by Megan Hart
She sobbed into her hands as though her heart was breaking, and I had nothing to do for her but sit beside her and rub her back and hand her tissues.
She gripped my hand so tightly my fingers went numb. Her tears wet my fingers like hot splashes of acid. Her body shook, each sob sounding as harsh as broken glass.
“It’s all right to be afraid,” I said at last.
She nodded and wiped her face, the tears tapering off into a series of small, hitching sobs that eventually became a soft sigh. She let go of my hand and wiped her face with another handful of tissues. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and stared at her hands again.
“I’ve been counting again.”
I patted her shoulder and got up to pour us both glasses of lemonade from the pitcher in the small fridge. She drank hers in a gulp and I poured more, then took my glass and sat next to her.
“And that upsets you.”
“Of course it does,” she said. “But it helps me, too.”
Elle counted things—tiles, leaves, window panes, whatever was on hand—when she felt stressed.
“So long as you understand your reasons for doing it,” I said, “It’s a way of self-soothing. That’s all. You’re not drinking or anything like that, are you?”
She shook her head. “No. No, but I’m wearing Dan out, poor guy.”
She laughed, after a moment, and her laughter was good to hear. “He says he doesn’t mind, but…three times a day is a lot for any guy. You know?”
I’d known once, but it had been a long, long time since I’d had to worry about that. “I bet he doesn’t mind.”
She laughed again and finished the second glass of lemonade and put the glass down. She wiped her eyes once more and pressed her fingertips to her swollen eyes.
“He says he doesn’t care what it takes to get me to walk down that aisle. If I have to wear him down to a nub, he’ll do it.”
I moved back behind my desk, now that she’d gotten a bit more control of herself. “But you’re still afraid. Of what?”
Two of the things that made her such a great patient were her willingness to embrace discussion and the sense of self-awareness that made her emotional problems so poignant. Elle knew exactly what had caused her issues and what she needed to do to overcome them—she struggled with feeling inadequate in her ability to do it, not with not understanding what she needed to do.
“That marrying him will ruin what we have. That I won’t be able to do the domestic thing.”
“You live together now.”
She laughed. “Yes. To my mother’s chagrin.”
“But your mother likes Dan, doesn’t she?”
“She wants me to be married,” Elle said, pointing a finger to the ceiling. “She accepts Dan because it’s pretty obvious he’s the one I’m with and she’d rather see me nicely settled into wedded bliss than be single.”
We’d spent a lot of hours discussing Elle’s mother. We could probably have spent twice as many more and never reached the bottom of that barrel. They tell us in school not to project our patient’s lives onto our own but I could never help but be grateful for my relationship with my mom whenever Elle talked about hers.
“I’m afraid,” she continued, “that I said yes to Dan because I’m still trying to please my mother. And not because I really want to be married to him.”
“Hmmm,” I said, agreeing she had a point. “Struggling with your desire to please your mother is something you’ve worked on for a while. Do you think you haven’t made progress?”
“Do you think I have?” She deftly turned that one around on me, but shot me a grin that told me her hysterics were over.
“Yes.” I hesitated. “I’m very pleased with the progress you’ve made, Elle. You’ve come a long way.”
“Farther than you ever thought I would?” She asked, rather sagely, I thought.
“I think you’ve come farther than you ever thought you would.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. I think so, too.”
“This will be a good thing for you,” I told her, thinking she needed affirmation.
Again, she nodded, the wad of tissues crumpled in her hand. “My heart says so. But my head…” She shook her head and gave me a watery smile. “My head’s filled up with all the reasons it won’t work. And I keep running the figures, over and over, but I can’t seem to come up with an answer.”
“You can’t distill life down into a set of calculations. I wish we could. It would make things so much easier, wouldn’t it?”
“Hell, yeah,” she said, and laughed again.
We looked at each other across my desk. Every doctor-patient relationship has to end at some point. Either the healing is done, or it never will be.
“I’d like you to come,” Elle said. “I’d like you to be there.”
“I’d be happy to come,” I told her.
Her smile was like the sun through a prism, all scattered pieces of brightness, but I could tell it was genuine. I returned it. She wiped her eyes again and it was time for her to go.
To really go, and we both knew it.
She stood and offered me her hand. “Thank you, Dr. Danning.”
I shook the hand she offered me. “Good luck, Elle.”
She nodded again and lifted her chin.
“Take care,” she said, a statement that could have been trite but wasn’t.
“You, too.”
There was distance between us again, the way it had been when she’d first started coming to me. A necessary distance. I watched her leave and wished there was a way to know for sure she’d be all right.
But the problem was, there never is a way to know.
Chapter
11
July
This month, my name is Priscilla, and I’m an investment banker. I wear my blond hair in a tight French twist. I wear pearl earrings in the tiny, perfect lobes of my ears. Everything about me is flawless, slim, put-together. I’m not beautiful, but nobody ever notices.
My friend Tandy’s party is sedate and leisurely. Conversation buzzes about stocks, bonds, the theater, books. The background music is something classical with strings and piano, and I don’t bother pretending I care what it is. I’ve got wine in my hand, but nothing to eat although the table’s laden with plates of fancy food.
“But if you compare the Utopian future of Huxley’s Brave New World and the Dystopian future of Orwell’s 1984,” the man beside me says earnestly, “don’t you have to agree that neither one is a viable scenario when you take into consideration the current financial and moral climate?”
Save me, I mouth to the man inching past me toward the buffet. He’s a couple inches taller than I am, and I’m wearing my tall shoes. He’s blond, too, with light eyes of which I can’t tell the exact color. Like attracts like, and it’s evident even from the first that we’re a nicely matched set.
“The point is,” the new man says easily, “both are fiction, Benson. Fiction. Means made up. Get it? And both of those novels reflect the society the author was living in at the time, so of course their ideas of what the future will be like are way different than what we can extrapolate now.”
I’m impressed. He’s fast, this one. He reaches around behind me to snag a couple biscuit-wrapped frankfurters, putting a casual hand on my forearm to keep from bumping into me as he does. Benson’s eyes lock onto the hand on my arm and he steps up the argument.
Do men really still think it’s about the conquest?
Apparently Benson does, because he leans in closer, sandwiching me effectively between the two of them. “I know it’s fiction, Wilder. I’m not a moron.”
Wilder, who hasn’t moved away from me although he could, laughs. “Of course you’re not.”
Benson seems to think Wilder’s mocking him, because he scowls. “Look, man, I’m just saying that today’s society doesn’t leave room for a Utopian future, but nobody expects Big Brother, either.”
Beside me, his shoulder brushing mine w
ith every movement, Wilder pops a frankfurter into his mouth. “Frankly, Benson, if I’m going to read futuristic fiction, give me some about Pleasurebots and unlimited sex.”
Benson looks aghast, his gaze going immediately to my face as though to check for my reaction. While the comment has taken me rather aback, it’s exciting, too, to hear something so blatant. Besides, Benson is boring me. Wilder…is not.
“What about you?” Wilder turns to me, an easy smile spreading across a mouth made for it. “What do you like to read?”
I don’t read fiction, usually, and when I tell them both so, Benson looks scandalized. Well, I’m pleased, because whatever he was looking for in me must have included a passionate interest in reading novels. He backs up a step, giving up the pursuit but with a disdainful glance toward Wilder as if to say Benson wasn’t beaten—he was voluntarily dropping the pursuit.
I’m not sad to see him go. Benson was becoming over-bearing. Wilder, on the other hand—
“Priscilla Eddings.” I hold out manicured fingers for him to squeeze.
“Joe Wilder.” His hand holds mine for just a second longer than necessary for a social greeting.
I don’t mind. I also don’t mind he’s still standing so close I can smell him, a cologne I can’t place. I can also see that his eyes are not gray, as I’d thought, but a greenish-blue.
No matter. We still look good together, both tall, slim, well-dressed and coiffed. We’re even wearing complimentary colors, his suit dark charcoal and mine pale dove.
“So, Joe Wilder,” I say. “What do you do when you’re not rescuing women from overexuberant discussions of literature?”
“Save people from overexuberant discussions about alimony and child support.”
“You’re a divorce attorney?” I flick my gaze over his body again, taking a second look at the suit, which, yes, is more expensive than I’d first thought. I like that. He’s not ostentatious.
“Mediator, actually. In divorce and family affairs.”
Even more interesting. Attorneys can be self-absorbed pricks. Mediators tend to focus more on other people, and they still make the same amount of money.
Not that I need a man who makes money since I make my own, and quite a bit of it. But it’s better to be with one’s own sort. Slumming gets tiresome after awhile.
I have a feeling there’s no slumming with Joe. In fact, the more he says, the more convinced I become that Joe is exactly the sort of man I’m looking for. I put on a wide smile and lean in, just a little.
“I’m going to get a drink…”
“Let me. What can I get you?” He looks toward the bar, then back at me, his eyebrow raised in expectation.
It’s the perfect answer. “White wine, please.”
He nods and heads toward the bar where Tandy’s husband Bill is pouring drinks. I watch his walk. I like it.
“I see you’ve met our Joe.” Tandy is a dear friend, but she tries too hard to be stylish. You either are, or you’re not. You can buy clothes, but you can’t buy style.
I watch Joe chat with Bill. “What makes him ‘your’ Joe?”
Tandy also tends to simper. “Oh, you know. Just that he’s our best single, worthwhile male friend.”
The key word being worthwhile, as it seemed likely Benson was single, too. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Ta, sweets,” says Tandy and returns to her role as hostess.
Tandy might lack style, but she clearly doesn’t lack taste. When Joe comes back with the drinks, I’ve decided I’m going to spend the rest of the night talking to him.
Which I do.
I’m used to getting what I want, in business and in pleasure. In this, too, Joe and I appear to be well-matched. Our conversation is carefully worded, a game we both know how to play. I speak. He listens. He talks and I weigh what he says against what he means and find little difference between them. I respect that. I’m used to men wanting me but being either too intimidated to tell me so, or else being so arrogant they’re certain they can woo me into acquiescence.
There’s no wooing to be done with me. I know what I like and what I want, and I’m not really interested in pretense. I don’t go to bed with men who don’t hold an interest for me long-term, who don’t meet my minimum standards.
Sex is as much an act of business as it is of pleasure. I’m not interested in the mess and complications of passion. I like my sex to be as neat and tidy as my appearance. Not without strings or emotion, of course, I’m not an entirely cold fish.
“Benson is giving us the evil eye.” Joe leans in to whisper in my ear.
His breath is hot, and I turn to look across the room where Benson is, indeed, watching us. I dismiss the other man with a sniff and turn my gaze to Joe. He’s smiling as he sips from a glass of very good whiskey.
“Let him look,” I say.
Joe lifts his glass to me. “Absolutely.”
We negotiate with glances and casual touches. Joe moves into my personal space, and I allow him. The rest of the room goes away as I focus on him. It pleases me to see he isn’t looking over my shoulder to scope out other possibilities. His responses to what I have to say are pertinent and interested.
He’s got good stories to tell, but he doesn’t overwhelm me with solely talking. He listens, too. The night moves on and the party gets a little raucous. Alcohol loosens inhibitions, makes people friendlier or more combative. Tomorrow morning a lot of the men and women here are going to wake with throbbing heads and regret the alliances they’ve made and broken as a result of too much wine.
Benson appears to have moved on. Joe and I can hear his impassioned speech from across the room, where he’s cornered a stunned-looking brunette who works for my bank. The couple next to us are about to start tongue-kissing at any moment, both of them giddy and flushed, their glasses empty. I move closer to Joe to get away from them, since they’ve obviously lost all sense of propriety.
“Another?” Joe points to my empty glass, but I shake my head.
He’s going to ask if he can see me home, and I’m going to let him. “I should be going.”
“Do you have a coat?” he says right away. “Let me get it for you.”
This time when I watch him walk away, I smile. Oh, there’s time for it to sour, for him to muck up our unobtrusive negotiations by behaving like so many men do with overeager hands and mouths. I’ll be sad if that’s the case, because Joe’s not only good-looking and charming, he’s smart, too. He gets it.
He brings my Burberry trench coat and helps me on with it with a compliment. He’s got one almost the same, and this satisfies me, too.
Because I only live three blocks from Tandy’s house, I walked to the party. Standing on Tandy’s front porch with the night air cool but not uncomfortable, it would be easy for Joe to say good-night and leave me. I know he’s not going to.
“May I walk you home, Priscilla?”
Neither of us pretend he’s offering only to be polite. The negotiations have stepped up a bit. I can’t deny the small flutter I feel in the pit of my stomach. It’s the same sensation when a particularly good investment comes through, or I finagle a deal that nobody else has managed.
It’s sweet anticipation and it makes me smile.
“I’d be delighted.”
The brick sidewalk is uneven and though I can walk miles in these heels, I don’t mind taking the arm Joe offers. He charms me further on the walk to my house with stories of his childhood menagerie of constantly escaping pets. I share details about my last vacation. These are not intimate stories, but they take us one step along the path we both seem interested in taking.
At my door, I pull out my keys but don’t fumble with the lock to give him an excuse to help me, therefore initiating an invitation inside. We stare at each other, both with pleasant smiles. Now’s the time he’ll either sink or swim, and though I’m hoping he’ll swim I’ve had it all go south at my door more times than not.
“Good night, Joe.”
We
’re standing close enough that the hems of our coats brush with the slightest shift of our legs. I hold my keys in my left hand, and I glance at the lock before looking back up at him. I tilt my head the barest inch to meet his eyes.
“Good night, Priscilla.”
Joe’s voice is warm and friendly. Both of us pause and the air between us thickens again with anticipation. I wait, wondering if I’ve read him wrong after all, and he’ll turn out to be one more just like all the others.
“I had a great time tonight.”
I smile. “I did, too.”
I wait. He smiles. The hems of our coats kiss, but we do not.
Joe holds out his hand for me to shake, which I do, and in that moment there is no question in my mind that I’ll be seeing him again.
I sat in silence. Stunned. I hadn’t even touched my salad, though my stomach had been grumbling since this morning. Now it churned.
Joe sat up straight on the bench, staring directly ahead. A woman jogged by, the cords of her headphones dangling from beneath her baseball cap. She turned her head to look at him as she passed, a gesture that seemed so automatic as to be unconscious. Joe didn’t seem to notice.
After another few minutes in which the only sounds between us were the rush of traffic and the occasional barking of dogs, Joe turned his head toward me with a motion stiff and precise, almost robotic.
“Ask me, Sadie.”
I shook my head.
“Ask me why I didn’t fuck her.”
I couldn’t look away from his face. If he smiles, I thought, I’ll walk away and never come back.
“Don’t you want to know?”
I didn’t want to know. He’d broken the rules, unspoken but understood. If there was no story to tell, I had nothing to listen to. And we had no reason to meet.
