As I’ve said—though not, of course, to Nora—there’s no way I’m going to be a therapist, but as for what I’ll be instead, I’m still narrowing it down. There’s a lot you can do when you can use one arm, one hand, when you control your Voice and your thoughts, when you can study and read and type. When you are smart and curious. When you have learned forbearance and acceptance and generosity of spirit the hardest of ways. My skies may not be the limit, but they are less clouded than they seem.
Whereas Apple’s are flat-out stormy. She’s nothing but weepy today. I feel bad that she feels bad. I feel worse that because she feels bad, she’s talking in circles and not about anything useful.
“Daddy worried these last years. Or, I don’t know, maybe he was worried all along. But especially at the end. I want to do what he wanted me to do. I just don’t know how.”
“You’re not a mind reader.” Nor, at the moment, is Nora, who’s not sure what Apple’s talking about but says all the right things anyway. “It’s just as hard for children to know how to make their parents happy as it is for parents to know how to make their children happy.”
I exchange a secret smile with my mother. We do read each other’s minds most of the time. We do share happiness and unhappiness like we’re splitting a sandwich.
“He had a good heart, my dad.” Apple nods, sniffles, nods. “Lots of people couldn’t see it—wouldn’t see it—but it’s true. Maybe he didn’t always do the right thing all the way, but he did the right thing some of the way, when he could, and the truth is that’s more than most people do.”
“It’s hard.” Nora might mean doing the right thing all the way. Or she might mean having a father who split these particular hairs. Or she might mean honoring that father now that he’s gone.
But Apple isn’t really listening anyway. “Dad was a man who saw the value of compromise. Doing things halfway gets a bad rap, but a lot of the time it’s better than not doing them at all. When it’s the most you can expect, you’ll be happiest if you learn to settle for it.”
I imagine Apple’s version of settling looks different from ours. Still, this strikes me as an unusually Bourne-like sensibility.
* * *
We are closing up. Nora’s filed her patient notes and progress reports, powered off her computer. Pastor Jeff left ten minutes ago, so she turns the lights off and the heat down. We are on the front stoop at the top of the ramp, and she’s got her key in the lock when there’s a sound.
It’s a throat clearing. Then a voice. “Nora?”
She turns, surprised. Takes him in, more surprised still.
“Dr. Mitchell,” the voice amends.
She turns back to the door and thunks the dead bolt into place. “I’m not a doctor.”
“I know I’m not on the schedule, but I wonder … is there any chance you have time for one more today?”
She does not say she’s been here nine hours already. She does not say she is due at the bar in twenty minutes. She does not say anything. So he keeps talking.
“I do realize it’s a lot to ask, but I … well, I could really use someone to talk to for a few minutes.”
Nathan Templeton looks at her, fully, right into her eyes. She looks right back. Their gazes are hard—not hard like cold, hard like challenging, thorough. I feel like Monday. I cannot read either of their expressions （too complicated） or emotions （too many）， but neither of them is shying away from whatever this is.
“I’m just … well, to be honest, I’m having a rough time,” he says. And when she still doesn’t reply, “I can make an appointment for next week or next month or whenever you have an opening, of course. I just thought I’d take a shot that maybe you had time right now. It’s a pretty small town after all.” Big, conspiratorial grin. “This is one of the good things about small-town living, right? I figured how many people in a town this size could possibly need a therapy appointment on any given day?”
Her jaw clenches, and the back of her neck flushes. It’s the certainty of his presumption that he’ll still be here “next month or whenever.” It’s his blindness to just how much therapy the people of our little town need—and why. It’s that she has a second job to get to, which he knows but which does not occur to him anyway. When she opens the office back up, turns the lights back on, it’s to tell him no, not on the street where it might seem flippant or even punch-pulling but in a clinical setting where it will be clear who’s in charge. She motions him onto the orange sofa, where he sits while she leans against the front of her desk and regards him.