The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls by Julie Schumacher

Author:Julie Schumacher [Schumacher, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780375985713
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-05-07T14:00:00+00:00

“A water tower?” Dr. Ramsan asked. We both stared at my knee, inflated to twice its normal size. “You were actually climbing it? A rusted ladder? In the middle of the night?”

My mother was pretending to read in the waiting room. She had driven over to CeeCee’s first thing in the morning, having consulted her kitchen calendar and discovered that I had an appointment with Dr. Ramsan (he had clinic on Saturdays) at nine a.m. I had woken up on CeeCee’s Oriental rug to the sound of my mother’s voice repeatedly demanding, “Are you drunk? Adrienne?”

Dr. Ramsan bent and straightened my leg several times. “May I ask—” He paused. He was so polite.

“It’s not a very big tower,” I said, with one hand on my skull; I was trying to keep my brain from exploding. “And the ladder doesn’t go all the way up anymore. I was climbing it because …” I tried to remember what my reason had been. Something to do with symbolism? “I guess I wanted to see … the view.”

“A view at night. Of what?” He pushed on either side of my knee with his thumbs.

“Ow. We were trying to find somebody’s house. It’s a person we know. We wanted to find out where she lives, but—” I remembered the wallpaper woman and the murdered bride and—had I seen a gun? “I need to lie down.” I felt twirly and nauseated and, though I had just showered, I could still smell the stench of the clothes I had slept in. My mouth was a saliva-filled marsh, boggy with pockets of vomit and gin.

Dr. Ramsan moved a pillow to the head of the paper-covered table. “And if you had found the person you were looking for and located her house? Then what?”

“Um, I’m not sure. But I think—” Trying to remember what had happened once we reached the tower was like pulling fish from a muddy pond: flashes of memory kept darting and slipping beneath the murk. “I think I did see the person we were looking for. But how did she know we were there? It was confusing.”

“As I suppose climbing a tower in the dark most often would be. You should have a tetanus booster because of this scrape.” Dr. Ramsan circled my wrist with his thumb and fingers and examined my forearm. “I notice your mother hasn’t come in with you this time.”

“She’s kind of sick of me lately,” I said. I had staggered behind her out of CeeCee’s bedroom, steering myself down the stairs by the handrail, a ribbon of vomit snaking its way up my throat. My head was pounding and my knee was on fire. My mother had looked for CeeCee’s parents (someone from their cleaning service had let her in), but they were apparently out playing golf. “So much for ‘I don’t drink,’ ” my mother had said when we got in the car.

“Being a parent is difficult,” Dr. Ramsan said. I saw him notice my hair. “And people your age are often attracted to danger.

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