What We Called Therapy After Dark novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three New Dresses

Her mother is warm in the car and has bought three more short dresses for therapy; Marin asks Mitch why he agreed without asking her.

"Time," said Dr. Keene.

I let go of Mitch's wrist.

My fingers stayed warm for a long time after.

Mitch stepped back and put his hands in his pockets.

Dr. Keene wrote for a while and then looked up with a small, pleased smile.

"That was real progress for a third session," he said.

He took the key out of his cardigan and unlocked the door.

"Same time Tuesday. Wear something comfortable, Marin."

I walked out past him without answering.

My mother was parked at the curb in the grey sedan with the engine running.

She leaned over and pushed the back door open for me.

"There they are," she said.

She was smiling, and she had put on the lipstick she wore for church.

I got into the back seat and Mitch took the front.

He shut the door harder than he needed to.

"How was it?" my mother asked brightly.

"Fine," Mitch said.

"Marin?"

"He locked the door," I said.

I watched her face in the mirror.

"Oh, honey," she said. "It's a safe space. He does that so nobody walks out in the middle of something hard."

"He told me to take off my dress."

"And did you?"

"No."

My mother's hand stopped on the gearshift for half a second.

Then she squeezed my knee over the seat and said, "I'm so proud of you for staying."

She pulled out into traffic.

It struck me later that she hadn't asked what Dr. Keene had said, or what Mitch had said, or what I had felt.

She only asked about the dress.

At home she kissed my forehead and went to start dinner.

Mitch disappeared into the garage.

I heard the door roll down and the radio come on.

I went upstairs to change.

The closet door was half open, and I stopped.

Three new dresses hung beside my jeans.

One was white and one was pale blue.

The third was the same yellow as the one I was wearing, but shorter.

All three still had their tags.

I touched the hem of the blue one.

It would have come to the middle of my thigh.

I pulled the tag out and turned it over.

There was a receipt tucked behind it, and on the back of the receipt, in my mother's round handwriting, someone had written:

Light. Short. No sleeves. For Tuesday.

It was not a note to me.

It was a list, and I didn't know who she had written it for.

I stood there in my yellow dress with the receipt in my hand.

Then I took it downstairs and out the kitchen door, into the backyard.

The light in the garage was on.

I knocked on the side door, and the radio went quiet.

Mitch opened it.

He had taken off his shirt cuffs and rolled his sleeves to the elbow, and there was sawdust in the hair of his forearms.

He looked at my face, and then at the paper in my hand.

"Come in," he said.

I had not been inside his shop in two years.

It smelled of cedar and linseed oil, and a half-built cabinet stood on the bench under the lamp.

"Why did you say yes?" I asked.

He didn't pretend to misunderstand.

"To the therapy?"

"To all of it. You didn't ask me. You didn't even look at me when she told us."

He picked up a rag and wiped his hands, slowly.

"She said if I didn't, she'd leave," he said. "And take you with her."

"I'm eighteen. She can't take me anywhere."

"She said it in the kitchen. Last week. She said you'd go if she asked you to."

"Would I have?"

He looked at me for the first time without looking away.

"I don't know," he said. "I didn't want to find out."

I turned the receipt over in my fingers.

"That's not the same as asking me."

"No," Mitch said. "It isn't."

He didn't argue and he didn't excuse himself.

It was the first honest thing he had said to me in months, and I stood there and let it land.

"Look at this," I said, and held out the paper.

He read the back, and the lines in his face went flat.

"Where did you get this?"

"It was in the tag of a dress I've never seen before. There are three more in my closet. She bought them for Tuesday."

He read it again.

"Joanna told me she bought you a few things for college," he said.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I took it out.

It was my mother.

Dr. K says light clothes help you relax! Wear the white one Tuesday. xx

I held the screen up so Mitch could read it.

He read it twice.

Neither of us said anything.

Out in the yard, my mother was calling us in to dinner.

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