The Break-Up Retreat(29)

I feel my cheeks burning.

In my mind, I flash back to a memory. An old one.

Standing in the kitchen, having broken a plate, panicked tears pooling in my eyes. One of the good ones my mother had inherited from her own grandmother; true bone china, with gold trim and intricate seashell-green patterns.

My dad’s hand on my shoulder.

It will be our secret. You and I, we don’t care about silly things like plates. We know they don’t matter.

And then, later, when she found out, and she was telling me off, hurt and disappointment radiating from her like waves, repeating his words back at her:

I don’t care about your silly plates. They don’t matter at all.

The shock on her face. The strength I found in it, the glorious feeling of being above it all, of not having to admit to a mistake because I was better than that, better than caring about breaking things that were precious to other people.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” I shoot back, rattled, and Martina smiles.

“Yes, you are,” she says. “Because, at the end of the day, you don’t want to keep living like this. You’re torn between wanting to change and finding that you can’t.”

She straightens back up, leaning back, and looks at me like she’s sizing me up.

“I’m going to tell you something you’re not going to like,” Martina says. “It’s going to make you angry, and it’s going to make you want to leave, or hurt my feelings, or shut down. But I think you need to hear it.”

“Okay. Hit me.” It’s not Isobel Anderssen speaking anymore. There is only me.

“You’re not as special, or as different, as you think you are,” Martina says. “I’ve seen hundreds of patients like you. This thing you keep doing, this facade you keep putting up? It’s not working nearly as well as you think it is.”

“That doesn’t upset me.” I smile, small and tight.

“Sure it doesn’t.” Martina laughs.

Fuck you lingers on my tongue, but I swallow the words.

It doesn’t matter what she thinks she’s seeing. It doesn’t even matter if she’s right. She can’t tell me who I am.

I grasp for my role, for the comfort of Isobel Anderssen, but I can’t figure out how she’d react in this situation. Isobel Anderssen the character doesn’t isolate herself, shut herself off; she seeks out any means of understanding and comfort. If Isobel Anderssen was real, if she was here, Martina Hastings would never have spoken to her like this.

“I don’t know why you are trying to make me uncomfortable,” I finally manage.

“I’m not trying to do that,” Martina says. “That is not my goal. But it’s interesting that you’re perceiving it that way.”

“That is what you said,” I insist. “That I would feel attacked.”

“Do you feel attacked?”

“I feel like . . .” I search for something to say, something that won’t give me away. “I feel like you don’t like me.”

I don’t like the bitter taste the words leave on my tongue.

Like chalk. Like failure.

Is there a part of me that wants her to like me? That wants to be seen, heard, appreciated by this woman, despite what she’s done, despite what she is?

I don’t want to know the answer to that.

“I don’t dislike you, Isobel,” Martina says, softer now. “Hey. Look at me.”

It’s not a question; it’s a command.

“I like you very much,” Martina says. “I think you are a very intelligent, very compassionate, very interesting woman. I’ve seen how much care you’ve tried to take with the other patients, even though you only just met them yesterday. I see how hard you’re working to keep it together, to keep your emotions in check so as to not burden other people with them.”

She reaches out over the table and puts her hand over mine, squeezing it carefully.

“You’re right in that I told you that story because I was hoping you would recognize something in it. I hope it’s not too much of a cliché, but I see quite a bit of myself in you.”

A shaky laugh tears out of my throat.

“I don’t think so.”

“You can’t see yourself the way others see you,” she says. “The way I see you, Isobel. And I want you to trust me enough to open up to me. Because I don’t want you to make the mistakes I’ve made. I don’t want you to choose the wrong partner because it feels safer to be loved than to love. I don’t want you to get stuck in something that feels just good enough because you are too scared to be vulnerable. You are suffocating yourself slowly, little by little, because it feels easier to hurt yourself than to risk letting others hurt you.”

“I’m not,” I say, but my voice doesn’t sound like my own; it sounds small, and scared.

I have to ground myself. I can’t let myself be sucked in.

I don’t even realize that I’ve reached for the pendant until she says:

“It’s pretty. Your necklace, I mean.”

I tug my hand away. Much too quickly to be inconspicuous.

“Does it make you feel safe?” she asks.

“It’s just a necklace,” I say. Too fast, and too high-pitched.