In The Cards
Eucalyptus and sandalwood notes infused an air thick with judgement and shame.
Crystals in a color wheel arrangement lay before Kitty. She squeezed her stress ball and snatched a peek at her laptop clock. 4:45pm. Mabry, her last patient of the day, rambled past her allotted time.
“Did you hear me, Kitty?” Mabry tightened the band on her ponytail and swished her hair like a horse’s tail.
Leaning backward and then forward in her ergonomic chair, Kitty, one hand under her chin, scribbled a few notes. “How about we save some for next session, huh? Follow up in eight weeks okay?”
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“Eight weeks. That’s two months, Doctor. I’m in crisis and you didn’t hear a word I said.” Mabry snatched up her Taylor Swift lunch bag and stomped to the door. “I need a new therapist. You seem out it.”
Mabry exited, and slammed the door behind her. A mahogany wood- framed license tumbled off the adjacent wall and assumed a prone position on the floor.
Kitty disdained losing patients, but she would make an exception today. Mabry bled high drama, and Kitty wanted this session, this day over. She needed to get home to her Edward and dissuade him from leaving her for Howard.
She had grown suspect of Edward and Howard’s “friendship” as they spent so much time together. They fished together every Sunday morning and attended opera performances quarterly. When they started dressing alike, often wearing complementary polka dot bowties and cravats, there was no denying the truth. The private detective she hired to track Edward was kind enough to return her deposit.
After 25 years, this is what their marriage had come to. What would people think, their friends, relatives, and work associates? And for heaven’s sake, Edward, a municipal judge in their small town, would be the joke of the legal community.
The couple in her mind had been together too long, gone through too much. She would not insist on couples’ therapy but would propose they did what her parents did: stay together for appearance’s sake. In her practice, she counseled many couples who slept apart but carved the turkey together at Thanksgiving.
She completed her patient notes and closed her laptop. Reaching under her blotter, she searched out a bent Madame Aubergine’s business card. Fingering the card, she turned it over to see an old number crossed out and new one written in. Not wanting any of her therapist peers to know of her marital woes, she’d contact the fortune teller tomorrow for a palm reading.
