by Katie Haley
The therapist I saw after the breakup with Lindsey fixated on my teen years, talking to me about them in present tense instead of past. I couldn’t tell if this was because she’s a shit therapist or if my development was so obviously arrested the therapist couldn’t imagine there was anything more to talk about then the things that happened to me before I was twenty years old.
Those years don’t do me any favors though. There’s a lot to talk about. Enough to fill a quarter of the pages in her yellow legal pad. There was the bulimia, which she seemed determined to blame on my mother’s habit of reading the nutrition labels on things like gum packets and toothpaste. The abortion I let Matty Parks pay for with money swiped from his dad’s nightstand that I haven’t thought about since it happened. And plenty of benzos in exchange for quickies behind the high school’s baseball dugout.
I think the therapist latched on to the worst stuff, the most obvious struggles, not understanding what I needed help with most was the mildly unpleasant. An empty pill bottle in the back of the bathroom drawer with Moonie, the name of Lindsey’s cat, written in faded black ink on the label. The street I have to pass on my way to work that she lived on when we first met. My roommate’s dirty dishes in the sink. Lately, anything small consumes me.
“How does it feel when your dad calls you a whore?”
We stared at each other in silence while she waited for my answer, which I knew was expected to be insightful. I shook my head, reminding her I needed to talk about Lindsey and my dad hasn’t called me a whore in years.
“Don’t you think your dad’s treatment of you will impact your relationships going forward?”
Greta asks why I’m still making appointments with the therapist. I think I’m too ashamed to admit it’s because the appointments are something to do. Somewhere to go. An air-conditioned room to sit in. Greta says she has something she’s been told not to tell me yet but that she can’t help but tell me anyway. I get my hopes up thinking it will be about Lindsey. That she’s dating someone we both know, whose social media presence I can hunt for glimpses of her. That she isn’t dating anyone because our relationship was so significant she needs to be single for a while to rid her system of me. That I can shop at Saltzman’s again because she’s moved to a different neighborhood. But no. None of that was said. Nothing was said. Greta touched her palms to her stomach and smiled wide enough I could see most of her teeth.
The baby shower was after a session where the bullshit therapist suggested I never got over the wound of my older sister leaving for college. I told the therapist my sister went to Sarah Lawerence so she didn’t exactly abandon me. At the shower, Greta assured me Lindsey wouldn’t be there. That the two of us were closer than the two of them. If only one of us could be invited, it was me. I did my best to hide my disappointment that the run-in I’d staged in my head was not happening. Her husband’s mother said the baby would be born with a full head of hair like her son, whose hairline hadn’t receded an inch all his life. She held up the sonogram and said a skull shaped like that is meant for thick hair. We ate cold cucumber sandwiches and were barred from wearing pink or blue or any kind of color that suggests gender. I went with a light green dress. Greta cried at her sister’s gift of a rattle engraved with their late brother’s initials under a small pair of angel wings. As much as I wanted the attention to be on Greta and the baby, all of mine was on Lindsey. I hadn’t found a way to casually bring her up in small talk I’d been making with the guests who knew her. It was my goal, to ask about her in a way that denoted I’d forgotten to until that moment. The hard part was picking the right friend to ask, someone close enough to have information but maybe not close enough to immediately message Lindsey to tell her I’d asked about her. Jess was out of the question as she and Lindsey saw each other almost every weekend and texted throughout the week. RJ couldn’t be trusted either as they did Lindsey’s hair, and from what I remember, she was due for a cut and color any day now. Liza would have to do. She liked to gossip but really only saw Lindsey a couple times a month. Although if one of those times should be the next day or sometime soon, if it was too close to the baby shower, one of the first things Lindsey would be told is that I wanted to know how she was doing. I took the risk.
“Lindsey’s alright, she’s getting another cat I think.” It was all I could manage to get.
It made me sad enough to spend the train ride back to the city crying. I’d begged Lindsey to add another cat to our mix, to give Moonie and I a friend, but she wouldn’t on account of our work schedules. What change had been made to her schedule that couldn’t have happened when we were together?
The second therapy session following the shower was spent assessing if the pass my science teacher made at me in the eleventh grade was the catalyst for my sorry attempt at college. At least we’d moved up in the timeline of my life.
At a dive bar I saw someone who looked like Lindsey walk out to the smoking patio with someone who didn’t look anything like me. When I had finally pushed my way through enough people to end up outside I didn’t see them but saw a girl who did look like me standing by herself, smoking the kind of cigarettes I’d just run out of. She let me bum one then took a book out of her purse to ask if I’d read it. It was her new thing, recommending it to strangers.
“It’s just that good,” she said.
A copy of a self-help book about dreams was in her right hand, the sticker promising a price that ended in ninety-nine cents was half picked off the front cover. She let me read the blurb before reading me a passage.
“Your past flies overhead in the shape of a vulture and your future is at the end of the pavement before you. Don’t get distracted by the sounds of the vulture’s wings that you fail to look at what’s waiting for you.”
She looked into my eyes like she was impressed to not see tears. I asked her what if the past isn’t a vulture flying above with the intent to maul you but a park pigeon whose begging for bread crumbs stresses you out so much you want to run as if it were a vulture?
“It hasn’t said anything like that yet. But I bet it will. At least something similar,” she said.
I put the cigarette out under the toe of my boot and thanked her. She said, “No need,” then went back to who I assumed, by the barely there brown eyeliner and the soft wave of her hair, was a date. I made a mental note that a book about dreams is a good thing to have on hand for a date in case the conversation dulls. Though I don’t know when I’ll be on a date next. After Lindsey, how little I am attracted to anyone else just makes me cry.
Staying up late, thinking of the cat I wanted that Lindsey probably now has, I decided to adopt my own. A cat I could name anything I wanted. Anything but the name I wanted to call the cat I wanted with Lindsey because she’s probably using it now. Before falling asleep I decided to come up with a new name once I had the thing in my hands and could see it. There wasn’t any particular breed on my mind, just that it had to be a girl because boy pets came with a dick and a pair of balls. She’d get arm & hammer litter and eat out of a ceramic bowl. If she could tolerate it she’d wear a purple collar.
The next morning I went to the shelter up the block and picked the only cat that didn’t come with a ‘but’ from the kid working.
“She’s really smart but… she sent two previous owners to the hospital with bites.”
“She’s sweet sometimes but… she swats at blondes.”
“She’s great but… she has chronic worms.”
We got to the cat I finally picked and I waited for the “but” for a long time. There wasn’t one. There wasn’t anything to say about her other than she’s smart, sweet, and great. Her gray fur had a patch missing on her leg from something that happened during her birth. It was the one part of her body she didn’t like touched. While wiping up her first shit I wondered if Lindsey was doing the same with her new cat that could’ve been ours and then wondered if, on the off chance that she was doing that, if she was thinking of me. Thinking about the little I asked for and when it became too much.
At the next therapy appointment I mentioned the new cat, who I thought made a good Margie, and how Lindsey’s cat was my idea. The therapist asked if Margie reminded me of Cookie, the cat I had in my teen years. I said no because Cookie was a slow stray I lurred into the house with cookie dough and kissing sounds.
“Cookie was with you after the abortion right? You said she laid on your stomach. Have you always felt connected to cats?”
I didn’t want to talk about the abortion again so I ignored that part.
“Always. Moonie, Lindsey’s first cat, was slow to warm up but she’d sleep on my chest sometimes.”
“Did Lindsey like that?”
It was the first time she’d asked me anything about Lindsey. Or spoke about the present.
“I think so.”
“Did she like you?”
“I hope.”
Katie Haley is a writer and gossip from California with honest work in/on Hobart, Vlad Mag, Somewords, and elsewhere.