​Chapter Eleven

“Are you having the nightmares again?” Rochelle can’t see Dr. Neese but she already knows the woman’s mouth is twisted and puckered. Dr. Neese is by no means pretty. She’s frazzled, that’s the word Rochelle would use for her which is almost generous today. Dr. Neese’s right hand shakes with caffeine tremors and her short curly hair is raising anarchy on her head. She’s a woman who has a lot going for her: a lot of people, a lot of knowledge. But Dr. Neese has little to no self-regulation.

Rochelle knows this, but she doesn’t stop seeing her because old habits die hard. Especially when you never try to break them.

“Yes. Always.” There was one last night. They were at the kitchen table again. Dennis had just raised his voice at her, but this time he had Mack in his arms. His hand started to wrap around her son’s small throat, and when she woke up, her own throat was screaming in the dark.

“He hurts him.”

“It’s only a dream,” Dr. Neese says, chewing an aggressive divot into her pen. What Rochelle can’t tell Dr. Neese is that it isn’t just a dream. That it’s truth. And that she knows this because I’ve revealed it to her.

“Maybe.” Rochelle is self-conscious acting like a rag doll on a couch during the middle of the day. She knows Dr. Neese doesn’t care. If the woman did, she wouldn’t make her patients lie down like they’ve entered Freud’s lair. But Rochelle is intimately tuned into the way her breasts lay pancake flat against her chest. The wide spread of her hips against the cushions. She isn’t who she used to be. That’s something we both agree on. But instead of looking into the renewed warmth in her heart, she keeps her wayward thoughts on the lie in the mirror.

“I know, Rochelle, that you’re in your...group,” Dr. Neese says, waving her pen in front of her in tic-toc swipes. “But maybe you need to be a part of something a little more...constructive.” Rochelle smiles at the ceiling. She knows when Dr. Neese goes home, she’ll put on sweatpants like the rest of the world and go looking for her cat under her bed. She’ll stalk the Internet, hunting down her ex-boyfriend’s new fiancée. She’ll take inventory of all the things that make her better than this woman she’s never met before in her life. She’ll hold onto them like the still wet pen she clutches in her hand.

“It’s constructive. They really care.” Rochelle winces. She knows she sounds like a doddering fool. She’s only ten years Dr. Neese’s senior but she feels old and slow and like all the people she never wanted to be. But she isn’t wrong. Her group at church, they love her. They’re all action and don’t stare at the clock like Dr. Neese. They want to know her, free of charge.

“I’m sure they do in their own little way. But I’m thinking we get you involved in something different. I know of a great therapy group that gets together for yoga and coffee. Just a group of chill women who don’t want anything from you. They don’t want to change you, Rochelle. They’ll accept you for who you are.” Rochelle smirks her response at the tiled ceiling above her. That’s what a lot of people don’t like about her now. The fact that she’s changed.

Because it reminds them that change is something they might need to give a go someday too.

Rochelle gives herself a second to gather her sagginess and stretchiness. She collects herself and mentally tries to pull herself out of her body and into the moment. She looks Dr. Neese in the eye which is hard for her. And she can tell it’s difficult for Dr. Neese, too.

“This hasn’t been helping me. I appreciate you listening to me for all these years. But I always feel...lacking when I leave here. I don’t mean that to be in any way offensive,” Rochelle says. But then I take over. “You are so intelligent, Dr. Neese. Please never let that render you stupid.” Dr. Neese looks bewildered and Rochelle’s heart takes flight.

Her chains loosen around her neck.

#

SHE KNOWS WHAT DENNIS did to Mack.

She just leaves it vague and void of detail which she imagines makes it even worse.

She didn’t know back then. That’s what she tells herself. Reassures herself with. But didn’t she eventually catch on just a little bit? Like the time she and Mack played Scrabble and he started to cry quietly like he was sharing a moment with himself. Or that other time when she was off one rare Saturday and took him to the park. She tried to get him to play with the other kids, but he wouldn’t move off the bench. He just sat and held her hand and studied the world working life out in front of him.

She should have hugged him more. That she regrets.

Rochelle cries so hard in her Jaguar, she stains the leather steering wheel. There’s something else branching through her that she’s tried to uproot the past several weeks.

Cancer. A tiny lump in her right breast. Stage three. A sliver of hope so small she keeps dropping it.

She doesn’t know how to tell Glenn.

The dark thoughts braid and weave behind her eyes. They’ve been blinding her more and more. She tells the group about them and the group hears her out. They hold her hands and pray hard for her. But they’ve known me for so long that thoughts like this have never edged their way in.

Or so they say.

“Can you hear me?” she asks me, and I nod. There’s a demon on the dashboard. He gnashes his teeth at me. I gently flick a finger at him, and he stalks closer to the windshield. “I feel...I feel so alone, Jesus. Nobody understands what this feels like. They’re tired of me talking about it. I’m tired of me talking about it.” Rochelle gulps in tears and air. She blasts the air conditioning at her face. “I feel so alone.” I take her hand and hold it. She bends her head toward her lap. She doesn’t say anything else, but no matter. I know her heart. She feels she’s failed. She feels she’s doing this wrong. She’s gotten baptized. She’s accepted me.  

But she feels no better.

I tell her it’s all about her mind. It’s all about what she’s letting tip toe inside of it. I tell her it’s all about guarding her heart. I tell her it’s all about purpose.

Rochelle snorts and sends the demon skittering across the dash. “What purpose?” she asks.

And then her car phone begins to ring.

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