Page 93 of Breakaway
"I've been her brother that calls and asks and organizes and shows up and never says what he actually needs because saying what I need is not…That's not the version of me everyone knows."
Gwen writes nothing. She adjusts her glasses. She waits.
"Tell me about that version," she says.
"That version is the one who works and is useful. The helpful one, the easy one, the one who doesn't need anything because everyone else needs things and there isn't room." My hands are on the arms of the chair and I am gripping them and I didn't notice I was gripping them until now. "I have been that person since I was nine years old."
"What happened when you were nine?"
"Sina was sick. She had leukemia."
"Tell me about that."
The room is quiet. The afternoon light through the window is softer than February's light. Warmer.
"It was a normal house to grow up in," I say. "My parents loved us. They loved both of us. They were not bad parents. I need to say that first."
"I hear you."
"But when your six-year-old sister has leukemia the house reorganizes around that. It has to. Every appointment, every treatment, every phone call from the hospital, every night my mother came home too tired to eat. The house became about keeping Sina alive. And that was right. That was what it should be about."
"And you?"
"I figured it out." The words are coming slowly. Not deflecting slowly. Thinking slowly. The fragments are the thinking, not the armor. "I figured out the best thing I could do was not make things harder. I made my own lunches. I did my homework without being asked. I cleaned my room. I went to hockey practice on my own starting when I was ten because my father was at the hospital and my mother was at the hospital and I could ride my bike."
"That's a lot for a ten-year-old."
"It didn't feel like a lot. It felt like the only option. My sister was fighting for her life and I was not going to be the reason anyone had to stop fighting for her."
Gwen nods. Her pen is on the notebook but it has not moved.
"So you learned how to not need anything."
"I learned how to be useful. If I was useful enough, if I was easy enough, if I was the one who organized and anticipated and showed up and never asked for anything, then it was easier for everyone."
"What happens if you're not useful?" she asks.
The question sits in the air between us. I can feel it the way I can feel a play developing before the pass arrives. The question is the pass. The answer is the play. The play has been forming forsix sessions and I have skated around it every time and today the pass is on my tape and I am standing still.
"Luca?"
"I heard you." My voice is quiet. "I'm trying to answer."
"Take your time."
The silence stretches. Ten seconds. Fifteen. The afternoon light moves on the windowsill. I can hear traffic on Juniper Street through the glass, the low hum of a city I have lived in for seven months and am only now beginning to hear.
"I don't think I know how to be a person who isn't useful."
Gwen does not move. "Tell me more," she says.
"When my sister was sick I figured out that the way I was supposed to be was the easy one. The one who didn't need anything. And I think I have been being that person ever since. In different forms. With my parents. With Wes. With the team." I stare at the plant that still has the yellow leaf. "I walk into places already on so nobody has to wonder if I'm okay. I think that's how I prove I'm still useful. And when I stop being useful I stop being a person."
"You stop being a person?”
"I stop having a reason. To be here. To be anywhere." My eyes are wet and I don’t know when I started to cry. "When I came to Atlanta and the function was gone, when I couldn't be the person who made Wes's life work from across the apartment, when I couldn't be the partner who showed up every day and did the thing that justified my being there, I just…I had nothing. There was nobody underneath it."
"There was nobody underneath the person being useful?"
