I didn’t say anything.
“He could only be who he was in my office.”
I nodded.
“I couldn’t help him to change who he was. I couldn’t help him to accept who he was. All I could accomplish, finally, for a few hours a week, was to provide a temporary refuge.”
“Not enough,” I said.
“No.”
My beer was gone. I got up and went to the kitchen and got a jar of olives and another beer. I was trying Heineken again. A blast from the past. Susan was having another micro sip of her martini when I came back and sat down beside her. It was still warm, in the evening. The air had begun to turn faintly blue as the darkness came toward us. There was no wind. I plunked a fresh olive into Susan’s martini. She smiled at me.
“If they have something somewhere,” Susan said. “If they are loved at home. If they have a circle of friends. But if it’s no good at home and it’s no good at school… Goddamn it.”
“No place to hide,” I said.
“No place.”
“Any theories why people are such jerks about it?” I said.
Susan shrugged.
“Nature of the beast,” she said.
“There is a high jerk count among the general populace,” I said. “Present company, of course, excluded.”
Four girls from Radcliffe went past us in various stages of undress. They all talked in that fast, slightly nasal way that well-bred young women talked around here.
“Living in a college town is not a bad thing,” I said.
Susan watched silently as the girls passed. She sipped her martini. I could hear her breathing.
“We are both in a business,” I said, “where we lose people.”
“I know.”
“A wise therapist once told me that you can’t really protect anyone, that sooner or later they have to protect themselves.”
“Did I say that?”
“Yes.”
“After you lost Candy Sloan?”
“Yes.”
“I am wise.”
“Good-looking, too,” I said.
“But god-damn it…” she said.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t feel bad when you lose one.”
Susan nodded.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Feel bad.”
Susan nodded again.
“I’ve been fighting it,” she said.
“And losing,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Give in to it. Feel as bad as you have to feel. Then get over it.”
Susan stared at me for a while. Then she put her head against my shoulder. We sat for a time watching the street traffic. I listened to her breathing.
“That what you do?”
“Yes.”
“Even after Candy Sloan?”
“Yes.”
She fished another olive from the jar and put it in her martini. She had already drunk nearly a fifth of it.
“And,” I said, “there’s always you and me.”
“I know.”
A squirrel ran along Susan’s front fence and up a fat oak tree and disappeared into the thick foliage. Pearl followed it with her eyes but didn’t raise her head.
“You’re a good therapist,” Susan said after a while.
