‘I believe you’ve been through a difficult period.’
‘Obviously!’ I try to smile. ‘Or I wouldn’t be here.’
‘I mean in here.’
‘Well, the food is pretty crap!’
He doesn’t smile. ‘Where are you now? Almost halfway?’
Does he really not know that I am the same person he gave his card to the day before I was forced to come here? He doesn’t look me directly in the eye. Something shifty about that, or awkward, or just shy.
‘Congratulations on your sobriety to date. That’s quite an achievement.’
‘I didn’t exactly have a choice.’
He stays looking at his notes. ‘What do you mean, “exactly”？’
‘I was threatened with my son being taken away from me if I didn’t come here. And now I’m here, they’ve taken him away anyway.’
‘Who are “they”， Sonya?’
I really don’t want to answer any question this man asks me about my son. He has seen the worst of me. I cast my mind back to that moment in the pizza place: I was jittery and pissed and without boundaries and he could see that Tommy wasn’t in safe hands.
‘Are you pretending not to know who I am?’ I can’t help myself.
He shifts in his seat, a red flush creeping under his collar. ‘I didn’t think it would help to make reference to that time, Sonya. I’m just as surprised as you are that you’re now sitting in front of me here. Surprised and also, I guess, relieved for you and for the boy.’ He almost mumbles the words. He looks up, though still not directly at me.
‘That girl that works in that place is such a little bitch.’
He fixes his collar, pulling it high as he says, ‘Of course, if it makes you uncomfortable, we can arrange for you to see someone else.’
I think back to how kind he was to Tommy, and how he didn’t feel the need to quiz me or patronise me, like that other asshole. He paid for our pizzas, for Christ’s sake.
‘I’m not sure, to be honest.’
‘That’s ok. You can take some time to decide before your next session.’
A silence descends. My heart speeds. Seeing this man here, this fragment from my past, means there can be no denial now. I was a pisshead mother and I deserve exactly what has befallen me. Sonya, you’re not playing a part now. This is real. I still don’t know how this separation, which, ok, maybe is my just punishment, is in Tommy’s best interests. The familiar torturous questions swirl: Who’s minding him? Are they being good to him? Can they understand his quirky little ways? Is he managing to eat anything? Is he able to sleep without our bedtime stories, without Herbie? And Herbie? I can’t seem to follow that line of thought any further. I’m terrified of what my father might have done with Herbie, who is, after all, only a dog.
‘Would you like to talk to me a little about the feelings this enforced separation is bringing up in you?’
Something about him tells me that he’s not a father. He has an aura of someone who spends a lot of time alone, a self-regard, a self-containment, an air of selfishness. I wonder how old he is. Older than me, for sure – mid-forties? Well preserved, toned. I wonder how long he’s been in recovery, and how bad he was before. He seems so upright, so uptight, so repressed, so absolutely sober in every sense of the word that I have a hard time imagining him off his head. How I’d like to see him out of control; see his perfectly coiffed hair all over the place. I surprise myself with this thought.
‘Would you like to finish our session now, Sonya?’
Would I? I like how he says my name, the way he puts the emphasis on the second syllable, like a character from a Chekhov play, like how Tommy says it. Yaya. I am brimming with my name, its music, its latent possibilities. Sonya.
‘No, sorry, just feeling a bit hemmed-in in here.’
He rubs the backs of his fingers against his stubble, a sound like sandpaper scratching. Shoulders wide and solid, forehead high and domed, brain helmeted. He looks intelligent, except for the preppy clothes. I imagine him in tweed. Much more satisfactory.
‘Would you like to go into the grounds for a walk, get some air?’ he says.
I nod. We walk down the grim corridor to the front door. The receptionist glances up for a beat, sees me looking at her, then buries herself back into her dark Secret, her cheeks flushing. Maybe one of the twelve-step devotees told her she shouldn’t be reading that blasphemous trash. I want to shout at her to stop looking for answers inside the pages of some stupid book written by some equally stupid fuck.