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“Look, I understand why you’re doing this, but it’s not going to come up positive. I swear to you. I’ve been sober for twenty months.”
“And we want to believe you,” Caroline says, and then she glances at the drawings all over the walls. “But we need to understand what happened here today.”
“I already told you what happened. Anya took possession of my body. She used me like a puppet. I didn’t draw any of these pictures! She did!”
“If we’re going to talk about this,” Caroline says, “we need to stay calm. We can’t shout at each other.”
I take a breath. “All right. Okay.”
“Now before you came to work here, we had a long talk with Russell about your history. He told us about your struggles—the false memories, the lapses—”
“This is different. I don’t have those problems anymore.”
“You know just a couple days ago, Teddy lost his box of drawing pencils. He came to me crying. He was upset because he couldn’t find them anywhere. And soon after that, all these pictures start magically appearing in your cottage. Doesn’t that seem like an extraordinary coincidence?”
I look down at the cup. It’s only been a minute. It’s still way too early for results.
“Caroline, I can barely draw a straight line. I took one art class in high school. I got a C plus. There’s no way I drew these pictures, I’m not that good.”
“My patients always say the same thing: ‘I can’t draw to save my life!’ But then they try art therapy and the results are extraordinary. They draw the most amazing images to work through their trauma. To process truths they’re not ready to face.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Look at the woman in your pictures. She’s young, she’s tall. She has an athletic build. She’s actually running, Mallory. Does she remind you of anyone?”
I see where she’s going but she’s wrong. “That’s not a self-portrait.”
“It’s a symbolic representation. A visual metaphor. You’ve lost your younger sister. You’re upset, you’re panicking, you’re desperate to bring her back—but it’s too late. She’s fallen into a valley of death.” She moves around the den, directing my attention from one picture to the next. “And then an angel comes to help her—nothing too subtle about that metaphor, right? The angel is leading Beth toward the light and you can’t stop them. Beth has crossed over, she’s never coming back. You know this, Mallory. It’s all here on the wall. This isn’t Anya’s story. It’s your story. It’s Beth’s story.”
I shake my head. I don’t want to drag Beth into this. I don’t even want Caroline saying her name.
“We know what happened,” she continues. “Russell told us your story and it’s awful, Mallory. I am so sorry it happened. I know you’re carrying a lot of guilt, a lot of grief. But if you don’t address these feelings—if you just keep tamping them down—” She gestures around the room to my artwork. “They’re like steam under pressure, Mallory. They’re going to look for cracks and find a way to escape.”
“What about all the other pictures? The woman being strangled?”
“An abstract concept made literal,” Caroline says. “Maybe grief, or addiction. The stranglehold that drugs put on your body.”
“And the woman getting dragged through the forest?”
“Perhaps there’s someone who pulled you out of danger? A sponsor or mentor? Like Russell?”
“Then why is he burying me?”
“He’s not burying you, Mallory. He’s freeing you. Excavating you from a mountain of heroin and bringing you back to society. And look at you now!”
Caroline turns the dip card so I can see the results. All five tabs—the indicators for THC, opioids, cocaine, amphetamines, and meth—they’ve all come up negative.
“Twenty months sober,” Ted says. “That’s amazing.”
“We’re really proud of you,” Caroline says. “But it’s clear you have a lot more work to do, isn’t that right?”
And I don’t know what to say.
I agree there are some very puzzling parallels between Anya’s drawings and my own personal history.
And yes, I have struggled with lapses and false memories and all the other psychological fallout of drug addiction.
But I have twelve more drawings back at my cottage that stink of death and there’s only one person responsible.
