“What would you like to drink? Coffee, water, or wine?”
The doctor’s eyebrows met in the center of his forehead.
“I know there’s not a lot of variety there, but I’m all out of whiskey,” she added.
“Water is fine,” the doctor replied, swiping the screen of his tablet.
Grace filled a wine goblet to the brim with purified water and handed it to the doctor. She remained on the opposite side of the island. “What kind of treatment are we talking about? I’m not checking into any facility or rehab center. I’m telling you that now, and you can tell Ethan I said that. He thinks he’s pretty smart, sending you here, but I’m not going to allow you all to manipulate me and control my life.”
“You’d rather alcohol and drugs control your life.”
Grace bent over and rested her elbows on the island. “They don’t control me. When I need a break from things, then I have a drink or two. They don’t control me,” she said, pointing at Dr. Sternberg. “Whoever your source is got that part screwed up.”
“Close your eyes.”
“I’m not in the mood for your little games.”
“Close your eyes.”
Grace gave in to the doctor’s command. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back.
“I’m going to tell you what I heard, and I want you to tell me what the controlling agent was in each situation. A model slugged a reality television star in a nightclub. It was reported that at the time of her arrest, the model’s blood alcohol level was point-forty-nine, and the legal limit is point-zero-eight. Who was in control?”
“Doc, I was angry. She was in my date’s face, and I had just finished working a photo shoot where all the shoes were a full size too small. When was the last time you posed for six hours in six-inch heels that were too small?”
“A model was found semiconscious in her condo, lying in a pile of her vomit and surrounded by empty bottles of liquor.”
The stiffness Grace felt in her backbone and the remnants of her recollection of those events gathered together and propelled Grace’s head forward. With her eyes wide open, she said, “You think you know so much just because of those two little letters in front of your name.” She covered her mouth and nose with one of her hands and inhaled and exhaled into her palm. “But you don’t know me, and you don’t know my story. Yeah, I get a little upset from time to time and like to deal with it by getting inebriated. Sometimes my plan doesn’t work and people get hurt, and sometimes my plan works and I am able to forget what happened.”
“Temporary amnesia induced by alcohol is not the answer for anger and whatever else you are holding on to.” Dr. Sternberg took a sip of water from his goblet. “Forgetting your problems is not the solution to your problems.”
“What do you propose?” Grace stood up straight, with her hands on her hips. “Ethan wants me to pray about everything, but I know Jesus ain’t checking for me, and I’m not all that interested in Him, either. Haven’t you ever been so angry that you just wanted to forget it all?”
“Yes, I have.” Dr. Sternberg took a long gulp from his goblet. “After I published my first book, What the You Inside of You Wants to Do, my wife left me. She took everything. My money, my children, and my Rolling Stones record collection.”
Grace stomped her feet. “Not the Rolling Stones. You sure you don’t want any wine to go with this story? I know I have a little Moscato around here somewhere,” she said, smiling.
Dr. Sternberg wiped the tip of his nose a couple of times and looked around the room before answering Grace. “No thank you. I once lived there in that fight, drink, forget zone. I fought everyone and everything I knew, including my home. At the end of my first month without her, every wall in my apartment had a hole in it, and I couldn’t even recall how that had happened. At that point I began to meditate. I fasted for an entire week. By the end of the week I was able to see my role in the situation. I didn’t want to forget anymore. I needed to remember so that it would never happen again.”
Grace could feel her fine features drawing together to form a fierce scowl. “Fasting is a part of psychotherapy? I can’t.” She waved her hands in the air. “I can’t do it.”
Dr. Sternberg rose to his feet and walked over to Grace’s side of the island. “I am going to touch you, Grace. Do I have your permission to do so?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Sternberg gathered Grace’s hands and pressed her palms together. “You don’t have to fast. That was a part of my personal process. The process toward healing and wholeness is different for each one of us, but let’s start with something simple that you can do with or without me.”
“The last time you said we were going to do a simple exercise, I was dang near ready to jump out the window, Doc.”
“I promise this is going to be simple. I want you to look down at your hands and explain to me how you feel physically when you get angry.”
Grace followed Dr. Sternberg’s instructions and shifted her gaze from his stark blue eyes to her hands. “My chest begins to tighten.” Grace began to separate her palms. Dr. Sternberg pressed them back together.
“Continue,” he said.
“My chest begins to tighten. I begin to sweat, and it becomes very difficult for me to hear. It’s like I’m not . . .” She attempted to separate her hands again, and Dr. Sternberg held them together. “I am not a part of myself. I am a whole other entity when I get angry.”
“I want you to focus on not allowing the anger to separate Grace from Grace. If it’s possible at that moment to change your environment, do so immediately, and return when you come back to yourself.”
“I’m supposed to just up and walk away while I’m arguing with someone?” Grace asked, attempting to separate her hands again.
“Your hands are getting warm and moist,” Dr. Sternberg said. “That means you’re beginning to get angry or frustrated, because you can’t do what you want right now. Right now that loss of power is frustrating you, and you’re ready to reclaim your power. Walking away is how you reclaim it. Every question doesn’t have to be answered, and every point doesn’t have to be countered, and when it’s impossible for you to walk away, I want you to bring your hands together just like this.” Dr. Sternberg held her hands up. “Your palms are you. When you feel that separation process beginning, I want you to force your hands to remain joined together, even if you have to interlock your fingers. Take deep cleansing breaths in through your nostrils and out through your mouth, and expel the anger. Refocus your energy on maintaining Grace, not lashing out.”
“Do you know what you’re asking me to do?”
“Yes, I know what I’m asking you to do. Do you?”
Chapter 16
“You know, you really put Mr. Summerville in a bind with your antics last week,” Alice said between each pop of her gum as she stood behind her desk.
Grace just looked at her out of the corner of her eye, with one of her freshly arched brows raised. Here I am, recovering from alcohol poisoning, and she wants to reprimand me.
“Alice, my mama been dead for a few years now.” Grace waved her hand to the side, dismissing Alice’s comment.
“She must be glad she’s in a grave and not stuck following behind yo’ ig’nant self,” Alice said, shaking her head like she pitied Grace.
Grace sat back in her chair, closed her eyes, and let her head roll back. An argument was brewing, and Grace was still on the mend from her little episode last week. She took a deep breath in through her nostrils, like Dr. Sternberg had taught her, and expelled the negative thoughts that had congregated in her head out through her mouth. Her hope was that the silence would motivate Alice to back down. When Grace looked up, Alice was still standing there, popping her gum, with her hand on her hip, like Grace owed her an explanation.
“Alice, don’t you have work to do?”
“I sure do. I have to take out the trash, but I don’t have any industrial-size bags to fit you into.”
Grace ros
e to her feet. She was done conversing with Alice. All that “holding your palms together” business that she’d rehearsed with Dr. Sternberg went up the chimney. The only response she had left was a backhand slap. The kind that had to be administered up close and personal, the kind that would cause Alice to whip out her little vanity mirror that she kept tucked in the back of her top drawer and check to see if she was bleeding. Just as Grace pulled back her right hand, Ethan grabbed it with his left.
“When are you going back to anger management?” he asked, still holding Grace by the wrist.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to discuss that with you, Ethan. How could you let that doctor just pop up at my condo like that?”
“Let’s have this conversation in my office.” He pointed at the door. “Go on inside.” He released Grace’s wrist, then swiveled around to face Alice.
Grace shuffled past Alice, delighted to know that Ethan was about to reprimand her for heckling her.
“Alice.” Ethan cupped her hands as she clicked away with the mouse. “I know you mean well, but you can’t antagonize the girl. Why don’t you take a break? Go and read a scripture, meditate, or do something calming.”
“I heard that Boris Kodjoe was going to be in the office today. I’m going to patrol the office for him.”
“He is married. You know that, right?” he asked, letting go of her hands.
“Yeah, but he hasn’t seen me yet.” She chuckled while pushing back her swivel chair. “In case I do bump into him, I’m giving you fair warning. Don’t expect me back anytime soon.”
Ethan winked at her before opening the door to his office.
Grace was seething on the other side. She had left the door cracked and had stood as close to it as she could in order to listen in on their exchange. The fact that Alice’s smart comments had somehow entitled her to a fifteen-minute break infuriated her. As soon as Ethan entered his office, Grace lit into him.
“That’s it? Take a break? Go meditate? That’s the punishment she gets for insulting your star client?”
“Star client, eh . . .” Ethan scoffed, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him. “I’ve got a few choice words for you, but I’m walking on the King’s Highway.” He walked to his desk in silence, with his head down, like a disappointed parent about to punish his teenage daughter. “So, you think you’re my star client? Grace, you are my only client,” he added.
“All the more reason for you to protect me from people like that.” She contorted her lips into a frown and crossed her legs. The toe of one of her neon orange pumps grazed the front of Ethan’s desk, creating a noise similar to a cat scratching at the door. She sat there, shaking her leg, which was usually indicative of an angry stew brewing inside of her.
“Are you serious?” Ethan asked, taking on a tone he had never used on Grace before. “You’re my only client because I have to follow behind you, cleaning up everything in the path of Storm Grace. From behind this desk, you look pitiful with that bottom lip of yours sticking out.” He pointed at her mouth with an arm of his glasses. “But if my memory serves me correctly, Grace King, you can be destructive as well. You don’t need protection from Alice or anyone else. You’re doing just fine damning yourself.”
She interjected, “Don’t get all Sunday morning on me, Brother Summerville.”
“I don’t have to get Sunday morning on you. All I have to do is go to last week, when I had to break your door down and when I found you semiconscious in a pool of your own vomit, which is why I asked Dr. Sternberg to do a house visit. While you were toasting the good life, I had to explain to Javier Roberts why you were not available for a screen test and why he can’t begin filming this week. Your private party is holding up production of a film, which means that I have to run around begging the studio and the producers not to sue you blind.”
“Sue moi?” she asked as reservedly as she possibly could. “Ethan, I did not sign on to do the film. Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Oh, but you did sign on,” Ethan said, stepping from behind his desk. “I signed you on. Thus you’re the lead.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“Grace, when do you ever ask me to do anything? You make the demands, and I hop to it.” He stuffed his fists into the pockets of his orange merino wool–blend pants. “Let me jog your memory.” He strolled back and forth in the space between her and his desk. “You stormed in here on a balmy summer afternoon four months ago and demanded that I accept the first film, television, or commercial job that came through this office. I landed you the audition with Tim Story, and you wrecked it with that Soriah Sommers incident. It was either the Javier Roberts film or nothing.”
The memory of that afternoon Ethan was referring to collapsed on her chest. She could recall how heavy her chest had felt under the pressure of desperation. The maintenance fee on the condo had been due, her quarterly statement from the firm had just come in the mail, she still had to pay off one of the people hurt in her club brawl at the start of the summer, and she’d just been hit with the criminal charges for her little tiff with Soriah. It was so clear that the old adage her mother had sputtered at her every time something went wrong was true. When the devil comes at you, he comes at you like a flood. The bills had been mounting, and modeling jobs had been dwindling. She’d been in an awkward space in her career. By industry standards, she was too old to be young, and too young to be old. So she had tried to be realistic about her career: she needed to work.
Grace had had visions of receiving Oscars and Emmys for her work in film and television when she began planning her transition into acting a year ago, but by the time her reality caught up with her, all that had mattered was a check rolling in, since her party lifestyle and her lawsuits had begun eating away at her savings. She wouldn’t have cared if they’d asked her to do Snakes on a Plane 3.
She folded her arms in resignation. It was true that she had been desperate then. “So now what?” she asked.
“Are you waiting for me to tell you that I have a plan to get us out of this?”
“No,” she replied quickly. She didn’t know what she was expecting him to do. She knew he had no idea what had transpired between her and Javier. She didn’t expect sympathy, nor did she expect to be met with bitterness and hostility. “Maybe we should discuss this when you’re feeling a little better,” she suggested.
Ethan exploded into a round of uncontrollable laughter. “When I’m feeling better?” He slapped the shiny varnished top of his desk and continued to laugh. “I’ll be feeling better when you’re on the set of Pressure and I hear Javier Roberts say, ‘Action.’”
Grace sucked in as much air as she could to inflate her chest before speaking to what appeared to be Mr. Hyde. “I am not going to star in this film.”
“You are.”
“I. Am. Not. And you can’t force me to,” she said defiantly.
“Well, your creditors can, this agency being one of them. You’re near bankruptcy.”
“Creditors,” she whispered. Grace sank in the chair.
“Yes, creditors. It’s time to pay the piper, Grace King. Let’s just take this gig and roll with the punches. One check is all we need to start making some good faith payments. Of course, after you deliver an excellent performance, the endorsements, guest appearances on television shows, and more movie offers will start rolling in.” Ethan moved his index finger in a circular motion a few times.
Grace tried to imagine filming that rape scene over and over again. Next to that, bankruptcy didn’t seem like such a bad deal. Burying her head in the palms of her hands, Grace breathed in and out, trying to calm herself.
Once again she found herself having to choose between doing the unscrupulous thing that appeared to be right and going completely to the left.
Ethan continued speaking, rattling off his master plan and spewing words of encouragement, while Grace buried her head between her legs like an ostrich with its head in the sand. All his words became unintelligi
ble. Not because Grace didn’t believe him—he had plucked her out of a jam more than once—but because she found herself right back in the place she’d fought so hard not to be in again.
“Maybe we should pray on it,” Ethan said, cutting into her thinking time.
“Pray?” Grace looked around the room. “You want me to pray? To who? To what God? A God that would allow this to happen to me again?” Her face began to wrinkle, and her voice cracked between each word. “I can’t pray to that God. I can’t, Ethan. Just can’t.” And then the dam broke. Whatever it was inside of Grace that had restrained the tears, it popped, and the tears were no longer obstructed. For the first time in as long as Grace could remember, she was able to cry.
Chapter 17
Ethan held his breath, searching for the next move to make. Consolation was not on the menu today. All he planned on serving her was a tally of all her bad debt and what she had to do to get out of it—the movie.
Her crying startled him and made the spot in his heart for Grace tender again.
While Ethan wrestled with himself, Grace continued to pour all of herself out. “I can’t. I can’t,” she wailed.
Shoving all his logistical thinking aside, Ethan reached out to her. First, he placed his arm around her, and then he crouched down to her level to cut the distance between them. With his other hand, he cocked her chin upward until their eyes met.
“Grace, you can get through this.”
She sucked up the remainder of her tears. “No, I can’t.”
“You can, and we will get through this.”
“How?”
“Together,” he said before being swept away in the moment.
Her vulnerability exposed his emotions, and his emotions exposed the desire he’d been masking for so long. Ethan was sure she could see it in his eyes, and he could see she needed comfort. Gradually, they leaned into each other, hoping to ease the frustration they were feeling.
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