Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [104]
He sits on the couch opposite me. “Oh, Jillian. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t just go back to there unchanged. All of this is connected. All of this is a full circle.” He waves his arms again.
“Just send me back there!” I shriek hysterically, as tears tug themselves down my cheeks. “Just help me get back!”
Garland’s head jerks back abruptly, as if the force of my cries made a literal impact. He exhales. “I can’t promise anything,” he says, rising to pull out the massage table that is tucked to the side, against a glass china cabinet that is instead stocked with purple-and moss- and gold-colored candles. Two of its shelves are entirely empty. “It’s up to you. It’s all ultimately up to you, what you’re thinking about, what matters most, where you want to end up when everything is loosened and freed.”
I nod and wipe my damp cheeks, then I climb on top of the table and mash my face into the donut cushion, just as I had so far ahead and so long ago. Garland brushes aside my hair from the nape of my neck, and I hear him push his breath out, so I try to do the same. His fingers flit over my scalp and twist themselves through my mane, and though every cell in me wants to relax, they only seem to rebel and puff up with more tension and anxiety, like a cheese soufflé that might at any minute explode.
I think of Katie and my body heaves, but I won’t let go of her face in my mind, of her butterfly kisses and her sweet breath as she falls into slumber when night tumbles in. I think of Henry and how we both got it wrong, how we twisted ourselves into versions of each other’s expectations without ever giving voice to what we were asking and how much we could each bend. I think of my mother who must have believed she had bent too far, and of my father who later agreed that he maybe could have placed an arm under her back when he saw it arching, and then I feel Garland’s hands dig into me, kneading out my pain, kneading out the past.
He leans in closer, his breath on my neck, and whispers, just as he did a lifetime ago, “Your chi is blocked. I’m going to work to unblock it, but you’ll feel some pressure.”
He pushes into my shoulder blades, and an explosion of fireworks moves through me. Red circles flash beneath my eyelids, and my breath grows measured and heavy. I move beyond the pain, and I bite down on my lip and think of Katie and Henry. What if I hadn’t married Henry? What if Katie had never been born? Looking back on it now, with Garland’s fingers pressing me free, I can see it from an entirely different view: not one of lost opportunity with Jack and my whole other life, but one of lost opportunity with this one. This life. The one I should have chosen all along.
What if I hadn’t married Henry? I ask myself again, the answer now as clear as cut glass. What if I hadn’t married Henry? And then, the world goes black.
Chapter Thirty
The sheets beneath me feel unfamiliar, like crisp, new linens that need to be washed before they soften, and my pillow is damp with sweat. Crusty saliva crowds the corners of my mouth, and my throat is sandy and dry. My temples throb, and my pulse thumps so strongly that the beats ring in my ears.
I roll to my side and sit up gingerly, swatting my knotted hair from my eyes. The room looks strange, different, yet also welcoming and a small reminder of home. Gone are the poufy silk window treatments, replaced by simpler, dark wood blinds, and gone too are the elaborate modern-print rugs that I opted for because I’d once read about them in Metropolitan Home, swapped for simple, cushy wall-to-wall cream carpeting. A pile of laundry is mashed in the corner, tucked away just enough that it’s not an eyesore, but still there, calling out to be washed, dried, and folded.
Katie!
I throw my sleep shade onto the rumpled covers and tear out of the room, down the hall into the nursery. But it’s a nursery no longer: Instead, I find a mess of an