The therapist told her she needed to process her grief. As though grief were a batch of vegetables you wanted to make into a puree, perhaps to make it easier to swallow. Claire told the therapist that she didn’t need to swallow her grief. It was already inside her, and she was fairly certain it was never going away.
The therapist reminded her that many women lose babies. Especially in the first trimester, which technically, Claire had already passed the morning she woke to find blood in her bed. Blood she still can’t stop thinking of as belonging to the very small–the size of walnut? an olive?–being that had just given up being inside her.
Is that supposed to make me feel better? Claire asked the therapist.
Does it? the therapist asked.
Not a goddamn bit, she told him. Because it didn’t. And because she hated when he answered a question with a question. As far as Claire was concerned it was bullshit technique. A way for therapists to sound like they’re working, when they were probably thinking about what they were going to have for lunch.
What would make me feel better, Claire said, is to get the hell out of this city and never come back.
That sounds to me like running away, the therapist old her.
It is, she said.