by C. S. Barnes
‘You have been married, then?’ I asked, sensing the opportunity for a subject change. Emily married her first husband – one of three, as it turned out – on her eighteenth birthday.
‘It was all very romanticised, Gillie. I remember feeling like I’d been sold a dud one about two months in, if I’m honest.’
Throughout our time together that afternoon she punctuated her stories with glances through the window and occasional tangents about neighbours I wouldn’t recognise, should I ever meet them in person. She provided brief overviews – a highlights reel, she called it – of her marriages and then her career. ‘A once-upon-a-time dancer until I got pregnant,’ she said with such flippancy that I felt like this pregnancy – and, presumably, the subsequent child – were things I should already know about. I bit down on the urge to ask where this offspring was now, and why Daniel had been the one left to care for Emily.
Emily delivered her stories with a cheerful tone but there was something sad about her face for the duration of our talk. They were fond memories, that much was clear, but perhaps still painful to revisit.
‘Do you have any regrets?’
Before Emily could answer her eyes watered; she held back from blinking, presumably for fear of sending the tears tumbling down her face. I wasn’t sure what I’d done, but it was clearly a very wrong move. Abandoning my seat, I squatted down in front of her instead and took up her small hand in my own.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘Oh,’ she half-started, pulling her hand back from me to rub a fingertip under each eye, catching at the tears before they could escape. ‘There’s no such thing as prying too much, Gillie. It’s quite nice to run through the old scrapbook, actually, just stirs up one or two things, you know?’ She took a long hard look at me then, as if realising something, but she didn’t share her revelation. ‘Anyway, another life, that was,’ she said, steadying her voice. ‘You must be sick of my rambles by now, and that Danny must be on his way home, so give me the last few details. You two seem to be seeing an awful lot of each other.’
Before Emily could steer the conversation down an unwelcome avenue – ‘Things must be quite serious with you two, then?’ – the front door opened and slammed, and Daniel tumbled into the room laden with carrier bags.
‘You needed to go the supermarket, today?’ I asked, instantly realising how redundant the question was. ‘But it’s Tuesday; who does their food shop on a Tuesday?’ Paul, I thought, now deeply uncomfortable with the image of him and Daniel in such close proximity.
‘So if you’re home for the afternoon, then I can unleash Gillie back into the wild, yes?’ Emily added.
‘Ha, if she’d like to be unleashed, then yes.’
I followed Daniel back into the hallway. He asked if I would call him later and I promised that I would, before shouting another quick goodbye back into Emily.
‘Gillie?’ she shouted back. With my feet still firmly planted in the hallway I craned my neck around the doorframe to look back in on her. ‘Same time next week?’ she said, with a wink.
And after that, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons became time ear-marked for Emily.
Chapter 16
My mother and I coasted along to my appointment with Louise, alluding to but never directly discussing the so-called anger issues that had led us here. On the morning of the appointment, as I was mentally preparing myself for the lies I was about to tell, my mother offered what I thought was intended to be words of encouragement on the matter.
‘You’ll be okay.’
I wasn’t sure whether it was a question or a command.
‘And you know what you’re discussing with her this time?’ she said, as though I hadn’t known what to say for myself during my previous encounter with the woman.
I nodded again, and then offered my mother monosyllabic answers to her semi-concerned questions and mostly redundant advice, ahead of leaving nearly an hour early, now desperate to escape home.
On entering the appointment room Louise steered me in the direction of the sofas. We sat opposite each other, in silence, while she fumbled through a collection of notes, the majority of which must have belonged to someone else, I remember thinking, because I surely couldn’t have given her that much material from one meeting alone. She looked tired that day, worn down; maybe I was the last hurdle on a particularly difficult Wednesday. Which didn’t bode well, given that it was only lunchtime and so she presumably had an onslaught of further issues to contend with from whoever was booked in for her afternoon. She wore black jeans this time, with a white shirt that would have been neat had it been properly ironed beforehand. As it was, it only compounded her worn-out exterior.
‘How have you been, Gillian?’
Rather than looking at me while talking she instead maintained eye contact with the pad in front of her, scribbling what I assumed was the time and date in the upper margin while waiting for my reply.
‘Okay, mostly. How are you?’ I said, half to be polite, and half because she really did look like she needed someone to ask. She pressed her lips together and for a second I thought she may be on the cusp of launching into a genuine answer.
‘I’m very well, thank you.’
‘You look a little tired.’
‘Gillian, that’s not really…’ She paused, closed her eyes for a beat too long for it to be a blink, and then started again. ‘Why don’t we just get stuck in for today?’
‘Okay.’
‘I was a little surprised you called for a follow-up appointment.’
It wasn’t a question but she stared at me expectantly, like she’d asked something.
‘There are some things that my mother wants me to talk through.’
‘So this is another appointment for your mother?’
I hadn’t said that, had I?
‘No, it’s not – well, she’s not here, so it’s not an appointment for her, no.’
Louise set her notepad down on the seat alongside her. She crossed her right leg over her left, tucking her foot behind her calf somehow. Apparently deciding that this was a comfortable position, she focused on me with some concentration. I didn’t know whether I was meant to be talking, or performing, but I was sure that, as conventional conversational exchanges went, it was her turn to say something.
‘You seem flustered, Gillian.’
‘Only because I don’t know what I’m meant to be saying.’
‘That’s an interesting way of phrasing it,’ she said as she leaned over and made a quick note of something on a clean sheet of paper. ‘There is no meant or should here, remember? We discussed this last time, Gillian. You need to be open in this space.’
I nodded like I understood, despite my mother having offered conflicting advice not two hours ago just ahead of my leaving the house.
‘You just need to tell Louise your feelings.’
‘Really, Mum?’
‘You must have feelings, Gillian.’
I flinched. Her tone was cutting.
‘And don’t mention the box.’
‘Are you okay, Gillian?’ Louise brought me back into the room.
‘Of course, sorry.’
She frowned, but didn’t push. ‘So we briefly discussed your relationship with your mother, and your anger at your parents. Let’s unpick some of that further today, shall we?’ she asked, although I sensed it was rhetorical.
‘I think that would be useful, yes,’ I lied. Two months ago no one had even thought that I had feelings of anger, and now it seemed to be all anyone wanted me to discuss.
‘Talk me through your feelings, Gillian. If we’re unpacking them, show me the box.’
Not that box, I thought, she doesn’t want to know about that box.
‘Okay.’ I paused, trying to find a starting point. ‘When I get agitated I tend to lash out, I suppose, in a way that my mother doesn’t approve of, and I suppose her concern is that this behaviour will worsen if I don’t do something to stop it.’
> ‘Okay, and do you think this behaviour will worsen?’
My mind flicked to an image – my father lying misshapen at the bottom of our stairs – so abruptly that even after it had dissipated, it took a few seconds for me to catch up with what I had remembered. Yes, I thought, the behaviour will definitely worsen. But I couldn’t admit that to Louise, or my mother.
‘Hard question to answer?’ she asked, noting my hesitation. I nodded. ‘Okay, I won’t ask too many specifics, because if you wanted to tell me then you would have done, yes? But, when you lash out, as you phrased it, do you hurt your mother?’
Something pulled at my insides. ‘No, I would never do that.’
‘Do you ever hurt yourself?’
When I had cut through – sawn through – the rat’s cervical vertebrae, I accidentally cut open my palm. It was only a centimetre in length, an inch or so below the smallest finger on my left hand. But I could remember how disruptive it had been. How I’d tried to carry on the procedure without stopping. How I’d been forced to pause, bandage, and pause again when the gauze became soaked with blood that seemed disproportionate for the small cut that had created it. I occasionally hurt myself collaterally, yes, but Louise probably hadn’t meant that.
‘No, I don’t ever do that either.’
‘Okay, so, talk me through this lashing out. Is it physical, verbal?’
‘Physical.’
‘Do you hit things?’
I wondered whether it was disingenuous to say yes. Probably, I thought, but it was also the closest I could tread to an honest answer.
‘Yes, I hit things.’
‘Because hitting something makes you feel better?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘And how often does this happen?’
‘There used to be quite a gap between them, but then things changed when I went to university.’ I remembered the weekly experiments performed for an audience, the excitement at being watched. ‘And things have changed again since my father passed away. Things have been different; more difficult, maybe.’
More difficult since Dad? Had I really said that?
I reassessed the sentence as Louise started on another sheet of paper. I had provided her with too much material in such a short space of time.
‘Can I be honest?’ I threw out, without fully considering what would follow. There was an uncomfortable flutter of something sitting in my stomach that told me I needed to say something.
Louise smiled and, without even finishing the sentence that she was midway through scribbling down the side margin of her page, she set the pad and pen down on the sofa again. Leaning back into the cushions behind her, she flashed her hands, palm up, at me, in a ‘the-floor-is-yours’ gesture.
‘I think my mother’s concern is mostly founded on her worry that I’m an angry person, and I think she worries that I’m like that because that’s how my father was.’ I thought of the box again. Much as I would have liked to blame my father, I had, in fact, brought this whole thing on myself. ‘Anger was always an immediate emotion in our house, and my mother seems to think that’s been more damaging to me than it actually was. Everyone has something, don’t they?’
Louise bunched her eyebrows together. ‘What do you mean by that, Gillian?’
‘Whatever it is that makes other people do things that they shouldn’t. People smoke, and drink, and shop until their credit card is within an inch of its expiry date. But no one rushes them into therapy for it.’ I paused and considered what I’d said. ‘Sometimes people rush them into therapy for it, in very extreme circumstances.’ Was this an extreme circumstance?
‘So you’re comparing you lashing out, as you phrase it, to these other habits?’
‘Yes,’ I said, relieved that Louise had managed to decipher my meaning.
‘So it’s a coping mechanism?’
I stalled again. It was the second time in two sessions that I had lost my way like this; I was concerned that Louise might take it personally now. Although perhaps she should, given that it was largely her fault. This level of acceptance was alien to me. Of all the names she could have given it, she gave it the one that I had been using to validate it for years. Was I
cured, then? Was everything about me now much more normal than I had given it credit for being?
‘There’s nothing wrong with it being a coping mechanism, Gillian. We don’t even have to give it that name, if you’d prefer not to.’
It wasn’t the name; it was the acceptance. The normalisation of it to someone who was originally intended – in my mother’s dreams, at least – to eradicate the issue.
‘No, coping mechanism is fine, I think.’
‘Everyone has them, as you clearly already know. It’s difficult without knowing the specifics of the behaviour, but you’ll tell me that when you’re ready, I’m sure. There are other things to consider with these things, these coping mechanisms – aside from the concerns it may raise for your mother, which is problematic, I know. The thing you always need to ask yourself is: who is this behaviour actually hurting? If it’s hurting no one but helping you, then that in itself is cause enough to allow yourself these’ – she fumbled over her phrasing – ‘things, these moments.’
And there was that benchmark again.
‘One thing that I would say is that there are options for this, and by that I mean there are better – no, sorry, not better necessarily, just different – coping mechanisms available to you. There are ways to lash out, as it were, in a less destructive way, if the destruction of things is the real issue here, and if that’s something you’d like to talk through with me in the future.’
‘Constructive instead of destructive, you mean?’
She nodded. ‘Maybe before the next session, you can think of some ways you might do that?’
I flicked to an image of Daniel. ‘Absolutely. I can manage that.’
Louise launched into her stock explanation of how well I’d done. I can’t say for certain that it was verbatim to what she had said previously, but the farewells were certainly close. Despite the uncomfortable silences, the hour had moved relatively quickly and while that had minimised the anguish of having to attend this meeting at all, I couldn’t stifle a growing worry that something had slipped out that shouldn’t have done. I hadn’t mentioned the box, and at the time that seemed the most important detail to hold on to.
‘If you head back down towards reception then Rachel can sort you out for another appointment. I know you had a little wait for this one, so best to get a jump on for the next one. But you can, of course, call me in the meantime if there’s anything you need.’
I thanked her, waited for the door to close shut behind me, and then set off walking in the opposite direction of the reception area.
Chapter 17
It was two hours later when I arrived back at home. My mother would have expected me much earlier, I knew. But after the food shop and the thirty minutes spent following Paul – his ‘German Shepherd on Board’ badge dangling with pride in the back window of his car – the afternoon had largely slipped away from me. And I hadn’t even been able to work out where he was going – beyond somewhere that broke his usual routine.
It irked me to be so out of his loop. I tried to shake the feeling away as I emptied my backseat of perishable goods. I had only made it halfway up the drive, heavily laden with bags, when I noticed that my mother was in the doorway. Her feet were twelve inches apart and her hands were on her hips. I heaved myself onto the front doorstep and set the bags down either side of me; their contents had already started to spill out over the floor.
‘Your appointment was this morning.’
It wasn’t a question, but she clearly expected an answer.
‘I’ve been food shopping. I must have just lost track of time. I thought we could talk through this morning over dinner.’
My mother eyed the shopping with suspicion. What exactly did she think I was trying to smuggle in?
‘But you did see Lou
ise this morning?’
The suspicion seemed disproportionate given my impeccable behaviour of late. It felt unwarranted and, as such, I felt offended.
I was suddenly quite aware of a slump in my shoulders, a downwards pull at the corner of my mouth. I hoped that I had created a look of disappointment, but would have settled for bemusement. Without saying a word I squatted down to the bags around my feet and gathered their handles. I stood slowly, in order to distribute the new weight around me.
‘Look, Gillian, I know that you think–’
‘Some of this needs to be chilled or it will be useless. Excuse me.’
She allowed enough room for me to waddle through the doorway and into the house. Two food-stuffed bags hit her shin and I decided it wasn’t worth an apology. Instead I quietly continued on my way to the kitchen. I counted through the first minute when the kitchen door swung open, as if my mother were counting as well. I busied myself by setting the oven temperature, organising the vegetables, stashing the apple pie – which had definitely been my mother’s favourite thing at some point – in the fridge, shortly followed by a canister of whipped cream. She could stand and watch me for as long as she wanted to. I would not speak first. The water was boiling for gravy and I was dicing an onion when my mother gathered together the nerves to say: ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, Gillian.’ She crossed the room as she spoke, and then took a seat at the small dining table behind me.
‘I’m not upset,’ I said. But I thought I was allowed to be.
‘I was just thinking all sorts of nonsense when you didn’t come home from that appointment. I know you were nervous, must have been nervous, talking to her about that sort of thing and it just got me thinking that–’
‘It’s clear what you were thinking.’
I added boiling water to the gravy granules and stirred until the mixture was smooth, then I threw in the diced onion. The mixture sat cooling on the work surface while I rummaged through the freezer to pick out the bag of chicken that I had only minutes ago shoved in. My mother continued to reflect. Her elbows were propped on the table, her hands cradling her chin, and her eyes had narrowed on a random spot on the floor.