and preprinted greeting card always ended here, with the same cymbal crash: But how will you feel if I die?
“Mom, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Evvie, it’s not like you to be like this.”
“No,” Evvie said. “I know it’s not.”
“EVELETH,” SAID DR. JANE TALCO with a smile as she swung open the door of her office. “Come on in. It’s good to see you again. Pardon my stacks of paperwork.”
Evvie stepped into the room, beige and blue and calming, feeling her heart pound so fast she thought she might pass out. She lowered herself onto the couch and tried to smile a mentally healthy smile, whatever that was. “It’s good to see you, too,” she finally said, as evenly as she could, which was ridiculous, because it wasn’t good at all.
“So,” Dr. Talco said, settling into her wing chair. “It’s been a while. Tell me what’s going on.”
The surprising thing to Evvie was not that she cried, since she’d been doing that on and off for the last four days, but that she cried so soon. “Shit,” she whispered to herself.
“There are tissues on the table. Take a breath.”
Evvie dabbed at her eyes, managed a long exhale, and then focused her eyes on a painting of gulls on the wall behind the doctor’s chair. “I feel like I’m already bad at this.”
“You’re doing fine,” Dr. Talco told her.
“What, crying as soon as I sit down?”
“I’ve had people cry for six months,” the doctor said. Evvie felt her eyes widen a little. “I’m not saying you will.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Evvie told her. “I guess ‘help.’ But I don’t know what else.”
“Well, what made you pick up the phone and call me?” Dr. Talco was holding a silver pen, rolling it a little between her fingers.
“I dropped something. In my kitchen. And I don’t know what happened, I just…flipped out. I guess I thought I might be going crazy. Or whatever is less offensive than that.” She explained about the rice and the can and hearing herself wail. It sounded as strange when she described it as it had felt when it happened. If her head really was the house she lived in, Evvie was increasingly afraid that walking through it and stomping on the floorboards, rattling the beams, might make it all collapse right down to the concrete slab. “I ended up screaming on the floor of my kitchen over having to clean up some stuff I spilled. And like I said, it made me think I might be crazy. It just didn’t seem normal.”
“I don’t know about that,” Dr. Talco told her. “When we talked last time, I told you that I thought in your situation, most people would need some help. Remind me how long ago your husband died?”
“Almost two years.” She shook her head. “Yeah, wow, in a couple of weeks, it’ll be two years,” Evvie said. She instantly felt fraudulent, letting this doctor treat her like she might be grieving. “I also just ended a relationship I was maybe getting into. And I might have broken up with my mother, too. I’m not sure my husband’s accident is what’s wrong.”
“You know, nothing’s necessarily wrong.”
“You didn’t see me on the floor of my kitchen.”
Dr. Talco smiled. “You would be shocked how many people tell me that they got through cancer or divorce or having their house burn down, but then they lost their keys or they ran out of coffee or the dog chewed on a slipper, and they fell to pieces. It’s just that last insult.”
“I feel…” This was all Evvie said for a while. She said, I feel, and she stopped. She looked out the window and at the floor, and she kept expecting Dr. Talco to take over. She expected her to lead. It went beyond an awkward silence until it was a cooperative silence. One with intent. Evvie finally cleared her throat into her fist. “I feel like I should be able to figure this out. I keep telling myself, you know? Pull it together. You’re not starving, and you have friends, and just…get a grip.”
Dr. Talco tapped her index fingers together. “Did you know it’s possible to remove your own teeth with pliers?”
Evvie looked at her blankly. “That’s not what I thought you were going to say.”
“No, no, probably not. But it’s true. If you have a bad tooth, you can take a pair of pliers, stick them in there, and pull as hard as you can. Is that