Элисон Скотч - The Song Remains the Same

“And me? At thirteen, you think I was better prepared for it?” Nell asks sincerely.

“You?” Rory almost laughs. “Nelly, no one is prepared for it. That’s the whole problem. That’s why everything is so screwed up in the first place.”

I ’m meeting an old friend today, hoping she might be able to help me find some answers,” I say to Liv, the next Tuesday. She looks tired, less shiny than usual, and I wonder whom she shares her own problems with. We are perched on my new red couch, side by side, bodies angled toward each other’s, which is both comfortable and still slightly awkward, the intimacy of sharing the space.

“Answers to what?”

“What do you mean, ‘answers to what’? Answers to everything.”

“This friend has them?” I can’t tell if she’s pushing me or just generally cranky.

“Are you cranky?”

“No.” She half-smiles.

“Tired?”

“Let’s keep this about you. When you say ‘answers,’ it seems almost too simplistic that your friend might have them.”

“Isn’t that what this whole pursuit is about?” I say, testily. “Getting my goddamn answers.”

“Of course.” She nods. “I only meant that some of them need to come from you, not anyone else. Your friend, for example, can’t tell you how to feel about your miscarriage and what that meant for your relationship with Peter.”

“I take it, through your therapist terminology, that you think it might actually be time to discuss the miscarriage with Peter.”

“There is no therapist terminology involved,” she says. “Only that it’s something to consider. Something that perhaps you might want to discuss with me first before moving on to him.”

“I have considered it,” I say. “And I’ve decided that even the best relationships have their secrets. That maybe there is something to be said for some mystery, for not discussing everything.”

“There may indeed be something to be said for it, though I can’t help but think you’re now mixing up your parents’ relationship with your own.”

I firm my jaw. “Tell me why you’re cranky, and I’ll keep talking.”

“I do not negotiate with terrorists,” she says, but I don’t blink. “Fine,” she exhales. “My dog, Watson, he was sick last night, and I spent most of it at the vet’s. That’s all. He’s fine now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “You could have rescheduled.”

“I’m not a rescheduler, don’t like missing things I’ve committed to.” I nod because the old me didn’t seem like she broke her commitments, either. “So back to your parents.”

“Back to my parents.” I stand to get myself some water. “I wasn’t specifically referring to them, no, but since you raised it, then, well, yes.”

“So your argument is that having secrets can do a relationship good, but—correct me if I’m wrong—what good came out of their own secrets?”

“Ask again later.” I set my glass down on the coffee table and lower myself back to the couch. She, intentionally or not, shifts an inch farther away. “That’s the million-dollar question.”

“Nell, I’m urging you to take this a little more seriously.” She places her notes down beside her as if to demonstrate that she is truly serious now.

“I couldn’t be taking it more seriously!” I say. “How could I be taking this more seriously if I tried?”

“Part of my job—and yours—is to occasionally tap into places that might not want to be tapped into. I’ve noticed that one thing you are very good at is blocking out something that you may not want to address.”

“Well, of course I block out what I don’t want to address! Why wouldn’t I? In your psychological view, couldn’t you argue that, in fact, this entire thing ”—I swirl my arms here and inadvertently knock her notes to the floor—“is an effort to block out what I don’t want to address?” I feel my pulse in my neck, instantly irritated at how easily she has broken this down, how simple a mark she has made me out to be. If she senses my sarcasm, she ignores it.

“Nell, look. I know you’re working hard here, and I know that you’re frustrated not to be making more progress. I’m only here to guide you, to suggest an opinion that may or may not be helpful.” She pauses, waiting for me to reel myself back in. “How about art?”

“How about it?”

“You’ve mentioned that you loved to paint, so how about art therapy? There are very conclusive studies that demonstrate how it can help in situations like yours.”

I shake my head. “I never said that I loved to paint. I said that my father always thought I could be great, like him. There’s a difference. What I’ve been told I always loved was music.”

She digests this, chewing on her lower lip, which must be an old habit from childhood, not one she could shed once she got her Ph.D.

“Well, this certainly leads to a different—albeit equally important—question,” she says finally. “We’ve spoken an awful lot about your father, much more so than about Peter or your marriage or any of the issues that, per your request, we can let rest for today. But your dad—in some ways, you seem more consumed with uncovering his past than your own.”

“Isn’t our time up yet?” I deadpan, and she just stares. “Okay, the truth is that I feel like the more I know about my dad, the more unanswered questions I have. And yes, I suppose I dwell on that. A lot. But so what? Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

“It’s part of what I’m here for, yes,” she concedes, and I think aha because there’s something truly satisfying about proving your therapist wrong. It’s the small victories these days. “But mostly what I’m here for is to help you figure out who you are now, not just who you were then.”

“Look,” I say flatly. “My dad left us, which must have been devastating. By all accounts it was devastating. And now, I can’t even remember that devastation. Why can’t I try to find out about it?”

“You are welcome to find out about it,” she says, finally reaching down, taking a breath, and retrieving her scattered notes from the floor. “But this ‘devastation,’ as you put it, has defined so much of how you are. Even in the absence of it! What’s wrong with that picture?”

“Ask my dad—he was the artist.”

“Nell,” she says, and I can tell she’s losing her patience.

“Fine.” I sulk. “Well, I was consumed with him once, and now I’m consumed with him all over again. Maybe this just proves that people don’t change.”

I gesture to the couch, as if to say, I tried! I got this enormous cherry tomato couch, but here I am, right back on the gerbil wheel, my father’s absence defining me in the same way that it always did.

“No,” she says, straightening her papers on her lap, then meeting my eyes. “People change. And you know that. It’s the not wanting to do the work involved that makes us complacent, and it’s that complacency that renders us right back where we started.”

Sam cuts out of work early that afternoon and meets me in front of Tina Marquis’s building in midtown. I’m early, so I have the cab drop me five blocks north when we pass a boutique that looks too hip for the old me. The new me, the one that I’d just sworn to Liv is nothing more than an ephemeral fabrication, thinks, Well, screw that. If anyone can change, it’s me. So I shove ten dollars at my driver and stride into the store, scooping up a too-purple V-neck and an odd little beret that the salesgirl swears shaves five years off my age before she shyly tells me that she knows who I am and admires how I’m making myself over. I don’t dwell on her intimation that I’ve actually reached an age that needs shaving off or that I did, indeed, need a makeover. Instead I assess myself in the mirror and see that the new, fabulous me very much approves. Who the hell knows if people can change?