Chapter Sixty-Seven
Sixty-Seven
Mary hugged herself, as her gaze settled on a neutral spot on the white rug under her feet. They were coming to the end of their session, and, to Dr. Lillian Fox, the psychologist that Mary had been seeing for a little over ten months now, Mary’s facial expression seemed intriguing.
‘Is everything OK?’ Dr. Fox asked, her voice calm and composed, as always.
She was sitting in her usual wingback Chesterfield armchair, just across the room from Mary.
Her right leg was crossed over her left one in a relaxed position.
She held a pen in her right hand, with a notepad resting on her lap.
Yes, the session was being recorded, that was standard common practice, but Dr. Fox liked to take notes of visible details…
things that the digital voice recorder could never capture.
Mary nodded shyly, but voiced no reply.
‘Anything bothering you?’ Dr. Fox asked. ‘Anything at all?’ She found Mary’s posture to be a little tense, with her facial expression showing an odd combination of happiness and concern.
Dr. Fox was maybe a couple of inches taller than Mary and several pounds heavier, with intelligent dark eyes that sat behind round spectacles.
Her hair, which was a shade darker than her eyes, was long and shiny, and she always had it either up in a ballet bun or loose, slung behind her head from her right shoulder to her left one, mermaid style.
That afternoon, Dr. Fox had chosen the ballerina look.
The sleeves of her pleated satin top were rolled up to her elbows, half exposing her arms.
‘I love that tattoo, you know?’ Mary said, nodding at Dr. Fox’s right forearm.
Dr. Fox did know that. Mary had told her so on their very first session and several times during their subsequent ones.
The tattoo covered most of the outside of Dr. Fox’s right forearm and it showed the two main characters from the classic Christmas animation movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas – Jack Skellington and his girlfriend, Sally.
In the tattoo, Jack and Sally were facing each other.
In their hands, they held each other’s bleeding hearts.
‘I hate Christmas,’ Mary told Dr. Fox… again. ‘But I love that film. It’s a great love story.’
Dr. Fox said nothing back. She knew that mentioning the tattoo was one of Mary’s most used evading tactics. It had happened several times before.
The doctor waited in silence.
Mary pressed her lips together, before allowing them to stretch into a half smile, but her eyes didn’t seem to smile with them.
Dr. Fox pushed. ‘Is there anything that you’d like to talk about, Mary?’
Mary’s acting was so on point that if this were an audition for the main role in some major Hollywood production film, she’d get it, hands down.
‘You seem just a little… on edge today,’ Dr. Fox said, her eyes carefully studying Mary.
This time, Mary allowed a full smile to take over her lips. ‘I think…’ The pause was deliberate… calculated. ‘I think that my partner is going to propose.’
During her therapy sessions, Dr. Fox had always been at the very high end of professionalism. Always calm, collected and analytical, with almost no emotional display whatsoever, but Mary’s revelation caught the doctor completely by surprise and her eyes widened behind her glasses.
‘Really?’ This time, it was the smile in Dr. Fox’s eyes that didn’t reach her lips.
Mary bit her bottom lip and nodded.
‘You think he’s going to propose?’ the doctor asked, quickly scribbling something down on her notepad. ‘Or you know for sure that he’s going to propose?’
‘He’s going to propose,’ Mary confirmed, no doubt in her tone. She had stopped hugging herself, allowing her arms to rest by her sides – her hands clasped together on her lap. ‘I wasn’t supposed to have seen it.’
‘The ring?’
Mary’s eyebrows arched. ‘The receipt for the ring. And a few days ago, just before he flew down to LA on business, he mentioned the idea of the two of us going on a holiday to somewhere romantic.’ Her head angled to one side. ‘The writing is on the wall.’
Dr. Fox observed Mary’s eye movement together with her demeanor. She was still getting mixed signals. ‘When?’
‘When he’s back, tomorrow or the day after,’ Mary replied. ‘So, we might be going as soon as next week… maybe.’
Dr. Fox allowed the silence to spread across the room for a few seconds before she spoke. ‘And how do you feel about that?’
Mary took in a breath, as her gaze moved to the psychologist in the armchair.
Dr. Fox had always captivated Mary in a way that Mary couldn’t quite explain.
It wasn’t just her attractiveness. It was a combination of everything – her elegance…
the cadence in which she spoke… her unflinching composure…
how intelligent and independent she was…
even the small mole that she had just above her right eyebrow seemed like the perfect imperfection.
In different circumstances, Mary would’ve loved to have Dr. Fox as a friend.
‘I feel great,’ Mary finally replied, renewing her smile – this one, excited.
Another analytical appraisal from Dr. Fox. ‘You feel great as in – you’re happy that your partner is going to propose?’
Mary looked away for a fraction of a second, as if she had to think about the answer for an instant. Once again, she gave her psychologist an answer that didn’t exactly fit the question.
‘I love him so much.’
Dr. Fox noted something down on her pad. ‘And you’re convinced that you would like to spend the rest of your life with him?’
Mary’s acting was boarding on spectacular – the way that she avoided Dr. Fox’s eyes before bringing her arms up to hug herself again, this time a little tighter, being careful to allow the hug to hitch up her right sleeve just enough so that the new bruise on her wrist would peek out.
Mary saw that Dr. Fox saw it. Her eyes stayed on it until Mary unhugged herself, pulled her sleeves down a touch and returned her hands to her lap.
‘I am, yes,’ Mary replied, at last. ‘What can be better than spending the rest of your life with the person you love?’ She indicated the tattoo on the doctor’s arm. ‘Jack and Sally. That’s how I see us.’
Dr. Fox allowed a sympathetic smile to blossom between her lips. ‘Why don’t you tell me a little about him?’ she asked, her concerned eyes finally moving from Mary’s right wrist back to her face. ‘About your relationship.’
Mary paused, frowning at the psychologist. ‘I’ve told you about him a thousand times.’
That much was true. Mary had told Dr. Fox about Quaddra several times since they’d started dating.
In fact, Mary had mentioned her partner in every session she’d had with Dr. Fox since, but Mary had always been very careful never to mention his name.
She didn’t want Dr. Fox to google it and find out that Quaddra was a billionaire.
The trick was to make Dr. Fox believe that Mary was head over heels in love with her partner, and that she would’ve said yes to marriage regardless of how wealthy he was.
That was the sort of testimony that won trials.
‘He’s loving and caring,’ Mary finally replied, her smile bright, but not so much. ‘Very attentive, funny, intelligent… he’s the kind of man that you dream of, you know? And he loves me… he really does.’
Mary was very careful as to her intonation and her posture, as she delivered her last sentence.
She really made it sound like – ‘And he loves me… he really does’ – was said more to convince herself than anyone else.
As if she had deliberately left a tag ending out of her sentence – ‘And he loves me… he really does… despite everything’.
As she delivered the sentence, her left hand cupped over her right wrist, as if trying to erase the bruise under her sleeve.
Psychologists called it a tell-tale reflex.
In essence, it was a subconscious giveaway.
It happened when a subject would unconsciously somehow drive attention to a part of the body associated with a memory, distressing or not.
Dr. Fox noticed the movement.
As Mary cupped her left hand over her right wrist, her eyes settled on her watch. ‘I think our time is up, Doc.’ She got to her feet.
Dr. Fox also checked her timepiece. Mary was right. Their time was up. She calmly closed her notepad and got up from the armchair.
‘Mary, wait,’ she called, halting Mary as she was just getting to the door.
Mary paused and turned to look back at the doctor.
Dr. Fox reached for one of her cards on her desk, scribbled something on the back of it and handed it to Mary.
‘If you ever feel the need to talk… about anything… anything at all… feel free to give me a call anytime, OK?’
Mary took the card and looked at the private cell number.
‘And I don’t mean it as doctor/patient,’ Dr. Fox added. ‘We can chat as friends in a much more relaxed atmosphere, if you like.’
Mary’s gaze met Dr. Fox’s and she gave her a shy smile. Internally, she was already thinking of something sad. Not sad enough to make her cry, but enough to glass her eyes over.
It took her only one second.
‘Thank you, Doc. I really appreciate it.’