Clay
It wasn’t my first time in a therapist's office. Not even Dr. Ramirez’s office.
But it was the first time in a while. I’d forgotten his office didn’t look like the others I’d been in, where everything was intentionally comfortable and homey; they felt more fake than the bedroom displays at Ikea. This one felt like someone’s office.
There was the desk, nothing fancy, but it looked sturdy, pushed into one corner.
It had a great view of the large glass wall that looked out onto the landscape.
Rather than toward the mountain range, this window faced the thick forest of trees outside the main entrance.
The fir trees were thick and green, but the others were losing their vibrant fall colors as their leaves fell.
I sat in the armchair, rather than the couch, fidgeting nervously as he wrote something down. “Why do you, uh, write? Isn’t typing the thing now?”
“For some,” he said with a smile. “And some prefer it because it’s quicker, and they can type while looking at someone.”
“But not you? Isn’t eye contact important?”
Ramirez smiled. “For the past twenty minutes you’ve been here talking, you’ve done everything in your power not to look into my eyes. Having to look down as I’m writing gives people the chance to breathe and not feel like I’m staring, as if I’m impatiently waiting for them to talk.”
“Isn’t that what you want, us to talk?” I wondered.
He chuckled. “Talking is a vital component of the process, but forced communication helps no one. If you want to talk, then talk, but I’m not going to stare you down until you say something.”
“Look, we covered the basics already,” I said, pulling at a loose string in my pants and frowning. “I’ve been dealing with the...the death of my family. I’ve told a few other people about it, my life still sucks and here we are.”
Dr. Ramirez nodded. “Okay, that more or less sums up what you said to me, though you boiled it down to a few simple sentences, so bravo on that one.”
“I didn’t think therapists were allowed to be sarcastic.”
“We’re not allowed to be a lot of things, but sarcastic? Absolutely. In fact, it’s important, in my opinion, to make sure a therapist is prepared to tailor their approach to each patient for the sake of that patient.”
“What, not guest?”
He smiled. “While you are in this room, you’re a patient. As I recall, that was precisely what you didn’t want to be called the first and only time you ever came into my office.”
“Well, let’s just say I’ve come to realize how much of a head case I really am,” I said with a frown. “Fine, why don’t you ask a question? Maybe that will help because I’m out of shit to say.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Out of things to say.”
“I mean, yeah, I said what I came to say.”
“I would say you came here with a prepared list of things to speak about, and when you pushed yourself to speak about them, you rushed to get them out of the way. Don’t mistake me, it’s quite a change from the previous time you were here.
It shows you’re willing to express those things you’ve been living in agonizing privacy with for the first time.
..but you lack the tools to express them properly. ”
“God, theraspeak,” I muttered.
He laughed at that. “Fine, tell me about Isaac.”
I stiffened. “What about him?”
His brow rose. “I may spend most of my time here or in group sessions, but I am not so sequestered that I miss things. You two are...close.”
“So?” I asked, hearing the defensiveness in my voice, but unable to stop it. “I’m close to Cade too, but I don’t hear you asking about him.”
“Would you like to?”
“I...what?”
“If you don’t want to talk about Isaac, you don’t have to. We can talk about your relationship with Cade instead, if you wish.”
“Relationship?”
“Friendship, then.”
“Damn right.”
His eyes searched my face, and he smiled softly, his fingers rising as if showing he was harmless. “I did notice you were insistent that I call your relationship with Cade a friendship, but didn’t do the same for Isaac.”
My tugging on the thread stopped, and I stared at him. “So?”
“Just an observation,” he said, but when I narrowed my eyes further, he sighed and nodded. “I don’t want to assume, but it seems like your relationship with Isaac is markedly different than the one you have with Cade. Do you want to speak about that?”
“No,” I said, frowning heavily, before I pictured the happy look on Isaac’s face a few days ago when I’d admitted I no longer wanted to sleep with other people because I had him.
And even then, he hadn’t for a moment thought it was because I wanted to only have sex with him, or at least that it was about the sex.
It definitely had been about sex later that day, because, boy, had he delivered on his promise of me getting laid that night, but.
..it was more than that. So, I sighed and pivoted slightly. “Maybe.”
“Okay,” the doctor said with a smile. “Then why might it be different?”
“I don’t know, because he’s different,” I said grumpily, realizing I didn’t want to keep having this conversation but knowing I was in too deep to stop.
“How?”
“Huh?”
“How is he different from Cade?”
“Because he puts out?” I shot out and then grimaced, hating how basic and degrading that sounded, but I’d already said it, so I could double down and stick to it, or I was officially in a position where I had to say more despite trying to avoid just that. “Because he’s...I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“I do.”
“Then you don’t want to say.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“You did ask me to ask a question.”
“A question,” I pointed out, but I had to admit he had a point, and with a groan, I tried to be more honest. “I don’t know, because they’re alike in a lot of ways, but different. And I feel a lot of the same things for them, but it’s also different.”
“How so?”
“I...” I frowned. “They both make me remember how to be kind to people. To remember that other people have gone through fucked up shit, not just me, and just because I’m fucked in the head doesn’t mean I should let other people be fucked in the head.
..or at least, not alone. I want to be there for them, even though Isaac has his shit together more than Cade and me, that’s for sure. ”
“What makes you say that?” he asked, and I felt my face twitch at the repeated questioning.
“Actually, I don’t know if he does. I mean, he does, but he’s also got a lot of things locked away in that pretty head of his, that I don't think I’m ever going to understand.
” I heard myself admit it, realized what I said, and had to keep going.
“He’s just... He’s got such a level head.
He knows how to deal with people, he knows how to make people feel special, but he’s been trying too hard to like—”
Dr. Ramirez stared at me, and I squirmed until he said, “You’re holding back again. Why?”
“Because I don’t want to talk about his business,” I muttered.
“Okay,” he said easily, leaning forward. “Then why don’t you tell me what you think is going on with him. Not what you know, not what you’ve been told, but what you think.”
“That he wasn’t nearly as fucked up as he thought,” I said with a shake of my head.
“That he’s actually got a chance to get through this place and be considered a success.
All he was afraid of was that he was losing himself because of what he did before, but.
..I think he just needed to be free from it for a while, and be.
..I guess free from the world for a bit. He’s figuring his shit out.”
“And you don’t think you can make the same claim,” he said softly.
I stared at him, frowning. “No, I don’t. And before you ask why, it’s because what’s wrong with me is worse. I mean, yeah, ha ha, dead family, of course it’s worse, but—”
Okay, that hurt. Not because I thought for a moment I was mocking Gina and Mikael’s deaths, because I would rather rip myself apart piece by piece than do that.
But it still felt dangerously close to it, even knowing I was making fun of myself, of how dramatic it was for me, and.
.. How I couldn’t let them go. To let them go would mean—
“To forget them,” I muttered.
“To forget who?” he asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. Whether that was because he was just curious or because he was putting on the air of confusion, I didn’t know, but it was believable either way.
“Gina,” I said dully. “And Mikael.”
“Your wife and son,” he said with a nod.
“Late wife,” I corrected, and after a moment of thinking, I laughed, the sound hard and brittle. “There’s no polite term for a dead son, is there? I can call Gina my late wife, but there’s nothing but Mikael. Nothing that has...dignity or grace. Just my goddamn dead son.”
Ah, even as I wondered if it would ever stop feeling like I was being torn apart...did I really want it to stop? Did I deserve to have it stop?
“Nothing is stopping you from calling him your late son,” he offered gently.
“It’s not the same, is it?” I asked, but I didn’t need the answer because I knew.
“Because Gina and I...we made our vows, didn’t we?
Till death do us part, and we meant it, not realizing we’d only have a few years until that part of the vows got called in.
So she’s my late wife. I guess it makes sense. ”
“Put like that, it does,” he said, his hand never having moved toward the pad of paper he’d been jotting notes on earlier.