Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,156

and Julie has done the same with me.

“This might sound crazy,” Julie said, “but I know that I’ll hear your voice after I die—that I’ll hear you wherever I am.”

Julie had told me that she’d begun thinking about the afterlife, a concept she insisted that she didn’t completely believe in but nonetheless contemplated, “just in case.” Would she be alone? Afraid? Everyone she loved was still alive—her husband, her parents, her grandparents, her sister, her nephew and niece. Who would keep her company there? And then she realized two things: first, that her babies from her miscarriages might be there, wherever “there” was, and second, that she was coming to believe that she would hear, in some unknowable spiritual way, the voices of those she loved.

“I would never say this if I weren’t dying,” she said shyly, “but I include you in those I love. I know you’re my therapist, so I hope you don’t think it’s creepy, but when I tell people that I love my therapist, I really mean I love my therapist.”

Though I’d come to love many patients over the years, I’d never used those words with any of them. In training, we’re taught to be careful with our words to avoid misinterpretations. There are many ways to convey to patients how deeply we’ve come to care about them without getting into dicey territory. Saying “I love you” isn’t one of those ways. But Julie had said she loved me, and I wasn’t going to stand on professional ceremony and reply with a watered-down response.

“I love you too, Julie,” I said to her that day. She smiled, then closed her eyes and dozed off again.

Now, as I stand in the kitchen waiting for Julie, I think about that conversation and about the ways I know that I’ll hear her voice too, long after she’s gone, especially at certain times, like while shopping at Trader Joe’s or folding laundry and seeing that pajama top with NAMAST’AY IN BED in the pile. I’m saving that top not to remember Boyfriend anymore, but to remember Julie.

I’m still munching on pretzels when my green light goes on. I pop one more into my mouth, rinse my hands, and breathe a sigh of relief.

Julie’s early today. She’s alive.

51

Dear Myron

Rita is carrying an artist’s portfolio, a large black case with nylon handles that’s at least three feet long. She’s begun teaching art at the local university, the one from which she would have graduated had she not dropped out to get married, and today she brought in her own work to share with her students.

Her portfolio holds sketches for the prints that she’s selling on her website, a series based on her own life. The images are visually comical and even cartoonish, but their themes—regret, humiliation, time, eighty-year-old sex—reveal their darkness and depth. She’s shown me these before, but now when Rita reaches into her portfolio, she takes out something else: a yellow legal pad.

She hasn’t spoken to Myron since the kiss more than two months ago—has avoided him, in fact, going to a different class at the Y, ignoring his knocks on her door (she uses the peephole for screening purposes now, not for spying on the hello-family), going into stealth mode when moving about the building. She’s been taking time to craft a letter, obsessing over every line. She tells me she has no idea if her words make sense anymore, and after reading it again this morning, she’s not convinced she should send it at all.

“Can I read it to you before I make an absolute fool of myself?” she asks.

“Of course,” I say, and she places the yellow pad on her lap.

I can see her handwriting from where I’m sitting—not the specific letters, but the shapes. An artist’s handwriting, I think. Gorgeous cursive, the loops perfectly formed but with an added flair. It takes her a minute to start. She breathes in, sighs, almost begins, breathes in, and sighs again. Finally, she speaks.

“‘Dear Myron,’” she reads off the page, then looks up at me. “Is that too formal—or too intimate, perhaps? Do you think I should start with ‘Hi’? Or just the more neutral ‘Myron’?”

“I think if you worry too much about the details, you might miss the big picture,” I say, and Rita makes a face. She knows that I’m talking about more than her salutation.

“All right, then,” she says, looking back at the lined pad. Still, she grabs a pen, crosses out the word dear, then takes