began to stay up late and sleep little, listening to bands I’d overheard Lindy talk about, and I hated this music. The lyrics were dark and without perspective, wrapped up in melodies that inevitably collapsed, self-aware, on themselves. Even as a kid I knew this. To get into her type of music was to sing along with a man on hisdeathbed. So that’s what I tried to do. I wrote poems about Lindy in red ink. I got an earring. I hit puberty.
All this to say that when Lindy and I emerged from that year, we were changed.
Lindy was now a brooding girl who roamed the halls of Perkins alone. Any friends that she did have were meek things who may as well have been shadows. She shunned bright colors, blue included, and wore only gray boxer shorts underneath her uniform at school. She rarely shaved her legs. She became increasingly obsessed with a band called Bauhaus that I was never sure how to pronounce and scribbled things like anarchy signs on her Chuck Taylor high-tops. She cut her hair to chin length and her bangs traced her soft face like sickles.
She became thin and, most said, bulimic. Rows of small pimples appeared on her chest.
This was a hard thing to watch.
But in the following year, when we were speaking again, when we were close, Lindy explained to me how all this had happened.
She said that therapy was to blame.
Lindy told me that her months in group counseling, something her parents insisted she attend, were the worst thing that could have happened to her. It was worse even than the way her father spied on her at all hours in the year that followed the crime, worse than the way she would see his car sitting inconspicuously in the corner of the movie theater parking lot as she bummed cigarettes off of random guys. It was worse than the sheepish way he would later act as if he hadn’t been spying at all, as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, when he cruised back around to pick her up at eleven. And it was even worse than the manner in which he eventually collapsed hisremorse into hers, begging her to talk to him, and adding complicated locks on their doors.
Because what therapy did, she explained, was introduce her to a world of problems she never would have known about otherwise. The girl who cut herself; she was in her group. The anorexic. The bulimic. The nymphomaniac. They each offered rebellious possibilities to Lindy, which she explored. The girl in her group who’d watched her mother die in an automobile accident that she herself had caused. Now there was a look at depression, she said. The boy who was molested by his uncle. Good grief.
Ultimately, the scope of these ills made Piney Creek Road look obscene to Lindy, she said, the way the blossoms on our crepe myrtles bloomed. The lovely street was like an ignorant joke. Therapy had taught her this, and she wore the lesson all over her face.
So I took on the look of a troubled boy as well. I flipped my long bangs out of my eyes when adults approached me. I quit the soccer team, which I was actually good at and enjoyed, and started playing guitar instead because I thought Lindy might find it sexy. I smoked cigarettes, and later dope, in the Taco Bell parking lot on school nights. I rarely smiled.
But my image was papier-mâché.
You could poke a hole right through me in those years and all you would see fall out were items from Lindy’s closet. No blood in me then. Only the one obsessed heart. I stood for nothing. I fought for nothing. Can’t you see?
I’m drawing myself as innocent here.
Don’t we all?
11.
T he third suspect in Lindy’s rape was the adopted boy named Jason Landry. One of the slew of children that Mr. Landry and his wife, Louise, fostered on Piney Creek Road, Jason was the only one who stuck around. He’d been in their clutches since he was an orphan, a toddler, and was two years older than me. He was not a pleasant boy by any stretch and, just as the people of Woodland Hills wondered if he could have been
All this to say that when Lindy and I emerged from that year, we were changed.
Lindy was now a brooding girl who roamed the halls of Perkins alone. Any friends that she did have were meek things who may as well have been shadows. She shunned bright colors, blue included, and wore only gray boxer shorts underneath her uniform at school. She rarely shaved her legs. She became increasingly obsessed with a band called Bauhaus that I was never sure how to pronounce and scribbled things like anarchy signs on her Chuck Taylor high-tops. She cut her hair to chin length and her bangs traced her soft face like sickles.
She became thin and, most said, bulimic. Rows of small pimples appeared on her chest.
This was a hard thing to watch.
But in the following year, when we were speaking again, when we were close, Lindy explained to me how all this had happened.
She said that therapy was to blame.
Lindy told me that her months in group counseling, something her parents insisted she attend, were the worst thing that could have happened to her. It was worse even than the way her father spied on her at all hours in the year that followed the crime, worse than the way she would see his car sitting inconspicuously in the corner of the movie theater parking lot as she bummed cigarettes off of random guys. It was worse than the sheepish way he would later act as if he hadn’t been spying at all, as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, when he cruised back around to pick her up at eleven. And it was even worse than the manner in which he eventually collapsed hisremorse into hers, begging her to talk to him, and adding complicated locks on their doors.
Because what therapy did, she explained, was introduce her to a world of problems she never would have known about otherwise. The girl who cut herself; she was in her group. The anorexic. The bulimic. The nymphomaniac. They each offered rebellious possibilities to Lindy, which she explored. The girl in her group who’d watched her mother die in an automobile accident that she herself had caused. Now there was a look at depression, she said. The boy who was molested by his uncle. Good grief.
Ultimately, the scope of these ills made Piney Creek Road look obscene to Lindy, she said, the way the blossoms on our crepe myrtles bloomed. The lovely street was like an ignorant joke. Therapy had taught her this, and she wore the lesson all over her face.
So I took on the look of a troubled boy as well. I flipped my long bangs out of my eyes when adults approached me. I quit the soccer team, which I was actually good at and enjoyed, and started playing guitar instead because I thought Lindy might find it sexy. I smoked cigarettes, and later dope, in the Taco Bell parking lot on school nights. I rarely smiled.
But my image was papier-mâché.
You could poke a hole right through me in those years and all you would see fall out were items from Lindy’s closet. No blood in me then. Only the one obsessed heart. I stood for nothing. I fought for nothing. Can’t you see?
I’m drawing myself as innocent here.
Don’t we all?
11.
T he third suspect in Lindy’s rape was the adopted boy named Jason Landry. One of the slew of children that Mr. Landry and his wife, Louise, fostered on Piney Creek Road, Jason was the only one who stuck around. He’d been in their clutches since he was an orphan, a toddler, and was two years older than me. He was not a pleasant boy by any stretch and, just as the people of Woodland Hills wondered if he could have been
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