“You would?” Amazed.
The honest answer: Who knows?
Grace said, “Of course.”
“So what would you do about it?”
Grace smiled. “I’d go talk to someone scary-smart. Because we all need help from time to time.”
Flashing to Malcolm. Sophie. The new experience of sleeping in a clean, sweet-smelling bed. Breakfast. Dinner. Tentative attempts to hug, however briefly.
Human touch Grace had to train herself to tolerate. Thinking about all that brought a smile to her lips, which was perfect, the moment called for a smile, let Bev think it was all about her.
Sighing, Bev hugged herself. “I appreciate what you’re saying, Dr. Blades, but once I get back home... it might be difficult.”
“It might be. But you’ll handle it. You always do.”
Bev pinged her lower lip with a finger. The finger that bore her diamond-chip ring. Brian, a plumber’s assistant, splurging at Zales. “You’re saying sometimes life needs to be difficult to be meaningful.”
“I’m saying when we’re well put together emotionally, Bev — as you are — we learn to trust ourselves.”
Oh, do we...
Bev took a long time before she spoke next. “I guess I need to just roll with it.”
Grace said nothing.
Bev said, “Okay, I need to roll with it even if that means thinking about Greg.”
“Don’t fight thinking about Greg. Greg was precious to you,” said Grace. “Why would you exile him from your consciousness?”
Bev thought some more, face tightening as if struggling with a weighty puzzle. “On the flight from Portland, Dr. Blades, I spent most of the time remembering. One memory really stuck with me. Like it was glued to my brain. There was a lake. We used to take a canoe and Greg would row me. He was so strong. Muscles on muscles. Each time he moved the oar, they rippled. The sun made them glisten. Sometimes we’d start out on a sunny day and it would rain and he’d be dripping with sweat and rain and just shine.”
She inhaled. “I’d sit in the canoe and watch him and... I’d want him. Right then and there. In the boat.” She blushed. “We never did anything like that. I never told him.”
Grace smiled. “You didn’t want to rock the boat. Literally and figuratively. Balance is important to you and right now you’re feeling off balance because life has taken a new turn.”
Bev gawked. Smiled. “You’re more than scary, Dr. Blades. I bless the God that brought me to you.”
The rest of the day rolled on with reassuring predictability. Grace knew that objectively she was young but sometimes felt as if she’d seen everything. That didn’t sour her on her job, nor did it bore her. On the contrary, she found it reassuring and invigorating.
This is what I’ve been created for.
Nevertheless, she needed to make sure confidence never slid into smugness. Nor would she ever allow the Haunted to enter a millimeter of her private world.
Friendly, yes. Friend, never.
Because friendship was a limited concept: Pals and chums and confidantes — what the textbooks sanitized as a social support system — were fine when you stubbed your emotional toe. With deep wounds, you needed a surgeon, not a barber.
To Grace, the concept of therapy as paid friendship was a horrid cliché. The last thing patients needed was some sloppy, mawkish do-gooder brimming with sickly-sweet smiles, contrived pauses, the phony gravity of by-the-book sympathy, the smarmy rote of catchphrases.
What I hear you saying...
Cram a patient’s throat with sugar and they’ll choke.
Phonies who practiced that way either were money-hungry quacks or just wanted to feel good about themselves. Which was why you saw so many fucked-up people seeking second careers as ahem counselors.
Some of the Haunted came to Grace seeking the eye-locking, intensely theatrical concern they’d seen on talk shows and movies of the week.
I’m not a shrink but I play one on TV.
When the expectation was for Dr. Soft Voice, Grace dispelled it gently by supplying constructive reality. For four hundred fifty bucks an hour you deserved more than an emotional adult diaper.
You deserved an actual adult.
Checking her desk clock, she brewed herself a strong shot of espresso, downed it just in time for the red light on the wall above her desk to illuminate.
Time for Roosevelt. Thoughtful, gracious, polite. Old enough to be her father.
If she’d had a real father...
Grace felt her breath catch. Her heart skipped a beat, obviously too much caffeine, she’d cut back.
Rising, she smoothed her hair, straightened her posture.
Onward.
As the end of the day approached, Grace felt uncharacteristically tired. Things had gone a little tougher than anticipated with Stan and Barb, the couple entering the therapy room outwardly hostile to each other in a way Grace had never seen.
No need to probe, they told her straight out: Both had a history of affairs and they were finally divorcing. The dual infidelity had been kept from Grace. They figured it didn’t matter, had begun years before Ian’s suicide.
A pair of fools truly believing Ian had never known, after all he was crazy, everyone told them so.
Now the marriage was coming apart and despite the mutual decision, Stan and Barb were angry.
At themselves for failing.
At embarking on an unsuitable marriage in the first place.
Then the inevitable segue: anger at Ian for walking into their bedroom and waking them up as he collapsed onto their duvet, spurting and leaking and seeping and dying.
Grace hadn’t spent much time wondering what had led a nineteen-year-old to nuclear self-destruction. Ian was gone, life was for the living, if she’d felt otherwise she’d have gone to mortician school.
But now, she wondered what else she’d missed.
Stan was saying, “So that’s it, we’re dividing everything in half and it’s done, we’re being mature and logical.” Grinding his jaws.
Barb snapped, “Over and done, put a fork in it.” Stan shot her a hard look.
Grace knew the answer to her next question but she asked it anyway.
“So you’re both in the same place with it?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
Lousy liars. So why the hell are you here?
Grace asked them.
Barb said, “We decided we needed it for closure. Your being such a big part of our family over the last few years and now there’ll be no family.”
Divorcing Grace first. She smiled internally.
Stan said, “We didn’t want you to think you failed us, this had nothing to do with Ian.”
“Definitely nothing,” said Barb.
“The two of us are still friends,” lied Stan. “Which I think is an accomplishment in itself.”
To prove it, he reached for Barb’s hand. She frowned but squeezed his fingers, let go quickly and positioned herself out of reach.
Grace said, “You’re moving on and were kind enough to think of me.”
“Yes, we are!” said Barb. “Perfect way to put it. Moving on.”
“You bet,” said Stan, with perhaps a bit less confidence.
Grace said, “Well, I appreciate the thought you’ve put into this and I wish you the best. I also want you to know that I’m always here for you.”