And as I speak these things I haven’t spoken in years, my voice gains vehemence, fluidity. “Because they have no idea how lucky they are, and they have no respect for what you’re going through, and they give you attitude because you took two seconds too long to order a hot cocoa in Starbucks in the hospital lobby because you were wondering if today is the day your sister is going to die, and whether she’ll do it while they’re putting on the whipped cream, and if it will hurt.
“You want them to hurt, too, so they can suffer like you are. Maybe it will teach them to be kinder. Not even kinder. So they can be human again. So that if you need to take an extra goddamn minute in the coffee line, you can, without getting someone muttering ‘move your slow idiot ass’ under their breath.”
I idly wonder—even as I’m talking, completely focused on my words—if my syllables will freeze in this arctic air, maybe shatter into dust and disappear, taking their pain with them. If only.
Kelsie’s rapt; her face focused. She steps closer.
I pause and add, “And then you have to somehow go to school, and do homework. And you have to mail things at the post office. Buy meat at the deli. All these people who don’t know what you’re going through, and don’t care. You’re an alien on Earth. You look like a human, but you’re not like them. You’re Other. You’re so separate that you can see the millions of miles between you. You’re looking at them all through the small end of a telescope. But you have to interact. And it’s the most soul-crushing, excruciating thing you’ll ever have to do in your life—to live it, when someone you love isn’t able to do the same.”
Tears are in my eyes, and I panic and look down fast—I don’t want anyone to see me looking so sad, especially Michael, but he and Anna are running away together, holding sticks and laughing in the distance. When I lift my head, the wind makes my tears hurt like ice, so I wipe at them with my mittens, and the thick weave does nothing except redistribute the moisture in an even less convenient pattern, so I pull off the wool and dig in my pocket, finding a crispy used tissue and dabbing at my face with the clean part.
Kelsie touches my arm, a compassionate gesture. “You do understand.” Her voice is different now; it holds respect and sympathy. “I wish you didn’t, though.”
I take a deep breath. “Wow. That’s something I haven’t talked about in a long time.”
“You can tell me more, if you want to,” she says. I see compassion in her gaze, and even more, friendship. The kind of friendship—sisterhood, maybe—that you only experience with an exclusive and sad group. War veterans. Combat amputees. When you share something so fundamental, it’s like the permafrost topsoil of friendship, the kind that you chip at with a teaspoon when you start making a friend, is blown away, leaving the real you to connect with the real them. It’s a friendship that skips over the social niceties, the first dozen letters, and starts you right in at J or K instead of making you wade through the crippling anxiety and boring crap of A, B, and etcetera.
I manage to laugh a little bit. “It’s okay.”
“So I know you’re a therapist, but do you, you know?” She pauses. “Do you see one yourself? Because it seems like even therapists need someone to talk to. Maybe especially therapists. Because of everything you probably hear and deal with.”
“It’s not a problem for me. I just got caught by surprise by a memory.” I nod, to reinforce my claim. This is a pain I don’t want to feel.
“You know, it’s not a sign of weakness to get help yourself. Even if you’re the one that usually does the helping.” Her voice is kind. “Put on your own breathing mask first, and all that.”
I nod again. “I tell my clients all the time, and it’s great advice. It’s just a momentary thing. I’m past it.” I’m worried that she’ll think I’m not a good therapist if I have such big issues in myself.
She sighs. “I don’t think you can ever get past it.” But she’s not challenging me; she’s looking into the wind, and I think she’s seeing her own bloody towels and coffee line, her own bad memories, whatever twisted wraiths exist in her own brain. Maybe she wishes her pain could shatter in this cold and blow away, just like I did.
“Are you a therapist, too?” I don’t think so, but you never know.
She laughs. “All cancer moms are therapists, too.”
“Not all of them.” A burst of anger, white hot, fills me, for what I never got from my own mom.
She gives me a questioning look, but doesn’t say anything because the kids are back, their laughter a beautiful healing sound, blowing all around us in the wind like flower petals, like glitter.
“Mama! Look! Look at my stick! It’s a perfect stick to make a fairy swing. Michael found it for me.” She looks up at him shyly, her eyes full of reverence, and my heart swells with pride at the way he’s being so kind. I did that—I helped him get here. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind, and it took him a while to adjust to me, but he’s listening. When I talk to him, he listens. And he takes my advice. He’s able to let his kindness out again.
But then I see something else—it’s not just kindness, it’s a desperate need. This ten-year-old genius who can do calculus, who has the vocabulary of a college student and who knows what it’s like to have clear poison drip into your veins, a slow burn that might—if he’s lucky—kill off the more serious poison that’s growing inside him like a sick twisted vine—this boy needs to laugh and play, too. He needs to gather sticks for a little girl, to run in the wind with nobody else judging. He needs to be needed by someone smaller. By someone bigger. By someone who matters.
And suddenly I know what I need to tell his father.
“We need to talk.” I take a deep breath and put down my hands.
“Urgently?” He raises an eyebrow, sees my face, and pushes the laptop lid shut.
The small click of the lid is loud within our silence. I wonder what he’s closing away; his life beyond this office and our random kitchen encounters is a mystery. I imagine rows of numbers, silver, shiny and bold. Dollar signs. Yen, Bhat. That’s his portal to the entire world, the globe, spinning thousands of miles per hour with all of her various colors and sounds. That’s gold-shot saris, and famine; it’s people making Murano glass in the silence of birdsong; it’s everything on New York’s Wall Street and all of the songs in Hollywood at his fingertips.
He hasn’t been rude to me these past weeks, but neither has he been especially open. He’s polite, interested in my ideas, my updates on Michael. I catch my breath when he stands close to me. Last week when he leaned in to show me something on a spreadsheet, my cheek and neck tingled at his proximity. I don’t know if he felt the same, but when he looked at my eyes I saw something flash in his, something that made me wonder.
Arielle hasn’t been back around the house, but I know he sees her. Michael reports back from time to time. “The Ice Queen came into the house and gave me a book meant for a five-year-old. She did it in front of my dad and acted all phony and condescending. But then I heard her on the phone asking her friend if there are boarding schools for grade-school kids. Are there?” His voice held scorn and terror, and I felt a matching worry in my stomach.
I focus back on Gabriel, here and now. He puts those fingertips together—long, strong fingers—and observes me. “Sit down, Shai.”
I nod and sit in his visitor chair across the desk. “You should change this chair,” I announce, running a finger over the severe wooden curve. “It’s too much of a power play. Too low, compared to yours. So austere, while yours is pure luxury. Isn’t that Herman Miller?”
I recognize it because Allison has one in her office. She offered to get me one, too, any ergo chair of my choice, but I prefer my battered blue swivel with the crumbing left armrest, which I’ve repaired with tape. There’s no need to toss out something that is still useful. That old chair still has a lot of life left in her. Like my car. Why get something new, when the old one works fine?
“It is. Please, let me switch with you, by all m
eans. I would hate for you to feel any discomfort during our discussion.” He raises one eyebrow and gets up, pushes his chair toward me. Is he teasing me? Flirting? My stomach lurches and I think about my ass and his hands. My face burns. I take the chair and rest into as gracefully as I can, and he takes the other chair.
“This is much better. Really, you need another one of these. Blue. To match your décor.” I gesture at the hourglass. It’s in the same spot, and there’s no dust marks to tell, but I’m sure it’s in the same spot as before. Unmoved.
Gabriel smiles. “Thank you for that input, Shai. I’ll note it down here. Is that all?” He smirks and I flush. His eyes, those brilliant green eyes, have an extra warmth in them today. His glance glides over my body and I catch my breath. It’s like a touch, a soft, silvery touch of wind, of gentle fingertips. It’s a caress that starts out like a whisper but you can see that it’s going to grow into a storm, an approaching swirl of roaring gales, as inevitable as the tide each morning.
For the first time I’m sure of his attraction. It’s like a discovery, a good one. An archaeologist who digs and digs under the burning sun, baking her skin, toiling away, focused on work, and uncovers a trove of sparkling crystal, untouched, just for her. I found that just now in his eyes. I can’t look away.
“Tell me.” His voice is low. He leans his arms on the table and bends in toward me. He’s still separated by his desk, and by a chasm of experience, but the slight movement is immense, and I lean in, too, a centimeter of my own. If we keep doing this, we’ll meet someday, right in the perfect middle, in the empty air, and fill it up.
“Okay.” I sit up straighter, pushing back my attraction. It’s still there; the curtain I put it behind is gauzy, and I can see the sharp edges of desire every time I smell his cologne waft over. The breeze of his presence swirls into me, but I focus on what I need to say. “Michael.”
“Yes.” His hands tense on the desk. “He’s doing well lately, yes?” His voice rises and he grips a pen. He blinks, looks down, then meets my eyes again. “Is everything… all right? What’s he doing right now?”
“He is doing well, Gabriel.” I can’t resist a smile when I think of Michael’s furrowed brows, his huge smile, the way he still runs like a little kid when he’s excited, although he’ll tell you a thousand times that he’s not a child. “Right now he’s napping.”
“Again?” Gabe’s eyes narrow, and if I didn’t know better I’d think he was angry. But the quick intake of his breath and the way his fingers grip his pen more tightly—no, that’s fear, the kind of fear that explodes inside you like a grenade that was hidden there for decades, old and dusty, camouflaged so well it was invisible, until today.
“Yes. But remember, the doctor said it’s normal for him to need naps, at this stage in his recovery. It’s good for his body. It’s all right. He’s doing fine.” I want my words to wash away the napalm of his anxiety, and I don’t know if they do, but I need to try.
He nods and sighs, letting his breath out slowly. “I do remember that. I just—sometimes it seems like it’s taking so long to get back to normal.” His eyes seek mine. He hesitates, checks his watch. “Did you stay longer today than usual? Was he difficult for you?” He frowns.
“No! I mean, no, not difficult, and yes, I stayed a bit longer. But you were, you know, in your meeting. And he asked me to read to him, and I don’t mind. Sometimes after therapy, he’s tired, and I read to him while he falls asleep in his room.”
My words tumble out, because I feel a little weird about overstaying, but also defensive, because every minute I stay, I think, is useful to Michael, and consequently also to Gabriel.
But Gabriel smiles, his face fond, his gaze looking past me to a picture on the wall: Michael as a small child, a baby. “He always fights falling asleep. Especially now.”
I nod. “I know! He does this breathing thing, like he’s faking—”
“And you know he’s faking because it’s too even!” Gabriel’s face lights up as he laughs.
“And after a few minutes he takes this deep, shuddering sigh, and then he’s over the mountain into dreamland for real,” I add.
Gabriel’s smile shows warmth. “Yes! Yes, that’s it exactly.” He hesitates. “Thank you for staying to help him fall asleep.”
I flush. “I don’t mind staying past my allotted time. I mean, it’s not like I’m paid by the hour, anyway.” I was trying to make a joke, but his brows wrinkle.
“Shai, if you feel that compensation is required, then definitely—”
“No. It’s not about money, although it is an investment.”
“An investment, how?” He’s gazing at me again, as if he wants to see past my eyes and into my soul, and it’s oddly off-putting and also erotic at once.
What I won’t tell him is this: I think, maybe, that each minute I spend with Michael goes into some existential bank. I see the minutes slipping past us, silver and fast, minnows twisting in rapids, light glinting off their shiny backs. But the discrete minutes I give—I hope—are more than the sum of their parts. I see it maybe as a scale, a switch. I’m pouring in all this energy and time, endless, into a bottomless dry bucket, and eventually it will fill. The switch will flip. The circuit will complete, and Michael will be whole again. Each minute matters, not just for itself, but for the sum to which it contributes.
I won’t say that, because you don’t recite poetry right off to your client’s father, even if he has a wall of poetry books behind his desk, but I do want him to understand how much I care. I pause. “Each minute matters. I hope all of the time I spend with Michael will add up into a faster glide into recovery. I’m just one part of his overall recovery. You’re huge. He’s the biggest part himself. But I want to do everything I can to contribute.”
He sucks in a breath and his eyes darken, like a storm on the sea. We stare at each other. I can see his chest moving as he breathes, and the feeling of utter eroticism is back. Not that talking about Michael is sexy; it’s not. But the intimacy of being in this room, across from this man, talking about the thing that matters most in the world to him, and what matters more to me each day—that is the erotic part. The way we’re connected on a level so much deeper than your ordinary conversations; the way our words have such impact, such meaning. This is the opposite of trivial. And yes, I’m mesmerized by his eyes, his lips, his arms. But it’s more than that. I’m connecting with his mind.
“So?” He looks at me, his green eyes direct. “What’s wrong, then, that made you come in here to talk to me especially?”
“He needs you to need him.” I put the words out there, between us. They sit, hard, and we both observe them.
“What do you mean?” He puts down the pen. His tone is cooler.
“He needs to feel necessary. He needs to know that you’d—die, without him.” The words are raw, and he flinches.
“I do need him. How the hell would I not need him? He’s my son. He’s everything.” His voice doesn’t rise, but the tone chills with each word.
“But he needs to feel it, viscerally.”
“Are you saying I need to hug him more often?” His voice is arctic now. He stands up, paces to the window. “Shai, I hired you to help my son assimilate back into everyday life and to get over his morbid preoccupations. I didn’t ask for feel-good New Age Dr. Phil.”
I swallow. “More hugs, yes, Gabriel. Even if he does that thing where he nudges you with his shoulder and makes that annoyed noise. Like a mature dog nudging away an aggressively affectionate puppy.”
Gabriel snorts out a laugh. “That’s it, Shai. That’s exactly what he does!” He sounds excited that I recognize it, and he comes toward me, warmth again in his eyes. “You nailed it.”
I smile back. “I’ve seen him do that to you a lot. But I think he likes it anyway. He needs it. I’ve noticed that when you give him more affection, yeah, he’s irritated. But then he sort of—softens, you know? It’s like the hugs unlock something and allow him to express more em
otions. I’m not saying, like, ten million hugs every hour, on the hour. But once a day. Although it’s not even hugs I wanted to talk about.” I clear my throat.
The happiness drains from his face. “What, then.” He crosses his arms.
“I’m talking more about emotional openness. Mental meeting, not physical.”
“Such as.”
“First of all, ease his fears. He said he overheard Arielle asking someone about boarding schools for kids. He wonders.” I feel a sick sense of pleasure for tattling on Arielle, even though I’m only bringing it up because it’s essential for Michael’s progress. “He wonders if you’re going to marry her and send him away. It would be a good idea to ease his mind, let him know that you’d never send him anywhere.” I hesitate. “You’re not planning that… right?”
His whole body clenches. “Fuck, I’m not sending him away. Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I’m sure she was not talking about him. We’re not even at the stage—no. There’s nothing like that planned, and I’d never.”
“He needs to know that for sure. I’d suggest bringing it up and telling him you’d never send him anywhere. I think it’s on his mind.”
“If you think I need to, then I will.” He shakes his head. “I just don’t know what to say, sometimes.” He looks directly at me. “What else should I say?”
“Tell him what he means to you, in words. For example, something like…” I nod. “Michael, I like that little smirk smile you do because it reminds me of your mother and how we liked to laugh together. I love laughing with you, too. That smile lets me know that you think something is genuinely funny. That’s something I loved about your mother, and I love it about you, too, that you have that great laugh.”
“You don’t know anything about my wife,” he says, his voice tense. “Or her smiles.” His eyes dart to a picture of their family on the wall. I can tell it’s a few years old, because Michael is smaller there, with a full head of hair. Smiles all around, wind-tossed smiles, on the beach. His wife is pretty, with olive skin and black hair.
A Handful of Fire Page 5