The Fifty-Minute Hour

by Karen Schauber

 

[Editor’s Note: This piece is part of the “Topical” series, with each piece solely submitted to and chosen by the Final Reader Pietra Dunmore.]

 

She arrives early, hands comported neatly on her lap, waiting, silent, thoughtful. Her olive-green chenille skirt hovering just above the knee while seated, slides down some inches to a more respectable length when she stands, as the door opens for the fifty-minute hour. She will make the most of it today. Sitting on the edge of the buttery-soft tufted leather divan, she draws the Kleenex box within arms’ reach.

Dr. Watzlawick-Pohl inhabits the matte black Eames lounge chair, across from her, his knees pressed together in slate-grey nubby wool slacks, hands neatly comported atop a slender clipboard with notepad, Montblanc pen poised. And says nothing.

It is the same lament. She has taken a pair of jewel-encrusted earrings, this time from her friend Yung Li, at Yung Li’s home, during a dinner party. She excused herself to attend the ladies’ room but withdrew to scout for something to pinch. Again, she cannot explain her behaviour, and she cannot stop.

She has become far too good at this game—stealthy in keeping hidden, while bemoaning the transgression, yet betraying friends and colleagues. Today she confesses she lifted an Isaac Sellam leather jacket at work. When the email circulated inquiring if anyone had seen it, she hid in the ladies’ room and was sick.

This is the fourth therapist she has seen.

She does not speak about being wrenched from her biological parents as an infant in the dead of night, abandoned in the cold on the stoop outside the police station, left alone for hours, to live or die, found dehydrated and sickly, shipped off to an overcrowded orphanage, fought to keep hold of the one rice milk bottle given her each morning, and abruptly displaced from her new caregivers, country, language and culture, when she was adopted by her Western Asian parents, who insisted they save face, vowing never to tell her, their only daughter, or anyone else, the secret. This she does not speak about. Because this she does not know.

Her body knows. And her preverbal self knows. But she does not remember. Instead, she is compelled to repeat over and over again, searching for what she has lost.

Soon she will move on to the next therapist who will also not know what questions to ask.

 

Karen Schauber’s work appears in sixty international literary magazines, journals and anthologies, including Bending Genres, Cabinet of Heed, Cease Cows, Ekphrastic Review, Fiction Southeast, New World Writing, Spelk Fiction; and a ‘Best Microfiction’ nomination. ‘The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories Inspired by Historic Canadian Paintings’ (Heritage House, 2019), her first editorial/curatorial flash fiction anthology, achieved ‘Silver’ in 2020 in The Miramichi Reader’s ‘Very Best Book Award” for Short Fiction. Schauber curates Vancouver Flash Fiction, an online resource hub, and Miramichi Flash, a monthly flash fiction column. In her spare time, she is a seasoned family therapist.

 

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