Chapter 15 Now
Now
Dimple
“It’s been a while since I last saw you.”
I’m sitting in my new therapist’s office.
It’s a little more distracting than the corporate simplicity of Dr. Foster’s was.
The walls here are peach, the carpet green.
The furniture is largely old mahogany with gold details.
It’s a strange room: certainly not modern, but not old-fashioned in a way that adheres to any archaic rules; not trendy or cool, but very intentional and cohesive in its decor choices, which seem to gel in a discordant way.
I sometimes wonder if this is part of the psychiatric evaluation—when you finally call out the madness of Dimple’s room, you’ve passed therapy, free to go.
That’s what she prefers I call her, by the way: Dimple.
Just her first name. I suppose it’s meant to foster a kind of familiarity.
Almost like a friend. But she’s not. Dr. Foster, on the other hand, felt familiar.
I’d been seeing her for so long before her retirement that she’d almost felt like family.
Dimple, her replacement, I’ve seen only thrice.
All the same, I do feel bad for how long we’ve gone without a session.
“You’re right,” I admit. “It’s been a while. How have you been doing?”
She gives me a wry smile. Lines deepen around her mouth and her eyes in a way that captures her warmth. She is a woman who smiles a lot.
“Come on, now, Natalie. I think we both know we’re not here to talk about me. What brings you back in to see me?”
My eyes fix themselves on the garden view over her left shoulder, trees gently rustling in the wind.
“I’m not really sure where to start,” I admit, fingertips digging into the velvety peach armrests beneath my hands.
Her head dips to one side, thick dark hair swinging down a shoulder. I know she’s about to go for the jugular. “So how about we start with why you stopped coming to see me?”
“Oh” is all I say. A small shuffle in my seat.
“Oh,” she repeats, eyes crinkling in amusement.
I know how this game goes. She pokes somewhere I don’t want prodded, and I waste time and money dodging away from the jabs until she finally gets what she wants. The truth. She will sit there for as long as it takes for her to get it; I might as well cut to the chase.
“To be honest, I felt better. My violent impulses have been down for so long, and I was happy with James.”
“I notice that we’re speaking a lot in the past tense.”
She’s good.
“Yes, well…”
And I explain the whole saga to her. Me finding the money gone. James finding my letters, telling me about them, telling Will about them. The blackmail, the panic, the fear.
“That’s a lot for one person to go through,” Dimple says.
“Yes.” I nod, feeling affirmed. “Yes, it is.”
“I’m interested to know more about how your conversation with James went. How exactly did you discuss the letters you’ve written?”
“He wanted to know more about my exes, about what happened.”
“And you told him?”
I scrape a shoulder blade against the backrest of my chair. “Sort of.”
Dimple smiles. “Let me reframe the question: What did you tell him?”
“I told him that Marc’s fall and Luca’s heart attack were accidents.” Her smile has turned knowing, and it’s as irritating as the fabric of the chair against my back.
“Did the two of you discuss George in any detail?” Dimple asks.
“A bit. He knows I hurt him. He doesn’t know he’s dead. And I know what you’re going to say about honesty in relationships, but this is what works for me for now, okay? I mean, haven’t you ever lied to a partner?”
Dimple’s eyebrows bob up and back down. “You know I don’t discuss my private life in this room.”
It seems an unfair trade. I like to think she’s glad I sometimes ask her questions about herself, too. She should know that I see her as a human being.
Dimple taps two fingers against the side of her glasses and changes tack. “Tell me, broadly, how have these new conversations with James made you feel?”
“Unsettled. Off-kilter, I guess. I felt like I had everything in control and now it’s all spiraling away from me.”
“This feeling of impotence, of not being in control, how is that presenting itself?”
I look at her and look away. I can’t bring myself to hold eye contact.
“The impulses. I suppose I’ve been feeling them again.
Nothing I haven’t been able to control, exactly.
But when I first found out about what James had done, about the money he stole, what that meant for my ability to have kids…
I could have really hurt him, Dimple. I wanted to.
” I pause for a moment. “Just to be clear, I’m not going to, though.
You don’t have to…” My words lose themselves on the way out of my mouth.
“Please feel that you can speak freely, Natalie.”
I massage a thumb into the groove of a knuckle, recall what Dimple has said about client confidentiality.
She assures me that what’s said in this room stays between us, and that if I say something that means that has to change, I’ll be the first to know.
I did my research before I started therapy, the threat of talking my way into a prison cell very present in my mind.
She doesn’t have to report past crimes, but if I say something that makes her think I might cause serious harm in the future, I’m screwed.
Dimple reclines in her chair, looks at me through the thick black rectangular frames of her glasses. It’s clear that no more words will come from me unless she draws them out, so she continues. “I notice we’ve slipped into the past tense again. Tell me, how are you feeling about James now?”
My head gives a small shake. I don’t know where to start. “He’s been great. I can’t imagine any other guy finding out about my past and…He just seems to want to protect me.” I shrug the simple truth out. “I’m grateful for him.”
Dimple’s head dips to the other side. “Is there a ‘but’ coming?”
My nostrils flare, and for a moment, I think about shoving her backward in her silly chair.
“But,” I concede, “that thing…that blinding white heat, it’s still there…
. It came back the moment I found out about what James had done, and although I understand now, although I don’t want to hurt him, it’s still there.
Just buried, with nowhere to go. It’s like I can feel that violence pricking behind my eyes at all times.
Like if I don’t unleash it, it’s going to blind me. Destroy me, even.”
Dimple leans forward again, elbows on knees. “How long has it been since you’ve acted on one of your violent impulses?”
“Four years. Still nothing since George.”
“And has anything bad happened to you?”
“No. And before you say it, yes, I remember what I’ve learned in my sessions about this. I know why I sometimes feel this way and I know, I know it’s not real…. But in the moment, when the feeling comes, when the thing bares its teeth, all I know is how real it feels.”
Dimple nods. “I understand. Still, remember what we said ab—”
“I get all of that. I do, I promise. But the problem isn’t my conscious mind. Even now, when everything feels like a house of cards waiting to blow over, I have control of that. It’s the other thing that keeps me awake at night.”
“The thing you canceled our sessions to avoid talking about.”
A frisson of irritation runs up my spine, pulling it taut. “I’ve never had a problem talking about the blackouts.”
Dimple’s head tilts over once more, her eyes narrowing. Only slightly, but enough that her unbelief is stripped bare. “I seem to recall you leaving our session early the last time we tried to talk about them. What might I have misremembered about that?”
“It wasn’t the blackouts; it was the other thing you wanted to talk about.”
“Because it’s not quite possible to talk about one without the other, is it?”
Silence from me.
“Is it?” Dimple insists.
The air in the room is dry. Too dry. “Yes. No.”
Dimple nods. “So, let’s talk about your mother.”