The Way Out

Chapter 1Thank God it’s Monday. Violet Vance walked into the office building for Alternative You with a smile on her face. Mondays always sent a shiver down her spine, even more when it was the first Monday of the month and her wellness company decided on their cases. Even better when it was September, and the burst of fall leaves outside their downtown Niagara office on the Canadian side of the border seemed to burst to life in oranges, reds, and yellows. There was green, too, like the lush grasses from the summer rains and green shimmer of Melanie’s Dodge in the parking lot, and these familiar colours made Violet feel, over and over again, that she’d made the right decision with her life. “Good morning,” she greeted as she stepped inside the front office. She’d used her key, since they were not open on Labour Day, and made sure to lock it behind her. From what she could tell in the parking lot, Melanie, Katrina, and Dawn were already there. Violet wiped her feet on the front matt before she inhaled deeply. A mix of patchouli from the air humidifier and nag champa incense greeted her. The Buddha statue in their front walkway smiled at her. The chakra poster behind it was light up by the sunlight from the outside. Violet calmed her mind, though there was nothing stressful keeping her tense. No, just excitement, and more excitement, because she had the perfect case to lobby for. “You!” Katrina said. She had just emerged from the employee bathroom. She wore her sweats, rather than get made-up for their meeting. Her six feet tall frame was still elegant and imposing, rather than slovenly in her university hoodie and baggy pants. She ran right over to Violet and gave her a hug. “Happy Birthday!” “It’s not for three days,” Violet said. “Still. You never pause to celebrate.” “I do, too.” Katrina gave her a look as they stepped out from the hug but didn’t press the issue. She gestured to their back meeting room where Melanie and Dawn had already set up with their cases. “And donuts,” Katrina added. “For, you know, moral support.” “Oh yeah. But if we tell our clients not to eat our feelings, then we really shouldn’t indulge so much.” “Listen to you,” Katrina said, shaking her head. “You really do need some birthday cake.” “Well, for now, I’ll settle for the sprinkles on the donut itself. Come on.” Violet tapped her shoulder bag, indicating—though opaquely—to the case she wanted to present. “I have so much to say.” There was another round of hugs and greetings from Dawn and Melanie before Violet had a chance to sit down. Though the four of them saw one another all the damn time in their Private Wellness Clinic called Alternative You, they made it a regular practice to shut their doors the last two weeks of August for their own vacations. Melanie had just gotten back from the Bahamas, and sported a wonderful tan that made her already dark features that much more sultry. Dawn had just gotten back from a yoga retreat, and as Violet sat down across from her, wanted to hear all the details. Violet picked up a sprinkled donut and placed it on a napkin before she did, and casually ate sprinkles as Dawn went through all the poses she’d learned and finally gotten into, along with the cool gear she’d gotten in the Arizona hills. “I brought a matt back for you,” Dawn said. She gestured to her bag on the other side of the room. “Purple like you. Violet for violet. “ “Oh, wow! Thank you.” Violet gave Dawn a hug. She was pretty sure her entire wardrobe was purple. Any gift she received, too. People heard her name, thought of violets, and then she felt like that purple monkey dishwasher at the end of a game of telephone. No one really knew her, so they just thought purple. At least this matt was nice. She gripped the edges and squeezed happily. “I’ve been meaning to try something out more seriously.” Katrina soon cleared her throat. “While all y’all were out on the town, I was nursing a sick puppy.” She then went on to briefly discuss her own adventures in dog sitting. Katrina, much like Violet, had not bothered to leave Niagara over their two-week break. Since they did still have clients who wanted to meet over that time, most of their walk-ins were shut down, and they took remote calls instead. Those remote calls had fallen to the two of them. Violet hadn’t minded working an hour here or there; she’d heard about some long repressed issues in one of her client’s backgrounds, and motivated another to apply for assistance from a government program—and all while she’d also cleaned her entire apartment. It was time, as far as Violet was concerned, well spent. “Anyway,” Katrina said. “Since I am still cleaning my carpet from my adventures in dog-sitting, I’d like to clock out of this meeting early. So let’s discuss results, expectations, and then our possible pro bono cases. Who wants to begin? “ Dawn raised a hand. She gave a rapid-fire recap on all her current cases, before moving onto her suggested pro bono work: a former child star who had just declared bankruptcy and wanted to get back on her feet. “Her aunt lives in Vineland, the town across from here. She seemed really nice when I spoke with her on the phone.” “Are we in the business of celebrity, though?” Violet asked. “I think my vote is no for this.” “Mine, too. But we’re certainly in the business of celebrities paying us,” Katrina said. “So whoever this child star is, see if we can reel them in tonight. Even at a discounted rate. I’m curious.” “Me, too.” Melanie leaned forward. She half-whispered, “Is this who I think?” “Maybe. We will talk later.” Melanie was already smiling, though. “Oh! I thought that phone message was a prank. You’re telling me it’s real?” Dawn just touched her nose. When they moved onto voting, it was only Dawn who said yes to the child star—so they moved onto other cases. Katrina presented hers next; then Melanie. They were both good candidates. Women with low incomes and a history of abuse, both of whom now wanted—and needed—help to reconstruct their lives. It was the bread and butter of their program in spirit, a hard choice to vote on. Since they’d become private practice, most of the people they helped had too much money and too much time. They were bored and wanted to feel better, re-craft their image, and become an alternative version of themselves. Every once in a while, there was a true issue that these women had to work through, and the team lifted them up to the best versions of themselves. But it didn’t happen too often. Not with that clientele. Most of Alternative You—save for Dawn—had been counsellors with degrees, and at one point, had worked for the government or another private practice offering their services. When they’d been held back by too much red tape, they’d diversified and crated their own unique clinic. It was technically not licensed as a therapy facility, meaning that their licenses were all bonuses to their services, not the main fare. This allowed them to do, mostly, what they wanted and charge as much as they wanted. To help with tax deductions, though, their accountant had recommended this scholarship program, to be decided on the first Monday of every month. At the time, it had sounded like a pipe dream. Now Violet only felt grateful, over and over, as if her life was finally shaking out to what it needed to be. When it came time for her to present her case to the three of them, she did so with the confidence that her thirty-five years in this business gave her. Though she was only thirty-six, she insisted that she’d been helping people through their issues since she was one year old, and her mother died in a car crash. “You okay, Vi?” Dawn asked. “You got a case?” “Yes. Of course. Her name is Ashley Stevenson.” Violet went through the details that were so similar to what would later happen when her father married her stepmother at age eight that she started to feel transparent. She shook it off and went forward. Ashley’s father and mother had split when she was seven, and her mother soon remarried a man who would then become too close with her over the next seven years of her life. She’d repressed her bad memories for a long time, and had recently run out of therapy sessions at her local university. Rather than seek out traditional therapy, her application letter had said, she wanted to find some pragmatic tools to keep going in her chosen field of medicine. “I want to be a doctor,” Violet said, reading off the application form. “But I realize that being a doctor means seeing patients naked, and I can’t do that right now. I want to be able to give a man in his forties or fifties a physical exam, and help him find whatever is wrong with him, and not think of my stepfather as I do this. I’ve worked out, the best I can, what happened to me. But I need help getting from the child who was abused to the woman who is now a survivor. Since your clinic has dealt with these cases before, I figured it was the best shot.” “Wow,” Katrina said. She tapped a pen against the table. “I think she read some of those lines off our website and tailored it perfectly.” Violet was a bit affronted by Katrina’s words. “Are you saying she’s lying?” “Never. Always believe the victims.” Katrina held up her hands. “It’s not my specialty, but I think she’s a good candidate. Impressive writing. Shouldn’t take long to help her, you know? So much of overcoming hardships, whatever it is, is about putting it in words.” Violet nodded slowly. Katrina’s specialty was, of course, narrative therapy. She helped clients tell a different life story. Dawn, ever the physical one, usually helped them with their exercise routines and introduced mindfulness and meditation to their lives. Melanie was the more detail oriented, whether that was the calories in the food they were eating or the dollars in their bank accounts, she made sure that everyone came out in the black in the end, including the clinic itself. It was Violet who had worked with people with s****l assault backgrounds; she didn’t always intend on it, but with the practical reality of most of their clients being women, and most women having dealt with some form of abuse in their lives, she was always there for them. She wanted to be there for Ashley, too. “What do you guys say? It’s definitely a yay from me.” “And me,” Katrina said. Dawn and Melanie exchanged a look. When Dawn nodded, she picked up a donut and took a large bite. Melanie wrote down the cost of their services and weighed it against all other cases they were considering. “This will work. We can take Ashley as the pro bono client this month. Ask the others if they don’t mind the waitlist, though.” “Even for the child star?” Violet said, scoffing. “Yes. Even celebrities need help, and in case you didn’t watch a ton of bad TV over the break,” Katrina teased, “they often go bankrupt, too.” Before Violet could tease Katrina back, Melanie got to the other business matters they needed to attend to. The rest of their clients needed to be scheduled for the upcoming month, and then there was the other celebrity case. “Not a pro bono one, I hope,” Violet said. She picked at another sprinkle, still not fully consuming her donut. “Definitely not pro bono.” Melanie’s eyes went wide as she looked at the figure again. “Nope. Not even close.” The table hissed in delight as she read out the number. “Wow, yes, take them on.” Katrina laughed. “Who is this, though?” “That’s the thing. It’s an entire band. Anyone ever heard of Dis-Chord?” Melanie then spelled out the stylized version of the name. When no one had, she played a few seconds of one of their songs on her phone. It sounded tinny thought the speakers of Melanie’s out of date device, but otherwise good. Mellow. More like a club song, like something from a gangster movie. When Violet said as much, Melanie nodded. “Yeah! I think I read somewhere that one of their songs was in that really popular gangster movie this summer. Maybe you heard it in the trailer? Either way.” Melanie went on when no one seemed to know it. “They want one of us to work with the band as they record—rather, rerecord—some of the aspects of their latest album, due out in December. They were adamant that one of us go with them to LA and live in the record company’s condo complex to then facilitate group therapy with the guys.” “What?” Dawn asked, flummoxed. “Is this Some Kind of Monster?” “What?” Violet asked. Dawn explained that it was the rock documentary for Metallica, when they’d had a band therapist come in and try to sort out the rock stars flaming tempers. “Oh. I don’t think that works for us. We’re more…gentle? I don’t think these guys will be into our treatment methods. There are probably lots more people out there to help them.” “That’s the thing,” Melanie said, reviewing a file in front of her. “They really want you, Violet.” “Me?” She looked down at her blouse, and her casual slacks, before she turned back to Melanie. “Why me?” “Your background. Apparently, the main reason why they’re asking for your expertise is because one of their band members has been picked up on a s*x crime.” Violet shuddered. “I’m not dealing with a rapist. I refuse.” Melanie made a face. “I know, that’s what I told them when I got the email over the break. But they insisted that they don’t want you—or whoever, if we still take this case—to confront the arrested party. They want you to deal with the band in the aftermath.” “Oh. I…” Violet didn’t say anything for a long time. It had been years since she’d worked with male clients. And when she did, long before Alternative You, they too had been abuse victims. She was used to sitting with someone as they went through their pain, and then taking those pieces and putting them together again. She didn’t know how she’d even begin to approach a group of men who were not victims, but had lived so close with a rapist. Or something. “Do we know what the band member did?” Melanie scanned the document again. “Nope. They’re obviously trying to keep it from the media, but they know it’s coming. He was arrested only a week and a half ago, and the band members have been saying he’s sick. They just got off tour…” Melanie looked at her phone and nodded. “Today. I think.” “So when would they want us to work with them?” Dawn asked. She emphasized that she was more than willing to go, and tried to parry her physical therapy background into something that might help these men work through their own issues. Katrina, too, also added some of her own expertise in how they might go about helping these men. “I don’t know how old they are,” Katrina added. “But everyone wants a puppy to take their pain away.” The table laughed again. All but Violet. “Are we really doing this?” “Yes,” Melanie said without hesitation. “It’s a lot of money.” Her other two partners nodded and added their own affirmation. Violet was annoyed. She didn’t need to be, but this sort of case weighed on her. She tried to see past her own history and focused solely on the pragmatics. “It’s not what we specialize in.” “It’s what you specialize in,” Katrina corrected. “That’s not what I meant. We work with people one-on-one. They come to us. They want to change, and we coach them through it. We don’t live with our clients, and we don’t typically do groups like this.” “We do families, though,” Melanie said. “And we don’t live with our clients not because we don’t want to, but because it’s largely impractical. Now it’s not. I mean, where’s a better place to have a coach like us than in your place?” Violet wanted to argue but couldn’t. “Fine. Take them on. But I’m not doing it.” “Okay.” Melanie wrote down something on her clipboard. She then moved to her phone and brought up a flight list. “You sure? The weather is nice in LA.” “I prefer Canada.” “Okay,” Melanie said again. She exchanged a look with everyone around the table. An expression of will someone help me out here? crossed her face. No one helped. Violet remained steadfast. “Why don’t we rotate?” Katrina suggested, only to have Dawn knock down that option. “Full house here. We need all hands on deck, and these men need consistency. They need Violet.” Melanie nodded and held up her flight list yet again. “When do you want to leave? They need you by the seventh.” “So my birthday?” Violet shot back. “Yes. Happy Birthday, once again,” Melanie said. When Violet only stared daggers, she added. “We will pack you many donuts to go.” “Well hey,” Dawn cut in. “Now I want to go.” “No. Fine. I will I just…” Violet huffed. She folded her arms across her chest. Was she really going to this? She wanted to stay and be with Ashley, her pro bono client. She wanted to stay in Niagara and go out to breakfast with Dawn or Katrina or even Melanie on her birthday, not sit on a flight to LA where she’d then have to live with these men for god knows how long. No amount of donuts could change her mind. “What about Ashley?” “We will take care of her.” “But I won’t be here.” “We can Skype you in if you must,” Melanie said. “And we can keep her file pro bono for a while. Couple months, more than average.” “Really?” Now Violet was paying attention. If she could get Ashley more time in general, she may have even done yoga right then and there. After a few more exchanges between them, and she felt like Ashley was set for life, did she finally concede to help the band. She made a face. At least their music, from what little she’d heard, was okay. “What do they look like? Is there an image I can see?” Melanie tossed over her phone. A four member band stood in front of a stage, posing for some kind of magazine shoot. The man at the front was positioned as the lead singer. He had a narrow nose, frosted tips, and too-tight pants. The three other men around him were dressed in suits, or merely suit jackets, and they all had dour and serious expressions on their face. Two of them had shocks of red hair, either on their head or in a large beard, and the other remaining man had dark hair, past his shoulders. He was much smaller than the other guys, but still probably around 5’10”. “What are you thinking?” Katrina asked. “Are you selecting which Beatle you will faint over?” “Shut it. I never understood that kind of mania…” Violet sighed. That, she knew, was a lie. She’d been a teenage girl once. She’d wanted to fawn all over a band member. Multiple band members. But she was a woman now, an adult, and she was definitely going to make sure these men—in the wake of one of their members abusing his position—understand just where they’d hurt her. And all women. “Yes,” Violet finally said. “I’ll do this.”