Close Your Eyes

8

“Lauren?” said Jane Stafford.

“Yes?” I said.

“Are you all right?” Jane tilted her head to the right, causing her glossy hair to fall across her cheekbone.

“We met at a sushi restaurant,” I said, “Gerry and me. And I. Gerry and I.”

She smiled, expectant. When I said nothing more, she commented, “That sounds nice.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How long ago was this?” said Jane. She held a cheap Bic ballpoint, a pad in her lap. I felt alarmed, wondering what she would write down, how she would distill me into sentences.

“I don’t know,” I said. She peered at me questioningly. I stared at her large brown eyes, and the room grew hazy.

“I love him,” I whispered, a familiar dread rising in my chest, making me feel feverish. “I’m really hot.”

“You feel hot?”

“Yes,” I said. Jane was intent, looking at me through what seemed to be a room of smoke. I cleared my throat and tried to shake it off. “I’m very dizzy,” I said.

“You’re feeling anxious?”

“Yes,” I said. “And I’m feeling really hot.”

“Breathe,” said Jane. “How else do you feel?”

I took a deep inhalation, but the woozy feeling remained. “What’s wrong with me?” I said.

“Nothing is wrong with you,” said Jane.

“I’m scared,” I said.

“It’s all right,” said Jane. I don’t know how long we sat in silence—a few minutes? Finally, the fog around the room dissipated, and it was just Jane and me again.

“I feel very small on this couch,” I said.

Jane laughed. I was glad to have pleased her. She looked quickly at the digital clock on a table next to me. “Do you feel okay to leave?” she asked.

“I guess so,” I said.

“That will be twenty dollars for the co-pay,” said Jane.

I fumbled in my purse. Gerry and I had recently consolidated accounts, and he had ordered checks with the University of Texas football insignia. Burnt-orange-colored checks. They were hideous. I wrote one to Jane Stafford. “I’ll see you next week,” she said as I handed her the check.

“Okay,” I said. I felt wobbly as I rose and walked down the hallway. I did not turn in to the kitchen. There was a brunette woman in the waiting room. She was paging through the same Glamour. I didn’t speak to her, just pushed the door open and went into the warm September day. I walked slowly to my car and got inside. I turned my key in the ignition and waited to cool down.

I didn’t want to drive away. I felt—bizarrely—as if I had left something, or someone, inside Jane Stafford’s office, on her couch. A girl. A doll. I had left a part of myself or something similarly weird. I felt guilty about leaving, though I had to get to work—I was meeting a couple from Massachusetts tomorrow morning and had to plan a full day of showings. But it was hard to put the car in gear.

I rested my head against the hot steering wheel. “It’s okay,” I said out loud to myself. I waited for something to come: some memory? Was I going to lose my shit someday and remember that I saw my father kill my mother? Come on, I said to myself silently. Just bring it on. I tried to conjure a vision, my father swinging, the glint of crystal, blood, but nothing came. I punched on the radio, and good old Willie came on singing, Whiskey River, take my mind.

“You said it, Willie,” I said. The taxi was still parked in front of my therapist’s office. I put the car in drive and hit the gas, singing along: “ ‘Whiskey River, don’t run dry, hi-hi-hi! You’re all I got, take care of me.’ ”

On my drive home from work, I bought a bottle of Yellow Tail chardonnay at the Drive-Thru Liquor Barn. Later that night, after three mugs of wine, four Tylenol PMs, and a few hours of the World Series of Poker, I fell asleep.

At some point, Gerry came to bed. The way he curled around me was one of my favorite things about him. I felt his warm breath on the back of my neck, his slow, sleepy exhalations. It was too good to last, I knew. So I tried not to grow accustomed to being loved, to being held in the night. I tried not to believe he would always be there, so I wouldn’t be too crushed when everything went wrong.

In the morning Gerry told me I had been snoring.