Andy Christie - We'll Have To Stop Now

 

 

So, my therapist Phyllis is in her chair across the other side of the coffee table. She's got her shoes off in front of the Saul Steinberg lithograph. Her legs are tucked up underneath her in these billowy white summery pants, and she's looking at me funny. I'm in the couch looking back at her funny, because in the middle of the coffee table, between the box of tissues and the African primitive carving, [audience laughter] is a bottle of Maker's Mark bourbon. She's my therapist, she knows what I drink. And next to that is a bottle of Glenfiddich. Scotch. She's my therapist. I have no idea what she drinks, but I assume this is for her. She's wearing a little more makeup than usual, enough so that I can notice. 

 

And three days ago, last time I saw her hair was brown, and now it's red. She'd been messing with it for a while. First kind of light brown, combed back, and then dark brown with bangs. Every time she shows up with a new do, she asks me how the change in her makes me feel. [audience laughter] Like, maybe she's doing it for me. So, I spend about $20 worth of therapy telling her how great she looks, because just in case she is flirting, I want her to know that I know. And now, she's in this red wig. There are these bottles and glasses with ice there. She wants to have a drink with me right now in the middle of a session, right here in her office, which is also her living room, which means there is a bedroom here someplace. [audience laughter] 

 

I am on the verge of a massive therapeutic breakthrough. [audience laughter] After three years sitting here listening to her say, “And how do you feel about that? And how do you feel about that?” While I'm trying for one guilt free second to forget my girlfriend back home and imagining Phyllis getting up and tiptoeing across the room to squeeze in next to me and ask me, “How do you feel about this?” [audience laughter] Now, with the whiskey bottles, I feel like it's my move, only I'm not much of a mover. I'm more the shaker type. That's why I'm here. 

 

And I have a girlfriend. That's also why I'm here. At the time, I was a 53-year-old man who after 16 years was still calling his girlfriend, his girlfriend. One day, my girlfriend and I were home when we were only living together for about 13 years. [audience laughter] We're watching TV, and we're talking about our future. [audience laughter] When she stops and laughs and says, “Oh, forget it, you'll get married when hell freezes over.” I stop for a second and think and I say, “I never agreed to that.” [audience laughter] She laughs again, because it's a funny line and she has a great sense of humor. But after that, the conversation [chuckles] fades away and stops, because it's time to talk, which for me means it's time to talk to a mental health professional, [audience laughter] which is when I find Phyllis. 

 

Phyllis is probably about 50, like I am, because she remembers and forgets a lot of the same things that I do. [audience laughter] But she looks a lot younger. She's tiny and pretty. So, she's cute enough to inspire my fantasies and old enough, so I don't have to feel like a midlife crisis cliché. It's the best of both worlds, really. But the attraction isn't really a physical thing. I just think we make a nice couple. Unlike every other therapist whose spirit I'd broken, [audience laughter] Phyllis always looks happy to see me. And also, unlike them, she has human reactions. 

 

She's appalled when I say something appalling, like the time I was in a men's room and a moth flew out of my pants. [audience laughter] Right out through the fly, like it was an empty old purse. When I say something funny, like time the moth flew out of my pants, she laughs, just like my girlfriend. Because we haven't been living together for 16 years, she always at least pretends to be listening, and you can't expect that from anyone. So, I'm kind of in love with her. But that's okay, because you're supposed to fall in love with your therapist. I swore to myself and to my girlfriend that I was going to do this right this time. 

 

So, she started changing her hair. That was the first thing I noticed. And shortly after the hair thing, I noticed that she started losing the little midriff belly bulge that she had that you could only see when she wore certain pants. It was like, she was working out maybe. Then a little while after that, I stopped bumping into her other patients, as they were walking in and out of the office. I wasn't avoiding eye contact with Mr. Handsome with a chiclet sized cell phone anymore. That was okay with me. I didn't think he belonged in therapy, anyway. 

 

After a while, it was just Phyllis and the Saul Steinberg lithograph and the Benjamin lithograph and the African carvings and the shark's teeth and the rainforest white noise machine, and me and her place was like my place, like our place. And now, she wants to pour cocktails, like we're a couple and we just got home from work and have to unwind before dinner. And she asks me, do I want a drink? And I'll say, “Sure, if you're having one.” And she says, “I know the whole drink thing is totally unprofessional, but I've been struggling with a way to bring this up.” 

 

I know it's coming, I know it's going to be big, and suddenly I am terrified. It's like, when I took a few flying lessons. I was really into the whole idea of it, the big green headphones and the logbook and the flight bag and the shrink-wrapped set of instructional manuals. But I always hoped the lesson would be canceled because of bad weather. [audience laughter] You know, give me a license, but keep that plane away from me. [audience laughter] So, now, I am nervous about how she's going to crack open this whole thing that's going on between us. So, I sit back and let her start. 

 

She pours the drinks, she looks at me for a while and she says, “I've been sick. I am in the middle of a course of chemotherapy right now. You must have noticed me losing weight. And I can't say anything. I am kind of frozen. I'm shocked, I'm scared, and I'm whatever a bigger word for sad is. And I'm ashamed about what I was expecting to happen. And I can't help it, but I'm disappointed. And that makes me ashamed again.” And she says she's not saying we have to stop our work right now. She doesn't want to-- Maybe it's selfish, but some work is good for her, because it helps her forget and stay centered. 

 

“But even though the treatment's pretty successful now, things could change anytime, without much warning, and I'm the one who has to decide what to do. You don't have to stay or go.” I look at her, trying to figure out what to say, still tongue tied. And she says, “It's up to me.” She hands me a list of other therapists, in case I decide that she can't help me anymore. And I say, “When have you ever helped me before?” [audience laughter] And she laughs. It's great because she gets one of those human looks again. I can't believe how much I would miss her if I left. She looks happy about that when I say, “I'm not going anywhere.” She looks at me again for a second and says, “You're the only client I'm seeing right now.” And my heart explodes. And she says, “Well, you and one other person, on and off.” I ask if it's the handsome guy with the cell phone, and she says, “That's none of my business. [audience laughter] But no.” And then, she looks at the clock and she says, “We'll have to stop now, like as any other session.” But I'm not ready to stop, and I'm just beginning to think of things to say. 

 

So I ask her, if she has anybody to talk to. She looks at me funny and says, “You mean like a therapist?” I feel like it's the stupidest question in the world. And she says, “I'm fine. I have plenty of friends and family.” I get this kind of quick flash of her real life. When she gets up to show me to the door, for the first time, I see how really thin she's gotten. Her pants are just hanging from these thin hips in these loose folds, so that her legs barely touch the material when she walks. When I get to the door, I hug her. I've never done that before. But she doesn't act surprised and she doesn't let go before I do. It feels the way I would imagine it would feel hugging a duckling. These kind of small, fragile bones under a soft coat. 

 

But her hair doesn't feel soft. It feels coarse and artificial, because it is. It's a wig. They all were. Then she kisses me on the cheek and she says, “I'm sorry, this has all been so weird.” And I tell her, “I'd sit through anything for a kiss.” And I wonder if she kissed the other guy. [audience laughter] So, we go on every Monday and Thursday. Every once in a while, her hair changes, but I stop telling her how nice it looks, because I don't want her to even notice that I'm looking at her at all, because she'll think I'm looking for changes, because I am. 

 

After a while, I stop asking her how she feels, because I just want her to feel like nothing has changed. So, she sits there, being dissolved from the inside by chemicals. I talk about how my girlfriend left the dishes for me to do again. Sometimes we quit early, because she's tired. Then she calls, leaves a message to cancel an appointment, and I call back, but I get her voicemail. I keep calling back for a couple of days until I get a phone call from this man with a European accent. And he says his name is Morton. He's Phyllis’ husband. And I find out she is married.

 

And without any kind of preamble, he says she died the night before. I knew it was coming, but it feels exactly like it felt when I was five and dad said that he was leaving. You know, where will you be? Where will I be? I tell him how unbelievably sorry I am for his loss, and I tell him how much I'll miss her. And he just grunts. I can tell that he is sick of hearing how much strangers are going to miss his wife. But I don't feel like a stranger. I knew her. She knew me every Monday and Thursday. And I'm sorry now that I stopped asking how she felt. I wonder if she thought I just didn't care, or maybe she enjoyed the kind of escape from reality twice a week the way I did. And I'm sorry I stopped telling her she looked nice. 

 

Morton tells me that she left a list of people that she wanted notified about the service, and I'm on it, and that's why he called. The next day, my girlfriend is ready to go to Riverside Memorial with me. But I tell her, “Go to work instead. I'm fine.” Because I just want to go alone and be alone with Phyllis one last time, I think. When I get there, for about 45 minutes, the length of a therapy session, people get up one after the other and talk about her. I finally find out little bits about her life now that she's gone. 

 

She married Morton three years ago, when she was 52, right around the time I started seeing her. He was the love of her life. It was her first marriage. Almost every Friday, they went to theater together. Everybody who goes up there and talks about him calls him Morty, not Morton, because they're all friends and family, but me. He's sitting in the first row, sobbing through the whole thing, devastated. There's an empty seat next to him. I think that if this were a theater, and last week even, that's where she'd be sitting. 

 

Then this guy walks up to the front with a guitar. He's about 35, mid-30s, nervous looking. And he says he's grateful for the opportunity to be here, for the invitation that he's not a friend or family. He just knew Phyllis as one of her patients, and he just saw her a few days ago. And it's the guy, it's the other patient, and I wonder which one of us saw her last. He says he's going to play a song that he wrote himself. And I'm jealous. I play guitar, I write songs. He apologizes and says he's not very good, and he starts. And he's not very good. [audience laughter] 

 

I'm less jealous, and I'm embarrassed for him. A couple of lines into it, I realize, along with everyone else, this song isn't even about Phyllis. [audience laughter] It's about this guy's wife who apparently is sitting in the back of the room, because he's singing over everyone's head. My song would have been about Phyllis. But he keeps playing and singing as people are shuffling and whispering all around me, “What's going on? What's up with this guy?” [audience laughter] He keeps going. The guitar is a little bit out of tune, but it's okay because it sounds like a church organ, the way a church organ is out of tune. 

 

He keeps going, and gradually the whispering subsides, everyone gets quiet. By the time the guy is done, everyone is either crying or smiling to themselves. I'm jealous again. And he says he had to come to say thank you to Phyllis, that she was the reason he and his wife were here together. I told my girlfriend to go to work, because I didn't want my real life and my imaginary life mixing up in the same room. I mean, this kind of nervous, earnest guy saw her to work out his life, whatever problems he had. I saw her to escape from my life, to skip out on it. I saw her for almost three years to work on a fantasy with someone that I loved, because she was so real. I squandered her. 

 

The list of therapists that Phyllis gave me on the day she told me she was sick, I had six names on it. They were all men. I thought back then, with my last shred of fantasy, maybe she just can't imagine me seeing another woman. But now, I know that she knew, especially with her life getting realer and shorter, enough make believe. I want to tell her that I can see that and we can work on that now. But I can't because it's too late, because our time is up and we have to stop now. Thanks.