Eliza Campbell’s office was tucked away in a part of the city I wasn’t familiar with, and I made three wrong turns searching for it. After Blair left, I had double-checked the address and driven to a massive Victorian-era home I had passed at least twice. I squinted at the building and sighed in frustration when I saw a teeny sign that read: Whole Being Counseling. I climbed out of my car and then up the wide stone stairs to the front door. The main floor lights were all out except for the porch and foyer. The entire place looked closed up for the day.
I turned the knob and was relieved to find it opened easily. In the foyer was a list of the names of the companies in the building. There were eight businesses set up in the house. Upstairs you could find both a massage therapist and a reflexologist. The main floor was home to a denturist, a tax accountant, and a Holistic Wellness Center, as well as a business calling itself the Success Sellers. I couldn’t imagine what product they were offering. The basement level held the office of Eliza Campbell’s private counseling practice and a taxidermist business called Live Again. I clumped down the stairs and made sure it was Eliza Campbell’s office door I was opening.
I heard the faint sound of a bell ringing as I stepped into the waiting room. I knew it was the waiting room because there was a sign affixed to the wall that read, “This is the waiting room. Please take a seat.”
I sat. I wondered if anyone knew I had arrived. I looked around. The room was small, the walls painted in muddy earth tones. The inner door, which, I presumed, led to Eliza Campbell’s office, was bedecked with a hand-painted picture of a tree. Its swirling lines and drooping branches were green and brown, its flowers blue and orange. Two peacocks flanked the tree at the bottom while an array of other birds graced its branches. I had never seen a painting like it. On the table in front of me were current copies of Psychology Today and Holistic Times. A small black book lay beside the magazines. At first I thought it was a Bible, but when I picked it up, it turned out to be a book called the Bhagavad Gita. I stole a glance at the ornate door and thought about knocking. I reread the sign and waited.
I was wondering how to pronounce “Bhagavad” when the inner door opened and a woman poked her head in the room. “Kate Davis?” she said almost shyly. I nodded. “I’m Eliza Campbell. Come this way, please.”
She led me into the inner office and seated herself in an oversized chair that looked both chic and comfortable. She offered me my choice of either a similar chair, an arrangement of pillows on the floor, or a camel-colored couch, on which I was welcome to lie down if I first removed my shoes. I chose the pillows. I saw Eliza Campbell lift a long eyebrow at my choice, but she said nothing. I took a moment to get comfortable.
“Do you consider yourself a spiritual person, Kate?”
I blinked twice. Spiritual? Images flashed through my mind: an unkempt, dreadlock-wearing girl sharing a passionate embrace with an elm tree. A meditating Yogi defying gravity. A red-faced preacher hollering about hell and sin. I felt no connection to any of these images.
“I guess I’m …” I stammered. “What I mean is … I meant to be. I might be. Spiritual. I guess.” I heaved my shoulders up and held out my palms in a what can ya do gesture.
Eliza Campbell looked spiritual. Like she could ascend to a higher plane of existence at any moment. Her dark eyes were framed by smoky eye shadow, making them appear deep set and large. Her mouth was wide and full. Her long brown hair was streaked with blonde and red, like she was trying on colors to decide which one she liked best. She wore loose-fitting clothes: billowing pants and a long, flowing blouse; a reformed sari, the color of dry mustard. Her face was calm and knowing. Although this was a counselor’s office, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a crystal ball or deck of tarot cards among the artifacts that dotted the room. I didn’t.
Eliza Campbell lifted a finger adorned by no less than three rings. A column of silver bracelets clacked together as she raised her arm. “What I hear you saying, Kate, is that you might be a spiritual person, but you aren’t sure.”
I nodded my quick agreement. That sounded pretty good. A spiritual wannabe had to be better than a no-show, right? I had attended Sunday school as a child, until I was about eight. But even sitting cross-legged among throw pillows on the floor of my counselor’s office trying to think spiritual thoughts, I couldn’t recall why I had started going, or what compelled me to stop.
“The reason I ask,” Eliza Campbell said, “is because I take a spiritual approach to my counseling. By that I mean I see us all as interconnected beings. We are connected, not just to other humans, but to the earth, the universe, and the spiritual realm.”
“Oh.” I wondered if I should be taking notes. The only connection I had ever felt to the spiritual realm was watching zombie movies with my best friend, Tanya, in seventh grade. Scared us both spitless.
She waved her hand. “It sounds complicated, but it’s not.”
I picked up a pillow. “Interconnected. Right.”
“I don’t know your story, Kate, but I can see you are spiritually blocked.”
“Blocked?”
“Closed off. Your spiritual taps are turned to the ‘on’ position, but nothing’s coming through.”
My spiritual pipes were plugged? This was news.
Eliza Campbell pointed at me. “Why are you hugging that throw pillow?”
“Pardon?” I unfolded my arms from around the pillow and held it at arm’s length as if it had developed a rank odor. “I don’t know.”
“You are using the pillow as a shield, Kate.”
“I am?” I supposed it wasn’t a passion for polyester that had me embracing throw pillows. “Sorry.” I put the pillow down.
“Don’t apologize. I’m simply pointing it out to you. It’s a sign of spiritual repression. One of several I’ve noticed since you first arrived.”
“Repression. Right. I see,” I mumbled, not looking up. Was there something I could do that was a sign of spiritual … whatever, unrepression? I felt vaguely defensive. Off balance. This wasn’t the conversation I expected to have. Should I tell her how I prayed for my dead goldfish when it had been flushed when I was seven? How my sister and I would make fairy crowns from dried flowers and grant each other three wishes? Was that spiritual? Maybe I should hit her with the conversations I was having with my dead husband? That’s not something that happens to spiritually repressed people, is it? Do spiritually plugged-up people talk to the dead?
“Tell me what brought you here to see me, Kate,” Eliza Campbell said, interrupting my thoughts.
I felt unreasonably panicked. What had brought me here to see her? Serendipity? Colossal forces beyond my knowing? My car? All my reasons piled up behind the same giant cork that was plugging my spiritual access. I was sure there had to be an answer, somewhere in the universe. “I don’t know what brought me here,” I said. “Can I take a bathroom break?”
Again that long eyebrow arched. “I don’t think you want a break, Kate. I think you want to end the session. Is that what you want?”
I thought for a moment, then said in a small voice, “Yes, please.”
I spent the forty-five minutes it takes to drive from Eliza Campbell’s office in the city back to Greenfield mentally yanking on my giant spiritual cork.
I hadn’t even told Eliza Campbell about Kevin. His death. His voice. I couldn’t. When she had asked me if I was spiritual, it was as if, somehow, a great crack had opened somewhere inside of me. I felt a sort of painful hope. There had been so much to think about. While I doubted it was her intention to get me defensive, her questions pushed me somehow.
Sure, I’d been embarrassed at first by the gaping void that was my past spiritual existence. But she assured me that I was a spiritual person, deep down. I just hadn’t explored it yet. The proof of it was that I was there, talking to her. “There are no accidents,” Eliza Campbell had said. “Everything happens for a purpose.”
I took strange comfort in the thought. Perhaps it was enough to go on for now. It was as if simply talking about my utter lack of spiritual experience, calling it out caused a shift in the foundations of my thinking. I didn’t have answers exactly, but just the idea of spiritual things—the fact of them, that they existed in the world—seemed to lighten my load, broaden my thinking. Maybe hearing Kevin’s voice was, in fact, a spiritual thing. A spiritual experience on which I could build. Build what, I didn’t know. But I felt, for the first time since Kevin died, that I could look up, look around. My spiritual cork was beginning to loosen.
I’m awake, but I keep my eyes closed and just feel. The warmth of the sheets against my skin, the comfort of the soft mattress. The sound of Kevin’s breathing. I lie on my back and count back the days and weeks we’ve been married. More than three years, and it feels like five minutes.
I turn my head and open my eyes. Light from the street pushes into the room through the cotton curtains and I look at Kevin’s face, softened by sleep, in the dim shadows. The sheets are pulled down, exposing his bare chest to the cool night. I rest my hand there, the hair on his chest curls around my hand like an embrace.
I close my eyes and feel the rise and fall of his breath, the steady beat of his heart. Within moments my heartbeat matches his. I wonder how this could still feel so new, and I’m filled with beautiful longing. I inch closer, lay my head on his shoulder, fitting myself between his arm and torso. I press my length against his side. His arm goes around me, but he’s asleep, unconsciously moving his body to fit with mine. The smell of him so familiar it’s somehow a part of me. As I drift off I think, Mine.