Seeing Julia (10 page)

The pain splashes everywhere inside of me, like paint violently thrown at a wall.
Tortured modern artwork, this is me. Someone interpret her, quick.

I voice my silent soliloquy, the one only I can hear.
He left for two weeks. No word. No phone calls. Nothing. I moved in with Kimberley again. I was eight months pregnant, despondent, broken, and disillusioned.

The heartbreak for all of that traverses through me at lightning speed calling up pain I haven’t allowed myself to feel for some time and performs a coupling with the all powerful grief. I practically implode right there in front of him with the pain that I must live with and carry. I stagger over to the window, look out, and see the nothingness. The minutes pass. I take shallow breaths and try to assemble some sort of control over the emotions raging inside. I turn back and discover my handsome doctor has this hopeful look, like a child’s, convinced there must be a happy ending to the story.
I almost feel sorry for him.

“Then, he came back. We had Reid. I like to think we worked it out.” I shrug my shoulders, perfecting nonchalance outward, while I quake inside. “Like I said, we weren’t perfect. He wasn’t Bobby and I wasn’t Elizabeth,” I say gently. “We were two broken people trying to make the best of a life as the two who were left behind.”

At my words, he looks bleak as if experiencing his first real heartbreak. I’ve pierced his life-is-good armor with my realism. This white knight struggles with the news that life is harsh. And, I already know it.

My recovery from this latest revelation is faster than his. He fumbles with his note pad, his writing pen and hastily glances at the window, trying to recover himself.
Are there answers for both of us there, doctor?
I slide into the chair across from him and adopt the shield of indifference and wait him out.

Silence again. One minute. Two. Three. Four.

He holds out his notebook and peruses his handwriting. “What do Evan’s parents want you to be?”

“They … they would surely like me to hand over Reid and never return.” I reward him with a cynical smile.

Dr. Bradley Stevenson just nods. “You’re Reid’s mother. In time, when you’re ready, you can establish the ground rules with them. You don’t have to do that, right now. They’ll always be his grandparents. There will be ties, connections because of Reid, but you’re your own person, Julia. And they’re grieving the loss of Evan, too; and, maybe not considering your feelings as much as they should.”

I clasp my hands together and attempt to control my irritation with the simple way he’s seeing these things. “Evan always denied their preference for Elizabeth over me, but it was there. It was easy to see. How they spoke of her all the time, when I was
right there
. I thought, maybe, after Reid was born, things would change, like they did for Evan and me. But they didn’t. Then, Evan … dies.” This conversation thread serves no purpose. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It all matters. But it takes time to work through it, for everyone to work through it. Paris for a couple of months might be good for you. Kimberley will be there; right?”

“Paris might be good for me,” I parrot back to him. “Kimberley’s running the Paris office there, right now. And, Christian and Stephanie are close by. They split their time between New York and Paris. They’ve always been there for me. All of them.”

“Friends are always good to lean on.”

He hesitates before adding, “But Julia, you’re perfectly capable of handling things; know this about yourself. You’ve been through more than most experience over a lifetime. Take your time to discover what you want; more importantly, what you need.”

“Wants. Needs. As if, there’s a difference.” He wanly smiles at my sarcasm.

“There’s a difference. What we need often has nothing to do with what we want. What do you need in your life, Julia?”

I struggle to find the right response. I should just make something up that sounds good, but the truth meets up with me. “I need someone … to see me.” A vague image of Bobby comes to mind and morphs into a clearer one of Jake Winston. I look over at him, study his face, and try to gauge his trustworthiness. “The real Julia, not the one everybody thinks they know, but the one I’ve always been inside, the one few people really see, besides Kimmy. Bobby.” I’m babbling like an overexcited teenager at a rock concert; I dig my nails into my palms to stop the soliloquy.
Why am I telling him all this?

“Did Evan
see
you, Julia?”

My answer sums up the whole session. “He wanted to.”

“You told me once you changed the color of your hair, your looks, even your name. Maybe, you need to start there. Show the world who you really are, by being who you really are.” He rewards me with this all-knowing look so similar to Kimberley’s; it’s uncanny.

The man is the personification of a Hallmark greeting card come to life; he believes in all he’s saying. It just emanates from him—this belief system in needs and wants and gods and angels and all the good in the world. I’ll be touched by his words and be saved.

But my own reality rushes in, a cruel reminder of the truth of this world, of this life I already know so well. This hoodoo voodoo greeting card script he adheres to is giving me a headache and stirring up too much of the pain I keep buried deep inside. Who I am? What I might need? Who gets those kinds of answers about life? Doesn’t everyone struggle to be seen?

“Show the world who you really are,” he says, again, breaking through my reverie.

“I’ll think about it.”

We spend what little time we have left talking about Reid, my support system, Kimberley in particular, and how I’m handling the dosage of my medication. At the end of our session, he hands me a business card with a referral to an American psychiatrist, who’s an acquaintance of his in Paris.

I’m almost home free, but guilt washes over me, like a rogue wave, it comes out of nowhere. I hesitate. He sees it.

“What is it?”

Oh God. Don’t say it. Just go.

“I have something I need to say. Something I should have told you sooner. It’s difficult.” I take a deep breath. “I was … well, let’s just say I wasn’t myself the night of Evan’s funeral.”

“Go on.” He says this in his now familiar, ever patient tone and assumes his clinical stance with me, at the ready to take more notes with his pen in mid-air.

I have his undivided attention. I smile in sympathy, when I see this.
Oh God. I’m going to disappoint him so much.

“Okay.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I let things get out of hand with … someone. The night of Evan’s funeral, at his wake, I was in the hotel suite with Evan’s best friend from Yale. I kissed him. He was there. And, holding him, felt like Evan. And, I needed to be held. And we had this … connection. I can’t explain it.”

I seek refuge at the doctor’s office window again just out of his direct line of sight and look out at the barren landscape.

“I can’t believe I kissed him,” I say in a low voice. “I’d just lost Evan ten days before. Drank enough alcohol and took enough pain killers to escape the grief for awhile. And, he was there and he made me … feel something. Alive again, I guess. Kimmy knows. She said it shows I’m living that I want to go on.” I turn around to face him. “What do you think it shows?”

“You’ve lost more loved ones than most, Julia.” His consolation reaches at me from the across the room. I’m undone by his kind words, but still ashamed and ready to do my penance. “You said it yourself. You needed to be held. He was there. No one controls the power of attraction.”

I look over at him. He looks calm, collected; a priest used to hearing such things from his sinners.

“No one controls the power of love,” he says.

“I didn’t say I was
attracted
to him. And, I certainly didn’t say I
love
him. I don’t even
know
him.”

“Love has nothing to do with knowing someone. And, everything to do with need.”

There’s that hoodoo voodoo Hallmark card schtick from him again. I avoid his direct gaze and make a point of looking at my watch. “Time’s up,” I say with a generous wave of my hand.

He finally nods in agreement.

Yes, indeed, time is certainly up.

We shake hands and I thank him for everything with one of my practiced winning smiles. I don’t think I fool him with my jubilant state. I think he sees right through me, but for some reason he’s willing to play along. Maybe, it’s because Kimberley greets us in the next room. And no one, not even Dr. Bradley Stevenson, is immune to the charms of Kimberley Powers.

I can see the effect she’s having on him in a matter of thirty seconds. Kimberley assures him she’ll take good care of me in Paris and promises she’ll make sure I continue my weekly sessions with his colleague. Dr. Stevenson gets this awestruck look on his face as he talks with her. The two exchange these evocative looks and business cards with a joint promise to keep in touch.

Is this in case Dr. Bradley Stevenson’s services are needed in my future? Or, because Kimberley wants his number and he wants hers? I avoid rolling my eyes at both of them, barely.

Intuitively, I know Kimberley could be swayed to take more than a passing interest in my psychiatrist, if she wasn’t involved with Gregoire Chantal. I tease her about this, as we make our way to the car.

And, she finally admits it by saying, “He’s incredibly good-looking. How do you manage to concentrate?”

“With difficulty,” I say, tossing my hair and mimicking the way she just did this to him.

We both laugh. It feels good to be normal, carefree, however temporary.

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