A Rhapsody Of Sorts

12- We're Like Leaves

September 21, 2012.

Dr. Liddle had her thinking face on — eyebrows pinched together and lips pursed as she ran her tongue along her front teeth. She clasped her hands on her desk, and while she thought over the pile of Fox-induced woes I'd just upturned on her, I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth and stared at her cherry red nails.

"Oliver," she finally started in a somber tone, "do you blame Gregory Fox for Matthew's death?" They were the first words she'd spoken since I arrived, but I wondered how long the question had been floating around in her head — days, weeks, months?

Her eyes were set in the well-practiced look of indifference that I'd come to know well in the past two years, though I saw it more after Matthew's death, when my appointments became weekly in January, than I ever did before, when I only saw her once a month or by special appointment.

Dr. Liddle's office was so different from Victoria Gold's. She always kept the drapes drawn open so that the morning sun could creep in through the windows behind her desk, giving me a great view of the oak tree in the building's back garden. Instead of stale cigar smoke, her office smelled of lilacs from the potpourri that sat in a bowl on her bookshelf. Her desk wasn't messy, but it wasn't neat either — there were stacks of dog-eared books, a clay mug filled with ballpoint pens and pencils, and a couple empty Styrofoam coffee cups across the top. Her office seemed lived-in, from its floral throw rug to the accent pillows on the chair and chaise lounge to her secondhand mahogany desk.

When I walked in this morning, she'd side-eyed me and pulled her glasses off her face to let them hang around her neck before she stood up and cracked one of the windows open, sighing quietly as I tossed the throw pillow on the floor and curled up in the armchair in front of her desk.

She knew. She always did, so she'd wordlessly poured me a cup of peppermint tea from the fresh pot on her desk, before settling back in her chair to listen to me grumble through the first twenty minutes of the appointment.

"Should I blame him?" I held my cup in a quivering hand as I brought the rim to my lips. The tea had gone cold.

"No, I don't necessarily think you should." She paused to refill her own cup. "But I think you do."

"What makes you think that?"

"What do you think makes me think that, Rose?" she countered, arching an eyebrow.

"Why would I blame him?"

She nearly smiled, the corners of her lips twitching for half a second. "Are we playing twenty questions or are you just deflecting?"

"Fine." I huffed back in my seat, carefully placing my teacup back in its saucer. "I do blame him."

No matter how hard my mother or Dr. Liddle tried to convince me that no one was at fault, I couldn't stop playing the blame game.

"Can you tell me why you blame him?"

"Because if he wasn't such a fucking knob Matthew would still be here," I snapped.

She didn't so much as bat a disapproving eye.

"Do you ever wonder how Fox feels about it?"

I didn't. I saw no need to let Fox defend himself. He'd apologized to me heedlessly last December, even when all I could do was lay down and cry — my mind empty of all thoughts that didn't pertain to Matthew — and then his apologies burnt to ash on his tongue when I told him I never wanted to see him again.

I slouched and put my feet up against the front of her desk. "I already know Fox feels guilty."

It felt like second nature for me to grasp the bandana wrapped around my wrist, as if I needed to bring a piece of Matthew closer to me — and yet the red cloth that I had to dig out of the back of my closet when I dressed myself this morning was not my piece of Matthew. Fox still had my black-and-white bandana, and I didn't know how I was meant to get it back from him without getting in another spat.