Chapter Thirteen Rose
Do you believe in second chances?”
“What?” I ask, trying to concentrate. I was up late last night at dinner with William again, and the lack of sleep is starting to affect me. “I mean, what do you mean by that?”
I’m currently in session with a new client of mine, a young mother who just left her husband. She has a newborn at home and is suffering from postpartum depression.
The first rule of therapy to avoid projecting on your clients. We call it “countertransference,” when your own biases, experiences, and thoughts end up coloring the way you see a client. I know how damaging countertransference can be to the therapeutic relationship.
Still, it’s hard not to see the resemblance to my own life.
“I know we can’t repeat the past, but do you think it’s ever okay to try again?” the client asks in a small, inquisitive voice.
Her name is Virginia, and she’s in her midthirties. Virginia has dark brown hair, now pulled back into a ponytail, and bright blue eyes that look especially tired today. Her son, Teddy, still isn’t sleeping through the night.
“Of course,” I tell her. “But more importantly, do you believe in second chances? That’s what really matters.”
The bread and butter of talk therapy is something called the OARS method. Essentially through open-ended questions (O), affirmations (A), reflective listening (R), and summarizing (S), you encourage the client to create change.
It’s a simple tool but sometimes it’s the simplest stuff that is the most effective.
“I don’t know,” says Virginia. “I want to but I’m not sure if it’s possible.”
“What kind of second chance are we talking about here?”
I hope she’s not talking about getting together with her ex-husband.
Perhaps it’s unprofessional to have such a biased view toward a relationship in my client’s life, but again, it’s difficult not to.
Therapists who claim not to care about their clients are either callous sociopaths or liars.
And from what Virginia has told me, her husband was emotionally abusive, often berating her about finances, her weight, and generally making her feel “not good enough.”
When working with a client who you suspect is in an abusive relationship—or in Virginia’s case, has recently left one—it’s important to proceed carefully, tread lightly.
I don’t want to scare her away from opening up to me, and I still need to earn her trust. We’ve only been working together for a month now.
“I met someone new,” says Virginia, looking at the floor. Even in the shadow of the overhead lighting, there’s a sudden brightness to her expression.
Phew. “Oh, well that’s great! Who is the lucky individual?”
She looks up at me with a sad smile. “He’s just here for the summer, so it probably can’t work.”
The clinician in me takes note of the immediate pessimism. It’s not easy learning how to be positive when the world has burned you. I mentally mark down that this is something we can work on together.
But simultaneously, the human in me irrationally thinks of Tommy. My breath somersaults. It’s an illogical assumption—it’s summer on Nantucket, after all! Of course, there are hundreds, thousands, of visitors. Tommy is by no means the only one. Still…
“You never know what a summer fling could turn into,” I say from experience. “Tell me more about him. How did you two meet?”
“Well, he’s renting in ’Sconset for a few weeks,” Virginia says, twisting the drawstring of her sweatshirt in her left hand, a nervous gesture. “His name is…”
Please don’t say Thomas. Please don’t say Tommy. Please don’t…
“His name is Michael,” she finishes. “He lives in Rhode Island and we met while I was walking on the beach the other day.”
Another phew. A wave of relief washes over me. I take a deep breath in, shifting in my chair.
“That’s wonderful!” I say with real enthusiasm now. “Besides the summer ending, what are you afraid of?”
While I wait to start my own practice, I’m currently seeing clients through a group clinic down by the hospital.
The rooms are stuffy and cramped. The carpet is a drab gray color, and despite the sound machines we have blasting, you can still catch snippets of other clinicians’ conversations through the thin walls.
Every time I’m here, I’m reminded of why I want to go out on my own.
Besides needing my own space, I yearn for the autonomy to make my own clinical decisions.
Right now, the group practice I work for is strict about which insurances we do and do not accept.
I’ve had to reject countless potential clients because they’re on Medicare, Medicaid, or some other insurance we don’t accept.
I also have no ability to set my own rates or make exceptions for people who can’t afford traditional treatment.
It’s heartbreaking to reject someone in need, someone who has gone through the brave, often intimidating and confusing process of seeking therapy. It breaks my heart.
“I guess I’m afraid that he won’t like me. Or, he’ll be disappointed I have a kid. I just… I really don’t want to get hurt again,” says Virginia.
I settle into my chair. This is where the real work begins. When a client like Virginia is able to admit something vulnerable, we can begin to make change and challenge negative self-beliefs.
This is why I love my work. As a kid, I felt orphaned in the world.
My sister and father sucked the air out of the room until I learned to take shallower, quieter breaths, blending in with the furniture.
In my house growing up, every other sentence I mumbled was an apology.
My father and sister were so alike in their grievances and pride.
I was constantly disappointing them by simply existing.
My mother passed before I was five. Lottie always claimed that we were alike, and I appreciated hearing that, but the truth is I’ll never know.
What I remember of my mother is vague, and it’s not easy trying to love a ghost.
That’s what made those summers with Lottie particularly magical.
She asked me to come, and only me, not Elizabeth and not our dad.
I was chosen, special for once. Lottie had her own ways of living, her own rules and moral codes, but there was a freedom to her, a wildness that was caged in my childhood house.
Lottie could be strict. She would lecture me on ethics and values, but she was also playful.
There would be music crooning from her record player, sand on the floor with no effort to vacuum it away.
She and Charlie danced at night by the fire, so clearly in love it shone out of their heads like the beacon of a lighthouse.
Seashells lined the windowsills, books left dog-eared on the mantel.
There was a simultaneous fluidity and rigidity to Lottie that contradicted itself, pulled and pushed at the edges of who she was, making it impossible to get a clear read.
Why did no one tell me that grief would be this physically painful?
It’s like my spine is a Jenga tower and every time I remember that Lottie is gone for good, one of the blocks dislodges and my whole body crumples down with it.
Spending those summers with Lottie was the only time I felt close to my mother again.
My aunt would tell me stories about her, stories that brought her back to life and confirmed all of my hazy half memories with color.
Lottie, my mother’s sister, was my sole comfort, my closest confidant.
She never had her own children, so she considered me like a daughter. I was grateful for that.
I know what it’s like to feel misunderstood, to feel truly alone in the world. If I can give that comfort to someone else—even a fraction of the immeasurable blessing Lottie gave to me of making me feel seen—I know I have done something good with my life.
“Let’s explore that thought some more,” I say, leaning in.
Lily is gone when I arrive back home three hours and two sessions later, probably still working at her new job or looking for photography clients. I’m proud of how hard she’s working. It’s no easy feat to start back at square one.
When I approach the front door, I also notice that Tommy is nowhere to be found. The windows of the side cottage are open but no one is inside.
I don’t know why I immediately thought of him today with Virginia.
It was such a comically illogical thought.
I shouldn’t care anyway because I have something budding with William, something that could be real.
It’s been ten days since our first date, and already, we’ve seen each other four more times.
My first impression was wrong. He’s been a perfect gentleman.
He calls when he says he will; schedules elaborate, romantic, albeit over-the-top dates; and most importantly, he is eager to know Lily.
I told him I’ll introduce them when the time is right.
For now, I want to leave her out of it, even though I feel guilty lying.
I pause on the doorstep of the breezeway, turning to look in Tommy’s windows again like some Peeping Tom.
One of the only drawbacks of the remodel is that Lottie’s bookcase, the one my Uncle Charlie built her, is on the guest side of the property.
I’ve left her books there, knowing she’d be thrilled to have visitors read them, but that means Lily and I don’t have access to them ourselves.
I’ve already grabbed my favorites for the summer, but I miss browsing them, flipping through random pages and reading the lines she thought important enough to underline.
She always loved the dedications most of all.
Some of the pages even smell like her perfume.
Would it be so wrong if I went in now, while Tommy is out, and took a look? Surely, that’s within my rights as the property manager?
Moral quandaries battle in my brain as I remain standing there. Eventually, curiosity wins. I’ll grab a book, make sure he’s using coasters and not leaving wet towels on the hardwood or exhibiting any of the other bad habits renters often display, and be on my merry way.
Quietly, I open his side of the cottage and walk in.
To his credit, Tommy has kept the main room remarkably clean.
It must be a remnant of his time in the Coast Guard.
There are no stray beach towels or clumps of sand.
Everything is pristine. The bookshelf, however, has certainly been used.
Lottie’s beloved books dot the living room like sunflowers popping out of the garden.
An open copy left on the armchair, another on the hallway bench.
Well, if he has this much time for reading, maybe he’s not dating after all.
I grab a book from the shelf—one of Lottie’s favorite beach reads—and am about to leave when I catch sight of her old desk in the guest bedroom. The drawer is half ajar. Clearly, Tommy has made himself quite at home.
It seems wrong that he’d be here, using her old furniture.
I creep into the room and open up the drawer. What is he possibly keeping in here? There are random receipts, a journal that even I have the boundary to not open, and miscellaneous menus for take-out places.
Disappointed, I go to put the drawer back but it’s stuck. I push it again but it keeps sticking. The humidity of the ocean air must have bent the old wood.
I hear someone approaching. My heartbeat quickens.
“I can’t wait to see you, too,” says Tommy from outside the front door. I figure he’s talking to someone on the phone, because I can’t hear the response. “August can’t come soon enough, sweetie.”
I jam the desk again, shoving it in with my shoulder.
Shoot, shoot, shoot. He’s going to catch me and then he’ll know I’m snooping through his things like a stalker.
Could he complain to the real estate office?
Have me banned from renting out my property?
Silently, I curse myself for not looking more into tenant law.
A quieter but more urgent question rises through the panic: Who exactly is he calling sweetie?
“I’ll call you again tomorrow?” says Tommy. His keys are in the door. I hear them jingling. Crap, crap, crap. “Same time?”
With one final surge of strength, I shove the drawer closed, but in the process, something else dislodges. From underneath the desk, a piece of paper flits down. It’s a bit crumpled, but on it is Lottie’s unmistakable handwriting.
Quickly, I grab it from the floor, shut the door, and sprint to the back patio. I make it to the side door of our cottage just as Tommy is entering. Through the wall, I hear a long, belabored sigh.
My chest feels like it’s caving in as I lean against the door to our place. Only when I’m safe on my own side of the cottage do I look down at the paper.
“The Last Summer Bucket List,” reads Lottie’s writing on the top.
Underneath it are ten items.