Really Good, Actually(60)
My cheeks flushed. Despite constant reminders from online ads, couples in the street, and drugstore windows, I had worked very hard to ignore the fact that today was Valentine’s Day. I didn’t need this right now. I turned on my heel and walked down our building’s front steps at speed. At the bottom I paused and looked back. Jiro was still standing there, wearing a jocular expression and a fucking cummerbund. It struck me suddenly that Jiro was hot.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you want to go to a wedding?”
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Chapter 15
The therapist opened our session by explaining the meaning of the word “liminal” for almost ten minutes. I couldn’t tell if she felt this was important information for me to have—a legal separation being, fair enough, a definitively liminal period in one’s life—or if she was stalling for time, since Jon was late, and I was getting increasingly agitated looking at the clock.
Eventually I cracked, telling her that I was a graduate student, so knowing how to use the word “liminal” in a sentence was one of my only concrete skills. She smiled with her lips closed and said, “How do you feel about your work, are you happy there?” This is how they get you.
Having never been to one before, I could not confirm whether all therapists’ offices looked like a New Yorker cartoon of a therapist’s office or if it was just this one. The walls were a beige color you could tell was called something like “Silken Sand” or “Meaningful Pebble.” A framed print on the wall depicted a barren cityscape, presumably deserted after some kind of emotional apocalypse. I was dismayed to see a sheer silk scarf draped over a lamp in the corner; I’d done something similar in my bedroom in high school, inadvertently causing a small fire. Wasn’t therapy supposed to be a definitively adult space? Surely there were more mature ways of creating ambience than the one I’d discovered in CosmoGirl at fifteen.
For her part, the therapist was also pretty classically “therapist,” first, because her name was Helen, and second, because of every other thing about her. She had a soft voice and “fun,” design-y glasses. Her unstructured blouse was covered in an abstract print that suggested she could at any time be coming from or going to a life-drawing evening.
A dark bob framed her round, friendly face, which was open though not revealing: you could tell her your secrets, but she’d never betray how she felt about them. She had an easy demeanor, and her comfortingly drab website had listed many certificates, workshops, and other accomplishments in addition to the standard qualifications she required for her practice. She seemed personable and like she had probably helped many people through difficult times. Still, I did not like her. This was inconvenient, as I’d come early to the appointment so that I could a) position my body in a flattering way on the couch for when Jon arrived and b) build a rapport with Helen that would lead her to side with me when we both presented our cases for why things were going the way they were going.
I assumed couples therapy would be something like high school debate club. We’d each defend our position, and then the therapist would tell us who was wrong (him) and who was right (me) and what was to be done about it. I was looking forward, in a way, to hearing Jon’s perspective. I imagined him squirming and stuttering as he tried to explain his radio silence for almost seven full months, the realization spreading across his face in real time that he had behaved badly. Maybe he would beg for forgiveness. At the very least, he would apologize. After five more minutes, Helen offered to make us some tea.
Two cups of Earl Grey between us, she moved on to ask the usual things: how I’d been sleeping, if I was making an effort to eat well and move my body, how else I was spending my time. She asked if I’d been to therapy before, and I told her I’d tried, many millions of times, to convince Jon to go, but couldn’t interest him in the idea. She adjusted the little chain that dangled from her glasses. “But you’ve never been yourself?”