“Fuck! Goddamn it, Izzy,” he said, louder than she’d ever heard him speak. “Fuck!”
He held out his hands, as if to apologize, but then he kept speaking. “I do so much to keep this thing going, to keep this fucking family together, millions of little parts that have to be attended to. I do it all. And then you people actively try to ruin it. It’s like you can’t keep yourselves from ruining something perfect.”
“I’m sorry,” Izzy said, but Dr. Grind didn’t seem to hear her.
“Fuck!” Dr. Grind again shouted, as if he was performing a magic trick and this was the word that was supposed to unlock the spell. Then, as if the gravity in the room was temporarily haywire, his body seemed to fold in on itself and he bent at the waist, and then returned to his standing position, his face now calm, slack.
“Of course, it’s not your fault at all, Izzy,” Dr. Grind said, still standing apart from her. “It’s a big family. It’s impossible to control it. We hope for the best. We do our best. Sometimes things fall apart. You and I probably know this better than anyone else, right?”
Izzy removed her hands from her face and looked at him. It was as if he did not remember having yelled at her. Could unkindness be so foreign to him that he imagined it to only be a dream? He now smiled at her and she, against her own instincts, smiled back.
“I remember when I got the news about my own family,” he continued. “There was that realization that I had not done enough. That I had not been able to keep what I loved safe. It was such a deep existential unhappiness. I am feeling that right now, that same frustration.”
“Me, too,” Izzy said.
“I’m so sorry for how I just acted. Of course, you had nothing to do with what happened to Ellen. This is the business of Ellen and Jeremy and Callie and Harris. It affects us, because we share this space, but we can’t control other people, no matter how much we want to.”
“I just don’t want this to end,” she said. “I don’t want it to fall apart. I need this place. I need the family. I need you.”
Dr. Grind finally stepped closer to Izzy, placing his right hand on her shoulder, and Izzy shrugged out of his grip, and pulled him close to her and kissed him. He immediately disengaged, and she noticed something in his expression that had not been there the first time she kissed him, his emotions cracked open for a brief moment. Dr. Grind, a lifetime of training, absorbed conflict and uncertainty and unhappiness and burned it off immediately within his body, the surface never changing. Even when he learned of Ellen’s suicide attempt, whatever shock waves had pulsed within him did not change his demeanor. And now, having kissed Dr. Grind, a man she knew with great certainty that she loved, she saw genuine desire. She saw him running through the events that marked their time in this family, and she saw him come to terms with how this had come to pass, her in his room, her mouth on his.
“Izzy,” he said, but she wouldn’t let him finish. Whatever he said next would be proper and measured and he would try to put distance between this moment and their lives moving forward. He would calm her down and this moment would pass and, if they both worked hard, nothing would come of it. She had a few seconds, she knew this, to disrupt the moment, to have what she wanted. She kissed him again and she felt him relent and then return the affection. And when it was over, the two of them stood there, unable to speak, unsure of how to proceed. Izzy looked down at the floor, at the indentations that her shoes had made on the carpet. She had left some kind of imprint, she understood this. If her family was falling apart, was it wrong of her to try to hold on to another person and make it last? She smiled at him and, before she could get a response, she opened the door to his apartment and walked out, closing the door behind her as quietly as she could.