by Susan Lewis
How many times, she wondered, as she ran down the stairs, had she made this errand of mercy before? Too many to count. Too many not to know what to do. She just hoped Laurie was ready to deal with it, for it was still very early days. Though Sherry didn’t doubt Laurie’s inner strength, getting to grips with the pain and learning how to handle it was really expecting far too much of herself at this stage. However, if anyone could do it, Laurie could, and if she did, it would be yet another reason to admire her, as if there weren’t enough already.
*
As Laurie prepared drinks and a snack in the kitchen Sherry stood in the sitting room, letting her eyes wander across the high, vaulted ceilings, the white brick walls, the Oriental-style balustrades of the mezzanine, to the dramatic river view. By anyone’s standards this could qualify as a dream home, she was thinking to herself. From the custom-made Italian furniture, to the exquisite Kashmiri silk carpets, to the curve of the staircase and modern paintings that hung on the walls, virtually everything had been chosen or created from a design Laurie and Elliot had worked on together. It was no wonder Laurie was finding it so hard to be here alone, so much of them and who they were, as individuals and as a couple, was wrapped up in the place, it had to be close to torture.
Turning as Laurie came round from the kitchen, she watched her set down a tray of iced lemonade and crudités, knowing it was unlikely either of them would eat much, but at least she’d persuaded Laurie to do without alcohol. It was an easy trap to fall into at a time like this, but it only ended up making everything seem ten times worse.
‘I shouldn’t have drunk so much at lunchtime,’ Laurie said, turning her sore, tired eyes to Sherry.
She looked so vulnerable that Sherry didn’t hesitate to draw her into an embrace, almost as though she were a parent comforting a child. In a way that was the role she was going to play for the next couple of hours, that of a parent, or an older sister, who could pull on all the experience she’d had at doing this, helping to get someone past the worst of the pain.
‘I’m sorry,’ Laurie said. ‘I feel so wretched. I should be able to handle this better, but I just can’t seem to. I keep tormenting myself with images of them together, and the worst of it is, they seem so right for each other.’
Sherry watched as she covered her face with her hands, as though to close out the images. ‘You can tell yourself anything you like,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t necessarily make it true.’
Laurie inhaled, then dropped her hands. ‘Thank you for that,’ she said, and went to sink into one of the big, downy cushions that were scattered around the coffee table. Now was the time to tell Sherry that she’d spent the afternoon with Nick, but she knew she wouldn’t because she didn’t want to distract Sherry from the reason she was here.
She looked up and forced a smile. ‘Lemonade?’
Sherry watched as she began to fill two glasses.
‘Now you’re here,’ Laurie said, ‘I’m starting to feel embarrassed about my inability to cope again. I’m a grown woman, successful, in full health, with so much else going for me … I shouldn’t be falling apart like this.’
Understanding the need to underestimate what she was going through, Sherry let the comment go and helped herself to an olive.
‘Actually, I can be going along just fine,’ Laurie continued, ‘getting on with my life as though everything’s OK, no tears, no hysteria, no panic, then suddenly it’s as though all the breath has been knocked out of me. I feel so utterly incapable of dealing with anything, and so terrified of spending even one evening alone, that it’s as though I’m going to be swallowed up by it all and never make it out the other side.’
Sherry nodded. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said.
‘Then please tell me how to make it stop. I’ll do anything. Anything. I know you said it won’t be easy, but whatever it is, I need to try.’
‘OK,’ Sherry said, ‘but I’m afraid an escape, which is what you’re basically asking for, isn’t the answer. You have to go through it. It’s the only way you’ll get past it.’
‘Oh my God,’ Laurie murmured, her eyes glazing as she picked up her glass. ‘My dad said virtually those words after Lysette’s funeral. “The only way past this is through it,” he said.’ Her face was paler than ever as she looked at Sherry. ‘I don’t want to go there again,’ she whispered. ‘Surely to God I don’t have to. He’s not dead. It’s not the same. He might come back, so can’t you just tell me how to cope with these next few weeks without driving myself insane?’
Seeing no reason to point out that days, weeks, years, it didn’t really matter, the pain still had to be got through, not around, Sherry said, ‘Actually, it is the same inasmuch as they’re both forms of loss. But it’s true, what’s happened with Elliot is going to have a very different outcome to what happened to Lysette, whether he comes back or not.’
‘Do you think he will?’ Laurie said, sounding as pathetic as she looked.
‘If it’s right, if it’s meant to be, then yes, he will.’
It was enough of a straw for Laurie to cling to. ‘It is meant to be,’ she said decisively. ‘I know it. I feel it. We belong together.’
‘Then he will come back, but I don’t think it’s going to happen tonight.’
Laurie’s face fell. ‘No. Tonight he’s over there with her, screwing her into oblivion, no doubt.’ Her pupils dilated as she gazed at Sherry. ‘Do you think he loves her?’ she asked. Then with a quick shake of her head, ‘You don’t have to answer that. Just tell me how to stop tormenting myself like this. How the hell can I turn off the pain?’
Touched by the naïvety in her trust, Sherry said, ‘Well, I guess first you should brace yourself, because what I’m about to say isn’t going to be what you want to hear.’
Laurie swallowed. ‘OK. I’m braced,’ she said.
‘Then you need to begin by going right into the very heart of the pain, letting it take you over so completely that it isn’t possible to feel anything else. Let it own you as much as you own it. Let it become you.’
Laurie’s face looked pinched. ‘What happened to putting it out of my mind, keeping myself busy with other things?’ she protested. ‘That’s what everyone else is telling me to do.’
‘You can do that, but those are avoidance tactics. They won’t take you through it, they take you around it, which is a bit like skirting the scene of an accident and not stopping to help. What’s there, what’s happened, needs to be dealt with, and in this case you’re the only one who can do it. If you skirt round it the injury will take a heck of a lot longer to heal. So you need to go right up to it, face what’s happened and do what’s required to bring about a cure.’
Laurie was still looking very unsure. ‘Please tell me this isn’t some kind of California cult thing,’ she said. ‘A New Age version of a hair shirt. Because I’ve never heard of having to get yourself all wrapped up in the pain before.’
Sherry smiled. ‘That’s because you’ve never had to deal with a broken heart before, nor have you had any therapy on how to cope with loss. Ask Anita, or anyone in her profession, they’ll tell you it’s never a good thing to avoid or ignore what you’re feeling. It has to be faced, so that’s what I’m trying to help you to do.’
Laurie’s eyes began moving about the room. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘the reason I don’t want to face it, or go right into it, as you put it, isn’t just because it hurts so much, but because it’ll make it real. I’ll have to accept then that he really has gone.’
‘Which he has,’ Sherry responded as gently as she could. ‘And what you’re doing is causing yourself a lot more pain than necessary by resisting the fact that things are going in a different direction to the one you planned. As far as you’re concerned this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. You had it all mapped out. You’d bought the apartment, booked the wedding, were all set for happy ever after, and now suddenly you’ve been thrown right off course. You’re not in the driving seat any more. Life’s not confor
ming to your dreams.’
‘You’re not wrong about that,’ Laurie muttered drily.
‘The point is,’ Sherry continued, ‘whether you like it or not you really are on another track now, and the longer you resist the reality of that the harder you’re going to make this for yourself.’
Laurie sat quietly, aware that what Sherry was saying made sense, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept or to act on.
‘To quote one counsellor I knew,’ Sherry said, ‘“Resistance is a self-inflicted form of torment, which is why you need to let it go.” It’s a waste of time, and no matter how hard you fight you’ll never win, because if it’s meant to happen, it will. Life, God, Fate, the Universe, call it what you like, is in charge here. It’s making up the rules, deciding on the journey, and you just have to trust that you’ll be taken to where you need to go.’
Laurie’s whole body was stiffening, for the very idea of going anywhere without Elliot wasn’t one she could welcome at all. ‘But what if I don’t want to go on the journey? What if I think it’s wrong?’
‘Well, to begin with you’re already on it, so the point is moot, and anyway, you don’t have a choice. All you can decide is whether you go willingly, or fight all the way. Whichever, it’s still a journey you have to take and you’ll make it a lot easier on yourself if you accept that.’
‘What about fighting for him? Other people fight, and they win.’
‘Only if they’re supposed to. And fighting takes a lot of different forms. The most effective is actually to let go, which I know doesn’t sound like a fight at all.’
‘It sounds more like giving up.’
‘Which in a way it is, because you’d be giving up the resistance. If you fight to get him back, in the sense you mean it, you’ll just be forcing it, and usually, if you force it, it’ll just fall apart again anyway. So give him the space, or whatever it is he needs right now, because if you don’t you’re resisting again. And the more you resist the more he’ll try to break free.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘Let him do what he feels he has to,’ she said, ‘while you concentrate on what’s right for you. I know at this moment you think it’s him, but it might just not be. It could be, by the time you come out the other side of this, you won’t even want him any more.’
Laurie’s expression showed how hard she found that to believe.
‘More resistance,’ Sherry told her gently. ‘Believe anything, because anything’s possible.’
Liking the tiny ray of hope that offered, Laurie said, ‘So let’s make sure I’m getting this right – I have to stop trying to control things and trust whatever’s out there to come through with what’s right, because it knows and I don’t. And meanwhile, I submerge myself in the pain of it all until I can’t stand it any more.’
‘That’s the point at which it will start to lessen.’
Laurie was looking extremely depressed. ‘So just how bad does it get?’ she asked after a pause. ‘What should I expect?’
Sherry hesitated.
‘Oh my God, it’s that bad!’
‘I once heard someone describe it as passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but before you get up and walk out on me it helps to remember that you pass through, you don’t stop and pitch a tent. You’ll always be moving forward, even without trying, towards that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.’
‘But it’s really that dark?’
‘It’s the pits. You’ll become consumed by worthlessness, self-pity, anger, hopelessness, hatred, all the dark emotions you can think of. Nothing will ever have felt so bad. You’ll be totally alone.’
‘Give it to me straight,’ Laurie muttered drily.
Sherry smiled. ‘I’m only putting it like that so you’ll remember, when you’re there, that you’re not the first to experience it, and you won’t be the last.’
‘I still can’t say I’m liking the sound of it too much. I mean I can feel all those things without sticking them right in me like knives.’
‘Here’s how life’s going to look if you don’t deal with this properly now,’ Sherry said. ‘The pain will continue to hang around, casting a shadow over your life in ways you might not even be aware of – lack of belief in anything good, failure to trust on any level, a general cynicism and fear that chips away at you until you forget how to enjoy the smooth and open roads when you’re on them, because you’re always too worried about what might be around the next bend. Whereas, if you confront it now, really go through it, you’ll set yourself free from all that negativity and fearful behaviour.’
Laurie said nothing, and Sherry watched the paleness of her face as she struggled with the enormity of what was inside her, knowing very well that it was the bitter conflict between resistance and reality.
‘How do I actually do it?’ Laurie said eventually. ‘I mean get myself right into it.’
‘You just do it. Whenever you’re feeling ghastly and that you simply can’t bear it any more, stay with it. Don’t run away. You’ve heard of fight or flight?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well this is it. You don’t take flight by throwing yourself into work, or TV, or a good book, you stay and deal with what’s there to be dealt with.’
‘You mean, stay in the moment?’
‘Exactly. Try not to look at the big picture, or work out the meaning of things. Just accept what’s happening to you now, feel it, then let it go.’
‘Just like that? Feel it, then let it go?’
‘Believe me, once you’ve felt it, it won’t be that hard to let go. It’s avoiding it that makes it hang around.’
Laurie sat staring into space, thinking everything over until finally she had to admit that in spite of believing what Sherry was telling her, she was still resisting it all. She didn’t want this to be happening, she didn’t want to let Eliot go, and she definitely didn’t want to make any kind of journey without him, particularly not the one Sherry was promoting. ‘So how many times do I have to make this trip down into Happy Valley?’ she asked glumly.
‘As many as it takes. The first is definitely the most difficult, and with any luck that might turn out to be all you need. You won’t know until you do it. But once you have, you’ll start seeing, within days, how much easier it is to cope when you’re not resisting. And the fact that you’re doing it for yourself is what makes all the difference, because thinking Elliot, or anyone else, can do it for you is just giving your power away at a time you need it the most.’
‘But Elliot could make a huge difference if he came back.’
‘If that happened,’ Sherry said, ‘you’d have other emotions to deal with that would be equally important and probably no less disturbing, considering the reason he left and what he’s been doing since. But what we’re doing now is dealing with “what is” rather than “what if”.’
Laurie turned to gaze towards the window and the darkening sky beyond. It wasn’t that she was doubting anything Sherry was telling her, it was simply that she just couldn’t conceive of ever being willing to let Elliot go, nor could she fully accept that she had no control over what was happening.
In the end she turned back to Sherry and looked at her kind, familiar face in the fading light, the lively, gentle blue eyes, the delicate nose, the large, appealingly imperfect mouth. ‘How on earth do you know all this?’ she said. ‘Was it just the experience with Nick?’
‘And losing my parents.’
‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry,’ Laurie responded, wondering how on earth Sherry had coped, for she knew that to lose her parents now, on top of losing Elliot, would be an end for her. She really wouldn’t be able to go on.
‘I found painting helped,’ Sherry told her. ‘It was when I created the little collection I have in my flat. I had so much anger and fear and violence in me at the time. I felt I’d been cheated by the world and nothing was ever going to go right again, so what was the point to anything. I was ready to damage or destroy whatever came into my life. I wanted to
punish everybody and everything for what had happened to me. I was having counselling, but I still couldn’t get rid of the anger. Then my aunt bought me a set of paints and an easel and suggested it might act as a kind of escape valve. I won’t go into what I was like at that time, a madwoman I expect, shut up in my uncle’s garden shed raging and cursing and just letting it all go. I had to get rid of it somehow, and that definitely helped. I’m told some people write it all down, while others turn up the music, or cook, or dig the garden, or climb to the top of a mountain and scream. Whatever it is, we all find what works for us in the end.’
Laurie suspected in her case it would be listening to opera, but already she was shrinking from the very thought of hearing just one bar. It was so much a part of her and Elliot, had played such a vital role in their relationship, especially in an intimate sense, that nothing in the world could induce her to put herself through it now.
Her eyes drifted for a while, then feeling suddenly restless, as an image of Elliot and Andraya flashed into her mind again, she got up and went to sit at the foot of the stairs. A few minutes later she wandered over to the window and stared down at the river. ‘I know you said you got all this from therapy,’ she said, finally turning back, ‘but there’s more to it, isn’t there? There’s something else.’
Not sure whether she was more surprised or shaken by the question, Sherry reached for her lemonade and drank, just to give herself some time. ‘You’re right, there is,’ she said finally, putting the glass down and staring at it. ‘There was a woman I used to know, in California. She taught me most of what I’ve told you tonight. She was someone who’d had her heart broken so many times and had tried so many ways to get over it … She consulted everyone, therapists, Buddhists, faith healers, priests, shamans, New Age spiritualists, you name it, she’d either read the book, gone for private counselling, or undertaken some pilgrimage to seek guidance on how to overcome the hurt and devastation and move past it.’
She paused for a moment, having to swallow the lump in her throat as she recalled the look of the woman, the sound of her voice, her scent and the bittersweet memory of her tears. ‘She was beautiful,’ she said. ‘Kind to a fault, generous, and one of the saddest people I ever knew. It used to break my heart sometimes just to look at her. I even used to feel her pain. I’d hold her hand and it was as though it flowed from her all the way into me. It was always the same man who broke her heart. She just couldn’t stop loving him, though God knew she tried. No-one could ever have tried harder.’
