Session Ten
SESSION TEN
DESERT FLOWER THERAPY
“I brought you a plant.”
Dr. Ruben gazes at me warily.
“You can accept it,” I tell him, holding it out. “I’m not trying to bribe you or remove any professionalism from our relationship. In fact”—I look around pointedly—“consider it a gift to myself. Your office lacks anything earthy, anything that promises more than tears and tissues. I need this plant in here.”
Dr. Ruben takes the plant and sets it on a shelf behind his desk, closer to a window. “Let’s keep talking about your marriage.”
My fingers stretch, the thumb of my left hand tucking into my palm and rubbing the bare flesh on my ring finger. Talking about Gabriel like this doesn’t hurt. It’s as if someone has given me a broom, and I’ve swept away the dust and detritus. I’m left with something shiny. Gleaming.
There’s nothing I want more than to be that way again.
“What about it?” I ask.
“Tell me about the climate.”
I point left, to the window and the scenery beyond. “It’s hotter than the surface of the sun out there. I’m not looking forward to getting in my car after spending this hour in here with you.”
Dr. Ruben shakes his head. “You’re stalling.”
“This is the good part. I want to sit in it for a while. Let the flavors mesh.”
“Are you talking about stew, or your marriage?”
I smile at him. As therapists go, I’ve lucked out with Dr. Ruben. He talks with me, not at me. I like to think I was that way, too. My turnover rate was low.
“Gabriel and I were married. I was busy completing my three thousand clinical hours under Dr. Mallory.”
“You can call him Joseph, if you’d like.”
I nod, glancing quickly at my knotted hands in my lap. I hope that, in time, my embarrassment over what happened will fade.
“Gabriel and I were better than good. We were amazing. My other friends who’d already married warned me the first year of marriage was the hardest. That wasn’t the case for us. Maybe it was everything I already knew about marriage from the time I spent studying it, or maybe Gabriel and I were just that damn good together. At any rate”—my head tips side to side as I think of those first months, as if even I cannot believe it—“we were the kind of couple other people want to be.”
“I bet that felt good.” Dr. Ruben sips his tea, then sets it on a small hot plate on the table between his chair and the couch I’m seated on.
"It did. If Aunt Francesca hadn't died a year later of lung cancer, I would have rubbed it in her face."
Dr. Ruben's lips quirk up in a corner. “She certainly made an impact on you.”
My eyebrows cinch. “How’s that?”
“You’re holding a grudge against her for what she said at your wedding.”
I make a face. “She was very rude.”
“How many years ago was your wedding?”
“Five.”
“Can you think of any reason why what she said five years ago still upsets you?”
I think back to that evening. The sage green pantsuit she wore, the large gold hoops tugging on earlobes that already sagged.
The answer hits me, square in the chest. Suddenly there are tears, running in paths down my cheeks, and I’m shocked by their appearance. No burning sensation, no tightening around the eyes, no warning whatsoever. Yet here they are, and there are so many I have no hope of removing them with a single swipe.
“She was right,” I whisper, taking the offered box of tissues from Dr. Ruben.
I blow my nose, a loud and unladylike honk, and wipe at my eyes.
Dr. Ruben gives me a moment, then asks, “What was she right about?”
I release a noisy, aggravated breath. “That we would fail.” I squeeze the balled up tissues in my hands, striped black with my mascara.
“We vowed to love each other through it all. I knew nothing of what that vow entailed. I had some vague notion it meant serious illness, like…like, cancer or dementia. It seemed intangible and far away.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No. It was not.” My heart aches, an organ in distress. Today’s appointment is the most painful of all, so far.
Dr. Ruben’s expression is one of sympathy. “Do you want to keep going?”
I nod, swallowing as I steel myself. Isn’t that what I do?
No matter what, I keep going.