Evvie Drake Starts Over(33)
“Okay. Are you saying you think I want to be your friend? Because I don’t think that’s what I’m asking. I mean…no offense.”
Dr. Talco smiled. “Nope. What I’m saying is that therapists aren’t friends, and friends aren’t therapists. And that means you can’t be a therapist for your pitcher.” Dr. Talco paused to see if Eveleth would get it and seemed to conclude she wouldn’t. “If he has problems and he needs support, then you can be his friend, which it sounds like you’re doing. But if he needs a doctor, he’s going to have to get one for himself. You aren’t going to be able to give him that kind of help, as his friend, if that’s the case, no matter how much I tell you about anxiety.”
“I don’t think that’s what I was trying to do.”
“It’s not a bad thing. Believe me, you’re not the first person who’s had this same idea. People come in and want me to fix a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or a parent, or a kid. And I give them the same bottom line I’m giving you.”
“Which is what?”
“That therapy is like a toothbrush. You can’t really put it to use for anybody except yourself.”
“So wait,” Evvie said. “You’re rejecting my application for therapy?”
She could tell Dr. Jane Talco came very, very close to laughing. But she didn’t. “I am not rejecting your application. In fact, I think there’s probably a lot we can do, and it might help you more than you think. But I’d want to talk about you. Losing your husband, especially at your age, is something that I think most people need a lot of help to handle. Complicated marriage or not. It’s not a bad thing.”
The bad thing, of course, was not the fact that she might well benefit from having her head shrunk so hard that it turned inside out. But what had curled Evvie into a ball on her bed, what had kept her sobbing into the shoulders of Andy’s shirts for almost two weeks after he brought her home from the hospital, was more like a bone-deep exhaustion than the grief the doctor seemed to want to unearth. And the last thing—the very last thing—she wanted was to talk about it.
She stood up. “Thank you for the advice. I promise I’ll keep your card.”
The doctor stood up, too, and extended a hand like she was going to put it on Evvie’s arm, but she didn’t. “Hey. Can you hang around? At least finish up the appointment? I want to help if I can.”
“I don’t think so, but thank you for listening.” Evvie picked up her bag, put on her coat, and let the door of the office latch behind her. When she got into her car, she immediately took out her phone. This was a moment to text someone and tell them about the doctor who wouldn’t listen, who turned a professional inquiry into some Barbara Walters interview intended to make Evvie cry, as if she needed another person who was obsessed with asking her about widowhood. She sat with her phone in her hand, and she listened to the beginning of a slightly crispy, sleeting rain fall on the windshield. After a few minutes, she put her phone back into her bag and started the car.
ABOUT A WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS, tucked inside, away from an icy wind that now and then made the window frame rattle, Dean and Evvie were stretched out in his club chairs drinking straight bourbon. They were a couple of glasses in. He was slumped down, with his long legs on the coffee table, and she was sitting sideways, her knees bent over the fat arm of the chair, feeling decidedly fuzzy-headed. “Why do they have Christmas every single year?” she asked.
“Oh, boy,” he said with a smile. “Where’s this going?”
“I think it’s a very fair question,” she said, tipping the rest of her drink into her mouth and making the little kuh! noise she always did when she swallowed liquor. “Nobody has enough time for it. Nobody wants to go through the whole…” She waved the hand without a glass in it. “I don’t think they need to have it every year.”
“How often do you think?”
“Every four years, like the Olympics.”
“The Olympics are every two years now.”
“Okay, every four years like the Winter Olympics, you lawyer.”
“So that’s your Christmas plan. If you’re a four-year-old kid, no more Christmases until third grade.”
“It’ll be good for them. Some children are horrible. These are the simple truths of Eveleth World.”
He nodded slowly. “Seventy-five percent cut to Christmas, zero percent mercy for horrible children.”
“Yes,” she said. “Zero percent.”
“Where does the name ‘Eveleth’ come from?” he asked, wrinkling his forehead. “Is it a family name? Is it the Viking goddess of lobsters or something?”
She shook her head. “Eveleth is in Minnesota. Way up north, cold as fu-huh-huck. It’s maybe forty miles from Canada. It’s where my mom was born. Her dad worked in an iron mine.”
“They have iron mining in Minnesota?”
“They used to.”
“They don’t now?”
“Not like they used to.”
“How in the hell did she wind up married to a lobsterman from Maine?” Dean asked. He finished his drink, took her glass from her, and poured them both a little more.