The Last Time I Was Me. Cathy Lamb

bet that smells yummy,” I told her.

      “No, not at all,” she said, her voice accusing. “It smells like fear.”

      “Fear?”

      “Yes. Fear. Truckloads of it. So, let’s start with that. What are you fearful of?” She wiped my sweat on her pant leg, and fixed those sharp, brown eyes on mine like lasers.

      “I’m not afraid of anything,” I told her. I sat up straighter in my beanbag, glad that the rest of my sweat was drying. I am a firm believer that sweat washes away all the bacteria infesting our bodies-the germy yuck that runs through our veins (Rosvita would be proud of my antigerm inner rhetoric), although I would rather not be wearing a silk shirt when punching a bag.

      No, I wasn’t afraid of anything, but it’s not what you think. I wasn’t afraid of anything because I didn’t care anymore. Not at all. I was done. I wasn’t sure I cared to live anymore. The analytical part of me knew it was a dangerous place to be.

      “Yes, you are.” She whacked the side of the beanbag. “Fear is lacing your life. It’s behind all of your problems. It’s behind your anger. And your impotence.”

      At the word impotence, I thought of Slick Dick’s little dickie. He obviously had enough kick in his dick to get it up for his girlfriends-as well as for me. I had heard from my doctor. I had insisted on being tested for every STD under the sun. All tests were negative and I was healthy. Good news, but it did not diminish my need to jab needles into his butt.

      “You’re getting angry,” Emmaline told me, spreading her arms out wide. “I’m going to catch your anger for you.”

      “Spread your arms out wider, Emmaline. I’ve got a heck of a lot more anger than that. Here it comes, one roll of fury after another,” I said, noting the bitter, mean tone. “Perhaps I’ll send you that tad bit of anger I felt when I realized that my career was pointless.” There was that word again. Pointless. I’m pointless.

      “Send it over,” she instructed, arms waving.

      “Or maybe you would like the anger I felt when I realized that I have hooked up with one loser after another. Let’s see, there was Devon who talked incessantly about himself and only needed a board with eyes painted on it and inflatable boobs to be happy. There was Carl who wanted sex and nothing else, and when I tried to talk to him about anything he pulled a pillow over his head-and for some reason I felt compelled to stay in that relationship for six months. There was Andy who was in love with his mother and wanted me to mother him and left when I wouldn’t fold his socks a certain way.”

      I tilted my head at her. “You get the picture.”

      “No, I don’t,” Emmaline said. “There’s more. So much more. Tell me.”

      “No. No, that’s it.” I crossed my arms. No more.

      “Yes. You’re raging. I want you to heal. Tell me.”

      “I’m healed.”

      “You’re not, Jeanne. You’re raw. You’re hurting.” She leaned toward me, took both my hands. She lowered her voice. “I’m here to help you. I want your anger. I want you to get rid of it. Keep talking, Jeanne.”

      I thought about it. Why the heck not. “I’m so angry. I hate myself.”

      “I know that. Kick that hate out, don’t be pathetic, don’t be weak. Kick the burning anger out.”

      I don’t know why but I felt the tears form in my eyes again. “Okay, well if you can take real burning anger I think I’ll send you the anger from my mother’s death. She was my only friend and now I don’t have any friends besides my brother who I rarely see because I can’t stand to look in the eyes of his children. Perhaps I’ll send you the fury I felt watching cancer eat her alive. Why couldn’t the cancer have landed in the body of a criminal or a creep? Why her? And why do so many people I know who do nothing but pollute the earth with their venom and hate and perversity get to live and she doesn’t?”

      “Keep it coming, Jeanne. All of it. There’s more, I can feel it.”

      I tried to pull my hands away, but she wouldn’t let me.

      Oh, yeah, there was more and I felt that anger ripping through me like a chain saw, noisy and relentless.

      “Well,” I tried to sound nonchalant but my voice caught on a sob. “There was Johnny Stewart. We met when I was in graduate school and he was in medical school. We were twenty-five.” I started to shake. Surely I was over this, almost twelve years later?

      “I’m feeling your fear again, Jeanne. This is the worst of it. Your negatives are radiating. Don’t be a wuss here. Get it out.”

      “Johnny always liked to sing.” I wiped tears off my face because my cracking heart was making me cry. “We would sing together all the time. He played the guitar; I played the violin. We decided we were going to get married and live in the country and have five kids and a farm.” I wrenched my hands away from Emmaline’s, then got up and slammed both hands into the punching bag, not bothering to wipe my tears. “He was going to be a doctor and I was going to raise the kids. We would go camping in the summer and I would volunteer in their classrooms and take care of the cows and chickens and horses. We would go to church on Sundays and have a bunch of friends. Did I mention the five children? We had even picked out names we liked.”

      “Hit it out, Jeanne. Rip it out and let’s deal with it. Be strong enough to deal with it.” She flapped again. “Speak of it. Get it out in the open, out of your heart.”

      “It’s never leaving my heart,” I told her, pummeling my hands into the bag. My body shook again, like a leaf would shake if you grabbed it by its stem and held it up in a tropical windstorm.

      “Tell me.”

      “Well, there was the little matter of my being pregnant. When I was twenty-five, during my last year of graduate school.” I smiled. My smile wobbled. Salty tears flowed into my mouth. “We planned on getting married after we graduated and having kids. But he was so happy that I was pregnant and I was so happy and we both cried. He always put his head on my stomach and talked to the baby.

      “Before the ultrasound told us we were having a girl, Johnny would tell the baby he loved her, that her mother loved her. He would talk to the other side of my stomach and tell the baby that he loved him, that his mother loved him.”

      I shuddered, smacked both fists into the bag.

      “We would name it Grayson if the baby was a boy, after my father, and Ally, after my mother, if the baby was a girl.”

      I felt ill. I hadn’t even spoken about this in twelve years. I had only talked about it with my mother who rocked me back and forth, in and out of my hysterics. I felt like it was yesterday and felt the full force of my grief. I could still smell it.

      “Tell me, Jeanne.”

      “No, I can’t.”

      “You can, I’m listening. Let it out.”

      Let it out? Let it out so it could eat me alive once again? So it could drive me to my knees? How fun. This counselor knew how to make a client have a good time. “Two weeks after I found out I was pregnant we got married in the church chapel with his family and mine and about fifty friends and professors from school. I wore my mother’s white lace wedding dress and the veil that she wore and her mother before her and her mother before her. And flip-flops. No heels for me. We were so happy together. We always had pancakes on Saturday mornings and Wednesday nights for dinner.”

      I remembered those evenings. We were students. We were broke and we bought pancake mix in bulk. We’d smother the pancakes in syrup and butter and eat naked by our fireplace and laugh. Afterward, Johnny would play his guitar, I’d play my violin. Naked.

      “Months later a drunk driver decided that it would be best if he sped down the highway and crashed his car into ours head on.”

      I