Good Deed Bad Deed

would never make any of the ‘right’ party lists being married to a virtual nobody, and an English fellow to boot. Of course the more they disapproved, the more strongly she set her course. The final disappointment was an elopement. Valerie could still picture their faces when she and Ben arrived at her home and announced their marriage.
Much later, after things fell apart, she had been sure that Ben always resented having excluded his parents, with whom he was extremely close. It was clear to her now: Pushing for the elopement had been her first mistake. Ben had seen, too late, that without a doubt she would require his complete and total allegiance in all things.
As memory carried her back through their relationship, she all but cursed her romantic imagination. The life of a writer’s wife hadn’t turned out to be the glamorous adventure she had envisioned. They struggled financially, and in spite of her pleas, Ben wouldn’t take help from his parents. Nor would he have allowed interference from her family, if they had offered. They did not. She saw it all going wrong, but hadn’t been insightful enough to know that her immaturity and sense of entitlement, not Ben’s emotional withdrawal and subsequent indiscretion, would be the end of them. As she sat there, eyes closed, feeling the sun’s warmth and the soft wind on her face, the reality struck her like the sting of a bee. Unbidden tears trickled down her cheeks. She accepted having driven Ben to act. For the first time in her life Valerie admitted that in spite of having tolerant and doting parents, she was not and never had been the perfect princess they had imagined.
* * *
The windows of Dr. Kate Loxley’s office provided a broad view of the Thames. It was a rare cloudless day, the low-slung morning fog having dispersed. She could see clearly across the water to the row of gray industrial-looking apartment buildings perched on the rise above the riverbank. A generous amount of landscaping softened the cold look of the architecture, and a few docks, intended for mooring boats owned by some of the residents, had been built straight down from the buildings. All in all, she had to admit she approved of the development, however glad she was not to be a resident.
It was fortuitous that she had a thirty-minute break before the next patient. Without doubt she needed some time to process what had occurred during the session with Valerie McKinnon. Dr. Kate, as she urged her patients to call her, had broken her very strict rule of treatment whereby she avoided giving opinions or advice. The stalemate in Valerie’s treatment had been going on for an unacceptable amount of time, her patient’s lapses in keeping appointments being a consideration. Kate intended to suggest at their next meeting that she find another therapist, due to the general lack of progress. The doctor had reached her breaking point during the appointment that had just ended, a result of being mired in an interminable silence with her patient. Silent, that is, until the moment Valerie’s willfulness finally caused the doctor to break her golden rule. Dr. Kate finally spoke first, and everything she had been thinking came spilling out, not only in the form of advice, but in her feelings about Valerie’s self-centered and delusional view of her life.
After telling her she was behaving like a willful adolescent in her obsession with Ben, her ex-husband, and that she wasn’t trying in the least to move on or take responsibility for her life, her patient just sat still, mouth agape. For what Kate thought could be the first time, Valerie was listening. At least Kate thought she was listening. The roles were reversed, and the doctor was doing all the talking. First, she told Valerie she didn’t really want to improve, that she was comfortable in the security of her old behaviors, primarily in her obsession with the man whom she had driven away with her unreasonable demands. Kate was aware of what Valerie had demanded from the marriage because she had revealed a litany of her unmet needs early in treatment, and assumed they would bear repeating ad infinitum.
Then Kate started on the advice. She urged Valerie to change her environment, to remove herself from the reminders of her life with Ben in London. She suggested that Valerie return to America, to the bosom of her family. Once there she could start a new chapter in her life, perhaps meet someone new or even finish her degree. Kate told her to face the fact that because she didn’t make it a priority, her business was always on the edge of a financial abyss, and the situation was draining her father’s bank account as well as his patience. The frustrated man had contacted Kate the week prior, hoping for the slightest hint of a positive outcome to his investment. She also remembered Valerie’s most recent lament about her floundering business. The outburst ended with Kate’s advice that first and foremost, Valerie must resume her maiden name, and that the finality of the act would help her to move on, to reinvent herself. Kate had said it all, everything she’d thought since the beginning, and it was cleansing to put words to her frustration.
The doctor could see that her verbal outpouring had left Valerie at a loss. She sat stone-faced for several minutes then drew forward in her chair and got up to leave. Her only retort was to tell Kate that she was considering a short vacation, a change of scene, and would probably be in touch upon her return. Kate just nodded. Her patient turned slowly and without another word left the office.
* * *
Valerie spent a few minutes regaining control of her emotions before rising from the park bench and continuing on to the boutique. As she rounded the corner into the street where her business was located, she saw several potential customers standing outside talking