ONE FISH TWO FISH RED FISH BLUE FISH

SO YOUR THERAPIST ASKED YOU TO TELL HER ABOUT THE FISH. 

You said it to be coy. She asked about it not because she believed you had some secret marine trauma you’d been skirting in the months she’d been seeing you, or because she thought you were hiding something glamorous and Freudian behind your little comment. No, she had not sat forward with her hands folded against her knees and brows pinched and said “now, tell me about the fish” because she saw something deeper within you like all the teachers in elementary school had. In fact, she only asked you about the fish because you had not said anything she could ask you about that entire session and therapists love metaphors. They were all felines with shoelaces and moths to flames and all that.

You’d been circling memory and when you said “it’s all one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish to me.” You had meant absolutely nothing by it, but you supposed it would continue letting your therapist think you as being clever. Which, you realize now, had been a mistake. It had led to her sitting forward as she had, near-clerical, and saying: “tell me about the fish”. 

What you had wanted to do was wave your hand in self-absolution, smile a charming smile, and say “bad joke, nevermind.” 

What you said instead is that “it’s the Dr. Suess book.” And that much is obvious, but she nodded along anyway, like some buoy out at sea, just taking every assaulting wave in stride. Yes, yes, the picture book. And so you continued, and you told her about how your mother had read it to you as a child and you hoped this elucidated more about how you can still love your mother despite the way her brain has softened like wet bread, gummy and useless, even though that is not what you were discussing. You did not tell your shrink about the way your mother most recently called you by your father’s name and it had made you weep and weep. You did not tell your shrink about how you wished you had a brother or a sister to make this all easier. You did not tell your shrink about how your father had died twenty-odd years ago and yet– and yet! – he seems to be the most present parent nowadays. Nevermind that. 

Your therapist asked you to tell her about the “red fish and blue fish” and you told her they were different things. That’s how you categorized memories, and that’s why you said “it’s all one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish to me.” God, you pay her for this? Couldn’t she keep up?

Driving home you think of the way that memory is just what you see, agèd. Therapy days leave you frayed and hot, like rug burn. The sky is the color of a waiting room. You stop at a red light by a charity car wash; see a blue car get hosed down by high school kids. For a split second you think of your children; wonder when they’ll be home this evening. They’re nineteen, now, and you’ve forgotten they are not coming home for dinner. They’re learning how to exist without your present shadow over their shoulder, and you tell yourself the distance is healthy and that it’s quite alright you have not talked to them in nearly two full weeks. It is a normal kind of distance. A healthy kind. There are worse kinds of distance, like that between you and your mother, the distance between you and your father, or the distance between you and your wife.

The light turns green and you sail through the intersection.