"We couldn't afford the mortgage and we didn't know where else to go." "We were just joking." "I'm going on vacation." "VO: michvanilly, salomon" "Oliver Week 4" "So is luke on the way?" "He's running late, of course." "But he will be here to pick up Oliver by the end of the session." "Can I speak to you alone for a minute?" " I have to leave a little early." " Sure." "Oliver, if you get hungry, I have some snacks in my purse, okay?" "I'm not hungry." "I'll just be a little bit." "Will you be all right?" "I'll do my homework." "I just wanted to thank you." "Thank me?" "For what?" "For everything." "Right after our session last week luke and I took oliver out to dinner and we explained everything about the adoption just like you asked us to." "And immediately the clouds lifted." "Good." "So you've noticed a positive change in Oliver's attitude?" "This week he's gotten all of his homework done even before dinner." "He made a terrarium for his turtle out of an old pasta box." "Plus he stopped gorging himself on food." "And he already looks better." "And it's all thanks to you." "Thank you, Bess." "I appreciate the compliment, but..." "I'm really not so sure it's anything I did." "He's even sleeping through the night now." "You have no idea what a relief it is to know that I can finally leave town and not freak out that something disastrous is gonna happen." "My friend michelle, she's gonna be here at a quarter past in a rental car." "You seem eager to leave." "We want to get a jump on traffic{\, you know}." "Michelle and I haven't done a trip like this since college." "And..." "I don't even care where we go." "I just want to get in the car and just drive." "I know the feeling." "And the only reason I can even consider leaving town right now is because oliver is doing so well." "So thank you again." "I really appreciate everything you've done." "I don't mean to concern you, bess, but I'm not so sure that Oliver's changed as much as you would like to believe." "What do you mean?" "It strikes me as unusual that... his issues, his problems have just cleared up overnight." "Yeah, it's more than unusual." "It's like a magitrick." "Yeah, it is a lot like a magic trick, by which I would mean that... there's a very good chance that this is an illusion." "But you haven't even talked to him yet." "Most people can't break their patterns in one week, bess." "So you're saying that I can't leave him?" "No, I'm only saying it's possible that he started behaving well because he doesn't want you to see him as the source of your troubles." "The source of my troubles?" "If anything, he's been the saving grace." "Maybe Oliver believes that if he behaves perfectly that... he can solve all the problems between you and Luke." "I really don't know what you're trying to do to me here." "How am I confusing you?" "For a month now you've been telling me that I'm stuck and that I need to get my own life together and let my son grow up into a man." "And then the first chance I have to go have some fun on my own, you say, "he's just pretending to do well and he actually needs you very badly, bess. "" "But I'm not saying you need to stay here and take care..." "I haven't taken a vacation without Luke and Oliver in six years." "And I think I more than deserve to take a little time for myself right now." "Okay, why right now?" "What, besides the fact that my ex-husband has a new girlfriend?" "I saw how hard that was for you to hear." "No, I'm actually glad that Luke is sleeping around now, because now it is very clear that we are done." "He's even started interviewing replacements." "But last week you were very angry about that." "It was a bucket of cold water in my face." "I've got to get my life together." "Oliver's gonna be staying at Luke's more often now and when he's gone I can't just pace around the apartment like a ghost." "I know what you mean." "I've never lived by myself before." "You can't imagine what that's like." "I think I can." "Why don't you tell me how you and Luke got together?" "I got pregnant my last semester in college." "I moved right out of the dorm and right in with luke." "It certainly wasn't what I had in mind." "I have a feeling that nothing that's happened in the past 12 years has been what you've had in mind." "Luke and I had just gotten back from spring break." "I remember his dorm room smelled awful because his roommate had left a pizza on the counter before vacation." "I told him I was pregnant and he dropped to his knees right on the shag rug and asked me to marry him." "I remember thinking," ""this is probably the most important moment of my life and the room smells like moldy pizza. "" "So did you want to marry him?" "I was crazy about luke." "And I was sure I would never stop being crazy about luke." "I was 21." "That's very young to make a big decision." "My parents were furious at luke." "We drove to hartford and we took them out to the best restaurant we could afford, which was ruby tuesday's." "Really classy, right?" "My mom was so upset." "She nearly choked on her fried shrimp." "But then oliver was born and," " you know..." " What?" "It's amazing." "The moment they saw Oliver, it's like their daughter disappeared." "I just became the mother of their grandchild." "But that's how I felt about him too." "The first night I brought him home" "I sat by his cradle and I watched him sleeping and I thought," ""this is the best thing I'm ever gonna do."" "You haven't said anything about how luke felt." "That's a good question." "You're not sure?" "To be honest, for a few years there we didn't see that much of each other." "He was just getting a toehold at work." "I was so busy with oliver." "It was like we were just working opposite shifts in some struggling startup business," "But I gotta hand it to luke, as soon as Oliver was ready for kindergarten we were doing well enough for me to start my master's." "I could tell you about the next five years, but what's the point?" "I just couldn't concentrate." "My kid was sick or he couldn't sleep or there was a bully at the nursery school." "Did you feel that oliver was" " a burden?" " No." "No, of course I didn't think he was a burden." "That's not what I'm trying to say." "It's... school just didn't seem real to me." "It was just making criticism about criticisms and making these meaningless distinctions and looking at art and pretending to see things that probably aren't even there." "And then I looked at my son and... are you saying that Oliver is the reason that you didn't finish college?" "I'm not blaming him." "I'm not." "It was my decision to put him first." "But, you know, I look up now and I'm 33 years old and I've never had a job in my life." "And I'm terrified." "What are you terrified of?" "Uh, my son is getting older." "My husband isn't my husband anymore." "I'm just overeducated enough to be completely unemployable at any sort of meaningful job." "You can contradict me here at any time." "Bess, you could also look at this as an enormous opportunity to reconnect with the person who disappeared 12 years ago and to take a leap into the unknown." "I don't understand you at all." "I spend too much time with Oliver and I'm and I'm overprotecting him, I'm smothering him." "And I try to get away for a little while and I'm abandoning him." "So either I'm taking too much care of him or too little care of him." "Seems like this is an argument that you're having with yourself." "Truth is..." "I don't know what to do." "I don't know what to do." "Michelle is probably waiting for me right now." "She's been in the rent..." "There she is." "I can't talk about this anymore." "I'm on vacation." "Oliver will be fine, right?" "He's 12 years old." "It's a week." "Are you asking for my permission?" "No, I'm not..." "I'm a grownup, okay?" "I was asking for your advice." "Isn't that your job?" "Oliver sweetie, you wanna come in and say goodbye?" "Are you leaving now?" "Yes, Michelle's waiting for me." "Your dad will be here to pick you up." "I {\just }wanna make sure you're okay with that." "I feel fine." "You're not just saying that, right?" "It's the truth." "You don't have to worry about me." "I will be calling you every day." "And if you have any problem or you just wanna talk, you can even wake me up in the middle of the night." "I don't care, okay?" "Thanks again for everything, Paul." "And I'm sorry to run out on you." "No problem." "Okay, go ahead." " Bye." " Bye." "Hey, Michelle." "Well, your mom told me it's a long time since she's been away on a trip." " I'll be fine." " So you got things under control, yeah?" " I'm good." " So, how has..." "How has the week been for you?" "I did all my homework." "Good." "And how's the turtle?" "I made a new house for him out of an old pasta box." "Cool." "I put in grass and leaves from the park." "So you've made a nice home for him." "That's great." "Are you..." "Are you sure you're not worried about your mom going away?" "Last week you were telling me that you were having trouble going to sleep and that when your mom and dad came in to check on you that you were kind of..." " pretending to be asleep." " I'm sleeping fine." "Good." "So you're not tired in class or..." "I just said I'm getting enough sleep." "And how are things going at your dad's?" "Why don't you ask him when he gets here?" "And how's school?" "A couple of weeks ago, you told me this story about a party." "And then there was a boy who did something mean to you." "Eric." "He pissed on my shoes." "You haven't {\really }said anything about him." "Has he been bothering you?" "How?" "Ruining my life." "There's this girl Maya." "Yeah, she was the girl who had the party." "We have Humanities together." "And we were partners for this colonial life project." "I don't know what that is." "Well, we dress up like we were in colonial times and have old colonial jobs." "I was a blacksmith and Maya was my wife and she milked the cows." "But it was stupid." "But she's nice." "She brings candy to school every day and always gives me some." "I wish I had a friend like that." "But last week," "Eric went all over school saying I'm in love with her, but she'll never go out with me because I'm too fat." "It's not fair." "You're right." "It isn't fair." "I'm not gonna be fat anymore." "What do you mean?" "I stopped eating this week." "You're not eating anything at all?" "Well, no." "I have a half a bowl of cereal for breakfast." "I buy lunch at school, but I throw it out." "I only eat a little when I'm with my mom." "And I don't eat at all when I'm with my dad." "But he doesn't notice." "Doesn't that make you feel weak?" "I mean, if you don't eat anything, how do you have energy to make it through the day?" "You know, if you really want to lose weight, you don't have to do it by yourself." "And you certainly do not need to stop eating altogether." "You need somebody to help you with this." "I don't need any help." " Aren't you hungry?" " I don't wanna talk about this anymore." "I remember last week you were telling me that your mom and dad were planning to adopt a baby boy." "But you said that they'd stopped talking about it." "They explained that to me." "And what did they say?" "Well, they were fighting too much about the baby, so they had to give him to someone else." "And how did you feel about that?" "Is there anything about the adoption that you still don't understand?" "I thought they were gonna tell me I was adopted too." "Why would you think that?" "'cause I don't look like them." "And that's another thing Eric said." ""Your mom's so skinny and pretty, you must be adopted."" "You know, I have to say, that kid Eric, I really cannot stand him." "But he's right." "I don't look like my mom or my dad." "I might be adopted." "Would that be... a good thing or a bad thing?" "My parents were fighting about my brother, so they just gave him away." "So do you think that if you don't behave the way they want you to, that... they might give you away?" "Your mom and dad, they might get upset sometimes no matter how well you behave." "But I make things worse." "Sometimes it's the people that we love the most who... upset us the most." "Does that make sense?" "I wish I was adopted." "You know," "I used to feel like that myself, when I was a kid." "You did?" "Absolutely." "I want them to give me away." " Why would you want that?" " 'cause they fight all the time, no matter what I do." "And now they're separated, but they're still fighting." "And they're probably not gonna stop." "So, if they did... give you away, as you said," "where do you think you'd go?" "Well, they said when they gave my brother back, there was a lot of people who wanted him." "Maybe I could go somewhere like that, with parents who'll want me." "Do you really feel that your mom and dad don't want you?" "My dad should be here by now." "I guess he's running a little late." "You want me to call him for you?" "No, I can do it." "It's probably gonna go to his voicemail." "Hey, dad." "It's me, Oliver." "I'm with Paul, waiting for you." "Bye." "I can leave now if you want." "You know, actually, my next appointment was just cancelled." "So you can..." " You can hang out here if you want." " Should I go in the other room?" "You don't have to." "I mean, you can stay here if you'd like." "What are we gonna do?" "We could talk." "We could play a game." "You could teach me how to play blackjack finally." "I'm starving." "Would you like me to make you a sandwich?" "The kitchen is over here." "So..." "Ham?" "Cheese?" "Could I have a ham and swiss cheese with mustard?" "I think I can do that." "I've just got this brown bread." " Is that okay?" " Yeah, that's fine." "Where does that door go?" "That's where I sleep." "And what about that one?" "That's just..." "That's just another entrance." " How many slices do you want?" " Just one of each." "One of each." "Thanks." "Did your son draw that picture?" "Yes, he did." "Is that the house where he lives?" "How is it?" "It's good." "Are you still hungry?"