“That’s my dad,” I told Tina.
Tina stroked her chin like some sort of British detective puzzling over a clue. Then she made a noise, the sort of hmmm! you make when someone has a good point, a point you’d never considered before.
I stepped up alongside Tina and looked again at the picture, at my father’s lips parted in a laugh while the rest of us wore our polite picture smiles. If you had never met my father, you might imagine from his expression that he produced a booming laugh from deep within his low-hanging Buddha belly. My father appeared beefier in pictures than he was—in person he was tall and pear-shaped, with a girlish giggle, an impish heeheehee that he seemed to serve on his tongue, the sort of laugh that made everyone else laugh too.
“And that’s my ex-husband,” I said, indicating CJ.
Tina seized the photo in both hands and brought it close to her face, examining every hair in CJ’s red beard. “For how long?”
CJ and I had sneaked around for years, but our marriage had lasted far less. “Not long,” I said with a short laugh.
Tina turned the picture around and showed it to me as though it were my first time seeing it. “I mean, no wonder. Look what a knockout you are.”
I blushed, wondering if I was still a knockout.
Tina set the picture back on the mahogany chest. “But your posture.” She copied me by rounding her shoulders. “I hunch like that too when I’m depressed.”
I felt like she’d dumped a bucket of ice water over my head. Immediately sobered, I saw Tina clear-eyed, the way my mother had all along. Well, therapists need clients, don’t they? That’s how they earn their living. How pitiful of me to think she had stopped by for any other reason than to fish, to try and get me to open up and realize that I needed her help.
“That picture was taken after a long day,” I said defensively. “Partly I was just tired.” Tina was reading too much into things, looking for some kind of psychological underpinning in places where, yes, it was, but only coincidentally.
Tina pursed her lips and nodded. She wouldn’t argue with me, but she didn’t believe me either. “What’s the rest?”
“Huh?”
“You said partly. What else is there?”
“I wish you’d knock it off,” I said, to my own absolute shock. I never spoke to people like that. I hated to hurt people’s feelings, to make anyone feel bad even when they deserved to feel bad. I started to apologize, but Tina shook her head vehemently. No. No. No.
“I’m the one who should be apologizing. You are so right. Frances is always warning me not to do this to people. Analyze their every breath when I don’t have all the information. Plus, who wants to feel like they’re being studied? It’s annoying. I’m annoying.” She could laugh because she knew it wasn’t true. Still, I was amazed that she’d taken my outburst in stride. It wasn’t like I had never been critical of someone, but I was used to seeing that person crumple in agony and realizing it just wasn’t worth it to be so honest. People were too easily destroyed.
“It’s just,” Tina continued, “I’m studying this stuff, you know? Why people are the way they are and how I can help them, and it’s like I’ve seen the light, or I’m seeing it, at least, and it’s helped me so much, and I want to help everyone around me too.”
Allen came into the room then, carrying a place mat, napkin, fork, and knife. He went about setting a place for Tina at the head of the table. “She doesn’t need a fork and knife for a sandwich,” I snapped at him. I knew he knew she didn’t, that he was only doting on her, and I wanted him to feel as stupid as I did for thinking Tina was here for any reason other than to psychoanalyze my mind. I walked over and collected the silverware, and that’s when I realized—he had set down the crude portrait he’d drawn of me as the place mat.
“You are in big trouble,” I hissed.
“I couldn’t find the place mats!” Allen cried. He sounded sincere, but I was too mortified to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Here, I’ll turn it over if it bothers you so—”
I snatched the drawing off the table and tore it to shreds, right in front of Allen’s veined, anemic face. He screamed like I used to, right before the nurse stuck the rubber bite block between my lips. “I hate you!” he cried. “I hate you so much!”
“Good!” I shouted.
Allen started to sob. “I’m telling my dad! He hates you too! Everyone hates you! Grandpop hated you!”