Stroke It

by Ivy Jordan

  “Maybe. But I don’t want to risk it, and it sounds like she doesn’t, either,” I said.

  “Shoot. You know, maybe you should try seeing someone else. That way you can keep talking to Quinn outside her office.”

  I frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t really like therapists that well, and she’s easy to talk to.”

  “Plenty of them are easy to talk to,” Pete argued.

  I sighed. “I don’t know, Pete. I’m not really keen on seeing a therapist as it is. I like her well enough, and she’s easy enough to talk to. I’d rather just bite the bullet and talk to her. I think it’d be easier to find another girl I’m interested in than to find another therapist I can tolerate.”

  “I guess that makes sense. But do you really think they make ‘em like that everywhere? No sir. Didn’t you see anyone while you were overseas?”

  I had to laugh at that insinuation. “No. I mean, I probably could have. Hell, maybe even should have. There were a lot of whores in some of those bars, and we had the money, and a lot of people in my team were up for it. I just didn’t. At first because of Stacy, and then because… I don’t know. Felt wrong.”

  “Wouldn’t be too bad for you to meet someone,” Pete mused.

  “Probably not. What about you? You been seeing anyone?”

  Pete sighed. “Girls out here don’t get where I’m coming from. Too many of them come out of the city, and all they care about is money. They want a big house, expensive jewelry, stuff like that. I guess I understand why, but I want a friend out here. Someone who understands where I’m coming from.”

  “Someone else to tear down corporate America?” I offered.

  He shot me a glare, but he was smiling at the same time. “Yeah, something like that. A friend, really. Doesn’t help me all too much that I’m missin’ a tooth up front and don’t talk like some of those city lawyers.”

  “Not everyone who works in the city is a lawyer.”

  “They all talk like lawyers. Saying one thing and meaning another. Trying to trick you out of what you’ve got by weaving loopholes into well-meaning conversation.” Pete shook his head. “I get sick of it. Sometimes I think I might be happy out here by myself. Me and the cows and the chickens and the beets.”

  “And the corn,” I offered. “And the wheat.”

  “And the corn and the wheat,” he agreed. “And the vegetable garden, of course.”

  I nodded.

  “But I don’t think you’re quite like me in that regard,” Pete said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re quieter than me. A little uptight sometimes. Don’t you get defensive; you are. It isn’t altogether a bad thing. You just need someone around to prod you outside yourself a little. If you spend your whole life alone, you’ll end up a hermit. Like one of them people in Asia that go and live in the mountains alone.”

  He was talking about monks, and he was wrong, but I understood his point. I tended to seclude, but I didn’t know that I necessarily needed another person for that. “I don’t think having a wife would mean that. I wouldn’t want to bother a woman with that sort of thing, anyway.”

  “I think you ought to,” Pete countered. “Women are clever, Sawyer. They’re clever in ways we can’t even understand. They know what to say to draw all the shit out and make you feel better. That’s why they go right over our heads most of the time. We’re just a bunch of idiots.”

  I couldn’t disagree with that too much. I thought of the men I’d met in the military and how responsive they were to their base urges. Women always seemed to operate at a more dignified level. Having that force in someone’s life could really help them.

  “That’s enough yakkin’,” Pete said. “Why don’t you get on the lawn mower and take care of the back yard and that area around the vegetable garden? Don’t mow the vegetable garden, though.” He pointed to an area that was fenced off. I could make out the red in the tomatoes from here on the porch.

  “Sounds good,” I said. “You know, you keep putting me to work on the easy stuff.”

  “I am aware.”

  I went out and got on the lawn mower without any further complaint. While I rode over the backyard, I considered what he said. It made sense, I supposed, that I might need to live with someone since I was reserved. But I didn’t think that being married was really like that. It was about finding someone that you loved. Although, I could see how people tended to fall in love with people who balanced them out.

  And in any case, I was hardly looking for love. I wasn’t looking for purely sex, but I wasn’t looking for the love of my life, either. The situation I’d been in with Stacy coupled with what I’d seen overseas made me both cynical regarding love and aware of my own mortality, and it made for a bad feeling in my stomach when it came to romance and getting someone else involved in all of my shit.

  How did Quinn factor into all of that? I didn’t know yet. I knew that I probably needed, on some level, to see a therapist. She was frighteningly smart. In her office, she’d honed in on me the moment I’d started to give, and I’d never had someone figure out what I was trying to get at so quickly before. She knew what I was thinking before I thought it, or at least that’s what it felt like.

  So I knew that she was a good therapist. By the time I got around to turning the mower off, I’d sort of had something together in my mind. I went around to the vegetable garden and found Pete picking tomatoes off the tomato plant. My mom would have loved to see it; she always tried to grow tomatoes, always to no avail.

  “I think I’m going to head out,” I said.

  “Alright,” Pete said. He set his basket down and looked back over at me. “Can I count on you being back tomorrow, same time?”

  I squinted and thought about my plans for the next day. “Actually, I have an appointment with Quinn in the morning. I’ll be here after, though. Probably should be here by noon. No later.”

  “Sounds good,” Pete said. “You be careful with that one, now.”

  He sounded like he didn’t think I could see her without making some romantic spectacle out of it. I rolled my eyes at him and got in the car. I would be perfectly fine seeing Quinn without getting into it with her. She was beautiful, no question about it, and had a way of taking me apart in that room with her eyes. What color were her eyes? Not unsettling like mine, but dark, calm like a lake.

  I shoved the keys in my ignition and took a deep breath. I’d be fine.

  Chapter Ten

  QUINN

  When the last patient left my office, I nearly wanted to cry. It was only Tuesday, but it was shaping up to be a long week. Talking to Sawyer yesterday had been lovely, but today had been incredibly stressful. I looked at the stack accumulating on my desk and decided that it would be best to deal with everything tomorrow. I’d told Janet and Jesse I would make it to their home for dinner, and I didn’t want to miss out.

  I drove to their home and didn’t see Stacy’s car in the driveway. Janet answered the door, wrapping me up in a hug whether I liked it or not.

  “There you are! Dinner’s almost ready. It’s good to see you!”

  I smiled at her warmth. It was difficult for me to live so far away from my parents; they’d moved a ways out to build their dream home, and I was happy for them. Still, I missed them. No matter how many times I cooked dinner for myself or made myself cookies, they didn’t have that same expert finesse that my mom’s meals did. Janet and Jesse provided that sort of relief in my life, the same way that I sort of played the role of ‘daughter’ while theirs was… elsewhere.

  Jesse was sitting at the kitchen table. “Well, hello!” He smiled at me and I took a seat next to him.

  “Hey, Jesse. It’s good to see you. What have you been up to today?”

  “I went to the nursery and picked up a new flower pot,” he said. “Janet wants to start growing tomatoes in the backyard, so I’m moving the flowers into pots to make room in the ground.”

  I smiled. “Tomatoes?”

 
; “I just think they’d be so nice,” Janet said. She brought a dish to the table; the smell nearly made my knees weak. I forgot, sometimes, how wonderful it was to have someone cook something.

  “It smells amazing,” I said.

  “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  “How was your day at work today?” Jesse asked.

  I groaned. “It was… more stressful than usual. I had to file three neglect reports and an abuse report. A few of them were with the same person. I think I’m going to need to file a report with another for the police, too, about something else. I can’t tell you names or details, really, but it’s just such a pain.”

  “Oh, goodness! Are you safe?” Janet set a glass of water at my place.

  “Of course,” I assured her. I’d never had any kind of threats come to me, and the police were clear about the protections available to me when I filed reports with them. I hadn’t had to file many since I’d started working, but this had been a particularly eventful day. “It’s just some kind of stressful. I don’t like to file reports with the police when I don’t have to.”

  “You must be dealing with a bunch of loons,” Jesse exclaimed.

  I shook my head. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “You have to call the police on them!”

  “Still, I wouldn’t say that. The neighbors called the police on my parents a few years back for playing music too loud at their barbecue, and they’re not loons,” I reasoned.

  “But you only file for neglect and abuse, right?”

  I sighed. “Yes. But, I don’t know, Jesse. I don’t think it’s healthy to look at people like that. Looking at them like they’re crazy means you’re not focusing on their problems. Only rarely is someone really just… You know, I’ve never had a patient that was out of their mind. Such a small part of the population is certifiably insane, you know. And out of those that are, some of them can be rehabilitated.”

  Jesse raised his eyebrows. “You sure do have a lot of faith in people.”

  “I have a lot of faith in mental health,” I corrected. “The brain’s just like anything else in the body. It gets sick, gets tired, needs fixing. That’s what I’m for.” I served myself some casserole and passed it to my aunt. I believed firmly in what I said. Calling people crazy or insane only took away from the larger point. People could have all sorts of problems that stemmed from all sorts of upbringings and situations. It wasn’t fair to dismiss them as crazy or loons when they weren’t. They were people who needed a little extra help.

  Besides, it was the stigma surrounding mental health that kept people from seeking help in the first place. People thought that therapy was for crazy people when really, just about everyone could benefit from a therapy appointment every now and again. I didn’t believe in drugs for everyone; in fact, I believed in drugs for very few people. I thought of some of the statistics I’d seen about college students and depression, married couples and depression. People got themselves into fixes sometimes.

  People that got themselves into fixes. I glanced across the table at the only empty spot remaining. I wondered where Stacy was, or whether my aunt or uncle had heard from her. I certainly hadn’t, but then, I wasn’t really someone that Stacy would come to if she needed help. She didn’t like or dislike me; she didn’t know me very well, and she tended to keep to her own social group. I tended to stay away from her social group. I thought about what my aunt had said about her and Sawyer dating in the past. I wondered if he’d been involved in what she got up to.

  As though she could read my mind, my aunt spoke up about the topic I was thinking about. “We haven’t heard from Stacy in a little while,” she said.

  An uncomfortable feeling settled over the table at the mention of her daughter’s name. My uncle cleared his throat and set his fork down, his mouth turned into an uncharacteristic frown. My aunt fidgeted, going quiet as though someone else had brought it up, not her.

  That meant that the conversation fell to me. “How long is a while?”

  “A few weeks,” Janet said.

  That was a little longer than usual. Stacy was prone to going out for spells and not coming back for a few days at a time. The longest she’d been gone was about a week and a half. A few weeks was a record, and it didn’t bode well.

  The uncomfortable feeling over the table didn’t shift. They didn’t know how to talk about Stacy, and so they tended not to. I wondered if they’d invited me over as a sort of psychological mediator. Sometimes friends would do that, using me for my skills. I usually got irritated by that, preferring them to schedule an appointment like everyone else, but I’d have done just about anything for Janet and Jesse. This situation with Stacy would require more than one twenty-seven-year-old with a psychology degree to crack.

  “Do you think you should call the police?” I asked. “File a missing persons report?” A few weeks really was a long time to go without hearing from her.

  Janet shook her head. “No, she’s updating her social media. I can’t see what she’s posting, but I can see she’s been on it.”

  “I don’t want you going after her,” Jesse said. He looked serious behind the eyes. “Especially with the trouble she gets into, it’s dangerous running after her. Best to wait until she gets back.”

  “Oh, I hate waiting,” Janet said. She folded her hands in her lap. “It’s dreadful not to know what she’s up to. Or, you know, where she is. I understand she’s an adult, but you know she gets involved in such dangerous things.”

  “It’s the drugs,” Jesse muttered. “It’s the drugs that are the worst of it. If she’d listen to any of the rehab officers, maybe she’d be fine by now.”

  I sighed. Stacy and her drugs were not something to be so easily divorced. She’d gone to rehab a few times and taken a chunk out of Janet and Jesse’s retirement doing so. It got to the point that the local church started throwing money at the issue. It seemed to be that her life was just going to be a series of cocaine binges and rehab cleansings until she decided to get her act together. I didn’t know where to start with that.

  “You know, when she gets back, I might see if she’ll go talk to a psychiatrist,” Jesse said. “Quinn, maybe you could take a crack at her.”

  I offered him a small smile. “I appreciate that, Jesse. But I don’t think I’m the person to deal with her. I know her too well. She needs someone on the outside who doesn’t know too much about her personal life.”

  “Someone close to the family will make her defensive,” Janet piped up. “But we can see about it. It’s testy, getting her into a therapist. She’s always so jumpy about getting help.”

  That was why I didn’t see the point in bringing her into my office. Someone who didn’t want help wouldn’t get help, no matter how much therapy they went to. Everything I might tell them would go out the other ear, and they wouldn’t be talking through their problems anyway.

  I thought about the situation with Stacy all the way home. My paperwork waited for me in a pile by my bed, and when I curled up with a mug of tea, I considered the implications of Stacy being gone so long. I tried to check her social media, but it seemed that I was blocked, too. It showed she’d updated it not too long ago.

  It seemed we’d hear back from her either when she got arrested or when she got into some serious trouble and needed Janet and Jesse to bail her out. I resented that she used them like that, as sort of money pots for her partying. They were good, kind people. But she was an addict, and I had to remember that. Addicts looked at people as means to an end, not as multifaceted and important beings with needs and wants outside of their problems.

  In any case, I wouldn’t be seeing her in my office. Even if Jesse insisted, even if Janet pleaded with Stacy, even if the whole world begged at her feet, Stacy wouldn’t be coming to me for help. She’d see someone else first. And that was for the best. An unbiased opinion was best, even if I did consider myself to be decent at my job. There would be too much at stake, knowing that she was Janet and Jesse’s daughte
r.

  I started sorting through the papers I had for my clients the next day. A few people wouldn’t be coming in, and so I set them at the back of the stack. I had a couple coming in around noon for marriage counseling, which was always exciting. At first it had been terribly awkward to listen to a couple try and talk about their problems, but at this point, I found it incredibly fun. I didn’t specialize in it, but couples came to me, nonetheless.

  When I finally reached the end of my stack, I found Sawyer’s paperwork. He’d marked his mother down as his emergency contact and put the house phone number as his phone number. I wondered if he still had a cell phone. I smiled at the scratchy writing, and at the reason he’d put for coming into therapy. ‘Sent by mother.’ It was the most honest anyone had been with me filling out a form.

  I couldn’t help it. Despite everything, I was looking forward to seeing Sawyer the next day in my office.

  Chapter Eleven

  SAWYER

  Wednesday morning was more of the same with my father running off, seemingly to avoid any conversation with me. I caught him leaving but said nothing, just watched while he took his newspaper and his mug of coffee to the back porch as though he’d ever done that ritual in his life before. For a moment I stood in the kitchen with one hand on the chair, considering running after him and confronting him about it. I knew he’d tell me some bullshit about liking to eat outside or always taking his breakfast in the morning outside, and how could I have forgotten?

  He was full of shit. But he was my father, nonetheless. I sat down at the table and watched Mom, seemingly ignorant to the entire affair, sat down across from me. She acted as though she hadn’t a clue what had gone on.

  “Do you think he’s ever going to get over this?” I asked her. That hadn’t been quite the right phrasing. I’d meant to make myself out to be more at fault. To some extent, though, I couldn’t do that anymore; I’d done nothing but blame myself and make penance for years. It was his turn now to offer some sort of forgiveness. At least, that’s what I felt.