reflection, and my reflections were always of the expression on my father’s
stretched face the moment before he’d fled from me.
The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious
it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I’m fine, you
think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I’m
not falling apart. I’m just lazy. Why it’s better to think yourself lazy than
think yourself in distress, I’m not sure. But it was better. More than better: it
was vital.
By December I was so far behind in my work that, pausing one night to
begin a new episode of Breaking Bad, I realized that I might fail my PhD. I
laughed maniacally for ten minutes at this irony: that having sacrificed my
family to my education, I might lose that, also.
After a few more weeks of this, I stumbled from my bed one night and
decided that I’d made a mistake, that when my father had offered me the
blessing, I should have accepted it. But it wasn’t too late. I could repair the
damage, put it right.
I purchased a ticket to Idaho for Christmas. Two days before the flight, I
awoke in a cold sweat. I’d dreamed I was in a hospital, lying on crisp white
sheets. Dad was at the foot of the gurney, telling a policeman I had stabbed
myself. Mother echoed him, her eyes panicked. I was surprised to hear
Drew’s voice, shouting that I needed to be moved to another hospital. “He’ll
find her here,” he kept saying.
I wrote to Drew, who was living in the Middle East. I told him I was going
to Buck’s Peak. When he replied his tone was urgent and sharp, as if he was
trying to cut through whatever fog I was living in. My dear Tara, he wrote. If
Shawn stabs you, you won’t be taken to a hospital. You’ll be put in the
basement and given some lavender for the wound. He begged me not to go,
saying a hundred things I already knew and didn’t care about, and when that
didn’t work, he said: You told me your story so I could stop you if you ever
did something crazy. Well, Tara, this is it. This is crazy.
I can still fix this, I chanted as the plane lifted off the tarmac.
It was a bright winter morning when I arrived on Buck’s Peak. I remember
the crisp smell of frozen earth as I approached the house and the feel of ice
and gravel crunching beneath my boots. The sky was a shocking blue. I
breathed in the welcome scent of pine.