The Witch was in her mid-thirties, tall, and rail thin. Her bony elbows and knees looked like weapons. Her nose was long and pointy and so ugly it shocked me that she had never had it fixed, since she seemed so vain otherwise. Her hair was dull brown and flat, hanging lankily around her long face. She was mean. I could hear her on her cell phone, always on her cell phone, berating her employees. Calling them stupid and lazy. Screaming. Throwing fits. The sessions didn’t seem to be helping with her anger problem because she wasn’t really present; she wasn’t meeting Dr. Don halfway, if at all. She just sat there staring at her cell, scrolling through emails, typing and clicking and swiping and pushing. If she showed up for the fifty minutes, she got credit for the session, even though she didn’t investigate her behavior or feelings or learn anything about herself or why she was such a wretched person.
Since she was a lost cause and had exactly zero rapport with Dr. Don, he had me take over her last seven sessions. She usually paced around the room, staring at her phone. The only time she spoke was to mutter to herself and sort of to me about her “idiot employees” and “waste-of-space maid who forgot to lock the side door again” and “libtard dermatologist who didn’t call in her retinol prescription.” During one session, as I continued to desperately try to dig out a kernel of good in the Witch, she got some sort of email. She flew into a rage. It was from her ex-husband. How she ever got anyone to marry her in the first place was a mystery to me.
“Motherfucking asshole!” She started to kick the side table near the couch.
“Evelyn, take a deep breath.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, cunt!”
Cunt? I had been nothing but nice to this Witch. She then kicked the side table again, this time hard enough for my giant, heavy gold lamp to tip over and crash onto the floor. The shade crumpled, the light bulb shattered, the metal neck bent, and worst of all, the ceramic base cracked.
The crash of the lamp snapped her out of her rage. She turned and faced me, curious to see what would happen next. I looked at her, a hate growing inside me. I wanted to snap off her bony arm like a twig from a tree, and then shove it down her throat, silencing her malignance. It was the most horrific thought I had ever had, but I couldn’t stop the image from cycling in my brain. It made me momentarily happy to replay in my mind.
“Get out,” I said coolly.
“Fine by me. And that lamp was ugly anyway.”
Before I picked up the pieces of my beloved possession, I seethed and watched the Witch from the office window. She walked to the corner, staring at her phone, as always, waiting for the light to change.
Forty-First Street is a busy thoroughfare because it turns into the I-195, one of the three major causeways that connect Miami Beach to Miami. Incidentally, it’s the causeway that Amy, Erika, Sharon, Hannah, and I always used to get to Coconut Grove, where Club Rox lived. Because it connected Miami to the beach, large trucks, big rigs, school buses, and delivery vans traveled on the street constantly.
A group of other people joined the Witch, waiting for the light to change. A young mother holding her little boy’s squirming hand, two teenagers on skateboards, a businessman looking dapper but too warm in a suit, and two bikini-clad beachgoers. The light changed, the cars and trucks rumbled to a stop, and the motley group crossed the street. The Witch joined them, never even looking up from her cell phone, simply following the movement of the crowd. It was a wonder she wasn’t hit by a truck.
Later I told Alisha about my arm-snapping fantasy. It was troubling me that I could think about something so atrocious, and I had to get it off my chest and talk it through. “Am I a monster?” I asked. Alisha put her little notepad down and looked at me. “Ruby, you are not a monster. The mere fact that you are concerned with being a monster means you’re not one, and you’ll never be one. You are a good person.” As she said this, a similar phrase, You are an angel, spoken by Duncan’s mom and the friendly traffic cop, quietly echoed through my head.
Alisha mentioned that new mothers, loving mothers, often picture themselves hurting their babies, slamming them against walls, or breaking their little necks. Other people are afraid of heights not because they might fall, but because they might have an urge to fling themselves over the edge. These people aren’t actually suicidal; they just have a vision they can’t control. Which is very different from an impulse they can’t control. A daydream is harmless. These fantasies, as horrible as they sound, are normal. The mind computes thoughts and feelings and emotions in ways that aren’t always linear or logical or acceptable. But that’s okay as long as we keep them where they belong, as fleeting thoughts that serve to get us from one emotion to the next.
She asked me, in earnest, “Do you think you will actually try to rip off her arm and choke her with it?”
“Of course not! . . . And I don’t even think that it would be physically possible, anyway.”
“Exactly. It’s a cartoonish demonstration of the hatred you feel. So let’s talk about that. Why do you hate this woman so much?”
“She broke my lamp.”
“Yes. And I’m very sorry that happened. But it seems you disliked her even before the lamp incident. So what about her triggers this intense anger in you?”
“She’s a vile, mean, rage-filled bigot who doesn’t deserve to be on this earth, when there are so many other good, decent people out there who are desperate for therapy. Desperate for help. And the Witch will not be helped.”
And there was the trigger. Other than the obvious, that she was a hideous person, she made me feel ineffectual, which was one of my own worst fears. I was invisible to the Witch, unable to perform an important task, leaving me worthless. Leaving me like a useless slug, vulnerable to being dissolved by salt.
By the end of the session with Alisha, I had decided two things. One, I would offset my anger toward the Witch and spend even more time helping others by volunteering at a nonprofit mental health organization. And two, I would get my lamp fixed.
CHAPTER 17
LAMP
I hauled my broken and battered lamp into a lamp-repair shop in Bal Harbour. It had been open since the 1950s and seemed unchanged since then. Headshots of long-forgotten and dead movie stars lined one wall, newer headshots of hopeful Miami models lined another, and faded floral curtains with little lace frills on the edges hung on to their rods by threads. Even the dust was old. It was the kind of place you can’t believe still exists in this modern world, until you realize everyone has lamps, and sometimes they break, and therefore a lamp-repair shop makes perfect sense.
The ancient man behind the counter examined my lamp with his gnarled hands, and he said in a thick Russian accent that he could fix, thirty dollars, but it would not be perfect. I said that was all right by me.
The door chime jingled and I instinctively looked back to see who was coming in. A man, maybe late twenties, wearing cargo shorts, Vans sneakers, and a blue T-shirt that made his eyes pop, walked in sheepishly carrying a small green lamp in the shape of a frog. He smiled at me. He had perfect white teeth. I smiled back.
“Nice frog.”
“Thanks. It’s not mine.”
“That’s what they all say.”
He laughed. An easy, comfortable laugh. He had a lovely hint of a Southern drawl and explained that his mother collected all frog-related items and he spotted this at a garage sale and thought it would be a good gift for Mother’s Day. I pointed out that Mother’s Day wasn’t for months. But he said he liked to think ahead. Wow, a guy who cared about his mom and bought thoughtful presents well ahead of time—and he was cute, at least five eleven, and not wearing a wedding ring.
The Russian man said, “Frog just needs to be rewired. Ten dollars. Will take three days.” I asked how long mine would take. “Longer. Three weeks.”
The frog guy and I walked out at the same time, leaving our lamps behind. We paused outside, waiting to see if our moment would amount to anything further.
“I’m Jason.”
“I’m Ruby.”
The Russian lamp fixer hurried out with an old camera. He said he liked photographs. That’s why he kept old ones up in the shop. But he liked new ones too. Of customers. And we made such a nice couple. Could he?