Chapter 20
Sit in This Chair
My mother hasn’t said a single word since we left Ink Lake.
It’s still hard for me to believe she agreed to come with me, but she let down her guard the night I found beauty.
When we were calmer, we went down to the kitchen for an herbal tea.
It was late, there were no sounds outside, and the streets were deserted.
I sat at the table and waited while she strained the tea and served us both.
“It’s good,” I said.
“Thanks,” she replied.
Then she started getting nervous. She kept trying to start a conversation, but she’d get mixed up and soon drop it. Maybe it was the lack of practice. Can two people really forget how to interact? Because I had the feeling just then that we had.
“What happened up there…” she began.
“It doesn’t matter. It was nothing. I’m fine.”
“That’s not true. What can I do, Greta?”
“You?” I was incredulous, but it seemed I’d thrown a hook and she’d bitten. “I think you need to take care of yourself.”
“That’s complicated sometimes.”
“I’d help you if you’d let me, Mom.”
Her hands shook as she lifted her cup, took a sip, set it back down on the saucer, and looked around like a frightened animal searching for a way out. We were alone. She tried to get her bearings, then gave off a defeated sigh.
“Fine, Greta. Let’s try.”
And that was how we found ourselves in the car on our way to group therapy today. She doesn’t seem enthusiastic about it, but at least she’s done something for herself, and that’s more promising than watching her spend the afternoon in front of the TV, watching naked couples on a desert island.
I hear her take a breath as I park.
“I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Of course you can, Mom.”
She looks over at the door a few feet away and shakes her head.
She doesn’t have earrings on, her roots are showing, and her T-shirt is old and has a bleach stain on it.
If you look at old family albums, from a decade ago or more, she was always well-dressed, even a little bit of a fashionista like her elder daughter.
“I don’t think this was a good idea. Sorry, Greta. Maybe I’ll be more in the mood for this some other day. Right now I just want to go home.”
I pause. I can’t make her go in. I can’t force her. I can’t get angry with her. But I can tell her the truth, or part of it. “You know how I found out about this place? Because Lucy used to come here.”
“What?” I’ve surprised her.
“She wanted me to do it. And now I’m asking you to. It’s like a chain. Please, Mom. Just once. Once, and I won’t insist anymore.”
She doesn’t react for a few seconds. But then she nods with damp eyes. We get out of the car together and walk to the entrance and then inside. The room isn’t full yet. I like the idea of us doing it together, sharing something: a feeling, a process, mourning.
We walk to the folding table and pour ourselves coffee.
Donna comes over with a curious smile. “Is this your mother, Greta?”
“It is. Donna, this is Rosie.”
“It’s a pleasure. I’ve brought macaroons. Have one.”
I tell her she looks great, and she’s visibly pleased, then she talks with my mother, who’s confused by the effect Donna has on her, and on everybody, without even trying. She listens politely to the several steps in the recipe.
Adrian arrives afterward, and Matilda, Jane, and the rest. We sit in a circle. Faith is wearing a T-shirt with yellow hexagons that look like beeswax.
“I see we have someone else with us today. Welcome…”
“Rosie,” Mom says, introducing herself. I notice she’s keeping her arms crossed over her chest, as though to say I won’t let you in.
“That’s a lovely name,” Jane says.
“We hope you feel at home.” Faith smiles, kindly as always. “Well, let’s get started. Matilda wanted to speak up today, isn’t that right?”
“It’s about guilt,” Matilda replies. “I think about my husband every day when I get up and when I go to bed, but at other times in the day, I don’t have time to mourn his death.
I’m too busy taking the kid to school, making meals, working, shopping, cleaning, running errands…
Then night comes, and I realize I haven’t thought about Andrew in hours, and…
” She sniffles and someone passes her a tissue.
“It’s complicated, but I feel like I’m suffocating. And that’s the guilt rearing its head.”
“We all feel that way sometimes,” Adrian says.
“I remember the first time I laughed after my wife died. It was horrible. I was watching this cop show on TV, a satire kind of thing, and I giggled while I was eating chips. Then I froze. I was paralyzed. I kept asking myself how could I possibly laugh at something that stupid when my Kate was dead.”
“Yeah. It’s like that with almost every dumb day-to-day thing,” a young woman, around my age, adds.
“It’s normal for those two worlds to clash: the emotional part and our outward lives.
” Faith smiles. “But guilt, that’s just a burden that’s holding you down.
We’ve talked about that before. Learning to manage it is a long road, and we need to give ourselves time and patience.
Setting rules, being rigid, only slows us down. ”
“What would you know about all that?”
The acid voice uttering these words belongs to my mother, who’s sitting next to me, her face and shoulders tense.
Far from getting offended, Faith looks at her with compassion.
“I’m a psychologist, and…”
“That doesn’t mean you can imagine what a person feels.”
“I’m a psychologist and I lost my daughter Tess just a few days before her twelfth birthday. That’s why I created this group. To keep from suffering alone.”
The silence that follows is deafening, until my mother breaks it with an animal howl so high-pitched that it moves something inside me and I almost feel like I have to get up and run away.
Then she sobs violently. Faith walks over and hugs her as if she were a little girl.
She strokes her hair, dries her cheeks, and the others offer her tissues, a glass of water, words of consolation, understanding sighs.
The scene is as painful as it is beautiful.
The session continues when my mother calms down, but I know something inside her has changed, as if letting those tears out somehow emptied her inside.
She doesn’t say much, but she nods when the others talk and listens attentively.
I can imagine how she feels. I’ve been there.
I’ve lived it. This group is like an old armchair with flowery upholstery that looks worthless at first glance, but then you sit in it and you realize it’s beyond comfortable, it settles around you, and you just want to stay there all afternoon.
The hands of the clock on the wall are lined up, one over the other, when we all stand. Faith asks my mother if she’s in a rush or if they could talk alone, and I encourage her, letting her know I’ll wait for her at the café on the corner.
I ease into the same seat Will used to sit in before I could drive here on my own. I shouldn’t miss him, but I do. I liked to peek at him through the glass before I pushed the door open to come in. He always used to seem so concentrated, so lost in his own world and isolated from everything.
I order a carrot cake and a coffee.
There’s something wrong with the way I obsess over that dessert.
I’ve had a craving for it ever since Olivia disappeared from my life.
It was her favorite. The flavors and scents evoke memories more clearly than you could believe.
For me, those memories are us in school, standing away from everyone else: the girl who thought differently from everyone else and the other who wore multicolored garments.
And the first time I tried gin or cigarettes, and the night I went to her house at dawn to tell her what a letdown it had been to lose my virginity in a car with Jerry Delton.
How happy I was the day she gave me that old sweater that I can’t throw away because she sewed all the purple and violet patches on with her own hands.
How nice it was to share secrets with someone, to share silences.
If we were still friends, I’d tell her about Will.
I’d tell her I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately.
Too much. When I get in bed at night, I see the blurry outline of his face and I try to remember every line, every freckle, until I can see him clear as glass in my mind.
It’s not enough to know he likes pasta with tons of cheese on it, or astronomy, or sunny days, or rock music, or glitter, rock climbing, and reading, because that’s just the first chapter of a long story that there’s so much more to it, but Will keeps it all under lock and key.
I look at my phone and scroll through my list of contacts until I find Olivia’s number. There it is, so close and yet so far away. I could touch it and let it ring, but I can’t face another rejection. So I go farther down, to W.
Greta: It went better than I thought.
I had already told him days ago that my mother had agreed to come to the next session, so he knows what I’m talking about. He answers right away.
Will: I’m glad. Are you good?
Greta: Yeah. Sitting in your favorite place.
I send a photo of the carrot cake and coffee.
Will: Are you doing something this weekend?
Greta: No, why?
Will: We should think about opening the next box. I work the next two nights, but we could meet before I go in. Or you can come by the bar. Fridays don’t usually get busy until later.
Greta: Sure. Can I ask you a question?
Will: Can I say no?
Greta: What did you study in college?
Will: Finally, an easy question. Prelaw.
Greta: Is that a family thing?
Will: No, I liked it.
Greta: Hm.
Will: You surprised?
Greta: I figured literature. Or architecture, maybe. But I like something unpredictable. It’s more fun.
I put down my phone and grab another piece of carrot cake and chew as I think of what I’d have liked to study if I’d decided to go to college.
A second later it comes to me, crystal clear, like a lightning bolt, but instead of embracing it, I push it aside and add it to the list of things I’ll never do.
Because I won’t—I won’t go to college. I won’t go to college, just like I won’t be a cloud chaser or a ballerina or head of a meteorological station.
I won’t own a hat shop, and I won’t be a lighthouse keeper on my own in the middle of nowhere.
If you pull the brake hard, everything’s easier.