Page 7 of Into the Deep Blue
An imaginary cat sits on my chest. Its name is how do I get out of Jaden’s party next weekend? It’s sitting on top of another cat called what’s on Mom’s camera? And they’re balancing on the bottom cat, named 101 problems with Monterey. The weight keeps growing. You know what they say, two cats are company, three are . . .
“A catastrophe,”
imaginary Nick says.
Sometimes I talk to him in my head. Imaginary Nick can be funny.
Why haven’t I ever invited him out? There are a few worstcase scenarios:
1. He says no.
2. He stops hanging out with me to avoid future lame party invites.
3. May. In her thousand disastrous forms. I can already hear her next in-my-underwear story, this time, featuring Nick.
Inviting him out could ruin our perfect friendship bubble. Everything inside me is screaming bail! Abort! I need to kick a cat off my chest.
I shouldn’t be thinking about this as I sit here in group, and when I look at Nick sitting across from me, I wonder if it shows. He was late as usual, but tonight so is Grace. The second he taps his watch, the door flies open, and Grace bustles through.
“Sorry everyone, but it’s been one of those days.”
She collapses in her chair and rummages through her bag for another minute before she spots what she’s looking for—her notebook, which is on the floor in front of her.
“You want to talk about it, Grace?”
Nick smiles.
“I appreciate that, but it was just a bad traffic day,”
she says, refocusing.
“Why don’t we begin with the last day you remember spending with your loved ones. What was the energy like? What details do you remember? ? Do you want to start us off?”
Everyone focuses on me.
“Yeah, sure.”
I’m always the default first pick, even though I never raise my hand, but it’s fine. It’s not like I can talk about this at home.
Dad made that pretty clear when he forwarded me the link to these meetings after a fellow paramedic sent it to him.
I think he saw it as a one-and-done solution the way a doctor prescribes meds, and they kick in twenty-four hours later. Grace gives me an encouraging nod as if she’s waiting for me to say something brilliant.
“Uhh, she was excited.”
Hardly brilliant.
Grace presses. “Why?”
“Touring with the military was like winning an Oscar for her.”
I cringe at my word choice.
“We were in Portland. She wanted to show me around PSU last summer, but she got a call from her agent, and we had to leave early. So, you know . . . ”
I shrug.
“It was okay.”
The day sucked. It was a million sticky degrees. We were a half hour late for the tour, couldn’t find anyone, and I spilled a jumbo-sized iced tea all over myself. All the while Mom kept checking her phone, so it was far from the memory-making day I had hoped it would be.
Grace’s plan works. My warm-up inspires Maddie to speak.
“My brother made the football team.”
Her voice is so faint I have to strain to hear.
“He was jumping across the house screaming, “In your face!”
It was so stupid. He worked out all summer so he would make it, and he did. Dad ordered pizza and wings to celebrate, but my brother wouldn’t even eat because he was on this crazy diet.” She smiles at the memory.
“So yeah, he was really happy.”
“And that’s a nice feeling to hang on to,”
Grace says.
“When you find your mind lingering on the sad, sometimes it helps to shift to a broader time frame to remember the good.”
After a few others share their stories, Grace turns to Nick.
“How about you, Nick?”
Nick shifts in his chair.
“How about me what?”
“What was your mom feeling? What’s the last thing you remember?”
He thinks for all of two seconds.
“She texted from the airport. She said, ‘Don’t fuck up the house.’”
There’s some nervous laughter from the group, but Grace isn’t fazed.
“That’s not really a feeling.”
Nick smirks.
“Okay. Then I guess she was suspicious that I’d fuck up the house.”
“Do you think she was happy?”
Nick takes her question as a personal challenge.
“I don’t know. How can anyone assume to know something like that?”
Grace thinks.
“It’s not always an assumption. There are indicators. Some people say it outright, and sometimes it’s intuition.”
“Yeah, but isn’t intuition just a form of projection? And asking rarely yields the truth. My intuition would say no, she wasn’t happy, but what the hell do I know? It could have been the happiest day of her life.”
“That’s interesting, Nick—”
He cuts her off.
“I mean, unless you’re asking a kid. Kids will tell you straight up. You ask anyone else if they’re happy, and you’ll get a tailored response.”
Grace absorbs this.
“Are you saying kids are the only ones who can be happy?”
“The only ones who can be honest about being happy.”
“Isn’t that kind of a jaded view? If you ask me if I’m happy, the answer would be yes, I am.”
Nick’s lips curl in a half-smile.
“Well, I call bullshit on that.”
The room falls quiet. Everyone watches the conversation volley between them with rapt attention. It’s like the rest of us aren’t even here anymore.
“Why?” she asks.
“For one, you’re stuck listening to these messed up—no offense—stories, which have got to leave some kind of residual weight, so I find it hard to believe you leave these meetings and walk out into the world feeling happy.”
Grace is quiet for a minute.
“But your logic is flawed. What about surgeons, firefighters, teachers, students? No one escapes . . . life. With that logic, you’re saying people are incapable of happiness.”
Nick sits back in his chair.
“Unless you’re under the age of ten.”
“Kids are bullied in school every day, so why exclude them?”
Now, he’s silent. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“I don’t know. I think happiness is an illusion. It’s something manufactured in books and movies, and everyone buys into this idea that it’s an attainable life goal, but it’s all pain management, isn’t it?”
He gestures to me.
“Is happiness going to a war zone or is that escapism? Is it playing football or is that an affirmation of a need to belong? I mean, isn’t happiness essentially those brief, fleeting moments when life isn’t shit?”
“It doesn’t last,”
Grace says.
“It doesn’t last.”
“So, happiness is not a sustainable emotion.”
“Right. I don’t think so,”
Nick says.
“What about love? Is it sustainable?”
“Hard pass.”
“No, really,”
Grace addresses the group with a new fire behind her eyes.
“Our emotions appear and fade like a rainbow after a storm. You can’t force a rainbow to stay. It fades. A rainbow is not sustainable. Emotions are not sustainable. Sometimes, we might feel happy for a month, a week, or ten seconds, when one small thing makes us smile, but the emotion inevitably fades. The same is true for grief and anger. We exist in a revolving door of feelings, and while your grief will never truly disappear, it will give way to something else. Sadness is not sustainable.”
“Unless you’re literally on antidepressants,”
Maddie pipes up.
Nick flashes me a smile. The epic crescendo Grace proudly built deflates in a second, and she couldn’t be more done with this session.
“This week when you’re out in the world, be mindful of the small things that impact your emotions. Your emotional triggers, okay?”
Everyone nods. I predict none of us will do this.
“See you all next time. Nick, can you hang back for a minute?”
Grace catches him halfway out the door, and his shoulders slump as he steps back into the room. Then she joins the rest of the group at the snack table.
I make my way to his side. He’s quiet, staring at the others, as if he can will them to leave.
“Want a coffee?” I ask.
“No.”
“Cookie?”
He shoots me a look.
“What do you think she wants?”
“To murder you?”
That wins me a tiny smile.
Maddie comes over, cradling a cup of tea in her hands.
“Hey, that was really smart, what you said.”
Nick isn’t even looking at her. He’s impatiently watching Grace. “Thanks.”
“Maybe we can all hang out sometime.”
“Uh-huh, maybe.”
It’s a total brush-off. I’m so mortified, I blurt out.
“That’s a great idea! Text me, and I’ll set something up.”
Maddie hands me her phone, and I punch in my number, but deep down, I know she’ll never use it.
“Sure. Thanks,”
she says when a text pings on her phone.
“That’s my mom. See you later.”
She waves and leaves.
I whack Nick in the chest, and he turns to me, clueless. “What?”
“She reached out to you!”
“Yeah, and I talked to her. I thought that’s what you wanted me to do?”
I shake my head, exasperated. The room empties, and Grace heads our way, carrying a bag of leftover snacks.
“Come on, take a walk with me.”
Nick casts a wary glance my way. Grace flicks off the lights, and we walk down the long corridor of the community center. The shrieks of children’s voices fill the halls where swimming lessons are underway. She still hasn’t said anything, and Nick can’t take the silence a second longer.
“Let me guess, you’re kicking me out?”
A thread of worry laces through his bravado. He needs this group even if he’d never admit it.
Grace side-eyes him.
“Why would I do that? You’re the only reason half these kids keep coming back.”
He thinks about this.
“Damn. I’m the reality show drama.”
“Why don’t we go with intellectual provocateur?”
It’s a compliment, but Nick is so self-effacing, he’s immune to it.
“So, what? You want to stage a fight for the next session?”
“Not exactly.”
She stops to face him.
“I was selected to be a guest editor for a national psych magazine. It’s a special edition that’s published yearly, and it’s always a big draw, as far as psych magazines go.”
Nick glances at me as if I might know where this is headed.
“Sounds fancy,” I say.
“Congratulations,” he adds.
“We’ve talked about your writing in sessions before, and I’d like you to consider submitting a piece for publication.”
He furrows his brow.
“A piece on what?”
“Whatever you want. Happiness, death, love. You seem to have strong feelings about . . . feelings.”
Nick zones out, focusing on a distant spot on the floor. She’s throwing him this incredible lifeline of opportunity, and he’s just bobbing in the ocean.
I nudge his arm, snapping him out of it.
“It would be good for your writing portfolio.”
“In a psych magazine?”
“In a national psych magazine,”
Grace corrects.
“Published is published, right?”
We trail behind Grace when Sarah, my private-lesson student, springs out from around a corner, swimming goggles around her neck.
“! It’s !”
she shouts. Her mom is a few steps behind, talking to another parent. I wave as we pass by.
Grace pushes open the front door. A blanket of fog hangs over the parking lot, making the streetlights glow like hazy fireflies.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, Nick, but this could work out nicely for you,”
she says as we walk down the stairs.
He eyes her, doubtful.
“You mean like a happy ending?”
“A step toward one.”
The fog is so dense I can’t see my car. Once we’re on the sidewalk, I press the lock button on the key fob to make the lights flash.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
Nick asks her.
Grace tilts her head.
“You don’t think I’m nice to you?”
“I thought you thought I was an asshole.”
A curious smile spreads across her lips.
“Why would you think that?”
“Ugh, don’t go all psych on me, Grace.”
“No, really,”
she says, eyeing him with interest.
“You gave an intriguing speech on projection tonight, so maybe you think you’re an asshole.”
Nick rocks back on his feet.
“I’ll email you the submission details. You don’t have to decide right now, but soon. Have a great night,”
she calls out over her shoulder.
“Hey, Grace.”
She turns back. “Thanks.”
She gives us a wave and heads down the sidewalk.
“Drive safely!”
Nick grabs his bike, and we cross the parking lot toward my car. Out of the blue, he asks.
“Do you think I’m an asshole?”
I smile. I could answer, but don’t. I just walk ahead and let his question disappear in the fog behind me.