That's Not a Feeling by Dan Josefson

Author:Dan Josefson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781616951894
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2012-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

3

Aubrey stopped on the stairs to catch his breath. One hand rested on the banister and the other on his knee. He hated this. From where he stood he could hear the ladies in the office typing and talking on the phones. Sun glinted off the polished floor of the Great Hall. Through the windows in the Meditation Room he saw a dorm of girls walking across campus together. Aubrey stared at his hand clutching the banister. The black hairs sprouting from his knuckles were like spiders’ legs, he thought. He shook himself loose and continued up to the therapy rooms.

He couldn’t allow himself to think of these as things he would miss. Aubrey felt very much that he was the only one holding Roaring Orchards together, not so much in what he did, as in how he thought about it. The school, he felt, existed in his head as much as it existed in the world. Or, rather, it could only exist in the world because it first existed in his head. If he began to indulge his melancholy, to think of all these things as drifting away from him, the school would indeed begin to spiral out of control. He could already feel it pulling apart. He had to keep it together.

Aubrey paused outside the door, then walked in. Doris was already sitting on the couch and talking with Frances, who was also my therapist for a time. Frances was probably the kindest adult I met at Roaring Orchards, if only intermittently attentive. She would stare out the window as I spoke and twist one of her long curls around her finger, and with each twist it made whatever problem I was talking about seem less important. Aubrey sat down next to Doris. Frances was telling Doris about her youngest niece, who had just begun nursery school. The therapy rooms were simply furnished. A desk with a computer for the therapists, a couch that converted into a bed for when visitors to the school stayed over. This room had a framed print hanging on either side of the door. One was of a painting by Balthus, the other a Maxfield Parrish.

“Well, let’s begin,” Frances said.

Aubrey lay his head down in Doris’s lap. With a jolt she slid away from him, and Aubrey sat back upright. “See, that’s the problem,” he said.

“What’s the problem,” Frances said.

“I have no partner. I am completely alone.”

For a while they sat. He could feel Doris’s anger but wouldn’t be the first to speak.

Doris said, “You’re not alone.”

“I feel alone,” he said. He turned to her. “When I hired you for this job it wasn’t just to be an administrator. This campus is a family. We all act out family roles here for one another and for the children. And how are the children supposed to trust us to take care of them when we won’t take care of one another?”

“I just don’t want you to lie down on my lap is all,” Doris said.

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