Page 12 of Delayed Intention
“I can talk about it. I gave up on all that. The dating and stuff. I mean, Mother sets me up with these men, and even though we are the same age, they feel old. Because I’m older now, physically anyway. It’s like I’m stuck back in the past, to who I was before.”
“I think I understand.”
“Nona, I want to I tell you something that happened. I’ve only told Monica, that’s my therapist, and now that I’ve told her, it feels like it might be easier to talk about it, maybe. I would like to try. But I also don’t want to upset you. Because it’s not great.”
I can feel my stomach twisting into knots in a different way. This talk feels inevitable, but that doesn’t stop my palms from feeling itchy and my belly from flipping over. The well-trained part of me, the part indoctrinated by my mother on how a nice Jewish girl behaves—that part is screaming for me to keep my mouth shut. But I know, despite the warring parts within me, I can’t keep my secrets anymore. Not if I’m going to get the help I need, not to mention the support from the people who love me.
“If you think it will help you or help me to be what you need, you can tell me anything you want. I am a gynecologist, after all. I mean, it would take a bit of doing to shock me.”
"Okay." I swallow bile, doing my best to ignore the nausea, and proceed to tell her everything.
I told her about the job I had with my parents’ friend, Dr. Kellerman, in 2005, when I was between fourteen and fifteen years old: how he would take me to Starbucks and talk to me about my anxiety, and how he’d listen and be supportive. He’d put words to feelings that I’d thought made me a bad person. He trained me to help around the office. It was meant to be job experience for getting into medical school. Then I told her how it transitioned. We were in his office one day, and he blocked the exit. He told me he was going to show me a way to help with my aversion to being touched.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell my grandmother more details than that. She had been in women’s medicine for so long that I’m sure she’d heard everything and could use her imagination sufficiently. I just choked on my tears for a little while, with my larger-than-life Nona walking by my side. I slowed my breathing after a time and was able to resume.
“I’m not in a place to verbalize what happened beyond what I’ve told you. I can tell you I worked at his practice for an entire year, and every day after that one in his office, I was on edge.” I kicked the dirt with my shoes and swallowed a lump in my throat. “I had all the usual victim language in my head. ‘I must have told him it was okay,’that kind of thing. When it first happened, I tried to tell Mom about it.”
I didn’t know that part was going to come out. I burn with shame and then anger because the shame should be my mother’s, not mine. I stop walking, close my eyes, slow my breathing. I turn to look my grandmother in the eye. I hoped I didn’t hurt her with my words. I could see her jaw tightening. I collapsed onto a nearby bench, and Nona joined me. She did not try to touch me that time.
“Mom shut me down. I’ll spare you her exact words—I remember them but... She told me I was not to embarrass her or my father by being lazy or making up stories. A few years later, that doctor was arrested for… other girls, younger than me. He committed suicide before there was a trial. I always wondered if Mom heard of it and thought about what I tried to tell her.”
“Lily, I’m so sorry that happened to you. If I could, I would go back in time and undo so many things.”
“Thank you, Nona. And thank you for letting me tell you. I don’t know why it has taken me so long to tell anyone, but once I finally told Monica, it feels so much easier to tell another person. I mean you’re the first other person, but you know what I mean? It is like claiming a part of myself again, does that make sense?”
“It sure does.” Then she looked confused. “Where does Joshua Cohen fit into all this?”
I sighed. “This part is stupid, but I had a crush on him when I was a teenager, and then the summer after I’d started working for Dr. Kellerman, we kind of connected—very G-rated, Nona, I promise.” She nods, looking much more relaxed about what I relayed than I was. I can feel the blush climbing my cheeks. “I knew how much I liked him and how he couldn’t be interested in me as anything more than a friend, so I came home after our… encounter together, and I never spoke to him again. I didn’t want to feel pain, so I ran. Also, I felt awful about what was happening with that doctor and could not bring myself to tell Josh. So, I lost my friend because of my fears. And then I had to go back and work in that office and was so full of distress all the time over what was going on that the next thing I knew, I had never talked to Josh again.”
“I see.”
We just sat there for a while. I don’t know what my grandmother is thinking about, but I can’t help but tally how many things fear has taken from my life.
Eventually, Nona clears her throat. “Josh was important to you. I think you owe it to yourself to try to make it right. I have an idea. Let’s head back to the house and fix some lunch.”
As we walked, she added, “You know, dear, there is a way things may just be lining up in favor of reconnecting you with your lost friend. Auspicious that we’re coming to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—the perfect time to do our part to repair broken things.”
“I suppose.” Starting to wonder where she was going with this, I felt my heart rate climbing again.
“Maybe you could help me with something. Your brother and his Felicia, they want to get married in Estes now, not here in Lincoln,” she sends me a side-eye. “So, they need help with some on-site planning and Joshua has agreed to help.”
“He has?” I was surprised. Josh was never much of an Eddie Mendes fan.
“He has—as a favor to me. Maybe this is something the two of you could work on together? You may be able to repair this friendship and help me out simultaneously.”
“I mean, he may not be affected by what happened at all, which is most likely, but in case he is, how can I just show up? Wouldn’t that make things worse?”
“Well, I have another thought about that—I think you should write him a letter. You can write about the incident between you two, how it meant something to you, and apologize for not staying in touch. The rest of it doesn’t have to be included, of course.”
“A letter.” I could do that. That would be easier for me on so many levels. “Okay, Nona, I think we should go out to the store after all. I want to get special stationery.” I don’t think I have ever written a letter other than to Nona. She and I have a tradition of writing letters to each other on our birthdays.
Later that night, after having written a dozen versions on my laptop, I started to handwrite a letter to Joshua Cohen. A letter nearly nineteen years overdue, but here it goes.
The Letter
Lily, Lincoln, October 1, 2024
Dear Josh,
