I sink into Jill’s sofa with a loud sigh. I considered cancelling, but decided against it at the last minute.
“That was quite the sigh,” Jill says. “Tell me all about it.”
“I’m knackered. I have this job going.” I let my head fall back. “In fact, I could fall asleep right now.” I snap my head back up. “But I pay you too much for that to happen.”
“How’s the job going?” Jill gazes at me with her pale blue eyes. When I first started seeing her, I never thought she’d look at me in such a confrontational manner. As though she wants to unearth the depths of my soul just by looking at me. Maybe she does.
“Fine. It’s not too big but also not too small. The perfect kind of project to get back to it, really. And I’m working for Rocco, which makes it extra pleasant.”
“That’s good.” Jill doesn’t say anything else. She’s definitely the kind of therapist who lets silences linger in the hopes she’ll get me talking. I fall for it every time, even though I know what she’s doing—she lets me think for myself. I am here to talk, of course, and at least, these days, I can do so without falling apart. I’ve gone through many a box of tissues in this office.
“Rocco’s business partner’s another kettle of fish, though,” I blurt out. Most of the time, I don’t even look at Jill when I’m talking, but fix my gaze on a painting behind her. It’s abstract. Just a blob of colors really. Nothing I would ever consider art, not that I know much about it. Yet this very painting has now become a sort of solace. I’ve looked at it through oceans of tears and, like today, through hooded eyelids because I can barely keep them open.
Jill just nods.
“Her name’s Katherine. They’ve been friends forever and Rocco told me long ago that she was a hooker. Although he prefers the term escort. ‘She works for a lesbian escort agency that caters only to women.’ That’s how he put it. As if that made it more acceptable. As long as I never had to meet her, I didn’t give it that much thought, but now I see this woman almost every day, I find her choice of career so… revolting.”
“Interesting choice of word,” Jill says.
“But it is.” I throw my hands in the air. “At least to me it is. But I’m old, and Rocco says I’m way too uptight about sex.”
This earns me a raised eyebrow from Jill. I’ve talked about sex with her before, about Sam and our sex life—it’s one of the main reasons I first sought Jill’s help. But this is the first time I’ve uttered the word in a good long while.
“Is that why being around her bugs you so much?” Jill asks. Before I found Jill, I had tried out a few other therapists, all of whom had a very monotone voice, as though any inflection could cause me psychological harm. Jill’s voice, however, is full of life.
“How do you mean?” I ask.
“I think you know what I mean, Hera.” Typical Jill. I’ve been coming here for more than two years now. She probably knows me better than I know myself.
“Because she represents something I’m no longer interested in?” I almost scoff when I say it.
“For instance,” Jill says.
I shake my head vehemently.
“You said it yourself.” Jill doesn’t shy away from painting the occasional smug smile on her face. I’ve always liked that she lets her personality shine through in our sessions, but right now, it bugs me as much as having to see Katherine nearly every day.
“Okay, I must have brought her up for a reason.” I look at Jill with a hopeful glint in my eye. “What’s your take on prostitution?”
“My take on it doesn’t matter one bit.” Jill told me this from the very beginning. This is not a friendship, even though, inevitably, sometimes it will feel like one, but it’s important that you’re aware of the difference. She tilts her head. “I can tell there’s something going on with you, Hera. How about we try and figure out what that is instead of you asking me questions like that?”
“Fine.” I know nothing about Jill’s personal life, yet she knows all about my inner workings. It’s a strange but comforting situation to walk into once a week, although it wasn’t always that way. “I just can’t be myself around her. She’s a beautiful woman. I can see the appeal, but I just can’t get over the fact that she… did those things in exchange for money.”
“Would you like to name those ‘things’?” Jill asks.
“Goodness, no.” I jerk my head to the side.
“Okay. Then tell me what it’s like to be back at work.” I’ve been seeing Jill long enough to know she’s not going to let me off the hook about Katherine this easily despite the change of subject matter.
“It’s good, though exhausting. I feel I’ve grown ten years older since Sam died instead of the one since she’s been gone. Everything I lift seems heavier. It’s hardly a desk job, is it? But it is a satisfactory one. There’s nothing like transforming a building, seeing it come to life again in front of my very eyes. I’ve missed that.”
“If you haven’t lifted anything heavy for that long, even the lightest load will feel like a ton. But you’ll get used to it again, Hera. You keep on building.” She cocks her head. “I can see the change in you so clearly.”
“I have Rocco to thank for that. In fact, when I do the gratitude meditations you’ve advised me to do, it’s mostly him I feel thankful toward.”
“There’s no one else?”
“Well, sure, there’s Hilda. But it’s different with her. Rocco just has this easy way about him. Even when I was at my most depressed, when I looked at him, with all his energy and bottomless zest for life, I had to acknowledge there would always be something else other than the despair I was feeling. He’s just so… bubbly, even though I hate that word to describe a person.” I shrug. “What does it mean to have a bubbly personality? I always thought it was the opposite of my own.”
“And that would be?” Jill’s lips quirk into a small smile.
“Cranky, and getting more so the older I get.”
“You’re not that cranky. Not all the time, anyway,” Jill says. “You were grieving. There’s a big difference.”
“I guess.” Something comes to me. “Maybe that’s what I see in Katherine as well. That effortless bubbliness, or whatever you want to call it. That’s probably why they get along so well, because they recognize that in each other, that same drive to always get the most out of life.”
“Yet in Rocco you admire it and in Katherine it bugs you?”
“Well, yes, because Rocco’s my nephew and she’s… an escort.”
“You didn’t have to take that job if you knew it was going to annoy you so much to be around her.”
“But I didn’t know. It was only when I met her that I felt she was getting under my skin—in a bad way.”
“You hadn’t expected to react to her the way you did?”
“No. She’s actually really nice. If I didn’t know, I certainly wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at her. She’s very… classy. Upmarket, I guess.”
Jill nods. “And that offends you?”
“No.” I shake my head for emphasis. “I don’t know.”
“Could it be that you actually like her, Hera? But you’re annoyed with yourself because you can’t allow yourself to do so because she’s an escort.”
“Actually she’s no longer an escort,” I blurt out. Why does it feel like I’m coming to Katherine’s defense in the privacy of my therapist’s office? Nothing of this makes any sense.
“Okay, my bad,” Jill says, then goes silent again.
“At least it’s good to feel something, even if only annoyance.” I do look Jill in the eye now. “Remember when I first came here? I was such a mess. And then, with your help, I was starting to pull myself together, and then Sam died on me. Just when everything was looking up.” I’m not saying this to garner Jill’s pity—she made it very clear from the start that her pity would never be up for grabs—only to summarize. To make things clear, once again, in my head.
“As I said before, Hera, I can see the difference in you.” Before I let my glance skitter away from Jill I consider that it might not be friendship we have between us, but it’s something very meaningful nonetheless.