by Phoebe Fox
“Good night, honey,” she said, pulling away. “Thank you for the phoenix. I love it.”
I felt something unfurl in my chest. “I’m glad, Mom. You’re welcome.” She patted my shoulder then shut the door behind us.
I wanted to snag Sasha outside before she got into the car for at least a two-second exchange that would tell me something about her state of mind, but she stuck to Stu as if she’d been glued there. He let her in on the passenger side of his Jeep and shut her door. With the car turned off she couldn’t even lower the window; it was like trying to have a private, intimate conversation with a bank teller at the drive-through.
Frustrated, I blurted to Stu as he walked around the car, “You guys okay? Everything all right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Eh. Asking Stu emotion questions was like asking a chimp about chess. “Just asking. We didn’t get to talk much tonight.”
Stu looked at me as if I’d turned into a vacuum cleaner. “We talked all night long.”
I sighed. “Night, Stuvie.” Sasha was staring straight ahead out the windshield; she looked confusedly over at me when I knuckled the window. “Night, Sash. I’ll call you,” I said, making stupid phone fingers before I caught myself.
She just waved with a pallid smile as Stu backed them out of the driveway and his headlights faded down my parents’ street.
four
“Grab that mousetrap for me, Rae Ann, would you?” I asked my first client Monday morning after my radio show, as we sat opposite each other in my home office. Before she’d arrived I’d spring-loaded the trap and left it by the chaise where she sat.
She eyeballed the thing uneasily, the mousetrap primed to snap at the slightest movement. “Can you hand me a pencil or something to set it off first?”
“Just pass it over, okay?”
Rae Ann Wilson had been coming to me for several months now, after her ex had broken up with her, but Rae Ann wasn’t letting herself begin to move on at all. Even after almost six months she couldn’t stop contacting him and obsessing over his every move on social media as he dated seemingly half of Cape Coral.
She chewed her lip, looking around the office. “Do you have some gloves?”
“No. Can’t you please just get it for me? I want it.” I held out a hand.
To my surprise, Rae Ann took a deep breath and then reached for it, and for just a moment I second-guessed my little gambit.
At the last second she reared away.
“No, I can’t. It’ll snap shut on my fingers. I’m really sorry,” she said.
“So you know better than to reach out for something that is clearly set up to hurt you.”
She looked bewildered for a moment, and then her expression cleared. “Paul.”
I nodded, then leaned over and tapped the trap with my pen, and it snapped shut so fast and hard we both jumped. I lifted it, still dangling from my pen, and handed it to her. “Next time you pick up the phone or get onto your computer to call or monitor Paul, I want you to look at this mousetrap. Keeping tabs on Paul is only hurting yourself, and you’re too smart to keep doing that.”
“Well, now you make it just seem foolish.”
“Never foolish.” I shook my head. “You feel the way you feel, and you love him still—it’s natural to want to know what he’s doing.”
“God, yes.”
“But just because you feel this way doesn’t mean he still does,” I said as gently as I could. “It’s one of the hardest truths, the most difficult part of breakups—he’s moving on. You’ve got to accept that and let him go, so you can do the same—and be whole on your own. So you’ll be ready when the right guy shows up.”
She swallowed hard against the tears I could see in her eyes. “He was the right guy. There isn’t anyone else out there for me.”
“Oh, Rae Ann…Of course there is, honey.” The endearment slipped out, but I no longer worried about little therapeutic breaches like that. The Breakup Doctor practice wasn’t like my old practice.
She shook her head adamantly. “No. I was single for four years before I met Paul. Do you know how hard it is to meet people in this town?”
Oh, yes. I did. As a retirement, snowbird, and tourist hotspot, Fort Myers’s demographic skewed heavily older and transient. “I’ll admit this is a tougher town than some to find a relationship. But it’s not impossible. You met Paul, right? That proves it can happen.”
“We were working together! And now I work at home! How am I supposed to meet anyone sitting at my desk all day in my robe and slippers with my cat?”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Well, for starters, we need to get you out of your pajamas.”
“What’s the point?” she said dully.
“The point is how you feel about yourself, Rae Ann. No one feels their best sitting around all day like they just rolled out of bed. When you worked at an office, why did you get up and shower every day and get dressed and put on makeup?”
Rae Ann shrugged. “I had coworkers. I wouldn’t want other people to see me looking all sloppy.”
I feigned bewilderment. “Why not?”
She shot me an incredulous stare. “Because it hardly looks professional, does it? If I don’t look like I take care of myself, why would anyone take me seriously?”
I leaned forward in my chair. “So why isn’t your opinion of yourself, how you feel, every bit as important as your colleagues’?”
Rae Ann opened her mouth, and then shut it again.
“Do you feel confident in your robe, Rae Ann?” I asked. “Do you feel put-together? Competent? Pretty?” She shook her head. I waited for a few moments while she digested things, but when she had no further reply to make, I went on. “I have a little bit of homework for you, okay? This week I want you to pretend you’re going into work every day. Take a shower, do your hair, wear a nice outfit—whatever you used to do when you were based out of an office.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I guess I can do that.”
“I also want you to meet someone. One person—I don’t care if it’s your bank teller or the grocery store clerk or the UPS deliveryman. But I want you to find out just a little something about that person—their name, why they came here, a hobby, their favorite food—I don’t care. Can you do that?”
She looked doubtful. “You mean like a man? You want me to hit on a bag boy?”
“I don’t want you to hit on anyone, necessarily. And no, I don’t care if it’s male or female. We’re just going to get you back into the habit of engaging with people. It’s so easy when you work at home to fall into the rabbit hole. Some people don’t even leave the house ’til they’re desperate for groceries.”
For the first time all morning a tiny grin touched her lips. “Well, I’ll be honest—sometimes I think if I didn’t have Mr. Theodore, I could go days without ever speaking aloud.”
I smiled back. “We’re going to see if we can get you into the habit of talking to more than your cat, okay? I know you love Paul, but he’s moved on. It’s time you start to, too.”
“Yeah,” she said in a small voice. “I know.” Her eyes filled up again, but her spine straightened, and for the first time since I’d met her she looked a little less beaten and wounded.
When Rae Ann let herself out—tucking the sprung mousetrap into her purse—I leaned back in my chair, a breath escaping me like steam hissing from a kettle. Breakthroughs like this were the best part of what I did, but Rae Ann’s session had left me uneasy.
My plan all weekend had been to call Michael today and plan a time for us to meet one evening this week—somewhere neutral, away from the house I’d bought after he dumped me, and not any of the regular haunts we’d frequented in our two years together. I’d hear him out, find out why he bugged out so close to our wedding when I’d thought everything was fin
e, and then I could finally forgive him, let it go, and forever close that chapter of my life.
But now I was wondering—was I doing exactly what Rae Ann was doing, reaching for something that had hurt me in the past, knowing it was probably going to hurt me again? I’d spent a long, hard couple of years getting over Michael, letting the slashing wound he’d left in my heart heal. Did I really want to reopen it?
It sounded exactly like something I’d advise my clients not to do.
My phone intercom buzzed.
“Delivery here for you. Also, your next client is running late.”
I let myself into the adjoining waiting room—formerly known as the front guest bedroom before my home-office renovations—to see an enormous beribboned potted plant perched on the reception desk I’d bought for the far corner.
“Paige?” I called out. I didn’t see the pretty petite blonde who should have been sitting at the desk.
“This just came for you,” said a voice from somewhere behind the plant, the body it belonged to completely obscured. She poked her head around the side. “It’s very big.”
I’d hired Paige—or Intern Paige, as I referred to her privately—early in the fall, when the logistics of managing my growing Breakup Doctor practice, with private consultations, my weekly newspaper column, the twice-weekly radio appearances on KXAR, and the support groups I ran, was becoming more than I could handle alone. A grad student in psychology at nearby FGCU, Paige had easily assuaged my initial fears about letting go of total control over the logistics of my practice with her competence, drive, focus, and intelligence. But she’d been working with me long enough now that I knew not to fire off my knee-jerk response to her observation (Is it? I hadn’t noticed). Comedic sarcasm flew right by my serious-minded assistant.
“Yes, I see that,” I said instead, coming closer to look for a tag. There was none, and I frowned. “I wonder who sent it?”
Paige stood and handed me a card. “He said to give this to you directly.”
My heart flipped over as I recognized the familiar handwriting: Michael. I looked up at Paige. “He brought this himself? It wasn’t a deliveryman?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t wearing a uniform. Should I not have accepted it?”
“No, it’s fine.” I looked at the envelope in my hand again, and noticed the edges of it were trembling. I cleared my throat. “What, um…what did the man look like?”
Paige closed her eyes and began reciting as if he were painted on the back of her eyelids: “Tall—about six-one—average build, but on the thin side, brown hair, cut short—maybe a couple of inches—but longer in front. Green eyes. Really green.” She opened her eyes again. “Sorry I can’t be more specific.”
I was torn between amusement at her star-witness accuracy and an uncomfortable feeling I couldn’t identify at the thought that Michael had been standing out in my waiting room, feet away from me, as I debated whether or not to see him again.
“Thanks,” was all I said, and deliberately laid the envelope back on her desk. “I’ll read this later. How late did Mr. Westmoreland say he’d be?”
“Five minutes, but he was calling from College and Cleveland, so I think it’ll be more like nine to eleven.”
I’d have laughed, but she wasn’t joking. “Thanks, Paige,” I said. “I’ll be in my office.” I stopped in the doorway and turned to see she had disappeared again. “How about if I help you move this onto the floor?” I offered, coming back over to the desk.
She popped back up over the top of the plant. “Okay,” she said immediately. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to leave it here.”
This time I did grin, but I bent my head to help lift the plant before Paige saw.
Later that afternoon, once Intern Paige had left for the day and the door had closed behind my last client, I came out into the waiting room, where the envelope was balanced on the corner of the desk like a cream-colored tongue sticking out at me.
I’d managed to avoid thinking about Michael for most of the day, the way my problems almost always spiraled into their own compartments while I worked with my clients on theirs. But now I had to make some kind of decision—even if it was to do nothing.
I picked up the letter and traced my fingertips over my name in his bold scrawl, almost as familiar as my own. Holding it to my nose, I imagined I could smell Michael’s distinctive sandalwood scent on it.
In a sudden movement, I flipped it over and slid a finger into the gap at the edge, yanking it along the seal—and then retracting my hand with a hiss. Paper cut.
Figured. Holding the bleeding finger away, I gingerly opened the envelope and pulled out the card inside.
A forlorn-looking big-eyed LOL cat. Inside the printed message read, I is sowwy.
I grimaced, sucking on my finger, even as a strange kind of relief flowered inside me. Michael didn’t know me after all if he thought this card would garner anything but an eye roll.
But then I read his handwritten note:
There’s no card adequate for this kind of apology, so instead I went with the worst one I could find. Might as well continue my run of bad judgment.
Flowers start out beautiful and then they die, and that seemed like pretty horrible symbolism after what I did, so this is a peace lily. Unlike me, it doesn’t need much attention and will happily thrive on its own. And I like the name. I’m hoping for some peace between us, Brook. You were the best thing that ever happened to me, and you didn’t deserve what I did.
—M
I swallowed hard and lowered the card in cold fingers. If he’d sent some kind of justification for his actions I’d have been enraged. If he’d begged me for another chance I’d have thrown away the card he gave me and ignored all further contact.
Instead his note was perfect—just the right amount of mea culpa, asking for nothing, and making me laugh.
He knew me through and through.
And that was exactly why I needed to stop this right now—before, like Rae Ann, I reached for something I knew was going to hurt me. Opening up Pandora’s box with someone who’d betrayed me completely wasn’t going to lead to anything healthy. The best thing to do now was leave it alone.
But my situation wasn’t the same as Rae Ann’s, a voice inside reminded me. I wasn’t obsessing over Michael (or I hadn’t been, until yesterday). And I wasn’t in danger of opening up that wound—I just wanted to take the opportunity I’d been offered to lessen an old pain. My brain had already done the work of healing, but my heart still needed it—and lately I’d started listening when that long-neglected organ weighed in.
I picked up my cell phone and dialed the number on Michael’s card that I’d already memorized.
five
Michael and I hovered before the holy figure with upraised arms silently offering us his blessing.
In the shaft of sunlight that filtered down and lit up the weathered and pitted yellow face of Jesus, Michael’s hair seemed to glow amber as it floated around him.
Bright yellow fish flitted past our faces.
For some reason, as I drove toward Fort Myers Beach to meet my ex-fiancé, I couldn’t get those images out of my head. It had been our one-year anniversary, and Michael and the band had found themselves with a rare free four days off when a gig fell through at the last minute. It was too unusual a chance to resist—I’d rescheduled my patients from my shared practice at the clinic on Cleveland, and we threw the basics into my Accord (the last thing we wanted was to break down on Alligator Alley in his battered Jeep) and headed down to Key Largo.
I’d heard of Christ of the Abyss, the eight-foot statue of Jesus submerged near Dry Rocks, but had never done a dive at Pennekamp Park. More than once Michael had heard me talk about the oddity of the thing—a replica of an identical statue in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Genoa, cast from th
e same mold and brought to the Florida keys, where it was donated to the first underwater park in the country and sunk twenty-five feet deep.
It had been startling to come upon the weathered bronze Christ on our dive amid the park’s coral reef, wondrous and moving in its incongruous placement below the waves. But I couldn’t help reflecting that with his head thrown back and hands raised toward the surface, the son of God seemed to be doing nothing so much as asking someone to please throw him down a line and pull him up.
I mimed as much to Michael as we floated before it, but he was oblivious to my silent humor, beckoning me closer.
Spotted eagle rays fluffed the sand surrounding the thick concrete pedestal anchoring Jesus’s feet, the white geometric markings on their black backs looking like lace against the pale sand. I swam down, mesmerized by the balletic flapping of their wings, the tiny clouds they stirred up.
Michael touched my shoulder and pointed again to the algae-laced Jesus, as if I were somehow missing seeing the statue towering immediately over me, but I couldn’t drag my gaze from the graceful rays. He reached for me again, this time a firmer hold, and I gazed up with a silent, impatient What?
He pointed to Jesus, and I nodded. Yes, I see the statue. It’s amazing. Now leave me alone for a sec.
He was flipping his fins to stay close beside me, pulling at me, still pointing at Christ with an insistent finger, and finally I followed its trajectory up the statue’s arms.
Where something glittering and bright contrasted starkly with the dulled gray and yellow of the barnacled metal—something hanging from the tip of Jesus’s middle finger.
I felt my eyebrows bunch in confusion as I pushed up from the bottom and glided over to the hand to investigate, Michael close behind me.
It was a ring.
My wide eyes flew over to Michael’s, which were now squinted behind his mask with the smile that stretched so wide his lips gapped around his mouthpiece, and he nodded a confirmation.