Page 8 of The Therapist
I wait for a moment and then she laughs. ‘Oh this’ – she gestures to her eye – ‘I walked into a door.’
‘Okay,’ I reply. I don’t believe her but then why would I? And I can see from the way she is looking at me that she doesn’t really want me to believe that clichéd excuse.
‘He says that I drink too much, and I know that I should cut down, I know I should, but life is so… Everything is so hard, you know, like every day is…’ She stops speaking and I wait for her to tell me what she is thinking. Softly, she says, ‘Do you ever get the feeling that you’re just waiting for death? I mean barely gettingthrough one day and then the next day and just waiting for it to all be over?’
I can hear her pain but I don’t answer her because she’s looking at the picture I have on the other wall in my office of a beach in the sunshine with bright blue, white-crested waves lapping at the shore. A little girl is digging in the sand with a pink bucket and matching spade. It was painted for me by a friend of mine, Amy, as a present for when I opened my own practice.
‘My daughter, Lila, loves the beach.’ She takes a deep breath. I can see that she’s calmer, which is better for her. I’m not going to ask about how much she drinks. Not yet. ‘My husband is the one who drinks too much and sometimes he…’
‘Sometimes he…?’
She frowns. ‘I’m not…ready to talk about everything. I barely know you.’ She seems angry at me and I take note of that. There is obviously a lot more going on here than just gaslighting.
‘Do you still love him, your husband?’ I ask her, sitting forward in my chair.
‘I do. I know that I have a thing for Ben, but I also know why that happened. I love my husband, Lana, and I wish I didn’t but I really, really do. I’m thirty-six. I don’t want to have to start again.’
Outside the office I hear the phone beginning to ring and then I hear Kirsty answer it, ‘Calm Minds Clinic, hold please.’
I can’t help thinking that this woman’s life should have been perfect. I know that beauty doesn’t guarantee anything but even now, at my age, I cannot help but envy her looks. She’s as old as I am but she looks much younger, even with the black eye. If she can’t have the perfect life, what hope is there for anyone else?
‘Why don’t you start at the beginning?’ I tell her as I remind myself that I can’t be ‘Lana the woman’ now. I need to be ‘Lana the therapist’, neutral, unemotional and certainly not jealous of another woman’s looks.
I listen while she talks, letting her tell me the story of her marriage, of how she met and fell in love with her husband.
After half an hour, I know that I need to stop her because I have another patient coming soon.
‘We can meet again,’ I say. ‘I’ll talk to Kirsty and get her to contact you with a time.’
‘Thank you,’ she says as she stands, ‘thank you so much.’ She clutches her matching navy bag. ‘At least you’re prettier than Ben.’ She laughs and I am at once flattered and concerned. It’s an odd thing to say to your therapist.
I stand as well, deciding to ignore the remark, opening my office door as she throws her crumpled tissue into the garbage bin by the door.
The waiting room is empty; my next client has, thankfully, not arrived yet.
‘Kirsty will be in contact,’ I tell Sandy.
Closing my office door, I take a deep breath and then I look down at my garbage bin where Sandy has thrown her tissue. Something seems off and I bend down to get closer, actually picking up the tissue she was using, even as my stomach churns at the idea of what I’m doing.
There are marks on the tissue, not only the black streaks of running mascara from all her tears but blue, yellow and purple smudges as well. From her eye make-up? Surely, I would have noticed purple? I study the tissue. Where did all the colour come from? She only dabbed at her eyes.
I screw up my face and drop the tissue back in the bin, using the hand sanitiser on my desk quickly.
There’s no way that black eye was fake – is there?
FOUR
Sandy
I didn’t do well at school. Truthfully, I had so many other experiences that I wanted to enjoy. I didn’t need to bury myself in repetitive rubbish, foisted on us by bureaucrats. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom, preening in the mirror, reapplying my delicate pink lip gloss, making sure my hair was perfect and waiting for the lunch break, which was when I was the most important person in the place. Girls watched me wherever I went and boys simply stopped talking when I walked past, their mouths gaping open with desire.
The fact that I failed to get into university doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I like to consider myself a student of the human condition. Mostly, I’m fascinated with myself, with the reaction others have to me. But I do like to watch other people, to get to know them, to find out what makes them tick and then maybe figure out what it would take to destroy them. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to fall into infatuation with ‘the husband’ and then end up pregnant and trapped, I would have destroyed him as well. I hate that I was weak, that I let him get to me, and that now, sometimes, I am afraid of him.
Needless to say, my parents never understood me. They didn’t have the capacity and were delighted when I got married and became someone else’s problem.
I stopped working when I got pregnant, and I did enjoy the months of growing the first child inside me. I liked the attention, the smiles and benevolent looks I received from strangers. I liked that people stood up when I was near, offered me their chairs.
I was a beautiful pregnant woman, my hair thick and glowing, my skin perfect, my bump neat. I was envied. I could see that.
