Grace
So, my therapist happens to be a stone-cold hottie.
That has nothing to do with anything, I know, but sometimes it just feels weird to pour your heart out to a woman while simultaneously wondering about her skincare routine or how her body looks so good.
Like, what’s the deal, Dr. Butler, do you do yoga or something, or have you just always been hot?
I never ask Dr. Butler these questions, obviously. Grief sucks—like lugging a bowling ball around all day—but my impulse control is still mostly intact.
“And your son’s dreams,” she says. “Those haven’t returned?”
We’ve mostly talked about the kids so far this session.
After Tim died, Ian had recurring dreams in which I got cancer, Bella got cancer, Iron Man got cancer—everyone got cancer.
I tell Dr. Butler that we’ve mostly been all good in the dream department, and we shift to Bella.
Yes, she’s still quieter than she was in the beforetimes, I tell her, but I feel like maybe she’s lightening up.
“And her smiles?” says Dr. Butler.
“Twelve since last week,” I say.
This is a thing Dr. Butler and I do. I log Bella’s smiles between sessions, and we track how they’re trending. She jots this on her yellow legal pad. “Solid numbers,” she says.
“Harry Styles helps,” I say. “He’s a natural comedian. He doesn’t hump things as much anymore, either, since, you know…” I make a snipping motion with my fingers.
“I’m glad. Grief dogs always make me nervous. Little Harry, though, seems to belong firmly in the win column.” Dr. Butler scans her pad now and crosses her legs. “What about you? Anything new?”
I think of Henry but decide not to tell her about him.
Henry is a nice, sad guy I know, and I’m helping him be a little less sad.
If I bring him up, Dr. Butler’s eyebrow will arch the way it sometimes does, and I’ll have to answer a bunch of questions, and I’m not in the mood for that.
“Same old,” I say. “Just getting ready for Christmas.”
We’re quiet now, and it’s okay. I like this about Dr. Butler, how she’s cool with us just sitting here sometimes.
She keeps a bowl of candy on the little table between us.
I take a Hershey’s Kiss and glance, as I always do, at the picture of her family on her desk.
Two kids, a boy and a girl, like me. The girl is holding an E.T. doll.
She’s so much better-looking than her husband, says Tim, because sometimes I bring him to therapy with me in my imagination.
He touches the silver frame. Guy really outkicked his coverage, huh?
And I smile because I’m remembering when Tim explained this analogy to me once. Something about punting in football.
Dr. Butler bites the inside of one cheek like she’s thinking. “If you don’t mind me saying, Grace, you seem good.”
“Yeah?”
She frowns, though, like maybe this isn’t entirely positive. “I’m gonna ask you something. And, for the sake of our work together, it’s important that you’re honest with me.”
I’m nervous suddenly, like I’m about to be in trouble. “Okay.”
“Are you pretending to talk to Tim again?”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, no.” I take another piece of candy and try to look like someone who isn’t obviously lying. To his credit, Tim has vanished. “I told you. I don’t do that anymore.”
She holds my gaze long enough to let me know she’s suspicious.
“I mean, I’m not, right?” I say. “But, if I were, remind me again why that’d be so bad.”
Dr. Butler takes a Hershey’s Kiss for herself now. “It isn’t bad, Grace. There is no bad, remember? There’s no wrong way to grieve. No right way, either. The stages aren’t linear. We do what we have to do.”
I wait, knowing, for the most part, what she’s going to say next.
“The risk, though,” she says, chewing, “is that you’ll get so good at talking to him—so good at pretending he’s here—that you’ll never truly be able to accept that he’s gone.”
Despite lying to her just now and not telling her things like how I’m friends with Sad Henry, I really do like Dr. Butler. But as far as I know, that smiling, nice-looking husband in the family picture behind her is alive and well. So, on this particular subject, maybe I’m the expert.