Green Is Dead
by Jennifer Michael Hecht
I’m staying alive to spite the people who would be smug if I died. I’m so full of spite that when I got acupuncture, spite seeped out of all the tiny holes. At the end of every day I have to say something spiteful, even to an empty room, just to get some spite out so there’s room to sleep.
I’ve been seeing the same therapist for twenty years and on Thursday I got a text saying he was dead. Is dead. It’s true that after years of perfect reliability he had canceled a few sessions for doctor appointments, but this still feels out of the blue. I don’t really know how it feels yet, I’m still in shock. Green is dead.
His name was Dr. Will Green. He wanted me to call him Will, and to his face I did, but otherwise he was Green. Green saved my life over and over, because over twenty years there were multiple times that I wanted to die. Green made me curious about why that was. I’d thought that I was failing at life and that I suffered because of each of the disappointments.
Green showed me another theory, which is that the pain is real but it’s coming from one big place and the individual disappointments of any given day are just camouflage. The one big place is that my parents were wounded people who had no business having children; they were moody and mean, competitive and insulting.
This took a long time to see, and now that I see it I can’t always do anything about it. I think hard about where the pain really comes from and it dissipates at contact with the air. It’s a lot of work and sometimes I just let myself seethe with false fury.
Veronica comes in and says, “You should get out today, the cats are frolicking, the doves are doing it in the eaves.”
I laugh. “I might. I’ll try.”
“You could put your boots on and stomp around the back garden. Everything needs weeding.”
Veronica is a good deal more than I deserve.
I decide to take her advice to get out and I throw on some outside clothes and head into the streets for a walk. I’m enjoying the sky and swinging my arms. I’m halfway to the bookstore when I hear, “Sean?”
I turn, and it’s Kate. She looks years older, yes, but it’s Kate.
We stare at each other for a beat and then come in for a hug. She’s carrying a tote bag, her hair swept back under a knit hat. I blink at her in the cold wind.
“Kate,” I say.
She laughs nervously. “Wow, Hi. It’s been…”
“Yeah, a long time.”
We stand there, awkwardly smiling.
“I was just thinking of you—I saw something,” she says, shifting her bag. “On a therapy site. Do you remember the couples therapist we saw? Well, he passed away. I saw his name and remembered us twenty years ago.” She puts her hand to her face and shakes her head, I guess in response to how we used to fight.
I flinch. “Yeah, I know.”
“Oh,” she says, surprised. “How’d you hear? … I mean, it’s been, what, twenty years? Since we saw him?”
I grin for some reason. “I never stopped seeing him,” I say quietly.
Her mouth opens slightly. “Wait, this whole time?”
“Yup,” I say again, raising my eyebrows at her. “Twice a week.”
“Wow,” she says, softening. “I didn’t realize. So this must be hard.”
“Yeah. Yup.”
“I liked him,” she adds. “He was so nice to me. Even when I was being a nightmare.”
I shake my head at her and say, “You weren’t a nightmare, I was a mess, we were kids.”
“That’s true,” she says. “We were kids.”
“You look good, Kate.”
She gives a small, sweet smile. “You too. It’s really nice to see you, Sean.”
“You too.”
She tells me about a meeting she’s late to and then she’s gone, walking off down the street, and around a corner. I collapse against the nearest building and pinch the bridge of my nose for a few heartbeats, then I turn around and head home. That was quite enough of the world for me.
I can handle seeing Kate. I just can’t handle that I won’t be able to tell Green about it.
At home I don’t know what to do with myself. I make a cup of tea with care but don’t drink much of it. I carry it from room to room unable to choose where to sit. I get ahold of myself and sit in the next place I see, the armchair by the window in the corner of the living room. Out the window the trees look black against a purple sky. I can’t look away, but soon enough it darkens into night.
If I were seeing Green today I’d tell him about running into Kate. He’d want to know how she was doing. What I really want to tell Green is that my therapist is dead, but I can’t because Green is my therapist.
Veronica comes out of the bedroom and says, “How was your walk?”
“I was out of the house maybe fifteen minutes, just you know, walking towards the bookstore, and I ran into Kate—my ex Kate. We talked for a minute or two, really, and then I came straight home.”
“Did you two, like, catch up?”
“Not really, she was late to get somewhere. She told me Green died. Remember that’s how I started with him, couples therapy. So Kate’s a therapist now and she heard about it on a therapy site or listserv or something she’s on, and told me like it was an interesting fact from ancient history.”
Veronica comes over and sits on a chair near me, one leg underneath her. “Not ancient history,” she says.
I shake my head no. “It feels like there’s someplace I’m supposed to be.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I mean, not really. I miss him.”
Veronica nods sympathetically and then says, “You’re not drinking your tea.”
I take it off the coffee table and take a sip. It’s still warm and feels good. I say, “This is good. I’m trying not to come apart. I’m okay.”
Veronica starts nodding again. She says, “What would you talk about if you had a session with Green today?”
The question makes air come out of my nose like I’m a bull. “I’d tell him how much I miss him. I’d tell him I saw Kate. Even in the few minutes encounter there was reference to how bad things had been back when we saw him together. We drank, we threw things, we thought the other one was nuts, we couldn’t get enough. All that was summed up when Kate put her hand to her face in shame. I’d say how glad I am that I got away from all that. How glad I am to be with you.”
“What would you have talked about if you hadn’t seen Kate?”
“You mean also if my therapist hadn’t died?”
“Right.”
“I guess my writing. How I haven’t been.”
Veronica looks around, finds one of my notebooks, and hands it to me. When she walks away I open it to a blank page and write:
“Green is dead.”
It takes me ten minutes but then I add, “I wonder how I’ll do without him.”
Thinking about Kate made me think of our one friend who made it big, big for a writer anyway, and the bitterness hits me like a wave. I realize I’ve been so taken up by the loss of Green and running into Kate like that, that I forgot my spite for a while. Now it comes rushing back in.
I stare at the few words I’ve managed to write. I start again.
I start with a title, “People Who Would Be Smug If I Died,” and list four names. I scratch one out, she probably would be more sad than snarky. Another I underline, twice.
Veronica walks by and I raise the notebook so she can see it.
She raises her eyebrows at me.
I say, “Spite therapy.”
She answers quick, “Progress.”
That was fun but now I’m stuck again. I’m not even trying to write, I’m trying to decide if I should bother to write. I have a big feeling that there is no point to it, but I open my laptop anyway.
I write, “A man and his anger lose their therapist.”
This is so much more than I’ve managed to do in months, that I pretty much leap out of the chair and call it a day on that.
I feel like a trapped tiger in the apartment, but the encounter with Kate has me skittish about going outside. In a joking voice, I say aloud, “Who knows who else is out there?”
Veronica breezes out of the bedroom and with a wave she’s out the door and I’m alone.
Alone is a different place for me.
I always called him Will when I talked to him, when I spoke of him I always said Green. Now that he’s dead I can call him whatever I want, so I’m calling him Green and he’ll just have to get used to it.
“Green,” I say aloud. “Dr. Green I am lonely without you.”
What would he say about this sudden boom of productivity? He’d ask me what I thought, and I’d say, “You’re dead, I have to talk to someone, so I wrote a few lines, and didn’t immediately erase them.”
I’m ricocheting around the apartment and I land in the bedroom closet where my old photo albums are, the ones from before Veronica. I know which ones I want to see. I don’t remember much about what is in these albums but I remember it’s the grey and the dark blue that are the important ones.
I carry them over to the couch and open the grey one. Ouch! Right away the pictures clobber me. I had no idea we were so young. There’s Kate, she looks like a baby. How could we have thought we were adults? And there I am. Arm around Richard at the beach. Kate and Barney in front of the fire. Barney mad that I’m taking his picture, hand out like a celebrity. These were all developed in a lab and given to me in a packet, with the negatives.
I’m getting stirred up so my mind naturally asks when I’ll see Green again. I won’t see Green again.
I close the album. It feels like too much, like I opened a yawning abyss instead of a book. I open it again to a random place, Kate, Kate, Richard, me with those people we met in France. I close it again. Then for whatever reason, I open the blue one. Stupid really. There’s the apartment on First Avenue with the terrible light. There’s Kate’s cat Winston with the fat face. There’s me and Richard each with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I stare at it a while and then shut the album. My heart is racing.
I open my laptop again, not thinking about it, and open a new document.
I’ve been seeing the same therapist for twenty years and on Thursday I got a text saying he was dead. Is dead. It’s true that after years of perfect reliability he had canceled a few sessions for doctor appointments, but this still feels out of the blue. I don’t really know how it feels yet, I’m still in shock. Green is dead.
His name was Dr. Will Green. He wanted me to call him Will, and to his face I did, but otherwise he was Green. Green saved my life over and over, because over twenty years there were multiple times that I wanted to die. Green made me curious about why that was. I’d thought that I was failing at life and that I suffered because of each of the disappointments.
Green showed me another theory, which is that the pain is real but it’s coming from one big place and the individual disappointments of any given day are just camouflage. The one big place is that my parents were wounded people who had no business having children; they were moody and mean, competitive and insulting.
This took a long time to see, and now that I see it I can’t always do anything about it. I think hard about where the pain really comes from and it dissipates at contact with the air. It’s a lot of work and sometimes I just let myself seethe with false fury.
Veronica comes in and says, “You should get out today, the cats are frolicking, the doves are doing it in the eaves.”
I laugh. “I might. I’ll try.”
“You could put your boots on and stomp around the back garden. Everything needs weeding.”
Veronica is a good deal more than I deserve.
I decide to take her advice to get out and I throw on some outside clothes and head into the streets for a walk. I’m enjoying the sky and swinging my arms. I’m halfway to the bookstore when I hear, “Sean?”
I turn, and it’s Kate. She looks years older, yes, but it’s Kate.
We stare at each other for a beat and then come in for a hug. She’s carrying a tote bag, her hair swept back under a knit hat. I blink at her in the cold wind.
“Kate,” I say.
She laughs nervously. “Wow, Hi. It’s been…”
“Yeah, a long time.”
We stand there, awkwardly smiling.
“I was just thinking of you—I saw something,” she says, shifting her bag. “On a therapy site. Do you remember the couples therapist we saw? Well, he passed away. I saw his name and remembered us twenty years ago.” She puts her hand to her face and shakes her head, I guess in response to how we used to fight.
I flinch. “Yeah, I know.”
“Oh,” she says, surprised. “How’d you hear? … I mean, it’s been, what, twenty years? Since we saw him?”
I grin for some reason. “I never stopped seeing him,” I say quietly.
Her mouth opens slightly. “Wait, this whole time?”
“Yup,” I say again, raising my eyebrows at her. “Twice a week.”
“Wow,” she says, softening. “I didn’t realize. So this must be hard.”
“Yeah. Yup.”
“I liked him,” she adds. “He was so nice to me. Even when I was being a nightmare.”
I shake my head at her and say, “You weren’t a nightmare, I was a mess, we were kids.”
“That’s true,” she says. “We were kids.”
“You look good, Kate.”
She gives a small, sweet smile. “You too. It’s really nice to see you, Sean.”
“You too.”
She tells me about a meeting she’s late to and then she’s gone, walking off down the street, and around a corner. I collapse against the nearest building and pinch the bridge of my nose for a few heartbeats, then I turn around and head home. That was quite enough of the world for me.
I can handle seeing Kate. I just can’t handle that I won’t be able to tell Green about it.
At home I don’t know what to do with myself. I make a cup of tea with care but don’t drink much of it. I carry it from room to room unable to choose where to sit. I get ahold of myself and sit in the next place I see, the armchair by the window in the corner of the living room. Out the window the trees look black against a purple sky. I can’t look away, but soon enough it darkens into night.
If I were seeing Green today I’d tell him about running into Kate. He’d want to know how she was doing. What I really want to tell Green is that my therapist is dead, but I can’t because Green is my therapist.
Veronica comes out of the bedroom and says, “How was your walk?”
“I was out of the house maybe fifteen minutes, just you know, walking towards the bookstore, and I ran into Kate—my ex Kate. We talked for a minute or two, really, and then I came straight home.”
“Did you two, like, catch up?”
“Not really, she was late to get somewhere. She told me Green died. Remember that’s how I started with him, couples therapy. So Kate’s a therapist now and she heard about it on a therapy site or listserv or something she’s on, and told me like it was an interesting fact from ancient history.”
Veronica comes over and sits on a chair near me, one leg underneath her. “Not ancient history,” she says.
I shake my head no. “It feels like there’s someplace I’m supposed to be.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I mean, not really. I miss him.”
Veronica nods sympathetically and then says, “You’re not drinking your tea.”
I take it off the coffee table and take a sip. It’s still warm and feels good. I say, “This is good. I’m trying not to come apart. I’m okay.”
Veronica starts nodding again. She says, “What would you talk about if you had a session with Green today?”
The question makes air come out of my nose like I’m a bull. “I’d tell him how much I miss him. I’d tell him I saw Kate. Even in the few minutes encounter there was reference to how bad things had been back when we saw him together. We drank, we threw things, we thought the other one was nuts, we couldn’t get enough. All that was summed up when Kate put her hand to her face in shame. I’d say how glad I am that I got away from all that. How glad I am to be with you.”
“What would you have talked about if you hadn’t seen Kate?”
“You mean also if my therapist hadn’t died?”
“Right.”
“I guess my writing. How I haven’t been.”
Veronica looks around, finds one of my notebooks, and hands it to me. When she walks away I open it to a blank page and write:
“Green is dead.”
It takes me ten minutes but then I add, “I wonder how I’ll do without him.”
Thinking about Kate made me think of our one friend who made it big, big for a writer anyway, and the bitterness hits me like a wave. I realize I’ve been so taken up by the loss of Green and running into Kate like that, that I forgot my spite for a while. Now it comes rushing back in.
I stare at the few words I’ve managed to write. I start again.
I start with a title, “People Who Would Be Smug If I Died,” and list four names. I scratch one out, she probably would be more sad than snarky. Another I underline, twice.
Veronica walks by and I raise the notebook so she can see it.
She raises her eyebrows at me.
I say, “Spite therapy.”
She answers quick, “Progress.”
That was fun but now I’m stuck again. I’m not even trying to write, I’m trying to decide if I should bother to write. I have a big feeling that there is no point to it, but I open my laptop anyway.
I write, “A man and his anger lose their therapist.”
This is so much more than I’ve managed to do in months, that I pretty much leap out of the chair and call it a day on that.
I feel like a trapped tiger in the apartment, but the encounter with Kate has me skittish about going outside. In a joking voice, I say aloud, “Who knows who else is out there?”
Veronica breezes out of the bedroom and with a wave she’s out the door and I’m alone.
Alone is a different place for me.
I always called him Will when I talked to him, when I spoke of him I always said Green. Now that he’s dead I can call him whatever I want, so I’m calling him Green and he’ll just have to get used to it.
“Green,” I say aloud. “Dr. Green I am lonely without you.”
What would he say about this sudden boom of productivity? He’d ask me what I thought, and I’d say, “You’re dead, I have to talk to someone, so I wrote a few lines, and didn’t immediately erase them.”
I’m ricocheting around the apartment and I land in the bedroom closet where my old photo albums are, the ones from before Veronica. I know which ones I want to see. I don’t remember much about what is in these albums but I remember it’s the grey and the dark blue that are the important ones.
I carry them over to the couch and open the grey one. Ouch! Right away the pictures clobber me. I had no idea we were so young. There’s Kate, she looks like a baby. How could we have thought we were adults? And there I am. Arm around Richard at the beach. Kate and Barney in front of the fire. Barney mad that I’m taking his picture, hand out like a celebrity. These were all developed in a lab and given to me in a packet, with the negatives.
I’m getting stirred up so my mind naturally asks when I’ll see Green again. I won’t see Green again.
I close the album. It feels like too much, like I opened a yawning abyss instead of a book. I open it again to a random place, Kate, Kate, Richard, me with those people we met in France. I close it again. Then for whatever reason, I open the blue one. Stupid really. There’s the apartment on First Avenue with the terrible light. There’s Kate’s cat Winston with the fat face. There’s me and Richard each with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I stare at it a while and then shut the album. My heart is racing.
I open my laptop again, not thinking about it, and open a new document.
Dear Dr. Green,
I always knew therapy would end at some point, but this was a little abrupt, no? We had no final sessions, the last time we spoke I blathered on about the usual things. There were a few times over the twenty years where we talked about ending soon, but then something would come up and we’d think it best to keep talking.
Anyway, I saw Kate today. She told me you died like it was an interesting little news item. She assumed I hadn’t thought of you in years. “Remember him?” she’d asked and I thought, “You have no idea.”
I’m not sure who I am without you in the world. That sounds dramatic, but it’s just math. I’ve been a person-with-Green for twenty years. Now I’m something else. I wish we’d had a little warning, a little prep. Even a quick phone call saying goodbye?
I can hear you saying that writing this is how I’m going to survive, and I’m doing it.
You would have laughed when I told you I started writing again with a spite list. You’d say it’s just good that I’m doing something.
I miss you and I love you.
Sean
I always knew therapy would end at some point, but this was a little abrupt, no? We had no final sessions, the last time we spoke I blathered on about the usual things. There were a few times over the twenty years where we talked about ending soon, but then something would come up and we’d think it best to keep talking.
Anyway, I saw Kate today. She told me you died like it was an interesting little news item. She assumed I hadn’t thought of you in years. “Remember him?” she’d asked and I thought, “You have no idea.”
I’m not sure who I am without you in the world. That sounds dramatic, but it’s just math. I’ve been a person-with-Green for twenty years. Now I’m something else. I wish we’d had a little warning, a little prep. Even a quick phone call saying goodbye?
I can hear you saying that writing this is how I’m going to survive, and I’m doing it.
You would have laughed when I told you I started writing again with a spite list. You’d say it’s just good that I’m doing something.
I miss you and I love you.
Sean
Then I put my email in the address line and send it to myself. My mail dings and I read the letter. Without thinking, I start writing back, as Green.
Dear Sean,
I am honestly sorry that I dropped dead. You may be surprised to realize that you are one of the least of the reasons I am sorry that I dropped dead. I have a wife and two daughters, as you know. I was eighty-seven and in great health when the pains started and I was dead in five months. So you see I continued with our sessions while I was in pain, a dull but powerful pain in my belly. I was not aware yet that I was gravely ill, but along with my gut pain, I was tired all the time. I kept doing all my phone sessions. Sometimes I was listening from a contorted position.
You’re not the only person I’ve been seeing for decades, though it is true, you have been seeing me the longest. I love my patients but at this moment in my life I was finally writing a book and close to the end and the reality that I was not going to finish it is what occupied my mind if I thought about professional things. Of my patients, I’m not particularly worried about you anymore. It’s true that for much of our time together I felt, with you more than with anyone else I’ve had, that I was holding an invisible string keeping you alive, but you are on solid ground now. If you want to stay there, don’t drink.
All that said, when I think of the work we were doing, I’m sorry, to you, that I dropped dead. Of course you deserved a gentler end to our long experience together.
If I started to tell you the things I can’t stop thinking about we’d be here all day. None of them are my patients; my patients will find their way, including you. My younger daughter is getting married in the spring. My older daughter is struggling to find her way in the world. My wife is being brave but is scared to be alone. We were an integrated unit. It’s fun while it lasts, but murder on whomever is left.
I’ve got siblings full of feelings. The book, I feel bad about the book. There’s my obsession to go back to the little town we stayed in when I was ten, in Virginia, which I did one weekend, before things got too bad.
And Sean, above all else there’s the simple fact of my death, sitting before me. And all the questions of a life, all the choices that might have made some crucial difference. I had a good life, even a great one, but it wasn’t a very big life. But yeah, just the very fact of death sitting like a giant toad on my railroad tracks, croaking about the end and stopping me dead.
If you were my primary concern, it would still be up to you to sum up what we’ve gone through, not me. So try doing that. I love you too.
Will
I am honestly sorry that I dropped dead. You may be surprised to realize that you are one of the least of the reasons I am sorry that I dropped dead. I have a wife and two daughters, as you know. I was eighty-seven and in great health when the pains started and I was dead in five months. So you see I continued with our sessions while I was in pain, a dull but powerful pain in my belly. I was not aware yet that I was gravely ill, but along with my gut pain, I was tired all the time. I kept doing all my phone sessions. Sometimes I was listening from a contorted position.
You’re not the only person I’ve been seeing for decades, though it is true, you have been seeing me the longest. I love my patients but at this moment in my life I was finally writing a book and close to the end and the reality that I was not going to finish it is what occupied my mind if I thought about professional things. Of my patients, I’m not particularly worried about you anymore. It’s true that for much of our time together I felt, with you more than with anyone else I’ve had, that I was holding an invisible string keeping you alive, but you are on solid ground now. If you want to stay there, don’t drink.
All that said, when I think of the work we were doing, I’m sorry, to you, that I dropped dead. Of course you deserved a gentler end to our long experience together.
If I started to tell you the things I can’t stop thinking about we’d be here all day. None of them are my patients; my patients will find their way, including you. My younger daughter is getting married in the spring. My older daughter is struggling to find her way in the world. My wife is being brave but is scared to be alone. We were an integrated unit. It’s fun while it lasts, but murder on whomever is left.
I’ve got siblings full of feelings. The book, I feel bad about the book. There’s my obsession to go back to the little town we stayed in when I was ten, in Virginia, which I did one weekend, before things got too bad.
And Sean, above all else there’s the simple fact of my death, sitting before me. And all the questions of a life, all the choices that might have made some crucial difference. I had a good life, even a great one, but it wasn’t a very big life. But yeah, just the very fact of death sitting like a giant toad on my railroad tracks, croaking about the end and stopping me dead.
If you were my primary concern, it would still be up to you to sum up what we’ve gone through, not me. So try doing that. I love you too.
Will
I leave the letter open on the screen and go to make another cup of tea. While the kettle boils, I forget what I’m doing and just stand there, staring at the floor.
When I come back, Veronica is at the desk, reading. I don’t even feel alarmed. She turns in the chair, her hand up to her mouth.
“You wrote this?” she asks.
“I did.”
She nods slowly. “I figured. But it really sounds like someone else. Except for death being a toad on one’s railroad tracks. That sounds like you. But mostly, I mean, it’s so… Do you really know these things or you made them up?”
“I know,” I say, sitting across from her on the couch. “It spilled right out of me. I made everything up but the two daughters.”
She closes the laptop gently, like it’s a precious book. “You should print it. Put it in your notebook.”
“I thought maybe I’d burn it.”
Veronica smiles, sad and fond. “You’re allowed to need him still.”
Outside, sirens go by. Lots of them. Something must have happened somewhere.
I get up, get dressed, and go stomp around the back garden like Veronica suggested. All the beds need to be weeded, and I’m in the mood to pull against the earth. I’m in the mood to tug deep roots against the earth. I put on garden gloves and get pulling. The doves are still at it in the eaves. The cats skitter by.
When I come back, Veronica is at the desk, reading. I don’t even feel alarmed. She turns in the chair, her hand up to her mouth.
“You wrote this?” she asks.
“I did.”
She nods slowly. “I figured. But it really sounds like someone else. Except for death being a toad on one’s railroad tracks. That sounds like you. But mostly, I mean, it’s so… Do you really know these things or you made them up?”
“I know,” I say, sitting across from her on the couch. “It spilled right out of me. I made everything up but the two daughters.”
She closes the laptop gently, like it’s a precious book. “You should print it. Put it in your notebook.”
“I thought maybe I’d burn it.”
Veronica smiles, sad and fond. “You’re allowed to need him still.”
Outside, sirens go by. Lots of them. Something must have happened somewhere.
I get up, get dressed, and go stomp around the back garden like Veronica suggested. All the beds need to be weeded, and I’m in the mood to pull against the earth. I’m in the mood to tug deep roots against the earth. I put on garden gloves and get pulling. The doves are still at it in the eaves. The cats skitter by.