After Life

Convergence

FRANCINE HUGH

"Francine?"

The barely shrunken cubes of ice clank and crack against the bottom of Dr. Beckford's glass as she readies it for her third fill.

"Would you like some more water?" she asks, her white-painted nails tapping against the half-empty glass cylinder. Dr. Beckford observes everything, from my constant attempt to use her thick, pink-framed lenses as makeshift mirrors to watch the clock behind me, to the tiny pieces of cotton that have fallen loose from her worn, grey couch because I couldn't restrain my fingers. Surely, the droplet streaking towards the centre of the wooden table between us from the liquid pooled on my saucer does not escape her. Even so, I humour her needless inquisition with a quick shake of my head and a swig of my nearly room temperature glass of water. The bitter taste of chlorine taints my otherwise genuine smile at the doctor.

"So," she says, meeting my gaze with a trained smile of her own, "my question. Ready to answer it?"

"What was it again, Dr. Beck-- I mean, Anne?"

"Francine..." she chided, reaching across the table to steady my fingers burrowing into the couch, "please answer the question."

I've ran out of room to sink; any lower and I'd find myself on the ground floor of this two-storey building.

"It's an unfair question, Anne," I finally manage to say.

"How so?"

"Because it implies that I have issues with my brother being back. How could I? What kind of person would that make me?" My mouth is parched as the truth scorches my tongue. The bitter-tasting water I've indulged yet again does little to relieve it.

"Do you have issues with your brother being back?"

"Dr. Beckford, you know I don't." But, as she slinks back in her chair, peering through those butterfly glasses, her initial question tugs at me even harder – "What do I want that I cannot have because of my brother?" Her silence wins out and like all the times before, the room sucks the words from my throat in a tear-filled, anger-filled blob.

"How can I afford to want anything right now when Mikey rightfully deserves to get all that he wants after going through what he went through? Now that he's dropped out of college, how can I tell him he should have been helping me before deciding to help anyone else? It's selfish. I... No, I'm selfish... for thinking that."

My grey cardigan is almost completely soaked with tears. Dr. Beckford encourages me to remove it and I do, revealing the scratch marks just on the edges of my upper back from nights spent hugging myself too tightly.

She pauses to observe the marks I failed to disclose in our sessions and grips my hand even tighter. "Your feelings are valid," she tells me, "and they do not make you a good or bad person, Francine. What you choose to do with them decides who you are. The question I asked you earlier had to lead to this place. And this is what I hope you take away from it – you are allowed to make demands. You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to want things for yourself, not because anyone else wants those things, but because you and only you do."

"It's just that... I am afraid. Though my brother is back, he hasn't quite been himself. That's why I need to give him time to figure out what he truly wants and how to get it. Maybe that will reconnect him to who he is. I am hopeful that things will work out on time and as they should." Dr. Beckford leans back into her chair, presses her hands to her knees and a smile slowly peels across her face. Her thick lenses could not hide the sparkle in her eyes this time.

"We're celebrating him tonight too, you know? That's why I've been ummm..."

"Attempting to watch the clock? I've seen you every day for a whole month now, Francine, of course I've picked up on a few of your little tricks." She taps her lenses and stare at me and we both share a laugh.