Anna North - The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

“Okay, I guess,” I said.

He nodded. I thought he would be a good game-show host, because his face would never give away whether you were on the right track or not. Then he put his notepad down and leaned toward me.

“You know,” he said, “I see a lot of men in my practice, and one thing we really have trouble with is expressing our feelings. We tend to feel like we have to be strong and keep everything inside, because that’s how we were raised — that’s how our dads were. But it’s not the only way to be.”

I didn’t know what he was getting at, but I nodded anyway. I didn’t want him to think I was stupid.

“The truth is, there are lots of different ways to be strong. We can be strong in the old way, the never-talking-about-our-feelings way, and that has certain advantages. In the short term, it might be easier. Or we can recognize that another way to be strong is asking for help when we need it and letting people in a little, even if it’s scary. More often than not, if we can learn to do that, we feel even better about ourselves and more able to take care of the people who need us than we did when we were trying to be strong and silent. Does that make sense?”

I was thinking about my dad. I wouldn’t call him strong and silent — he laughed a lot, and sometimes he yelled, but he certainly didn’t talk much about his feelings. I thought if he were sitting on the therapist’s couch, he’d probably say he wasn’t keeping anything inside. He’d say if he was ever feeling something important, he’d be sure to let somebody know. And really, I didn’t think he’d been hiding a lot of complicated stuff all those years we were growing up, when he’d come home whistling from his job at the Grain Board, eat his dinner, have a beer, and go to bed. He always said we were a lot alike, he and I, and mostly I agreed with him.

“I guess,” I said.

I knew that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but he smiled anyway. He would’ve been good at poker too.

“Look,” he said. “Let’s try a little exercise. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it again.”

“Okay,” I said.

I was expecting inkblots or word association or something, like on TV, but instead he just told me, “Try to describe, in as much detail as you can, a time when you felt helpless.”

I thought he was trying to get me to talk about the accident or the hospital, but “helpless” wasn’t the right word for what I’d felt. When I was at the hospital I had so much help — help eating and help falling asleep and help going to the bathroom — so much help all the time that I barely had to feel anything at all. And now I didn’t feel helpless when I sat in front of the computer at four a.m., clicking and clicking like the next website would have answers written on it. Maybe it was because I’d been thinking about Sophie so much lately, but when I thought about helpless, I thought about the last time I saw her.

It was December, the end of the first semester of our junior year. I’d been seeing Sophie for a month while I was still dating CeCe, and Sophie never asked about it or acted like she even cared. I cared, though. Before when I cheated on CeCe I could forget about it quickly — if she ever called me on it I would’ve actually had trouble remembering. But Sophie was under my skin — I could smell her room on me even after I showered, and I could tell CeCe was suspicious. She’d never asked so many questions about where I was or asked me so often if I loved her. She was worried in a way she’d never been before, when I stayed out late or said I had to practice so I could go off and be with another girl. I felt guilty every time I looked at her, and also confused. She and I made sense together — she was fun, she was pretty, my parents liked her. Before the Sophie thing, she’d been jealous enough to show she cared but chill enough to let me do what I wanted. But I couldn’t get back to feeling about her the way I did before I met Sophie, the way my heart used to race when I looked at her or touched the back of her neck.

Finally I decided I wanted Sophie to be my real girlfriend. Once I made the decision I knew it was right. I practically ran across town to her apartment so I could tell her. I knew something was wrong as soon as I got there, because she was cleaning. She had a giant trash bag on the floor and she’d cleaned off the desk and half the bed already.

“I’ve never seen you clean before,” I said.

“I’m moving out,” she said. “I got a job.”

My stomach fell. “What kind of job?”

“It’s a fellowship in New York. For young directors. They give you some money and train you to make better movies.”

“What about your classes?” I asked. “Are you going to skip next semester?”

It wasn’t what I wanted to say but it was the easiest question I could come up with.

“I guess I’ll apply for leave or something,” she said. She didn’t seem to have thought about it.

“For how long?” I asked. “When are you coming back?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“Well, you have to come back in the fall, right? So you can re-enroll?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess so. Probably.”

That was when I knew I was going to lose her. When she was in New York making movies, why would she come back here where people made fun of her and guys shaved her head? I was sad and pissed off, and I let myself get mean.

“You’re going to get eaten alive there, you know,” I said. “What’s the biggest city you’ve been to? Des Moines?”

“I’ve never been to Des Moines,” she said.

“See? You’ve never been anywhere and you think you can just go to New York and everything will be fine?”

She looked confused and — the first time I’d ever seen it — hurt.

“Why are you talking to me like this?” she asked.

I felt bad that I’d hurt her, but I was still mad.

“I just want you to think through this before you rush into it. You can’t just move across the country without thinking about how it’s going to affect you.” I couldn’t stop myself from adding, “Or me.”

“You have a girlfriend,” she said.

I’d always liked her plain way of talking, like everything was simple and obvious. Now it made me feel like an idiot.

“So this is it?” I asked her. “I’m never going to see you again?”

She looked really upset then, and I couldn’t tell if she was sad to be going or if I was just bothering her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We might see each other. How do I know?”

I couldn’t stop. “And you’re not going to miss me at all?”

She sat in the clean space on the bed, wrapped her arms around her knees. “Why are you asking me this stuff? I thought you liked how things were.”

“Well, maybe I wanted more,” I said. “Did you ever think about that?”

She looked up at me then, and now her face was different. She looked like I’d suggested she jump off the roof.

“What did you want?” she asked. “Did you want me to be your girlfriend?”

Her voice wasn’t nice, but I wasn’t giving up.

“Yes,” I said. “I want you to be my girlfriend.”

I thought she might change her mind then, that once I’d made the offer she’d decide to stay. Part of me thought she might be leaving because of me, because she was in love with me and I wasn’t giving her what she wanted. I knew I was the only one who’d used the word “love,” but I also knew she’d stalked me for three months, and I didn’t believe she could be done with me so fast. I thought a lot of myself then; nowadays it’s hard to remember why.

“And then what?” she asked. “Were you going to take me to the frat formal with my shaved head? Were you going to introduce me to your parents? What were you going to say when they asked what the fuck you were thinking?”