Page 27 of Counting Backwards

Sunday was always my favorite day of the week. Usually, Sundays meant brunches and long walks with Vance or running a couple of frivolous errands before catching up on work that had spilled over from the prior week. But Vance was out of town, and even if he’d been home, I’d still have felt off-kilter, probably even worse. I sat at the Formica table in the narrow kitchen of the apartment where my grandmother raised me, flipping through the pages of a celebrity gossip magazine. Gram was at the sink, sponging pink globs of Goddard’s silver polish onto a tarnished serving spoon. A pile of old serving utensils rested on a dish towel beside the sink, waiting to be freed of their black and purple stains.

“Stop reading that garbage,” Gram said. “It’s obvious you’re stewing about something over there, so you might as well spit it out.”

I looked down at the magazine and laughed. “I’m not the one who subscribes to these rags.” Closing the cover, I took in the glossy photos on the front. In one corner was a picture captioned, “Tom and Gisele: At Each Other’s Throats!”

Maybe it should have made me feel better about all the recent arguing with Vance that there were other couples—even rich andfamous ones—who couldn’t get along either. But for the moment, my focus was elsewhere.

“I can’t get Hydeford out of my head,” I confessed. “The fact that multiple women had their reproductive organs altered without their permission. I’m just so outraged. We still live in a world filled with monsters—awful, awful humans—and I guess I’m just trying to process it all. It’s filling me up with all these warring emotions.”

Gram put down the spoon and turned to face me.

“Monsters,” she repeated, and I couldn’t tell if she was agreeing or reproaching me for the unproductive comment. “Why don’t you try to name what you’re feeling?” This was something we’d done ever since I was a kid. She said it increased emotional regulation and self-compassion.

I thought for a moment, trying to determine which sentiment was most prominent for me at the moment. “I’m feeling a lot,” I said. “Anger, shock, disgust, helplessness, fear. I’m also feeling motivated, thanks to you. If you hadn’t pushed me the way you did...” I paused, not even wanting to vocalize how I might not have followed up on the situation at the center. I never would have seen the ugly truth for what it was without her prodding. “It’s just a lot to digest. Maybe you could distract me with something else?”

She studied me for a moment, her light eyes traveling over my face, like she wanted to say more. “All right,” she breathed finally. “Go get my box of photos, if you want. It’s on the nightstand on Grandpa’s side.” Three months earlier at Christmas, Vance’s parents had given Gram a picture frame, which she immediately displayed on a credenza in the living room. But she’d never bothered to put a photo in it. “You’ve spent long enough admiring this beautiful couple,” I’d laughed earlier that morning, pulling out the insert that had come from the store.

“We’ll find a different picture for the frame,” Gram said, “but throw that awful tabloid in the bin on your way.”

I tossed the magazine back on the pile of mail where I’d found it and started toward my grandparents’ bedroom. “We both know you’re going to read it from cover to cover right after I leave,” I called over my shoulder.

When I reached the end of the hallway, the floral, citrusy smell of Gram’s Jean Naté After Bath Splash was as strong as ever. The shoebox full of photos waited in the same spot as always, on the bedside table next to a stack of my grandfather’s business books. Grandpa Walter had died decades earlier, when I was only seven years old. Gram had long since gotten rid of most of his things, but she’d left his nightstand as he’d always kept it, filled with his books and reading glasses and vitamin bottles. I thought maybe Gram liked to open her eyes to that view every morning. Maybe it allowed her to pretend, just for a moment after she woke up each day, that her husband was still alive.

I crouched down for the Cole Haan box that contained many old photographs, but before grabbing it, I paused to admire the framed picture still on Grandpa’s beside table. It was a shot of me when I was about six years old, wearing a glittery leotard and posing onstage at a dance competition. I lifted the photo and studied my younger self. The smile on my overly made-up lips was as wide as possible. I could still remember that dance, a sassy number I performed to “My Lovin’” by En Vogue. Back then, I had adored dancing and might’ve even been talented at it. But after my parents died, I just couldn’t do it anymore. Without their smiling faces watching me from the audience, I just didn’t see any point.

Looking down at the picture, I suddenly realized why I’d felt so strange when Isobel mentioned the doctor telling her to count backwards from ten. My father used to tell me the exact same thing right before I went onstage as a kid. I hadn’t thought aboutthat in forever, but now it all came flooding back to me. His words had been like a shorthand message. Whenever I was afraid to try something, instead of giving me a long, boring speech, my father would tell me, “Count backwards from ten, and then it’s showtime.”

A knot grew in my throat as I remembered. How could I have forgotten that? It had been something so special between us. I had a pang thinking of how many other special things I must have forgotten—about both of them.

Count backwards from ten.Isobel and Denise had heard the same phrase right before being victimized. The thought horrified me. I wished my dad was still here so I could tell him about the women I’d met. As I pictured his deep hazel eyes and his bushy hair, I was pretty sure I knew what he would say.

I wiped at my eyes and put the ceramic frame back in its place, returning my attention to the box. I’d been through the photos inside countless times over the years, poring over images of my mother from the 1960s, a child with unruly, curly pigtails, then later as a teenager in the ’70s, her hair styled into a puffier version of Farrah Fawcett wings. My favorite pictures were from the 1990s, when I started appearing in the images too, a baby in my mother’s arms.

With the box in hand, I returned to the kitchen table and lifted off the dusty top. Gram was back at the sink working on the next piece of silver.

“Is there a specific picture you want me to find?”

As I reached into the pile of photos, my phone chimed from inside my tote bag on the floor. I twisted around to reach for it, but she interrupted me.

“Hey now,” she said, glancing back to fix me with a halting stare. “I thought we were finished with working eight days a week.”

“You know what?” I removed my hand from the bag and held it up, showing my empty palm as proof. “You’re right. I’m not attheir beck and call anymore.” I wondered for a second if it might be Vance calling, but then I remembered his flight schedule. As the phone continued buzzing inside my bag, I willfully ignored it.

“Not at their beck and call?” Gram repeated. “Didn’t you work late Friday night and then spend the whole day at the office yesterday?”

“Not for any paying clients,” I said.

After meeting with Denise, I hadn’t wasted a moment. I’d begun researching case law on medical care in detention facilities, retaliatory actions by correctional officers, prisoners’ rights, and the requirements for consent in medical procedures. I still needed more proof, but so far, everything pointed toward the women at Hydeford having a strong case against the facility and potentially even the federal government. I was trying to figure out what relief to seek, how to get justice for the women who’d been harmed, and how to prevent any further damage.

“It was for the women at the detention center. I wanted to do it while Vance was away.”

Gram blinked twice. I hated how she always managed to see right through me.

“You haven’t told him you’re looking into the surgeries?”

“No, I did,” I said, but I could see by the tilt of her head that she knew I was holding something back. “I mean, partially, just broad strokes about medical mistreatment,” I admitted. “But then he told me I should hand the whole thing off to another attorney. He’s not behind me on this, and... I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t feel like listening to him discount any more of my ideas or the reasons why it’s important for me to be involved.”

She nodded slowly, putting down the cake server she was holding and drying her hands on a dish towel.