gonna_live (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gonna_live) wrote2009-01-11 01:10 am
gonna_live) wrote2009-01-11 01:10 am
(no subject)
The second appointment rolls around at ungodly o'clock in the morning. Diana offers her tea -- herbal, fragrant, non-caffeinated -- and asks whether she'd like to talk, or pick up the pastels again.
Kaylee likes being able to draw things. Mostly she takes on abstract patterns. They're the kinds of things that could be sunrises or sunsets, with the colors bleeding into each other. She rubs them with her fingertips, with the side of her thumb. Diana watches her work while working on her own picture -- something that slowly begins to take the picture of a bird.
And, slowly, Kaylee starts to talk -- about her family, about why she's here, about where she lives. Her hands move as she talks, coloring, blurring, coloring more, adding layers and shading in red and orange and dark blue. She talks about Simon, about why it's important for her to be able to stick this out, about how he gets a little standoffish like he doesn't know what to do for her, about how they've had the conversations where it's always felt like people try to protect her and how she doesn't want to have people solve her problems for her, Simon included, and about how she can appreciate what he's doing for her at the same time as she feels like she doesn't have any support at all and she's drowning, and even if this wasn't going on he's still in school and she shouldn't bother him with it and it's just one more way she's failed him and how she needs to be a good wife but she's never succeeded yet and probably never will, and how it's utterly beyond her why Simon still bothers with her.
All the while she keeps drawing, and she doesn't cry.
Diana asks if she had to take a pill. Kaylee shakes her head -- says there hasn't been a need for her to, says she's stayed home, and it's not as bad if she doesn't leave.
Kaylee gets homework: write down what the criteria are for being a good wife, and where they come from -- Simon and where he comes from, or her, or somewhere else entirely.
And another appointment in five days.
Kaylee likes being able to draw things. Mostly she takes on abstract patterns. They're the kinds of things that could be sunrises or sunsets, with the colors bleeding into each other. She rubs them with her fingertips, with the side of her thumb. Diana watches her work while working on her own picture -- something that slowly begins to take the picture of a bird.
And, slowly, Kaylee starts to talk -- about her family, about why she's here, about where she lives. Her hands move as she talks, coloring, blurring, coloring more, adding layers and shading in red and orange and dark blue. She talks about Simon, about why it's important for her to be able to stick this out, about how he gets a little standoffish like he doesn't know what to do for her, about how they've had the conversations where it's always felt like people try to protect her and how she doesn't want to have people solve her problems for her, Simon included, and about how she can appreciate what he's doing for her at the same time as she feels like she doesn't have any support at all and she's drowning, and even if this wasn't going on he's still in school and she shouldn't bother him with it and it's just one more way she's failed him and how she needs to be a good wife but she's never succeeded yet and probably never will, and how it's utterly beyond her why Simon still bothers with her.
All the while she keeps drawing, and she doesn't cry.
Diana asks if she had to take a pill. Kaylee shakes her head -- says there hasn't been a need for her to, says she's stayed home, and it's not as bad if she doesn't leave.
Kaylee gets homework: write down what the criteria are for being a good wife, and where they come from -- Simon and where he comes from, or her, or somewhere else entirely.
And another appointment in five days.