As I’ve said—though not, of course, to Nora—there’s no way I’m going to be a therapist, but as for what I’ll be instead, I’m still narrowing it down. There’s a lot you can do when you can use one arm, one hand, when you control your Voice and your thoughts, when you can study and read and type. When you are smart and curious. When you have learned forbearance and acceptance and generosity of spirit the hardest of ways. My skies may not be the limit, but they are less clouded than they seem.
Whereas Apple’s are flat-out stormy. She’s nothing but weepy today. I feel bad that she feels bad. I feel worse that because she feels bad, she’s talking in circles and not about anything useful.
“Daddy worried these last years. Or, I don’t know, maybe he was worried all along. But especially at the end. I want to do what he wanted me to do. I just don’t know how.”
“You’re not a mind reader.” Nor, at the moment, is Nora, who’s not sure what Apple’s talking about but says all the right things anyway. “It’s just as hard for children to know how to make their parents happy as it is for parents to know how to make their children happy.”
I exchange a secret smile with my mother. We do read each other’s minds most of the time. We do share happiness and unhappiness like we’re splitting a sandwich.
“He had a good heart, my dad.” Apple nods, sniffles, nods. “Lots of people couldn’t see it—wouldn’t see it—but it’s true. Maybe he didn’t always do the right thing all the way, but he did the right thing some of the way, when he could, and the truth is that’s more than most people do.”
“It’s hard.” Nora might mean doing the right thing all the way. Or she might mean having a father who split these particular hairs. Or she might mean honoring that father now that he’s gone.
But Apple isn’t really listening anyway. “Dad was a man who saw the value of compromise. Doing things halfway gets a bad rap, but a lot of the time it’s better than not doing them at all. When it’s the most you can expect, you’ll be happiest if you learn to settle for it.”
I imagine Apple’s version of settling looks different from ours. Still, this strikes me as an unusually Bourne-like sensibility.
* * *
We are closing up. Nora’s filed her patient notes and progress reports, powered off her computer. Pastor Jeff left ten minutes ago, so she turns the lights off and the heat down. We are on the front stoop at the top of the ramp, and she’s got her key in the lock when there’s a sound.
It’s a throat clearing. Then a voice. “Nora?”
She turns, surprised. Takes him in, more surprised still.
“Dr. Mitchell,” the voice amends.
She turns back to the door and thunks the dead bolt into place. “I’m not a doctor.”
“I know I’m not on the schedule, but I wonder … is there any chance you have time for one more today?”
She does not say she’s been here nine hours already. She does not say she is due at the bar in twenty minutes. She does not say anything. So he keeps talking.
“I do realize it’s a lot to ask, but I … well, I could really use someone to talk to for a few minutes.”
Nathan Templeton looks at her, fully, right into her eyes. She looks right back. Their gazes are hard—not hard like cold, hard like challenging, thorough. I feel like Monday. I cannot read either of their expressions (too complicated) or emotions (too many), but neither of them is shying away from whatever this is.
“I’m just … well, to be honest, I’m having a rough time,” he says. And when she still doesn’t reply, “I can make an appointment for next week or next month or whenever you have an opening, of course. I just thought I’d take a shot that maybe you had time right now. It’s a pretty small town after all.” Big, conspiratorial grin. “This is one of the good things about small-town living, right? I figured how many people in a town this size could possibly need a therapy appointment on any given day?”
Her jaw clenches, and the back of her neck flushes. It’s the certainty of his presumption that he’ll still be here “next month or whenever.” It’s his blindness to just how much therapy the people of our little town need—and why. It’s that she has a second job to get to, which he knows but which does not occur to him anyway. When she opens the office back up, turns the lights back on, it’s to tell him no, not on the street where it might seem flippant or even punch-pulling but in a clinical setting where it will be clear who’s in charge. She motions him onto the orange sofa, where he sits while she leans against the front of her desk and regards him.
“First of all, your wife is a patient of mine.”
He shakes his head, unconcerned. “I understand that, but—”
“Second of all”—she puts up a hand to interrupt and make him listen—“there would be a significant conflict of interest in my working with you.”
“I appreciate that”—Nathan nods this time—“but I have confidence in your professionalism.” That flashed we-two-have-an-understanding smile again. “I like people who are good at what they do.”
“And as you can see, my daughter is here.” She’s wavering. She indicates me with her chin but does not offer to make me sit in the waiting room. Probably she feels beggars of on-demand after-hours therapy appointments can’t be choosers. Only afterward does it occur to me: maybe she wanted a witness.
Nathan Templeton does me the favor his wife did not of doubting whether he can discuss whatever he needs to with me sitting in the room. His eyes dart my way, and the wattage of his smile falters like when there’s a storm and the lights flicker but you don’t lose power altogether. He must feel just that bad though because the spark of his smile catches finally and flares. “Oh, Mirabel and I go way back. My secrets are safe with her.” He winks at me then beams at my mother. “You’ve got a gaggle of whip-smart girls, Nora. You must be so proud. Raising kids is hard work—believe me, I know—and you haven’t had the easiest time of it. Apple and I, we’re two against one. You, you’re one against three. I don’t know how you do it.”
And that’s what does it. That’s when she decides to lay rough timber over the morass of ruin between them and help—because he comes to her at last, parent to parent, because she is wooed by his praise of her daughters, because he’s stopped short of admitting why she’s had such a hard time of it, but he’s come close, and that’s something. And because he needs help and she’s the only one here and that, after all, is her job.
She moves from standing against her desk with her arms folded to her chair, where she tucks her feet up and says, soft but clear, “So, Nathan Templeton. How can I help you?”
“Well, Nora, I’ll tell you.” But then he doesn’t. He’s wearing a silky cream shirt with tiny just-pink stripes—even the buttons look fancy and perfect—but it’s untucked from dark jeans, jeans nicer and more expensive-looking than anyone else’s entire wardrobe around here, but jeans nonetheless. He’s leaning forward on the sofa, toward Nora, his hands loosely clasped between his knees, his eyes on the floor. “It’s all a bit of a strain at the moment,” he finally manages, with a laugh that says this is pretty silly and not a big deal, but with eyes that admit he’s here, isn’t he? “I guess I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know since you saw my lovely wife just a few hours ago.”