Travis Flatt

Picnic Therapy

 When Ava gets up for work, I roll out of bed and make some coffee. I ask if she wants anything done while she’s at work, and she says, “Dishes.”

The moment her car rolls away,  I grudgingly wash the plates to earn my favorite part of the day, my nap, which I think of as “snuggly time.”

I dream about Mom. We’re lost in this party at a mansion that’s supposed to be our house. We want to play poker but can’t find a place to sit down. I lie in bed, thinking about that labyrinthine dream house, how cool it was, pick faces out of the dream crowd, remember that my mom’s dead, like, “Oh, that’s weird,” and get up to make more coffee.

A text from my wife dings: “therapist 11:30”

In my car, outside marriage counseling, I don’t know, I’m thinking about that stupid dream again—how Mom appears most every night, akin to how I’m usually still married to my first wife, Jenny.

Ava steps out on the therapist’s porch and waves; she’s got to get back to work in an hour. I’ll just go back to the house and fill out more job applications. Unemployment requires you to fill out those applications every week; I choose jobs I’m wildly underqualified for; I don’t risk getting hired.

Mom, though kind about it, worries I’ll become more deeply depressed staying home all the time. Ava, understandably, worries about the bills piling up, wants our therapist to help get me on disability.

Most likely, I’ll take another nap and see what Mom (and my ex-wife) are up to.

Today, Dr. Greer, who doesn’t take insurance—it says that, like, at least three times on her automated appointment system—says she thinks we’re ready for a simulation game, Ava and me, that it’s more efficient at this stage than talking. Ava clams up every session and lets me say shit that gets me in trouble, so I’m like, “Sounds good,” and we sign a waiver and put on these VR headsets.

I’m sitting on a blue checkered blanket with Ava in a grove of maple trees, a wicker picnic basket open to reveal plastic-wrapped sandwiches, red Coke cans, and a yellow bag of Lay’s potato chips. A few fallen leaves—orange, brown, red—lie around the grass and on our blanket. The sky is blue, fall trees tufted enough to lightly shade us.

I wave my hand in front of my face, see Ava doing the same. She’s all made up, looks ten years younger and is done up like it’s our first year dating—tight jeans, white t-shirt, her hair dyed purple and spiked.

Aware I’m under scrutiny, I go to retrieve a sandwich for her, ask if she’s hungry. She gives a dramatic, demure smile, like she’s testing her face and I’m her mirror.

When I reach for the basket, I graze it with my pinky, feel a sting, draw back my finger to search for a splinter. One huge drop of blood, the shade of the Coke cans, sprouts from my fingertip. I examine it, like a jeweler. “What the hell?”

Ava gasps and scoots back on her butt, pulling the blanket from under me, which jostles the blood drop so that it runs down the side of my hand. She’s staring over my shoulder.

“What?” I say, then follow her eyes.

From out of the trees lumbers a bear, head hanging but eyes up, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Its mouth hangs open, trailing drool. It stinks like rotting meat. Ava’s hopped up and is backing toward a tree, will conk into it if I don’t say something. “Watch out, babe,” I whisper. She doesn’t hear, bangs into the trunk, startles, and screams. The bear, who’s been taking slow, rolling steps toward the basket—and me—hisses like a huge house cat.

Ava screams again; she’s pissed herself, gray jeans turning black down the left leg.

“Shit. Okay,” I say and stand, wondering how bad this will hurt.

The bear stands on its hind legs and roars. As I just sit there in its path, cross my arms, dimly regard myself as an appetizer. I realize my cheeks are wet; in these last few seconds I sit and try to remember if my mom and I ever found a place to play cards.

The bear lunges and my vision goes dark.

“You can take the headset off,” says Dr. Greer.

She sits with a clipboard in her lap, looking but not writing.

Ava sits frowning out the window.

We’ve still got twenty minutes left on this session. There are tears running down my cheeks and Dr. Greer hasn’t offered me a tissue, so I just use my shirt.

It’s flop-sweat silence, so I say, “I failed, right?”

Dr. Greer ignores this; Ava takes her wallet from her purse and begins taking out hundreds.

“Wait,” I say, reaching over to put my hand on Ava’s knee. “Let me try that again.”

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Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee.