Page 10 of Stay Away from Him
Amelia:
So why are you coming to me , Thomas?
[pause]
Thomas:
I’m not sure what you’re asking.
Amelia:
What’s unclear?
Thomas:
It’s two questions in one.
Amelia:
Is it?
Thomas:
Sure it is. Number one, why am I in therapy?
Why do I want to talk to someone at all?
Number two, why, out of all the therapists I could have gone to, did I choose you?
My best friend from college, former girlfriend, next-door neighbor, godmother to my two daughters…
Should I go on? Why am I insisting on talking to someone I’ve got history with?
Amelia:
Okay. Two questions, then.
Thomas:
So which one were you asking?
Amelia:
Both, maybe?
Thomas:
And which one should I answer first?
Amelia:
Client’s choice.
Thomas:
Maybe the why-you question is the easier one to answer.
Amelia:
And?
Thomas:
I don’t know. I guess it’s just, I don’t really trust anyone else.
Amelia:
Counselors have a code. Confidentiality. You could see anyone in the whole city, the whole world , any therapist, and they’d have to keep whatever you tell them to themselves.
Thomas:
I know that. But also, would they really observe confidentiality?
Everybody’s gossiping about me. I’m in the papers, in the news.
When I step out my door, I’ve got cameras in my face, people shouting questions at me.
I drive around town, and people follow me.
In the grocery store, people walk up and tell me that I’m evil—or that they think I’m innocent.
Everyone’s got an opinion about me. Everyone’s talking.
Amelia:
And? How does that pertain to whether a therapist would keep your sessions confidential?
Thomas:
You mean to tell me a therapist wouldn’t at least be tempted to tell someone that they’re treating the guy who’s been in the news every night for the past three weeks running?
Maybe he wouldn’t tell the press, but he’d tell his wife.
Or a friend, over drinks. The guy he plays racquetball with.
Something to brag about—and then the person listening presses him for details.
Maybe he protests at first, he can’t, he’s a professional, like you’ve been saying.
But then he lets something slip. Just to keep his audience interested.
And then that person tells a friend, and that friend tells another friend, and maybe that friend puts it on social media, and somehow it ends up in the news.
Amelia:
You really think that would happen?
Thomas:
Maybe not. But it’s what I’m imagining.
I can’t stop. With anyone else—anyone but you—it would be what I’m thinking about the whole session long.
Checking what I say. Holding back. And I can’t do that.
It’s too important, what’s happening right now.
This trial, preparing for it. It’s my whole life on the line.
My kids’ future. I have to stay sharp right now.
I can’t fall apart. What we’re doing here—I just, I need this.
I need to talk to someone if I’m going to keep it together.
Amelia:
Maybe that brings us to the other half of the question. Why are you in therapy, period?
[pause]
Thomas:
I don’t know if I can…
[pause]
Amelia:
Thomas? Don’t know if you can what?
Thomas:
[sniffs]
[rustling of tissue paper]
[sound of nose blowing]
[throat clearing]
Amelia:
Go on. You can tell me.
Thomas:
I’m just… I’m not doing great, Amelia.
[pause]
Amelia:
Tell me about “not great.” What does that look like? What does it feel like?
Thomas:
God, I don’t even know where to start.
Amelia:
Start anywhere.
Thomas:
Well, my wife is dead, for one thing. Maybe. Probably. I don’t even know for sure. I haven’t seen her body.
Amelia:
That’s called ambiguous grief . When a person feels grief, but it’s not entirely clear what they should be grieving. Not clear what they’ve lost. It’s incredibly difficult.
Thomas:
That’s right. I’m hollowed out, sad and angry and I can’t even think sometimes—but also, I have no idea what it’s all about.
What I’m even feeling all of this for . Was Rose murdered?
Did she kill herself? Did she go on a walk and fall into the river and drown?
Did she leave me, leave us ? I don’t know.
And the not knowing—it’s as bad as the grieving.
Amelia:
Okay. This is good. What else?
Thomas:
Well, in the middle of all this…this ambiguous grief , as you call it, the world has decided that I’m to blame. That I killed her.
Amelia:
Not the whole world, Thomas. Your friends believe in your innocence. Your daughters. Me.
Thomas:
Sure, but a good portion of the world, they think I’m a killer.
You have any idea how that feels? My wife, the woman I love, the girl I fell in love with all those years ago—you remember, don’t you, how in love we were?
Then we get married, and we make a life together, we have these beautiful girls, and the woman I fell in love with becomes the mother of the children I love more than life itself.
Rose, my beautiful Rose, she’s gone. She’s the one person who I most want to find, the one face in all the billions of faces in the world that I’m completely desperate to see, who I’d be completely relieved to see.
And some detective, some county prosecutor, some journalists get it into their heads that I killed her?
That I snuffed the life out of her? That I’m capable of doing that to someone I love? I can’t even put words to it.
Amelia:
That sounds incredibly difficult.
Thomas:
And then you add the girls to it.
Think of it—two girls, a fourteen-year-old and a twelve-year-old.
What they must be going through. Losing a mother, that’s trauma enough.
But then to also see their father accused of killing her?
What’s worst of all, what absolutely kills me, is that I can’t protect them from any of it.
I can’t protect them from what people are saying, what they think I did.
It’s in their heads, even if they don’t believe it.
Amelia:
You’re a good dad, Thomas. The girls have exactly what they need in you.
Thomas:
Do they, though? I swear, sometimes it’s all so much, I feel like it’s literally going to break me in half.
I go to bed some nights thinking this is it, that I’ll just die in my sleep—as if a person could die from stress and sadness.
And maybe a person could. But then every morning I wake up, still alive, and I have to go through it all over again. It’s all just…
[pause]
[muffled crying]
Thomas:
I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. You have to help me.