“Do you see how far you’ve gone?”
She thought she heard fear in his voice, in addition to the anger. She floated for another moment, then started to swim, obedient, back toward shore.
Soon, she could touch the smooth ocean bottom again. He was only a few feet away. “There,” she said. “Fine. See?” She shivered and tried to pretend she was wearing more than a soaked bra and underwear in front of her therapist.
He handed her his shirt. “Dry off with this,” he said. “Get your clothes back on. This area of the beach isn’t safe. It’s full of jellyfish and lionfish and barracuda and sometimes worse.”
She turned away from him and did as she was told, dressing quickly.
“You’re a sad woman,” Miles said, his tone and expression thoughtful.
“Well, shit. You could say that again, Doctor,” she said as he pulled his shirt back over his head. This wasn’t the voice of the bitter old crone she had become, she realized. It wasn’t even the voice of the somewhat carefree woman she had once been. This was someone else entirely, a new person altogether.
He laughed. “Ah. Your bluntness. It’s your greatest strength, and maybe your greatest weakness.” He frowned for a moment. “But you shouldn’t be vulgar.”
His words pulled her in two directions. “Am I being analyzed, right here on the beach?”
“At Harmony, you can be analyzed anywhere,” he said.
“I’m not going to another anger management session,” she said. “If I’m saying what I mean, if I’m being blunt—you can forget it. It was a disaster.”
He looked out at the ocean, then back at her. His expression was softer. “I read something once,” he said, “about the very thin line between anger and desolation—between sadness and rage, even. It came to mind, when we were in our session yesterday. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. I do think you need to attend that group. But I’m also willing to trust that you know what’s best for you right now. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. I see a strength in you I don’t see in many others. Perhaps a strength I’ve never seen before.”
She could feel her bra making a wet patch on her shirt, and, as if he could read her thoughts, he glanced down at her chest and she felt embarrassed heat creep into her cheeks. But he kept talking as if it were all perfectly normal.
“I know you were frustrated yesterday, and frankly, I don’t blame you for that. I was thinking about it as I was jogging along the beach this morning. I lost my temper with you, and I shouldn’t have—but there are moments with some patients when I realize two weeks might not be enough, when I long for the luxury of time, months and months to work together, maybe even years. And maybe I was testing you.” He looked at her for a long moment. “It’s a trade-off, what we do here. I firmly believe we help more couples than we could if we had a more regular practice, but there are certain things we have to give up. Yesterday, I wanted to push you because I saw something in you, Shell. I understood what you needed. So I shouted, I pushed your boundaries—and I shouldn’t have been so harsh, not yet. I’m sorry.”
She felt shaky, a combination of relief and trepidation. Not yet. “I didn’t feel comfortable,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I could trust you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I will earn your trust. That will be my work for this week. And maybe beyond?” They stood in silence for a moment.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s all right. Not right now. Why were you swimming away like that?”
She hesitated. “It’s probably a very good thing you showed up,” was all she said.
“Did it help, the swimming away?”
“For a moment.”
“Do you want to let me help you? So you won’t want to swim away from your life anymore? So you’ll have a life you love?”
She felt her eyes fill with tears and wished they wouldn’t; she was surprised when he reached for her and pulled her into a spontaneous embrace. Her cheek was against his chest, against the shirt that she had rubbed over her body and now smelled like salt water and her own skin, and his. At Harmony, you can be analyzed anywhere.
“Why do you do this?” she said into his chest and she felt him stiffen. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have asked you during the question and answer period, but we weren’t there, because we were fighting. Why do you and Grace make this your life’s work, helping people like me?”
At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer her, but then he started to speak. “I was raised by a single mother. My father left my mother when I was very young and she was never the same. My whole life, I imagined what my childhood would have been like if they had actually tried, both of them. If my father had stayed, if my mother had made him want to. I imagined how different my life might have been.”
“But you seem okay.”
“I really have to work at it.” He lowered his hands to her arms and held her away from him as he looked into her eyes. “It’s almost impossible, to really know another person’s inner life. And as for why I do what I do—some days, I’m not sure. I’ve been doing this for a very long time. Everyone burns out. I’m happy you’re here, because what I see in you, it’s making me want to get up in the morning and work hard.” Another silence. She was almost smiling. Now she shivered and he rubbed his hands briskly up and down her arms before pulling her into another embrace that was confusing and perfect.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered. “You just have to be brave. I’m with you. I’m here. I want to help you. And I know you’re going to let me.”
She looked over his shoulder. There was a gap in the clouds and she could see the sun’s rays casting ladders into the ocean. She stood in his arms and counted the rays, stopped when she got up to twelve. “I lost something,” she said. “We lost something. I want to let you help me, but it’s hard to talk about.”
“Everyone here has lost something. We’ll take the journey together. All will be well.”
She could feel his chest moving up and down against hers. She kept counting the rays of the sun—ladders to heaven, someone had once called them. Maybe her mother? Thirteen. Fourteen. And then, suddenly, more than she could count and that was how much she missed Zoey and always would and she’d never be able to explain it to anyone, but she was going to try, she decided, eyes dazzled by those ladders of morning light she desperately wished she could climb. She was going to try it this way, Miles’s way, instead of attempting to drown herself at the bottom of a bottle or an ocean. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Movement on the beach, a figure jogging past, a blond ponytail, and Miles pulled back from her as Shell watched Ruth moving down the coastline.
“We should get back,” Miles said. “Come on.”
A knock at the door of Grace’s office. She checked her watch. Johanna and Ben were a little early but that was all right—Grace was ready for them. “Come on in,” she said, rising from her desk.
But it wasn’t the couple: it was Ruth, wearing her running clothes and breathing heavily. Even though she’d clearly been out running, she was still in full makeup. The year before, when Grace’s mother had died and Grace had returned to Texas for a week, Ruth asked her to bring back a long list of cosmetics. The urgency of the request had given Grace pause, and she had brought it up with Miles. “Don’t you think it’s weird for her to request studio-grade concealer when I’m going to my mother’s funeral?” she had asked. “She looks like a televangelist’s wife. She looks like someone else. Is this what she thinks you want her to look like?”
“Are you really grieving?” Miles responded, ignoring her other questions.
“You still grieve a mother you haven’t seen in almost twenty years,” Grace said and marveled for a moment at how much care they took to unearth their clients’ secrets while burying their own. When she went home to sort out her mother’s house, she’d foun
d a letter in her mother’s things. It was the only thing she brought back with her. Dear Garrett, I’ll get right to the point, I am the son you and a woman named Barbara Moore gave up when you were teenagers. I don’t blame you, I swear, but I would really like to get in touch. Barbara Moore has yet to answer any of my letters. I just want to know where I came from. Miles didn’t know about the letter. No one did except her mother, and her mother was dead. They were masters, the two of them, at hiding the truth. Why did Grace even keep it? What was she going to do about it? It was a piece of her brother. It was all she had. It was family. It was a chance that one day, Grace would be someone else, someone who might be able to explain to this young man where he had come from.
“Oh, good,” Ruth said now. “I’ve caught you before your session. Johanna Haines and her husband, is it?” Her voice was like acid, full of innuendo that didn’t belong in it and caused Grace to bristle, though she tried not to. She knew she had to be gentle with Ruth, especially now. It hadn’t even been a year since the pregnancy, the baby. And she knew how long it took to heal from such a loss: forever. It never did heal. “I saw you had an enrichment session with Johanna on the schedule and I realized what you were doing,” Ruth continued.
“What do you mean by that?” Grace said, startled now.
“How could you use my anger management group session, the first one I have been allowed to run on my own and something very important to my research project, for your own purposes? How dare you?”
“Is this about Miles, and the research project he took credit—”
“No! I’m not here to talk about that. Why are you always bringing up the past? This is about you hijacking my anger management group with your own agenda!”
“I don’t understand. Please sit down.” She glanced at her watch. “I do have a few minutes for us to discuss this, whatever it is you’re trying to tell me.”
“I am not one of your clients. Don’t treat me that way.”
Grace tried to temper the annoyance but couldn’t. “No, you aren’t. You’re my employee.”
Ruth gasped. “Your employee?”
“I’m sorry. No. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not like that—you’re family, Ruth. Please. Forgive me. Sit down.”
Ruth sat, then leaned forward and gripped the edges of the couch cushions. “Just because you’re the star, just because you’re the wife, doesn’t mean that I am nothing.”
“Ruth, please. You’re important, too.”
“I haven’t been feeling that way lately,” Ruth said. There were tears in her voice and alarm bells in Grace’s brain. Ruth rubbed her forehead, then her face. She winced as she did so. “I just feel so...overwhelmed.”
“Do you think you need a break?” Grace asked gently. “Maybe a short sabbatical to work on your research project on anger and intimacy in a more intensive way?”
“You want me to leave? I’ve already moved into the main villa. You want me to leave here, too?”
“No. No! That’s not what I meant.” She felt like a bird flying through the air, mistaken—hitting a window, falling to the ground. She hesitated again. Ruth wasn’t her department. She was Miles’s. But clearly not. Clearly he had been neglecting her. “Ruth, I thought that move was temporary, just you taking some time to rest, after the baby...”
“Please, don’t.”
“I know it hurts. I understand.”
“You have no idea. I didn’t deserve it, not the way you did.”
Grace gritted her teeth, glanced at her watch. “Okay, Ruth. I really don’t have much time. Can we schedule an hour tomorrow to sit and really talk? I didn’t realize you were...struggling so much.”
Ruth’s smile was bitter. “I don’t want to have a heart-to-heart with you, thanks. What I’m trying to do is work intensively on my project by hosting those groups. But you just go ahead and send in your traumatized patient who messed it all up. She’s paralyzed everyone. Now I’ve got a problem to deal with, but you’ll get your glory because you’ll have fixed her. And then what, you’ll be Miles’s star again?”
“I’m not trying to fix her, or get glory, I’m trying to help her. That’s the point of what we do, all of us. And you’re a part of that.”
“No, I’m not! No one will let me be!” She sounded like a child, and Grace tried to imagine Ruth was her child, tried to extend the same compassion. It hurt, but she did it anyway.
“You have a generous soul, Ruth. You love to help people. And sharing that was probably an important step for Johanna. Try to make room for that.”
Ruth narrowed her eyes, and they filled with tears. “Oh, what does any of it matter?” she cried, and suddenly all the anger was gone and she was sobbing, mascara staining her cheeks. Grace reached out, squeezed Ruth’s shoulder, then held her hand, which was paper dry and shaking, like the hand of a much older woman.
“I saw him with her,” Ruth said.
“What do you mean? Who?”
“Shell Williams. On the beach this morning. They were—” Ruth sniffled and wiped uselessly at the dark tears on her cheeks “—together on the beach. They were—it wasn’t appropriate.”
Grace closed her eyes for a moment, but couldn’t find any words. Not again, was all she could think.
Another sob from Ruth.
“Shh, calm down, don’t cry,” Grace said.
Ruth accepted a tissue and began to clean up her face.
“Ruth.” She paused. How to say it? “Has your relationship with Miles ended?”
“He hasn’t told you anything? Do I matter that little?” The words dissolved into more sobs. And the alarm bells that had been clanging in Grace’s head earlier were full-blown sirens now. Ruth was wiping at her face, and she was sure there were bruises.
“You’re so beautiful,” Grace said to her, the way she imagined a mother might speak, the way perhaps her own mother might have spoken to her, if she had been different. “You shouldn’t wear all that makeup. You don’t need it.” She leaned closer, reached up to turn on the lamp beside them, quickly, her hand flying through the air, her mind desperate to confirm her suspicions even though she had no idea what she would do if they were correct.
But Ruth jerked away from her, eyes wide. She pushed Grace away. “Don’t touch me! You’re disgusting. You’re just as bad as him. Worse.”
Ruth fled the room, pushing open the door with a bang as it hit the opposite wall, leaving it open behind her. It had been so sudden, such a shock, and there was no one to explain it to, that Grace had only been trying to turn on the light, that she was worried for Ruth, worried about her safety. She pressed her hand against her mouth, appalled, filled with immediate self-loathing. Ruth had misinterpreted the situation entirely. But it didn’t matter because it had awoken the truth inside her, which was now out and flying around the room. The success, the clothes, the shoes, the hair, the polished exterior, none of those things mattered. Two words, You’re disgusting, peeled away Grace’s layers. What a powerful girl Ruth was, and she didn’t even know it.
Grace was catapulted to the past. Her present faded away. She became Grace Tyler, with her long ponytail and jeans, her sullied heart with hope inside it, still.
* * *
The church basement smells of burnt coffee, crayons and dusty Bibles. Plastic tables stacked against one wall; rows of chairs stacked against the other; a painting of Jesus on a shoreline on one wall, his cupped hands outstretched, the words “And Jesus said, ‘And I will make you fishers of men’” stenciled across the bottom.
Pastor Kesey is praying. Grace Tyler’s heart flutters in her chest. She’s been in trouble before, for missing curfew, for blowing off schoolwork, for sassing her parents—but never like this. This is bad. Mom, Dad, I need to talk to you. I’ve been struggling with something.
As Pastor Kesey speaks, his words blurring in her mind, she feels the guilt and shame pres
s itself against her chest, dance inside her stomach until she feels sick, literally. “Excuse me—” she has to say, and they bring her a bucket. She retches, but nothing comes out.
“Thank you, Lord. We thank you so much for your communion with us here today, for your support, for your grace and your mercy. Forgive us, Lord, for we are all sinners. Be with us, Lord, we pray. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”
Four voices for the last sentence: Pastor Kesey’s, Grace’s, a church elder—Don Cleary, and his wife, Janet. Grace isn’t sure why Janet is there.
There is a tape recorder in the center of the table, beige, with a red record button, which Don pushes forward and presses. They don’t ask if it’s okay to record her. They don’t ask if anything is okay. Normally, Pastor Kesey is in charge, but it is Don everyone looks to now for cues. He had been a psychotherapist; Grace heard this once. And he isn’t anymore. She doesn’t know why. She nudges the bucket away with her toe and looks at him hopefully.
“Grace, everything you say to us, everything revealed in this room will remain between us,” he begins, and Grace knows he’s lying. He reminds her of Grace’s brother, Garrett, saying her family’s presupper prayer. He could make dozens of words sound like one long one, eyes not closed but heavenward: “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly grateful and may we always be mindful of the needs of others in Jesus’s name Amen.” Don sounded just like that.
“Grace?”
“I’m sorry, yes?” A dry mouth, a thick tongue, she thinks of Jesus being deprived of water and made to drink vinegar before he was killed. No one is depriving her of anything, she reminds herself. Her mother, whom she still trusts, has promised this is going to help her. Her father—well, he’s another story.
“Has anyone ever hurt you?”
“What do you mean?” Of course people had hurt her. People hurt other people every day. But this was not that. The question meant something else and if she answered it right, she could leave, maybe.
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