Now she’s a motivational speaker. A slightly insensitive one, but nonetheless effective. She gets up from the table and pulls a laptop from a messenger bag in the corner. After sitting in a house observing technology that was manufactured when Cher had her last hit, it was refreshing to see something made in the post industrial era. Sandra is clicking furiously on different links before turning the laptop to me. An American Airlines stewardess smiles at me, the page set to a red eye flight to New York City.
“You gotta be shitting me.”
“This is your point of launch, Miles. Not sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself, or coming in here every week, dredging up the past and putting off the inevitable.” She leans forward and the table creaks, a warning that it wasn’t as spry as it used to be. “The truth is, you don’t need me anymore, you just have to trust in your grief and let it guide you to be the man you want to become.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. Don’t pack anything, just head to the airport,” she says, getting up from the table. “Let the spontaneity consume you.”
I feel a rush of excitement in my chest—that, or an oncoming panic attack. Before I can think of a rebuttal, my wallet is out and the flight is booked. As Sandra puts the laptop away, I lean back and rub my temples, coming to terms with the ending of our working relationship. We banter on for awhile, like friends do when they’re trying to prolong the goodbye. Each of us coming up with new subjects to talk about to buy time, knowing when I leave, it will never be the same. I lose track of time and realize I have to get on the road if I’m going to make the flight. We share a long embrace, and I feel the lump growing in my throat, my tear ducts warming up for another water show. But I hold firm, because if she saw me cry, I’d have to stay and talk, and I’ve done enough of that already.
It was time for action.
“You alright?” she asks.
“Yeah, I just … thank you … for everything.”
She released me and holds the door open, “You’re welcome.”
As I step out, I turn to look into her eyes again, remembering the first time she answered the door. But I see that her smile isn’t the same, and I know that she’s cared about me beyond the parameters of her job. It was then I made myself a promise, that even if it took the next ten years, I would figure out my life as my way of saying thank you for everything she’d done for me.
I chuckle, “Everything I love, I lose.”
“You’re not losing me, Miles. You’re just going to find yourself,” she replies, profound to the very end.
She watches me back out of the driveway, never moving, one hand shielding herself from the sun so she could watch me drive away. I honk twice and pulled off, watching her grow smaller in the rearview before she’s gone, fading out of my life as peacefully as she entered it.
Nineteen
Unscheduled Openings
“I don’t know why I’m doing this, because I know you’ll try to talk me out of it,” I say into the phone. “I don’t need a therapist right now, but I could really use a friend.”
There’s silence on the other end of the phone as Dr. Felt mulls my offer while surely trying to find a loophole that’ll allow her to slip back into the therapist role. The intercom in my terminal announces that my flight will begin boarding shortly. Unfortunately, because I bought my ticket at the last minute, I’m at the end of the final boarding group.
After an eternity, she agrees to be a friend, though we both know that it won’t last long. “Talk to me, Miles. What’s going on?”
“What—” I struggle to convey the words, “what do you do when you’ve fucked everything up?”
She lets out a long whistle, like the one a mother makes when you wreck the car but haven’t told dad yet. The voice over the intercom announces that my flight is now boarding, so I take the long walk to the back of the line.
“Where are you?” Dr. Felt asks. She knows where I am, like she knows why I’m calling. But having me speak my line of thinking out loud is part of what makes her so great at her job.
“I’m at the airport.” I say. “Look, I don’t have long, my flight is boarding as we speak.”
“Alright, but at least let me talk to you before you get on the plane, can you agree to that?” she asks, sounding more like Dr. Felt and less like Susan.
“Deal.”
“Ok, let’s start with the obvious. How did you fuck everything up?”
“The pain is still too fresh, and I don’t wanna relive it. I just want you to know I did what I set out to do, but I’m coming back home.”
“Your goal was to reconnect with your sister,” she presses further. “If you did that, why are you calling me after midnight from an airport terminal?”
“Because it got complicated.”
“I’m flying blind here, no pun intended. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I see her face everywhere, Dr. Felt, literally every time I close my eyes, all I see is her crying on the floor.” The people in my part of the line are staring, and on instinct, I look down to make sure I don’t have an erection. “She was willing to take me as I am, with all I’ve been through, and I walked away from her.”
“From Lily?”
“Melody.”
“Melody,” she says, trying to recall where the name fits in my journey. “The girl from the coffee shop?”
“Yes.”
“Oh…Wow. Man I wasn’t expecting that.” She hums for a few seconds. “Ok, you gotta start from the beginning.”
I break everything down, starting with going to Lily’s school and the bribed security guard. Not the most pertinent detail, but it’s a kick ass starting point. Lily’s apartment comes next, the falling debris and potential accessory to property destruction charge getting their moment to shine. Next, I talk about my mothers appearance, and the WWE style entrance to boot. Finally, I tell her about Melody. I start with the number on the cup, and then the dates, leaving out the erection in the ice cream shop, but explaining how my feelings changed over time. I explain the night in her apartment, and the remark about not replacing Sara, which naturally leads to the fight with my mother and Lily. Lily’s last words sting even worse hearing them come out of my mouth.
There is a long silence as the line I’m standing in moves at a snails pace. The first group has just finished boarding, with three more coming before they get to my group.
“You’ve been busy,” she finally says. “I know we don’t have much time, but I wanna work through this with you. If you didn’t call me, what was your plan, and why?”
This is one of the reasons I love having her as my therapist. She never gets too high, approaching issues with a calmness that brings you back down to earth. It’s from that level place that she helps you find a solution. At her price she’s an absolute steal.
“Honestly? I saw there’s seven seasons of a show called Shameless on Netflix.”
“That’s a great show,” she says.
“Yeah, and I found the premise to be right in the wheelhouse of my current situation. So I figured, maybe get through a couple seasons of that—”