Ace Jones: Mad Fat Adventures in Therapy

by Stephanie McAfee

  “Buster Loo!” I call when I get home. “You wanna go for a walk?” It’s kind of windy out, so I bundle him up in his thickest doggie jacket. I wrap a scarf around my face and look at my dog, who is prancing around in his fancy winter coat. When we get outside, he doesn’t miss a beat. I make it all of two blocks before I have to stop and tell Buster Loo that we have to go home. “It’s too cold, little man.” I say. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He stands there, snout pointed toward the park, and doesn’t budge. “Buster Loo, maybe the sun will come out tomorrow. C’mon, now.” He doesn’t turn around. I tug on the leash and he stiffens up. He stares down the road as if life cannot go on as planned unless we finish our walk. I reach down to pick him up, and he promptly starts running in circles, wrapping the leash around my ankles. I have to unsnap it and when he realizes he’s free, he takes off at top speed toward the park. Luckily, his fluffy jacket puts a damper on his haste. “Buster Loo!” I say as loud as I can without shouting. I don’t need the whole neighborhood involved in this. “Stop!” He doesn’t look back. He’s headed for the walking trail. I have to jog to catch up. “Buster Loo!” I say again and then use my devil voice, “Stop right now.” He stops and looks back at me with those chiweenie eyes of shame. “I’m sorry, Buster Loo.” I say as I scoop him up and snap the leash back to his collar. “It’s just too cold out here.” My nose is running now. He starts wiggling so I put him down and he trots back home as if nothing happened. As soon as we walk in the door, he runs to the kitchen, sits up on his rump, and starts waving his paws. Buster Loo thinks he’s earned a treat. So I give him one. God love him. At least my dog isn’t worried about me going off the deep end. He loves me just the way I am. We snuggle up on the sofa and sleep until well after lunch.

  3

  Monday morning, the weather folks are all in a tizzy. To hear them tell it, this winter storm could bury us all! It’s going to dump snow across the southeast like none of us have ever seen before! But that’s what they always say, and either they’re always lying or they’re always wrong, because northeast Mississippi has seen all of two big snowfalls and one serious ice storm in the past thirty years. Yet the promise of snow never fails to keep us glued to our televisions in hopeful expectation, while the threat of ice tends to cause widespread panic. And here I sit, coffee in hand, watching the weather and thinking a good snowstorm would provide a nice break in the monotony of things.

  The sky is dark gray when I pull out of my driveway and head downtown. I take a right off Main Street onto Willow Lane where several historic homes have been converted into offices. It’s a charming area, especially in the summertime when the big oak trees form a leafy green canopy over the street. But today, the bare branches look like skeleton arms reaching out to one another through a foggy haze.

  I drive down the street until I see the one I’m looking for, then make a U-turn and park by the curb. The house is pale green with dark green shutters, and the porch is skirted by glorious evergreen shrubs. There are two giant square columns, six extremely tall windows, and a second-floor balcony jutting out over the double front doors. The wooden sign next to the sidewalk indicates that there is a dance studio, an accountant, some kind of consulting firm, and a licensed professional counselor. Two offices are vacant and available for rent. I walk up the cobblestone steps and admire the wavy glass of the large wooden doors. I wonder how they’ve survived all these years without a single crack.

  The door creaks when I push it open and a gust of cool air comes into the foyer with me. I count six doors, four downstairs and two up. It’s remarkably quiet inside the house. I tiptoe up the steps and look for door number six. I find it to my right and see a small sign that reads, “Rosemary Tallis, L.P.C.” I don’t know if I should knock or just walk in. I put one hand on the knob, then gently tap on the door with the other.

  “It’s open.”

  I turn the knob and walk inside. A girl that looks about twenty is sitting behind a block of something that appears to function as a desk. Instead of a nameplate, there is an ornamental picture frame holding a card that reads Aurelia. The letters are thin and wispy, like the girl herself. I don’t see a computer anywhere. Aurelia picks up a pencil, the kind that has to be sharpened, and scribbles something on what I’m almost sure is recycled paper. There are three candles on the corner of the desk-thing, and all three are burning.

  “You must be Graciela Jones,” she says. “Rosemary will be right out.” Her voice is warm and sweet with a hint of an accent. She tells me I can have a seat if I like. I turn and see four squares covered in a pea green fabric that resembles the texture of a potato sack. They look like multi-functional pieces that could either be used as individual footstools or arranged in front of a sectional in place of a coffee table. I ease down on the green thing closest to the door, and my ass hangs off either side. While I worry about crushing it, a horrible scene plays out in my mind where I tumble back against the wall and that giant wooden anvil looking thing falls on my head and kills me graveyard dead. Even though it’s relatively cool in the waiting area, I start to sweat. I stand up and walk to the closest window.

  “Do you think it’s going to snow?” I ask Aurelia.

  “I hope so,” she says. She’s using the eraser end of her pencil now.

  “This house is so quiet,” I say.

  “Yes,” she replies. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It is.” If I could get my mind as calm and peaceful as this lovely old house, I’d be in good shape. I’m glad I came here today. Maybe I need to start buying pencils. Wooden pencils with which to write on recycled paper. I could erase things so easily. Why can’t my house be this quiet?

  “Graciela?” I turn to see Rosemary Tallis, who has appeared like a vision on the opposite side of Aurelia’s block desk-thing. Rosemary is wearing a long-sleeved shirt embellished with fabric flowers. Her skirt is long and flowing, like her hair. I smile and nod. “Please come on back.” Aurelia gives me a little wave and I follow Rosemary down a short hallway.

  There are lit candles all over Rosemary’s office, and the curtains on the windows appear to be made from the same gauzy fabric as her shirt. The walls are a soft shade of yellow, and there is a collage of empty frames between the windows. She motions to the plush sofa. I lie down and look up at the ornate ceiling tiles. I could sleep here for days.

  After some small talk, Rosemary asks, “Is this your first visit to a therapist?”

  “No,” I sigh. “When I was younger, I saw a lady for about a year.” Oh please let’s not rehash my childhood.

  “Do you feel the issues you saw her about were resolved?”

  “I do,” I say. “Fully.”

  “Okay,” she says. She crosses her legs and picks up a manila folder. She flips it open and starts to write. I can’t help but notice that she too is using a wooden pencil with an eraser. I want to ask what she’s writing. Actually, I’d like to see it. “So what brings you here today?” she asks. I wonder if I should tell her about the gift certificate, but I have a feeling she already knows. Aurelia made no mention of fees or payment. She didn’t even ask to see my ID. When I don’t respond, Rosemary says, “Do you mind if I call you Ace?”

  “Not at all,” I say. I wonder how much about me she already knows from Chloe.

  “What’s on your mind today, Ace?”

  I don’t even know where to start. I stare at the ceiling tiles, waiting for her to say something else but she doesn’t. “I’m not very happy right now,” I say finally.

  “Go on,” she says.

  “I’m teetering on miserable.” That’s the understatement of the year. I’m drowning in the misery tank. “And every day it gets a little worse.” I look at her and she nods. We stare at each other for a minute. Oh, what the hell? I might as well tell her the whole story. Chloe is probably paying good money for this and it might actually make me feel better. God knows I’m tired of feeling bad all the time. “I’m not one to think life should be all cotton candy and lo
llipops, but I just can’t seem to see the brighter side of things anymore. I made some bad decisions—well, not bad, necessarily. I mean, nothing that I had to go to jail for. Okay, I’ve been to jail, but it wasn’t a bad decision and I almost went to jail last week, but the lady I punched in the face didn’t show up for court so they let me go.” Wow. I’m horrible at this. “That’s not really as bad as it sounds.” Or maybe it is.

  “You punched someone in the face?” Rosemary is writing again.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Why?” She crosses her legs in the opposite direction. Rosemary is a very pretty woman.

  “She was acting a fool in Walmart and I couldn’t listen to it. I wasn’t even finished shopping but I went to get in the checkout line because I knew I had to get out of there because I just couldn’t listen to her anymore. Then she got in line behind me and I tried to ignore her, I really did, but she kept pushing her buggy up closer and closer to me and I just, I don’t know. She was giving me this look and you’ve got to understand that this was not a classy person and while I’m certainly not the classiest woman myself, I do have a full set of healthy white teeth.” I smile. She smiles.

  “So …”

  “So the lady checking me out was taking her time and there was that lady behind me talking on her cell phone and she was loud and she was cussing and she kept giving me the evil eye.”

  “The evil eye?”

  “Yes. The evil eye.” I give her the evil eye. She looks like she wants to laugh, but she doesn’t.

  “What was the cashier doing?”

  “Taking her sweet time,” I say again. “It was like she couldn’t hear the idiot lady at all. She was just in her own little world scanning my stuff and sticking it into a bag.”

  “Were there other people around?”

  “Sure, but everyone was trying to keep their distance, you know. And there I was with her right behind me in the checkout line.”

  “Was she getting louder because she was getting closer to you?”

  I think about that for a moment. “Maybe,” I say.

  “So you punched her?” I appreciate the lack of judgment in Rosemary’s tone when she asks me this.

  “Yes, I did. When she pushed her cart up next to me that last time, instead of stepping out of the way again, I stepped around that buggy, looked her right in the eye, drew back my fist and knocked the ever-lovin’ shit out of her. She fell down. But then she jumped up like a cat and started cussing me like a dog and before I even knew what I was doing, I’d punched her a second time. She stayed down that time. And she finally shut up.”

  “What did the cashier do?”

  “She said, ‘That’ll be sixty-three dollars and forty-three cents.’”

  Rosemary’s eyes tell me that she thinks that’s funny but, again, she doesn’t crack a smile. “So what happened then?”

  “Well, that stupid lady got up and ran over to the customer service counter and started yelling for someone to call 911. Her nose was bleeding, so she was able to make a huge scene.”

  “Why didn’t she just call from her cell phone?”

  “Well, she dropped it when I hit her and it busted.” I breathe a sigh of relief. I haven’t told anyone the whole story. Just bits and pieces. It feels good to get it all out.

  “Do you plan to cover the expense for her phone?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Okay, so you were arrested, but you didn’t go to jail?”

  “Well, yes, I did get locked up, but my friend Lilly posted my bail so I didn’t have to stay long. And then my court date was last week, and Patricia, that was her name I found out later, didn’t show up, so here I am.”

  “Is this the only time you’ve ever been arrested?”

  “Uh, no.” I’m starting to feel like a real criminal. “There was one other time.”

  “What happened then?”

  “We were stalking a friend’s husband who is now her ex-husband, and we were at a strip club in Memphis and we’d decided to go incognito so we went to this costume shop and ended up wearing dresses designed for men, but they looked really good on us, they really did.” Stoic Rosemary finally smiles. “I’m sure you heard all about that from Chloe. It was her ex-husband.”

  “Chloe?”

  “Yes. Chloe Stacks. She’s a regular here, isn’t she?”

  “You know, the privacy laws these days are so sticky.”

  “Right, sorry. Well, we both know she comes here. I mean, she told me she was and she’s the one who gave me that gift certificate or whatever you want to call it and I know she had to tell you about this because that whole incident was why she started coming here in the first place.”

  “Getting back to you, Ace.”

  “Right. Getting back to me.”

  “Why aren’t you happy?”

  Oh boy. “Well, I made a decision that I thought was right for me, but then it wasn’t and now I’ve wrecked my whole life. Well, not wrecked.”

  “It’s okay to say that.”

  “Okay, it’s wrecked. My life is wrecked bigger than shit. I showed my ass and quit my job and moved out of my house. Chloe rented it for a while after her divorce but then she just bought a new house so I was able to move right back in when I moved back to Bugtussle.” She raises her eyebrows at me. “So at least I have a home.”

  “That’s a good thing,” she says and makes another note in my folder. “Tell me what else is good in your life.”

  “I have great friends and a fabulous dog.”

  “Those are very good things,” she says. “A home, friends, a loving pet.” I want to tell her that Buster Loo is so much more than a pet, but I don’t. She continues, “So let’s talk about what you want to change in your life and why.”

  “Oh Lord,” I say. “See, the thing about me is that I really enjoy helping other people solve their problems but I’d very much prefer to carry on like I don’t have any. Ever since college, I’ve just kind of lived this safe little comfortable life, but I always felt like something was missing. Like I could do more and be happier somehow, but I was scared to make any changes. Then out of the blue one day, my big opportunity came and I packed up and moved to Florida to live my dream life with my fiancé. What’s really sad is that I honestly thought it was my time to shine, you know, my time to really live life and be happy, but it wasn’t. Not a damn thing down there turned out anything like it was supposed to and now I’m back up here and I’m heartbroken and I’m depressed and I want my old job back and I don’t know if or how that can be done and this is why I help other people fix their problems because it always seems to turn out fine for them, but this chance I took with my life—wow. I fucked that up big time and now it’s just a wreck.”

  “Okay,” she says, and she’s writing again. “Now let’s define ‘wreck.’”

  “Wreck. Let’s see … I have no job. I’m down to single digits in my savings account. I wear jogging pants every day. I take entirely too many naps. And I’ve gotten to where I don’t even want to leave my house anymore.” There, I said it.

  “You mentioned the job first, so can we talk about that?”

  “Well, naturally, another teacher had to be hired to fill the vacancy when I left, and the school board would probably rather see me tarred and feathered than to offer me another teaching position at Bugtussle High School.”

  “Why not apply in another district?” she asks, and I lie there and stare at those beautiful ceiling tiles. The answer is simply because I don’t want to, but I don’t tell her that. We sit in silence for a moment and then she continues, “Okay, let me ask you this: Would having your old job back solve all of your problems?”

  I don’t answer right away and I’m ready to start squalling for real and I don’t even know why. After several minutes pass, I say, “Having that job would solve a lot of my problems.”

  “The immediate ones, I suppose,” she says. “A job would put money in your bank account, require you to wear something other than joggi
ng pants, and get you out of the house, but would it solve all of your problems? Would you be completely happy if you had your old job back?”

  I don’t want to go where this conversation is about to take me, but I guess that’s why I’m here so I try to be honest. “No,” I say.

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I would still miss Mason.” There it is.

  “Tell me about Mason.” Here we go.

  “Mason is my ex-fiancé,” I say. I give her the short version of our pitiful “he loves me he loves me not” love story which ends with me saying, “And then he proposed and I moved to Florida and—” I stop talking because I can’t continue without breaking out in a Lilly Lane–style sobbing fit.

  “Sometimes we imagine people, places, and things to be something that, in reality, they are not. For example, we might build up expectations for a hotel or a vacation destination that, when we arrive, doesn’t measure up to the vision we created in our mind, but we’re invested emotionally and otherwise so that creates a crisis because we don’t feel what we think we should feel.” I nod to indicate that I understand. “Are you mad at Mason?”

  “Of course not,” I say and I’m barely hanging on. I stare at the ceiling and Rosemary doesn’t speak so I go ahead and say what I know I have to: “Mason McKenzie is a wonderful person and I love him very much and will love him until the day that I die.” That does it. I start squalling and can’t stop. Rosemary hands me a box of tissues. After a few minutes, I calm down enough to tell her the whole story about what happened in Florida and why I couldn’t stay.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Your heart will mend and your soul will find peace.”

  “When?” I ask her. “I’m ready to start on that right now.”

  “It takes time, and you don’t want to rush it. The healing process, however long it may be, can greatly enrich your life.” I want to call bullshit on that, but I don’t. Rosemary continues, “You might not believe this, Ace, but you’re in a wonderful place right now. This is a new beginning for you.” She’s right. I don’t believe that at all, and, actually, I despise new beginnings. I just want to get over it, dammit! And I want to get over it right now! Rosemary is still talking. “It’s good you went to Florida because that experience provided you with a deeper understanding of who you are and what you want from life.” What I want is for someone to tell me why things couldn’t have worked out differently for me down there. What I want is for someone to explain how I could’ve been so wrong for so long about how and with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. What I want more than anything is for someone to tell me how in the hell I could’ve been so incredibly foolish as to buy into the idea that a fairy tale life existed for someone like me. As my mind spins, I come to the dreadful realization that the person I’m most mad at is me. “Ace?” Rosemary says and I snap back to reality. Cold, harsh reality.