His head drew back slightly. “Wow. That sounds very interesting.”
“I’ve always thought so,” I replied. “Of course, planes go missing all the time, all over the world, but I did a search of the records at NTSB—that’s the National Transportation Safety Board—and it showed a much higher frequency of aircraft going missing over the Triangle than in other places. And I’m not talking about regular crashes. Those can be explained. I’m talking about planes that vanish without a trace, and there’s often unusual circumstances surrounding the disappearances that leave investigators baffled.” I paused and sat back again. “Anyway, Dr. Fielding thought I needed to talk to someone about why I’m not motivated anymore.”
My therapist waved a hand through the air as if he were conducting a symphony. “Why do you think you’ve lost interest?”
“Well . . .” I swallowed uneasily. “My mother died recently. That’s why it was suggested that I talk to someone. To work through my grief.”
Dr. Robinson stared at me again, as if I were something he was trying to identify from a great distance. “I’m sorry about your mother. Were you close to her?”
Without thinking, I sighed heavily and realized it sounded like I was disappointed by his question, which maybe I was. It was kind of predictable. “She died suddenly,” I explained. “It was a shock. I’m sure you heard about the tornado in Oklahoma recently? It tore through a trailer park, and a bunch of people were killed?”
“Yes. Your mother was one of them?”
“Yes.”
He frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. Where were you when it happened?”
“Here in New York. I saw it on the news, then a police officer called to tell me that she was . . . well, you know . . . that she was dead.”
He nodded sympathetically.
There was another long, uncomfortable silence.
“I hadn’t been home in almost two years,” I explained, feeling pressure to elaborate. “I can’t even remember the last time we spoke on the phone.”
When I started picking at that loose thread on my jeans again, he prompted me further. “Was there a reason you hadn’t spoken?”
I was beginning to get the hang of this. It wasn’t a conversational tennis match where the ball went back and forth over the net and both players contributed equally. It was just me, hitting the ball up against a wall that didn’t say too much. That meant I had to keep talking—otherwise, we would just sit there, through those awkward silences.
Looking away toward the leafy view outside the window, I said, “When I left home to go to college, I didn’t keep in touch. I just wanted to get away from there.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t have an ideal upbringing.” I paused, looked at the doctor, and narrowed my eyes at him. “How am I doing? Is this what you’re looking for? You want to use your handy-dandy therapist’s shovel to dig into my childhood? I came fully prepared to talk about my mother.”
He was completely unfazed by my condescending tone. He simply shrugged, and I felt an immediate twinge of remorse.
“Is that what you’d like me to do?” he asked. “Focus on your mother?”
I tried to relax. “It doesn’t matter. My life is pretty boring, actually. I can give it to you in a nutshell, if you like. When I was a child, my mom was always bringing home a new man to live with us. There was a new ‘dad’ for me every year or two. Out with the old, in with the new. Most of them were horrible.”
“And what about your real father?” Dr. Robinson asked. “Was he in the picture at all?”
“No. I never knew who he was. To be honest, I don’t think my mother did either. Or if she did, she planned to take that secret to her grave. Which, as it turned out, she did.” I paused and thought about that for a moment. “She was only seventeen when she had me. My grandmother didn’t know the guy either. At least I don’t think she did.”
“Tell me about your grandmother.”
I perked up at this question, perhaps because my grandmother was someone that I was proud of. “She was a force of nature. She lived in the trailer park, three doors down, so I could go there after school when I was little.”
“Did your mother work?”
“Yes. She worked in a diner. They were open until midnight, so she worked a lot of nights. At least that’s what my grandmother told me. Maybe she was out partying. I shouldn’t judge her. She was barely twenty and saddled with a three-year-old. I don’t know what she would have done without my grandmother to help out and take care of me.”
“It sounds like your grandmother was an important part of your life. Where is she now?”
“She died when I was fifteen. Then it was just me and my mom and whatever guy was living with us at the time.”
The doctor’s brow furrowed with concern. I knew immediately what he was thinking, so I held up a hand. “No, no. I can tell by the way you’re looking at me . . . I assure you, there was none of that going on. Nothing X rated. Most of them were okay. I just had to listen to a lot of yelling and screaming when they drank too much, which was pretty much every weekend. My mom liked her whiskey, and she had a talent for poking angry bears.”
I scrutinized Dr. Robinson’s face for a few seconds and felt rather overcome by the warmth in his eyes. It was remarkable how he could meet my gaze at length without looking away. It wasn’t awkward for him at all.
“Is this really important?” I asked. “Talking about my mother’s boyfriends? My goal here is to get back to work on my research. Figure out how to stop planes from disappearing in the Bahamas. And those boyfriends aren’t the ones I’m supposed to be grieving about.”
With his elbows perched on the armrests of the chair, his notepad on his lap, he steepled his forefingers. “I find it interesting that you use the words supposed to be. It brings me back to something you said earlier—that it wasn’t your idea to come here. You also say that you came prepared. Perhaps you feel that coming here is a test that you have to pass?”
I laid my hand on my purse. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“If it is a test, who’s providing the grade? The head of the physics department? Or me? You?”
I chuckled. “You think that I’m here just to say the appropriate things that my professor would want me to say so that I don’t flunk out of my program?”
“I didn’t say that,” Dr. Robinson replied. “Is that what you think I think?”
My head drew back slightly, and I laughed. “Wow. This line of questioning is making me feel a little dizzy, like we’re going around in circles. What do you think I think about what you think I think?”
With a smile, he chuckled as well. “I apologize. I just want to get a sense of what you’d like to achieve from these sessions. What’s your end goal, Melanie?”
“Well, that’s an interesting question, Doctor,” I replied with a touch of humor. “It’s kind of existential, don’t you think?”
He offered no response to that, so I was forced to answer him seriously. I tried to dig deep because I suspected that’s what he wanted from me. Deep, important, profound thoughts.