Bluebell House (Chapter One)
This is the roughest of rough drafts
Chapter 1
I’ve never had a male therapist before. Grandma is nervous. I can tell by the way she taps one of her ballet flats against the leg of the chair in this decidedly masculine office.
Males don’t have the emotional capacity darling, she’ll say, regardless of if I have a good session. She’ll catch my cheek in her hand as she points this out, and twirl my hair in a way that would make me seem like a total dork if I tried it with one of my friends.
But on Grandma, like everything else, it is effortlessly cool. She tells me it’s age and wisdom, but I think it’s just her.
“Ms. Sinclair?” I looked up.
A bespectacled man, shorter than me, is gesturing me into his office. Grandma smarts.
“Can’t even make himself get up for a proper introduction,” she mutters.
“Quit it,” I whisper, and she straightens her spine mockingly, pasting on a Stepford wife smile, gesturing me towards the door where the man is still waiting.
“Alright, get in there. Give me the signal if he’s horrible, I’ll pretend I’m stroking or something.”
“That’s very nice Sulli, thank you. That won’t make me seem traumatized at all.”
I feel like Mr. Therapist might be a douche. His office has posters that remind you to breathe and that say things like “Self-care checkpoint.”
I tap my foot down, but it doesn’t make the same satisfying sound it did against the chairs in the outer office. Is it a lobby if it’s that small? Oh no, it’s a waiting room, I’m dumb.
“Lola?”
“Hm?” I looked up.
Why are therapists always so fucking good at staring?
“I thought we were on Ms. Sinclair,” I joked.
The douche smiles. He pulls at the sleeves of his sweater that looks like the pattern on Grandma’s sofa. I make a mental note to reference Neil from Santa Clause later.
“My apologies Ms. Sinclair,” he said, emphasizing the Mizz.
“So how long has your grandmother been your legal guardian?”
I snapped my gum.
“7 years.”
“So you were nine”
“That would be correct math yes. Isn’t this kind of thing on my form?”
His eyes crinkle a little bit. I think he’s fighting a smile.
“It’s polite and a pretense. And also my job sort of demands it.”
“So you’re just going through the motions?” I say, challenging him now. My last therapist cracked halfway through our first session, maybe I can beat my time.
“Until you give me something more than motions to go through,” he said like it was obvious.
There was a that’s what she said joke lingering in the back of my mind, but I shoved it aside in the hopes of some better material.
“Nice posters.” I gestured to the wall.
Now he did smile, sort of, with one corner of his mouth pulling up.
“Thanks.”
“Are you married?”
He started.
“That’s an inappropriate line of questioning, Ms. Sinclair.”
I slunk back into the slouchy armchair, bravado slightly bent but still going strong.
“Divorced huh?”
His eyes had narrowed to little slits, but a flush tinted his cheeks, indicating a little hit to his dignity. Or was it embarrassment? Either way, I was uninterested in pressing further, as his face smoothed out, fine lines subduing. He adjusted the spectacles on his face, back to neutral once again.
Far too experienced to act rashly, I noted. I knew I was being contrarian, but honestly, this was the fifth therapist I had been to this month. I was tired.
For the remainder of the session, I made polite small talk and gave half-answers. I could tell professional frustration was there, I didn’t know how much that boiled over to personal. Not my job to find out though.
Why had I been to five therapists this month?
The answer was simple. My obnoxiously interfering, obviously well-meaning, simple-minded Ms. Frizzle-esque art teacher had called Sulli, worried about my behavior.
Honestly dramatic. My “behavior” as she called it involved strolling in late for class twice, and not doing an assignment that I considered stupid (it was). The cliche of my so-called angsty teen moment was just that, a cliche. I was fine.
But nevertheless, Frizzle called my grandmother.
In typical Sulli fashion, she told me to journal it out, left celestite and howlite on my nightstand, and figured the matter was solved.
“We don’t need middlemen,” my grandmother told me from the perch of her hanging wicker chair that Frank had bolted to the ceiling.
Frank lives with us. He’s gunning to be my step-grandfather but his love interest, so to speak, is incredibly literal. And Frank is a man of few words.
One of these days I’ll sit them down and have them take the love languages test.
But back to me. This is about my “trauma.” I’m the star, dammit.
I don’t like therapists. I feel pretty confident that I can diagnose myself. Mom left, never knew Dad. Sulli loved me, but her revolving door of partners (sorry Frank love you) has left me with no idea of what a healthy relationship looks like. I don’t trust men, because I had no male figures or role models until Frank, again as stated above, Frank’s a man of few words so I don’t always get a lot from him.
There you go. That’s me solved. Why waste the money talking to someone who will just tell me what I already know? I got names for it from TikTok, like I’m pretty sure I align with anxious attachment disorder, or something like that. I heard the girl explaining it and I was like “yep.”
I was explaining this all to Sulli in the kitchen, where she was experimenting with cooking some sort of hash. I would take over following my rant, as I often did.
“It seems like you have it all figured out,” she said, before pouring a combo of spices that definitely did not make sense. I gingerly removed one from her hand, (with Sulli sometimes you got to go slow).
“I do,” I said, pointing at her.
I removed the remainder of the spices from Sulli’s hand before dragging a chair out from the kitchen table so I could plop down.
She was eying me dubiously which made me confused.
“What is it?” I asked. She chewed her lip slightly, shaking her head.
“C’mon tell me.”
“Nope.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Does Frank know?”
“Why would Frank know?”
“Because he loves you that’s why.”
“Blasphemy. And that strawman’s argument made no sense.”
“Oh big words to hide your emotions, maybe you should spend some time in therapy.”
Sulli’s eyes were bright, and I could tell she was fighting a smile. She wiped her hands with a rag before dragging out the accompanying kitchen chair so she could face me, head-on.
“You know we’ve always operated with complete trust. I treat you not as an adult, because you aren’t one” she said, holding up one of her spindly tattooed fingers when I opened my mouth to protest.
“Grandma–”
“Now just hold on a minute,” she said. “I treat you not as an adult, because you aren’t one. But I value your opinion. I’ve consulted you on every person we’ve moved into this house because this is your home, this is your space. I’ve never wanted you to feel like anyone could come in here and usurp that, or make you feel unwelcome in your own space.”
I could have pointed out that her plethora of lovers including my seventh-grade math teacher, Ms. Spellings (ironic) had made me feel quite uncomfortable in my own space, but like most things, I tabled that for another day.
“What is it?” I asked.
Sulli frowned, before leaning forward to take one of my hands in hers.
“You can say no, is my point. You can always say no.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Your mother called.”