Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,165

direction. I take the phone and recognize the New York Times website. There’s a review of the new season of John’s show.

“Check out the last paragraph,” he says.

I scroll to the end, where the reviewer waxes poetic about the direction the show has taken. The main character, the reviewer writes, has begun to share glimpses of his underlying humanity without losing his edge, and this makes him all the more interesting, his moments of compassion a delightful twist. If viewers used to be riveted by his perverse lack of regard for others, the reviewer contends, now we can’t stop watching him struggle to reconcile this with what’s buried beneath. The review concludes with a question: What might we discover if he continues to reveal himself?

I look up from the phone and smile at John. “I agree,” I say. “Especially with the question posed at the end.”

“It’s a nice review, huh?” he says.

“It is—and more.”

“No, no, no—don’t start making this like he’s talking about me again. It’s the character.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Good,” he says. “Just so we’re straight on that.”

I catch John’s eye. “Why did you want me to see this?”

He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Because it’s a great review! It’s the fucking New York Times!”

“But why that specific paragraph?”

“Because it means we’ll go into syndication. If this season is doing so well, the network can’t not give us another pickup.”

I think about how hard it is for John to be vulnerable. How ashamed and needy it makes him feel. How scary connection seems.

“Well,” I say, “I look forward to seeing where ‘the character’”—I make air quotations like John did—“goes in the next season. I think the future holds a lot of possibility.”

John’s body responds for him; he blushes. Caught, he blushes even more. “Thanks,” he says. I smile and meet his eyes, and he manages to meet mine and hold my gaze for a good twenty seconds before glancing toward his feet. Looking down, he whispers, “Thanks for . . . you know”—he searches for the right word—“everything.”

My eyes tear up again. “You’re so welcome,” I say.

“Well,” John says, clearing his throat and folding his pedicured feet onto the couch. “Now that the preliminaries are over, what the fuck should we talk about today?”

54

Don’t Blow It

There are two main categories of people who are so depressed that they contemplate suicide. One type thinks, I had a nice life, and if I can just emerge from this terrible crisis—the death of a loved one; extended unemployment—I’ll have something to look forward to. But what if I can’t? The other type thinks, My life is barren, and there’s nothing to look forward to.

Rita fell into the second category.

Of course, the story a patient comes into therapy with may not be the story she leaves with. What was included in the telling at first might now be written out, and what was left out might become a central plot point. Some major characters might become minor ones, and some minor characters might go on to receive star billing. The patient’s own role might change too—from bit player to protagonist, from victim to hero.

A few days after her seventieth birthday, Rita comes in for her regular session. Instead of marking the occasion with her suicide, she’s brought me a present.

“It’s my birthday gift to you,” she says.

Rita’s gift is beautifully wrapped, and she asks me to open it in front of her. The box is heavy, and I try to figure out what it is. Bottles of my favorite tea that she had seen and commented on in my office? A large book? A set of the darkly comic mugs that she’s begun selling on her website? (I’m hoping for these.)

I dig through the tissue paper and feel something ceramic (the mugs!), but as I lift the object out, I look at Rita and smile. It’s a tissue-box cover painted with the words RITA SAYS—DON’T BLOW IT. The design is at once bold and unassuming, like Rita herself. I turn the box over and notice her logo with her business’s name: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over, Inc.

I begin to thank her but she interrupts me.

“It was inspired by our conversations about my not taking the tissues,” Rita says, as if I might not get the reference. “I used to think, What is with this therapist, harping on which tissues I use? I never understood it until one of the girls”—she means one of the hello-family girls—“saw me take a tissue from