and ask all these questions for more reasons than just getting paid.”

He smiled lightly and watched me. I don’t think he knew what else to say. And so there was a two-minute silence while he thought. Finally he put down his pen and paper and leaned toward me, resting his elbows on his knees.

“I like to have conversations with people, I always have. I find that through talking about themselves people learn things that they didn’t know before. It’s a kind of self-healing. I ask questions because I like to help people.”

“And so do I.”

“You feel by asking questions about Jenny-May, you’re helping her or maybe her parents?” He tried to hide the confusion from his eyes.

“No, I’m helping myself.”

“How does it help you? Isn’t not getting the answers frustrating you even more?”

“Sometimes I find things, Mr. Burton. I find the things that have just been misplaced.”

“Isn’t everything that’s lost, misplaced?”

“To misplace something is to lose it temporarily by forgetting where you put it. I always remember where I put things. It’s the things that I don’t misplace that I try to find-the things that grow legs and walk away all by themselves-that annoy me.”

“Do you think it’s possible that somebody else, other than you, moves all these things?”

“Like who?”

“I’m asking you.”

“Well, in the case of the Scotch tape the answer is clearly no. In the case of the socks, unless somebody reaches into the washing machine and takes out my socks, then the answer is no. Mr. Burton, my parents want to help me. I don’t think that they would move things and then forget about it every single time. If anything, they are more aware of exactly where they put things.”

“So what is your assumption? Where do you think these things are?”

“Mr. Burton, if I had an assumption, then I wouldn’t be here.”

“You have no idea, then? Even in your wildest dreams, during your most frustrating times when you’re vigorously searching into the early hours of the morning and you still can’t find it, have you any opinion at all as to where you think the missing things are?”

Well, he’d clearly learned more about me from my parents than I thought, but having to answer this question truthfully, I feared, would mean he’d never fall in love with me. But I took a deep breath and told the truth anyway. “At times like that I’m convinced they are in a place where missing things go.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Do you think Jenny-May is there? Does it make you feel better to think that she’s there?”

“Oh, God.” I rolled my eyes. “If someone killed her, Mr. Burton, they killed her. I’m not trying to create imaginary worlds to make myself feel better.”

He tried very hard not to move a muscle in his face.

“But whether she’s alive now or not, why haven’t the Gardaí been able to find her?”

“Would it make you feel better to just accept that sometimes there are mysteries?”

“You don’t accept that, why should I?”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“You’re a counselor. You believe that every action has a reaction and all that kind of stuff, I read up on it before I came here. Everything that I do now is because of something that happened, something somebody said or did. You believe there are answers to everything and ways of solving everything.”

“That’s not necessarily true. I can’t fix everything, Sandy.”

“Can you fix me?”

“You’re not broken.”

“Is that your medical opinion?”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“Aren’t you a ‘doctor of the mind’?” I held up my fingers in quotation marks and rolled my eyes.

Silence.

“How do you feel when you are searching and searching but you still can’t find whatever it is that you’re looking for?”

I could tell this was the weirdest conversation he had ever had.

“Have you a girlfriend, Mr. Burton?”

His forehead creased. “ Sandy, I’m not sure that this is relevant.” When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “No, I don’t.”

“Do you want one?”

He was contemplative. “Are you saying that the feeling of searching for a missing sock is like searching for love?” He tried to ask the question without making me sound stupid but he failed miserably.

I rolled my eyes again. He was making me do that a lot. “No, it’s a feeling of knowing something is missing in your life but not being able to find it, no matter how hard you look.”

He cleared his throat awkwardly, picked up his pen and paper and pretended to write something.

Doodle time. “Boring you, am I?”

He laughed and it broke the tension.

I tried to explain again. “Perhaps it would have been easier if I said that not being able to find something is like suddenly not remembering the words to your favorite song that you knew by heart. It’s like suddenly forgetting the name of someone you know really well and see every day, or the name of a television show you watched for years. It’s something so frustrating that it plays on your mind over and over again because you know there’s an answer but no one can tell you it. It niggles and niggles at me and I can’t rest until I know the answers.”

“I understand,” he said softly.

“Well, then, multiply that feeling by one hundred.”

He was contemplative. “You’re mature for your age, Sandy.”

“Funny, because I was hoping you’d know an awful lot more for yours.”

He laughed until our time was up.

That night at dinner Dad asked me how it went.

“He couldn’t answer my questions,” I replied, slurping on my soup.

Dad looked like his heart was going to break. “So I suppose you don’t want to go back.”

“No!” I said quickly and my mum tried to hide her smile by taking a sip of water.

Dad looked back and forth from her face to mine questioningly.

“He has nice eyes,” I offered by way of explanation, slurping again.

His eyebrows rose and he looked to my mum, who had a grin from ear to ear and flushed cheeks. “That’s true, Harold. He has very nice eyes.”

“Ah, well then!” He threw his arms up. “If the man has nice eyes for Christ’s sake, who am I to argue?”

Later that night I lay on my bed and thought about my conversation with Mr. Burton. He may not have had answers for me but he sure cured me of searching for one thing.