"I think I can make significant progress in a short period. She's reachable." I said. "It's more of a case of having someone she trusts. She's already quite forthcoming."
His head moved in a slow tilt to the right as his skepticism fattened and fattened right before my eyes.
"I see, and you were able to make this analysis in one day?" he asked, one eyebrow higher than the other.
"Yes. I was." I said "And she has a little boy waiting for her at home." I practically shouted at him.
He pressed his lips together and uttered that famous "Ummm" of his. Then he flipped the pages of his calendar and nodded. "Okay, Claude. Let's see how it goes for a while. I'll take on those other patients for you."
"Thank you, Ralston."
I started out of his office and he said. "Claude." I turned, "Don't reach too high. Remember our wings of wax." he reminded me, I nodded.
He was referring to that myth of Icarus, the boy who, with his inventive father, tried to escape an island imprisonment with wings attached by wax. He was warned not to fly too closely to the sun or the wings would melt. We psychiatrists like to use it to illustrate how arrogance can be your downfall.
Like Icarus. I was not to listen to the warning, but this was a happy fall. Willow. Without it, you wouldn't have been born and I wouldn't have known true love. I'd gladly fly too close to the sun repeatedly if it meant I'd have you and Grace's love again and again and again.
After breakfast. as I had suggested. Grace and I took that walk. I found that when one of my patients reached the point where he or she could be
comfortable outside my office. I would try to get him or her to take one of my famous walks. Somehow, without spending much time with her. I knew Grace would be more comfortable. She was curious, however, even suspicious about this almost
immediately.
"Dr. Anderson never spoke with me out of his office," she said. "Even if he saw me somewhere else, which was not often, he would barely say hello, especially if I was with my mother. She didn't want anyone to know I was seeing him."
"I'll tell you a secret. Grace. I make it seem as if we're just going on a walk, but it's way more than that. I try to sneak up on my patients and doing things that are a bit unorthodox helps."
She liked that. She enjoyed my honesty. With her head slightly lowered, but holding on to that soft Mona Lisa--like smile on her lips, she walked along. I confess I couldn't take my eyes off her. Willow, and no matter how twisted and troubled she was inside herself. I sensed that she knew I couldn't. We doctors, especially we psychiatrists, like to pride ourselves on our stoical expression, what you called my doctor mask. and I know I rarely, if ever, unmasked myself. but with your mother, right from that first clay, it was as if my doctor mask was made of a thin layer of ice and either melted in the presence of her beauty or slipped off.
As we walked. I asked her about her youth, prodded dee
per and deeper into the origin of these terrible fears that plagued her. I quickly understood that even as a little girl she was worried about her father, worried that when he went away, he would never come back. It made every return special. wonderful. It wasn't hard to see that these sort of emotional ups and downs took its toll on an impressionable child.
However, every time her father returned, her confidence in him grew.
"I thought Daddy was indestructible." she admitted. We were sitting on a bench by now, looking out over the field and hills behind the clinic. The threat of rain had passed, and as Miles had predicted, the gray overcast sky was shattering like brittle china, slices of sunlight forming a web of promise behind them.
"He was so strong," she said. "so tall and handsome and confident, and I saw how other men looked up to him and saluted him and snapped to attention when he appeared. How could he die? How could he not come back to me?"
"And so you thought if that could happen to him, it could happen to anyone. In fact, you expected it to happen to everyone you loved, didn't you. Grace?"
"Yes." she said, her eyes widening a little. She nodded. "Yes."
"People like to say the only thing certain to expect is death and taxes. None of us has any more assurances than that. Grace. You can't predict much more and definitely not someone else's future. Here I am a psychiatrist. I'm supposed to know how to read people's minds and anticipate what they will do, but it's not an exact science. Actually, that's what makes people interesting to me."
"What?" she asked me. Our eyes locked.
"That they are unpredictable, that even a man like I am might do and think unexpected things, might do something out of character."
She held my gaze a moment longer and then looked dawn.
"You put too much on yourself, Grace." I said. "Those pretty shoulders shouldn't have to carry that much weight, carry other people's futures and fate. Not that I couldn't see why someone, some man might want to trust you with all that."
She didn't look at me, but I could see just a slight tint of crimson rise to the surface of her cheeks.
"I read about all the people you thought you somehow injured just by being close to them. Every one of them had his own history, Grace. Every one of them made decisions without you present and all had done significant things before they even knew you. Many of the things they already had done influenced what eventually happened to them. Please consider that whenever you think to blame yourself."
She almost nodded.