Page 41 - In Five Years

Her office was bright and friendly, if not a little sterile. There was one giant
plant. I couldn’t figure out if it was fake or not. I never touched it. It was on the
other side of the sofa, behind her chair, and it would have been impossible to get
to.

Dr. Christine. One of those professionals who uses their first name with their
title to seem more relatable. She didn’t. She wore swaths of Eileen Fisher—

linens and silks and cottons spun so excessively I had no idea what her shape
even was. She was sixty, maybe.
“What brings you in today?” she asked me.
I had been in therapy once, after my brother died. A fatal drunk driving

accident fifteen years ago that had the police show up at our house at 1:37 in the
morning. He wasn’t the one at the wheel. He was in the passenger seat. What I

heard first were my mother’s screams.
My therapist had me talk about him, our relationship, and then draw what I
thought the accident might have looked like, which seemed condescending for a

twelve year old. I went for a month, maybe more. I don’t remember much,
except that afterward my mom and I would stop for ice cream, like I was seven
and not nearly thirteen. I often didn’t want any, but I always got two scoops of

mint chocolate chip. It felt important to play along then, and for a long time
after.
“I had a strange dream,” I said. “I mean, something strange happened to me.”

She nodded. Some of the silk slipped. “Would you like to tell me about it?”
I did. I expressed to her that David and I had gotten engaged, that I’d had too
much champagne, that I’d fallen asleep, and that I’d woken up in 2025 in a

strange apartment with a man I’d never met before. I left out that I slept with
him.
She looked at me for a long time once I stopped talking. It made me

uncomfortable.
“Tell me more about your fiancé.”
I was immediately relieved. I knew where she was headed with this. I was

unsure about David, and therefore my subconscious was projecting a kind of
alternative reality where I was not subject to the burdens of what I had just
committed to in getting engaged.