Healing Sands (16 page)

“I don't try to be tough,” she said. “I just do what I have to do. Only right now I don't know what
to
do, and that's what I want you to tell me.”

Holy crow. They were at a crossroads already, and she was still trying to figure out how to get her feet to touch the floor. He felt like he was entering a minefield.

“I can tell you,” he said, “but it will be a whole lot more effective if I help you figure out how to tell yourself.” He refolded his legs. “How do you see things when you get ready to make a picture? That's how you say it, right? Make a picture?”

She gave him a doubtful look before the goalpost hands went up and she focused between them. “I see it in layers in a frame,” she said. “I find all the compositional elements that are going to make the reader look at the photograph and think about it a little while longer. What's in the foreground? What's in the background? Where is the light?”

“Why do you do all that?”

“Well, because . . .” She shrugged. “The longer I can capture the viewers and make them think about what they're seeing, the better chance I have of them understanding what I'm trying to say with the photograph.”

“Bingo.”

She gave Sully a blank look.

“You just described what we're about here,” he said. “Only I'm the photographer, and you're the reader. I have to bring out all the layers, all the elements that are going to get you to look at your life and think about it. And the longer and deeper I can get you to do that, the better chance you have of understanding it all.”

Ryan studied his face as if she were looking for traces of a clandestine plot. The only thing missing was the bare lightbulb.

And yet there was something desperate in her eyes, something that tugged at Sully's heart. This was no high-strung woman trying to get the best of her road rage.

“All right,” she said. “What is it you want me to look at?”

Sully took another step into the minefield. “I want you to look at the thing you want the most right now.”

No pause. “I want my son to be acquitted.”

“What if he weren't? What would be the next thing you would want?”

“You're not going for ‘To get him out on an appeal.'”

“I'm not going for anything. Let's say he did get out, but he still wouldn't talk to you?”

“I'd be back where I was before this happened.”

“And what did you want then?”

“I wanted my sons to love me again. I still do. I just want to be their mother.” She brought herself up abruptly in the chair. “Where
are
we going with this?”

“To another layer,” Sully said. “You're having to work pretty hard at being a mother right now, yeah?”

“Thanks to my ex-husband, yes. Look, if you're saying my anger stems from him, that is not a news flash.”

“Did you get angry before you were married to Dan?”

“You mean like when I was a kid?”

“Sure.”

She actually smiled—ruefully, Sully thought.

“I wasn't allowed to. You didn't pitch fits in our house.”

“What happened if you did?”

“I never tested it out.”

Sully found that hard to believe. He waited until she squinted. “I never tested it out
personally
,” she said. “I just saw what happened when somebody else did.”

“For instance?”

Ryan pulled her knees toward her chest, then caught herself. “When I was five, my mother got me a boxer, from the pound. I wanted to call him Slobber.”

“‘Wanted' to . . . ?”

“He didn't stay long enough to call him anything. My father came home from work and said okay, fine, you got a dog. You have to take care of him.”

“You were how old?”

“Five.”

Holy crow
, Sully thought, but he nodded her on.

“I was feeding him, and a couple of kibbles fell on the floor. Slobber and I went for them at the same time, and my father picked me up and screamed at my mother to get that blankity-blank dog out of our blankity-blank house and take him back where he blankity-blank came from.”

“How did your mother react?”

“She said he was being unreasonable, that the dog wasn't going to bite me.”

“Did she yell back at him when she said it?”

Ryan's eyebrows twisted. “My mother never said anything worse than ‘good gravy' to anybody.”

“So what happened?”

Ryan shrugged. “Slobber went back to the pound.”

“And you?”

Once again she raised her knees and forced them down again. She wasn't going into that fetal position the little girl in her longed for.

“I don't think I did anything. What would be the point?”

“So you weren't allowed to
express
anger. But did you
feel
it?”

“You mean like I do now? I guess not, no.”

Sully waited.

“Maybe when I was younger than that. I probably got so used to controlling it I didn't even feel it anymore.”

“So you didn't start consciously feeling anger until after you were married,” he said.

“A few years after.” Ryan's voice sharpened. “Right after I got pregnant with Jake. I wanted Dan to get a real job so we'd have health insurance when I quit work to stay home with the baby. He said he would—and he didn't. That was probably when it started.” She shook her head. “I wasn't violent. I just yelled, and he blamed it on hormones. It went downhill from there. What's the point?”

“That resentment could be what fuels your anger. That might be one layer, anyway.”

“Like I said, that is not breaking news.”

“So when Dan flaked out on the job thing, what did you do?”

She scowled. “I worked until I had Jake, took the minimum six-week maternity leave, and went back to my job. Obviously Dan wasn't going to take any responsibility. Somebody had to.”

“And that continued.”

“For the most part. There was a period before I got pregnant with Alex when he was teaching at the Art Institute in Chicago, and I thought he was finally growing up. That's the only reason I agreed to have another baby.”

“But that didn't last.”

“Of course not.”

“So once again you had to be in charge.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “I wasn't trying to be the Gestapo—but if somebody didn't take control of our lives, we were going to end up on the street with two kids. It's not like I tried to make him into a nine-to-fiver. I helped him start a business where he could have a venue for selling his stuff, and he just ran it into the ground while he was telling me it was doing great. When that went under and we lost all our savings, that was it.”

Sully leaned forward, straight into the minefield. “I want to put something to you, and I just want you to look at it as a possible layer. If it doesn't ring true, we'll move on, okay?”

Her eyes squinted. “I can already tell I'm not going to like this.” She didn't have to like it. All he wanted her to do was consider it—before she headed for the door.

“Let's just explore the idea that you have a basic conflict going here.” Sully held out one palm. “On the one hand, you want things to go a certain way, and you've learned to put yourself in a position where they go that way—because if you don't, the consequences could be pretty disastrous.”

She formed the lines on either side of her mouth, but she nodded.

“But at the same time, you resent having to be in that position in the first place, where it's up to you to take all the responsibility. And it's that conflict that makes you so mad you want to throw things.” Sully cocked his head. “How does that sound?”

“It sounds like psychological bilge water.” Her feet hit the floor as she jerked to the edge of the chair. “I did not lose it at my ex-husband's last night because I was ‘conflicted.' I blew up because his girlfriend accused me of putting down her son when I barely looked at the kid. That woman is in worse shape than I am.”

“What did she do?” Sully asked.

Ryan rolled her eyes. “She cried. I have nothing against shedding a few tears when the situation calls for it, but she was sobbing like I'd tried to castrate the boy. She was hanging on to the porch pole with mascara running down her face like Tammy Faye. I mean, get a grip.”

Sully had a hard time reining in a grin.

“And
that's
the reason I'm here,” Ryan went on. “I don't want to turn into a version of her. I mean, I don't see myself boo-hooing like that, but for every trail of snot coming out of her nose, I could throw some kind of projectile, do you know what I'm saying?”

Once again the desperation quickened in her eyes.

Sully steepled his fingers under his chin. “I can't say for sure without seeing—what's her name?”

“Ginger.” Ryan licked her lips as if she were trying to get a bad taste out of her mouth.

“I'm not making an official diagnosis here, but she could be histrionic.”

“Is that an actual mental illness?”

“It's a personality disorder,” Sully said. “And again, I wouldn't go to Dan and tell him his girlfriend has HPD.”

He waited for her to nod, which she finally did with obvious reluctance.

“My point is, you don't fit that profile. You don't go off randomly or deliberately for the sake of drama. When histrionic people seek help, it's usually just to have an audience. They think the problem is with everyone else, and they want to tell you about it in graphic detail so you'll sympathize and enable and everything else they thrive on. That isn't you.”

“Great,” Ryan said. “So I'm not like the Spice Girl. How does this help me?”

There was none of the relief the average client would have felt. But then, Ryan wasn't the average client. Back to the minefield.

“It helps you rule out certain things,” Sully said. “It's like going to a medical doctor with headaches. They immediately try to determine that you don't have a brain tumor. Once they do, they can move on—”

“To what?”

“In our case, to looking at another layer—
while
we're giving you come coping mechanisms to use in the meantime.”

“Such as.”

She seldom seemed to put anything to him as a question. It was always as a challenge. An I-bet-you-don't-know-the-answer. He wasn't sure he did.

“The usual approach would be things like trying to stay away from the situations that trigger your anger.”

“When the situation is right in my face all the time? Look, I know you probably think I'm just trying to be difficult. I've been accused of that before.”

“No, I don't think that at all,” Sully said. “What I think is that you're smart enough to know what doesn't work for you. Most of the time.”

“Most of the time. What's the exception?” She turned her head to look at him from the corner of her eye. “I'm not going to like this, am I?”

“You're probably going to hate it,” Sully said. “But in therapy, often the thing you resist is the thing you need the most. Do you know anything about quicksand?”

“Quicksand. No.”

“When somebody gets stuck in quicksand, what do you think is their first instinct for getting out?”

She gave her hand an impatient flick. “They probably panic and start thrashing around.”

“Which is the worst thing they can do, because the more they agitate the quicksand, the more it will liquefy and the faster they'll sink. The best thing they can do is relax, take a few deep breaths, spread out their arms and legs, and just let their body's natural buoyancy bring them to the top.” Sully tilted his head at her. “If anybody's in quicksand right now, Ryan, it's you. You're trying everything you know to do, and yet the more you struggle, the deeper you go. That isn't
wrong
. It's just an instinct that isn't serving you well in this situation.”

“You're telling me I need to surrender and just let my son go to prison?”

“I'm not saying stop trying to prove Jake's innocence,” Sully said. “I'm saying let's work on letting go of the conviction that you can control not only the outcome, but everyone else's actions along the way.” He smiled at her. “The good news is, if you expect to come across quicksand, which I think you can in the weeks to come, you can carry a pole to support yourself when you start to sink. That, I think, would be God.”

Ryan put up both hands, palms toward Sully as if he were trying to push her against a wall. “I don't think about God as somebody who rescues me when I and everybody else have screwed up.”

“How
do
you think of God?”

“No, let's get back to you telling me that if I'm going to be healed of anger, I have to totally give up control.” Her voice rose to the pitch he was certain was reserved for the ex-husband and the Spice Girl. “
What—
is the
matter
with you? If I give up control, I'm going to lose my son—maybe
both
of my sons. You can't make me do that. I'd rather stay angry.”

“I'm not trying to make you do anything, Ryan,” Sully said.

But she was already on her feet, fumbling to get her purse strap over her shoulder.

“This is not what I need,” she said. “Matter of fact, I don't think you can give me what I need.”

She charged for the door, and although Sully followed her down the hall, he didn't try to stop her.

“Bill me,” she barked at Olivia. To Sully she said, “I'm sure what you do works for most people. I guess I'm just not most people.”

She could say that again. Sully watched her slam out the door and break into a virtual run across the parking lot. She was arguably the most challenging client he'd ever had. And yet a sad ache wrapped itself around his gut. She was like a stray cat. He wanted to pick up her soul and hug it until she gave in to her hurt so she could heal. But he knew if he tried it, he'd be shredded to ribbons.