“Can I play a song?” Lucy asks, excited.
“Well, with one more chord you can learn ‘A Horse with No Name.’” I take the guitar from her and settle it in my lap, then play the E minor, followed by a D add6 add9.
“Wait,” Lucy says. She covers my hand with her own, so that her fingers match the places where mine sit on the guitar. Then she lifts my hand off the neck of the instrument, and spins my wedding band. “That’s really pretty,” Lucy says.
“Thanks.”
“I never noticed it before. Is it your wedding ring?”
I wrap my arms around the guitar. Why is a question that should be so simple to answernotsimple at all? “We’re not here to talk about me.”
“But I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know if you’re married or if you’ve got kids or if you’re a serial killer . . .”
When she says the wordkids,my stomach does a flip. “I’m not a serial killer.”
“Well, that’s a comfort.”
“Look, Lucy. I don’t want to waste our time together by—”
“It’s not wasting time if I’m the one who asks, is it?”
This much I know about Lucy: she is unstoppable. Once she gets an idea in her head, she won’t let go. It’s why she picks up so quickly on any musical challenge I toss her, from lyric analysis to learning how to play an instrument. I’ve often thought that this was why she was so disconnected from the world when we first met—not because she didn’t care but because she cared too much; whenever she engaged, it was bound to exhaust her.
This I also know about Lucy: Although I don’t think she’s particularly conservative, her family is. And in this case, what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. If she accidentally reveals to her mother that I’m married to Vanessa, I have no doubt our therapy sessions will come to a grinding halt. I couldn’t stand knowing that my own situation in some way negatively affected hers.
“I don’t understand why this is such a state secret,” she says.
I shrug. “You wouldn’t ask the school psychologist about her personal life, would you?”
“The school psychologist isn’t my friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” I correct. “I’m your music therapist.”
Immediately, she pulls away from me. Her eyes shutter.
“Lucy, you don’t understand—”
“Oh, believe me, I understand,” she says. “I’m your fucking dissertation. Your little Frankenstein experiment. You walk out of here and go home and you don’t give a shit about me. I’m just business, to you. It’s okay. I totally get it.”
I sigh. “I know it feels hurtful to you, but my job, Lucy, is to talk about you. To focus on you. Of course I care about you, and of course I think about you when we’re not meeting. But ultimately I need you to see me as your music therapist, not your buddy.”
Lucy pivots her seat, staring blankly out the window. For the next forty minutes, she doesn’t react when I play, sing, or ask her what she wants to listen to on my iPod. When the bell finally rings, she bolts like a mustang who’s chewed through her tethers. She’s halfway out the door when I tell her I will see her Friday, but I am not sure she hears me at all.
“Stop fidgeting,” Vanessa whispers as I sit beside Angela Moretti, waiting for the judge to walk into the courtroom and rule on Wade Preston’s motion to appoint a guardian ad litem.
“I can’t help it,” I mutter.
Vanessa is sitting directly behind our table. My mother, beside her, pipes up. “Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far.”
Vanessa looks at her. “Who said that?”
“I just did.”
“But were you quoting anyone?”
“Myself,” she says proudly.
“I’m going to tell it to one of my AP students. He actually had his car detailed to readHARVARD OR BUST.”
