Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn by Kris Radish Page B

almost died when you walked in. I am not like that, you know, sleeping with neighbor men, but I just got so messed up. I'm still so messed up. Why are you here? Why aren't you trying to murder me?”
    I tell her, leaning in so we can support each other. We share our stories in sentences that dip and sway just like we do when we straddle the sidewalk down the block and to my house. We laugh thinking what it would be like to have Bob come in and find us talking in the kitchen, and then I put Jane to bed in Katie's room because she has left her key locked in her car, and when I turn to leave she takes my arm and she asks me if I will be her friend, because she will be mine.
    “Yes,” I say, “I need you too, I do.”
    My dreams that night are laced with shadows and questions and in the morning when I remember the night before I race to the bedroom and there is Jane, arms wrapped around Katie's pink kitten, her head tilted toward the door, pillow on the floor, and I tell myself she is real, that I did something, one good thing, and that whatever happens next will be okay. I tell myself this over and over, and then I do what I have done maybe thirty thousand times.
    I make the coffee and I wait.

 
     
     

     
     
    Dr. Cassie Breckwith has six stuffed dogs, a drum, a lava lamp, a pile of broken pencils, stacks and stacks of files, and an ashtray full of marbles sitting on top of her desk. Off to one side I swear to God there is a slab of concrete with a nail through its center, two Folgers coffee cans filled with dirt as black as midnight and an empty beer bottle. It's all lovely stuff and my mind is whirling. There are no cutesy-wootsy posters on the walls advocating the benefits of peace or love or anything in between. The couch is a sagging lump of green corduroy. There are no psychiatric magazines or pill bottles anywhere. The window has a full view of the asphalt parking lot, and when I walk into her office the first thing I see is her bending over a stuffed chair and whacking at a fly with her shoe. I like her instantly.
    “Damn vents let in everything from mice to these flies,” she tells me, slapping like a wild woman at a fly that is admittedly the size of something that should not be able to fly at all.
    “Need some help?”
    She laughs loudly. It is a machine gun. This woman has one of those infectious laughs that makes you want to start cackling, which is exactly what I do after she says, “That's what I'm supposed to say.”
    I have never been to a therapist and from the get-go with this woman I am immediately sorry that I have not discovered how screwed up I am much sooner. Dr. C has a kind intensity that overshadows everything and I watch her walk around her office and immediately know what her entire life must be like. She never makes her bed and there are always dishes on the counter. She was married, may still be, and has grandchildren who love to come over because she doesn't give a damn if the house gets messy. She drinks something with whiskey in it, loves to watch old movies and she has a beautiful singing voice. I have no idea if any of this information is correct, but I decide to latch on to it and make it real. She's what all our grandmas would call “a real peach.”
    The preliminaries are already down on paper. Husband. Affair. Unhappy. Married young. Unhappy. Two kids. Works at the University. Unhappy. Fairly decent support system. Confused and unhappy.
    She begins by leaning forward in her big chair, touching one set of fingers to the other and telling me how remarkable it is that this is my first trip to a therapist. “That's something,” she exclaims as if she has just found a missing hundred-dollar bill.
    She makes me laugh again. Her polyester pants and long cotton blouse, her pinned-up hair that dangles out in strands from behind her ears and her row of gold rings, one on every single finger and thumb, are a miracle of comfortableness for me. “Talk,” she commands me. We are just