The Grass is Dead on the Other Side

By Brandalyn Kemp

Cyn seeks out help from a marriage and relationship therapist. Cyn is trying to make sense of her decisions that lead to making poor choices within her marriage. Cyn comes to realize that the grass is not that green on the other side. And as she revisits the events that led up to her decision she finds out that the grass is actually dead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667801100

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The Grass is Dead on the Other Side

Copyright © 2021 by Brandalyn Kemp

All right reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced or used without written permission of the copyright owner expect for the use of quotations and a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66780-1-094

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66780-1-100

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Mom, I did it!

Thanks for all your encouragement.

You’re the best!

Rest Easy.

1

I never know what to say. She sighed.

Cyn couldn’t get comfortable in her chair. It was big, a little too big. She felt like a child as she sat in it, like she could curl up in a ball and escape to her dreams. There was a sense of security tied into her inherent feeling of vulnerability, and although she knew in her mind she was in a safe place, that nitpicking anxiety in her soul simply wouldn’t disappear. The doctor’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

Let’s speak about something else perhaps. How’s work been treating you?

Cyn gazed deeply into the doctor’s eyes. A light brown, the light practically dancing in them. They emanated intelligence, understanding, and somehow a sense of intimate knowing without having actually disclosed anything terribly personal before. They reminded Cyn of her sister’s eyes. She looked down at her hands, looking over them, as if there were something new to see. The nails, knuckles, the wrists. There’s nothing new there. It’s all the same as it’s always been.

Work’s been fine, said Cyn, rather dispassionately. She looked up. Those eyes were asking for more. Cyn knew she wanted to say more, she needed to say more.

"Look. I don’t want to give such bullshit answers. I know what I should be doing here. It’s just ... it’s just that when I think I know where to start, I think of something else I wish I’d said first, and then I start getting confused, I can’t think what to say next ... so, it’s so tough even to talk at all." Cyn pulled her legs and feet up on the chair and wrapped her arms around them. She nuzzled her chin on her knees and looked at Doctor Fisher’s notebook. The pen danced across it, writing much more than seemed appropriate for what she just said.

What are you writing so much about? Cyn asked softly.

Fisher completed the sentence she was writing and looked up. She smiled warmly.

Cyn, even if you think you aren’t saying anything worthwhile or that you’re not telling me what’s going on, you are. Trust me, you are. Every word you say in here, from the tone of your voice to your body language, tells me your story. I may not know what’s led you from A to B, but I can certainly analyze your current state. It helps me figure out what I can do to help open you up. Think of it as me working backwards, like an investigation.

And what is it that you think about me right now?

Fisher didn’t answer immediately, but looked straight at Cyn while collecting her thoughts. Those eyes again, anyone could easily detect the gears working behind them. Fisher placed the notebook down in her lap and began speaking.

You’re obviously an intelligent woman. Part of you knows exactly what you want and where you should be going. Except, there’s something in you that seems to be holding you back. Or ... maybe, I should say, sending you in the wrong direction. But you aren’t a misguided person, you’re not unstable by any means. I can say that confidently. I want you to help me help you; this is what these sessions are all about. Let me state a couple assumptions I’ve made about you so far.

Go ahead, Cyn told her, dropping her feet back to the floor and leaning forward, hands clasped. Fisher cleared her throat and began.

Something must have happened to prompt your seeing me. You’ve never seen a therapist before, you said. Fisher paused. Cyn nodded her head slightly. Fisher continued.

I’d venture to say that you veered from your average day-to-day, and you didn’t like the outcome. Based on that, it’s common for anyone to do such a thing, in a variety of ways, and subsequently find themselves feeling lost at sea. Fisher stopped again. She let the silence take hold between them. Cyn felt she was waiting for an answer.

Look, you’re basically right. I guess I’m just reluctant to open up. I don’t really know you. I’ve only really told my husband what’s happened. And even he doesn’t fully know what’s been going on with me.

Fisher interjected.

You know, of course, this is purely confidential—

Cyn cut her off.

No, no, I know. Trust me, I understand that. It’s still just ... it’s tough.

The silence took hold once again. That unique silence, which only exists between two people in a room, when there’s so much to be said, but no one has the nerve to speak. Cyn stretched her back up and her arms out with her hands along her knees.

Let’s try this. Can you think of one precise moment which led to your current stress? Fisher asked and looked at Cyn a bit harder, her eyes searching Cyn’s face. Maybe if she looks hard enough, she’ll see right through me and I won’t have to say a word, Cyn thought.

Cyn cleared her throat. She leaned forward again, looking at the floor, and then up at Fisher.

I’d say don’t judge me, but I guess that’s what I’m here for, in a way. Cyn looked away, toward the wall. The window. She studied the framed photo of Fisher and two other women. Sisters, perhaps. Maybe colleagues. Cyn looked into Fisher’s eyes again.

There’s this guy I met.

2

The lettering on the Grand Cafe’s sign was battered by years of rainstorms, wind gusts, and grit kicked up by innumerable taxis and buses incessantly speeding by. The r was faded, the white background was more brown than anything. Smaller words reading Coffee – Breakfast – Lunch – 24 hours were barely legible. Outside the door, amidst the cigarette smoke and putrid odors rising from a grate leading to the underbelly of the city, the world was a dizzying myriad of horns, engines, sirens, dogs barking, business men and women speaking dramatically into their phones, a metropolitan opera of chaos.

Opening the door and stepping inside, however, was a different world completely. Chaotic in its own right, to be sure. Clattering dishes, rushing waiters, a chef heard yelling from the kitchen, chatter across all the tables, and somewhere a small child making just too much noise to be cute. Faded autographed photos of celebrities hung on the walls. Each of them a different obscure TV star, looking jaunty next to the old Greek owner and a sandwich in hand. Smiling into the camera, forever. Staring out at each and every customer, at everything, every day, ever observant.

Even with the noise, Cyn loved this place. It’s that hole-in-the-wall cafe that’s only found in a big city and no one knows about unless they live there. She had lived a few blocks away when she was young, but the neighborhood was completely different then. The dingy cafe was much more appropriate to its surroundings. Although, Cyn thought, it wasn’t completely fair to call the cafe dingy, the interior was fine. It was just the exterior, resiliently run-down despite the ever-gentrifying neighborhood around it.

Old brick apartments in the area had been torn down when Cyn was in high school, replaced by modern steel and glass towers by the time she’d been married. She never would have imagined, while running down the street in her youth, that she’d be back again, but this time for work. Cyn’s office was just a couple blocks away from the Grand, and twenty-two floors up in one of those new towers. Through all these years, the hustle and bustle of the Grand was Cyn’s refuge. It had literally been decades since she first pushed the glass door open, and in all that time the coffee still tasted the same. There was nothing else as comforting in Cyn’s life, nothing else as resilient.

It was a Monday in March. Clouds dominated the sky, hanging low over the rushing multitudes on the streets. The tops of the skyscrapers hidden; far-off jetliners heard but not seen. Cyn, walking down the sidewalk, was the image of success in the city. Her coat, a brilliant red, stretching down to below the knee, with a black leather handbag on her arm, stood in contrast to the dreary gray ceiling covering the world. In a big city, the swarms of people become just one large mass on the street. Not one individual is discernable from the rest. In a way, they are all one person. A crowd unites people like that: it takes away the unique quality owned by a single person but throws dozens or hundreds or thousands of minds, mannerisms, looks, and backgrounds together into one. It takes a lot to stick out, to be the visible needle in the haystack. To turn heads, a person has to possess a quality unlike the rest. It’s an attitude, an energy that emanates out and across the entire street, down the sidewalks, hitting every person within eyeshot.

Cyn didn’t even notice people looking anymore. She’d stopped noticing long ago. The fact of the matter was that while she may stick out to those she passed, it remained that the rest of those around her didn’t even appear on her radar. Not out of any malice toward others or a sense of haughtiness, however. In a big city like this, a woman just does not have time to make eye contact or shoot a smile at any random person walking by. Moreover, being New York, chances are that the other person wouldn’t even smile back anyway. That’s just the way it is. Cyn thought about this often but felt satisfied in the knowledge that she always looked cashiers in the eye and at least put her phone down when buying something. She tipped well and was almost never late for appointments. That certainly makes her a good person, or at least not a total bitch.

Cyn’s black shoes made a slight clip-clop noise as she briskly marched down the sidewalk. The shoes make her sound a bit like a horse, Cyn thought. Too bad horses don’t look half as good as me, she thought a moment later, chuckling to herself.

Cyn stepped through the doors of the Grand clutching her coat around her tightly, letting it loose once the door had shut behind her and the blanket of heat washed over her. The Grand was always perfectly warm on a cold day.

She stopped, took a breath, and looked around. The line wasn’t so bad, except that old man is there again. She’d seen him once, the week before. He’d given poor Louisa at the register absolute hell over his sandwich.

"I believe I asked for grilled chicken, not this burnt shit!"

Cyn just looked at him for