Promise the Moon

Deleted Scene

Elizabeth Photo

Natalie at the Therapist

(Replaced by Chapter 60. Deleted because it felt odd for an outside force to be helping Natalie reach peace, rather than her own family.)

Caution: This section contains spoilers...

Natalie

I pulled into the office parking lot, and helped Toby from his booster seat. He stared up at the squat, mirror-glassed office building a long while, then took my hand and let me walk him inside.

I left Toby playing Legos with the receptionist while I spoke to Dr. Haines alone. It had occurred to me that Dr. Haines might read the Herald, and that to effectively help Toby, she’d have to learn the truth about how Josh had died. Hopefully, she believed in patient confidentiality. But I knew I’d have to feel her out before letting Toby talk.

Dr. Haines was somewhere in between “solidly built” and “pleasantly plump,” with blond hair cut in a stylish bob. Her office was set up to look more like a playroom, its carpet printed with hopscotch squares, toys on every surface, a bathtub-sized sandbox in the corner and two blue vinyl overstuffed sofas against the walls. I sat on one and Dr. Haines took the other, slipping off her shoes and crossing her legs up Indian style, which disconcerted me because it seemed to have been done in a purposeful attempt to put me at ease. We’re friends here, she seemed to be trying to say. I’d be here for you, even if you weren’t paying me a fortune to be. She watched me, a notebook in her lap, waiting for me to speak.

“So thanks for seeing Toby,” I said.

She smiled at me, continued waiting.

“I’m just coming to you because he’s had some problems. He used to be real happy, a normal five year old, independent, rambunctious, he used to make up knock-knock jokes that made no sense, and then laugh his head off. I mean, I guess every five year old does that.” I pressed my palms together and held them under my chin, like I was praying. “Except Toby doesn’t anymore.”

In the corner was a baby doll dressed only in diapers. I imagined Dr. Haines saying, Show me where he touches you. “His father died,” I said, “and ever since it happened he’s been a completely different boy. He stopped talking for two months, would hardly look at me.”

I studied Dr. Haines’s face, looking for signs of recognition, but she only said, “And now he’s talking again?”

“As of Sunday, actually, but it’s more than the not talking. He’s just not the same boy. He’s aggressive sometimes, and he’s still so quiet, and you can tell looking in his eyes, it’s like he’s lost his spirit.” My voice was unsteady. I looked down at my hands. “My husband Josh, Toby’s dad, he suffered from depression.” Still Dr. Haines showed no sign of having read about Josh, and so I leaned back on the sofa and said, “He killed himself. At home, in his car, and when I found him Toby was there, sitting inside the car with his dad. Holding his hand, and I don’t know how much he saw, if he actually saw it happen, but he saw enough. And now I’m scared he might’ve inherited Josh’s depression; that’s the thing I’m scared of most.”

When I’d finished, I saw her make a quick mark in her notebook, and then she looked up again wearing a smile that could’ve meant anything. That one mark to describe Toby’s whole story? What kind of shorthand could that be? An L for Lost Cause?

“I didn’t know if he’d seen it,” I said, “and I thought they were too young to understand the truth, so I never talked to them about it. And then I heard my daughter telling Toby he’d died in the war, which I guess was the only reason she could think of for him to have gotten shot. And I let them believe that; I never told them the truth, which I know I’ll have to eventually. I’ve been trying to figure out when to talk about it and how to, but it’s been so much easier to just let it be for now.”

The same enigmatic smile–maybe a psychologist’s trick to get people to blab things they normally wouldn’t. But then she said, “You aren’t doing the wrong thing.”

You aren’t doing the wrong thing . I watched her, waiting for more, then finally said, “What do you mean?”

“I can sense that you feel guilty, but suicide is hard enough for a grownup to understand. They’ll process what actually happened when they’re ready to, and at some point you’ll need to discuss it with them. I’d recommend coming in for family therapy sessions when the time feels right, and we can work on it together. But for now you’re just doing what you can to help them accept his death.”

I heard myself make a strange, unbidden, high-pitched sound, then pressed my fist against my mouth and spoke from behind it. “I wrote letters. From Josh after he died, I wrote them letters.”

This got her. Maybe not as much as it would’ve gotten anyone else, but she did widen her eyes, her face suddenly still and watchful.

“I knew it was the wrong thing to do, but Toby wasn’t talking and I was desperate. So I left them letters saying Josh was okay, that he was happy in heaven, and he was still watching down to make sure they were okay.”

She stood and walked to my couch, sat close and reached to touch my arm, and that touch was like a trigger. All at once I started sobbing, and I was mortified but I couldn’t help myself. It all came out of me, the dam broken and the words and tears consuming all of me. “And then I started letting them write letters back because I wanted to see how they were feeling, things they wouldn’t tell me, and it worked because Toby started talking again. But eventually they’ll find out I was lying, and I don’t know if I made the whole thing worse instead of better, because now Anna’s trying to convince me she’s been talking to her dad, which must mean she’s trying to replace the letters or, I don’t know, maybe she actually believes it! Which means I’ve made her actually certifiably crazy!”

Dr. Haines pulled me against her, rubbing at my back. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay…” Her hold so soft, the mother I’d lost, the husband I’d lost, the comfort, the calm authority of her. Someone who knew what I’d done, and still was able to embrace me.

 

Ten minutes later I sat in the reception area, waiting for Toby to emerge from Dr. Haines’s office. Maybe I should’ve hated myself; I’d used up more than half of Toby’s fifty minute hour, an hour he needed and sixty dollars we needed so that I could bawl in a stranger’s arms. Maybe tomorrow thinking back on it I’d want to kill myself, but for now I felt good. More than good, I felt like I’d coughed up a tumor that had been crowding out my internal organs. I felt like I could breathe. And like I was in love with Dr. Haines.

In the end she actually gave Toby more time, to make up for what I’d taken. After forty minutes in which I pretended to read Family Circle, the same article on how to sew a durable, ridiculous, flower-stenciled burlap pillow, the door opened. Dr. Haines had her hand on Toby’s head. Toby looked angry. “Why don’t you keep working on your Lego tower,” she said. “I’d like to speak with your mother for just a minute.”

Instantly, the tumor returned. Apparently it had never actually left, had just gone into hibernation. I followed her and she gestured to the sofa. We both sat.

“So,” she said, “I wanted to show you something.” She reached to a side table for a tablet of drawing paper, which she set on my lap. “I asked Toby to draw me some pictures. It’s a helpful tool to use when children aren’t comfortable enough with me to share their feelings.”

I flipped the tablet open. On the first page was a large purple block with a head, next to three smaller, smiling heads attached directly to L-shaped legs. “I asked him to draw his favorite thing,” she said. “That’s a picture of you telling stories.”

I smiled. I was Toby’s favorite thing. “I need to lose some weight,” I said.

Dr. Haines turned the page. “And next is his least favorite thing,” she said.

The picture was similar to the one he’d drawn weeks before, of two men beside a blue square. “I think that’s a picture of his father’s death,” I said softly. “The square is our car, where Josh died. And the other man must be one of the quote-unquote bad guys, which means he must’ve confused my story of how Josh died with whatever he actually saw.”

I glanced at her, part of me looking for reassurance, another you did okay sort of remark. But she only nodded at the tablet. “It’s the next picture I wanted to show you.”

I turned the page. “I asked him to draw himself,” she said. “This is how Toby pictures himself.”

I stared at the picture. In the center of the page was a huge black mass, angry slashes and swirls, like rage set onto paper. How could someone so little possibly hold so much emotion inside him? I touched it and then shuddered and pulled my hand away. Dr. Haines was watching me. “It looks dark,” she said, “but I think it’s confusion more than hate or anger.”

This was what was inside Toby? How could so much darkness be inside a five year old boy? I closed the notebook quickly.

“That’s what therapy’s for, really,” she said, “to untangle and lighten that darkness. We’ll work to untangle him, Natalie.”

I nodded like I believed it was possible, but this was what I realized. That it was only with the stories I’d told and halfway believed that I’d been able to crawl out from my own dark tangle, forget that it was there. While Toby, who’d lived in silence, was buried inside it and unable to find his way back.