Page 116 of Touch of Class

“How so? Because my choice disappointed you?”

“It confounded me,” Maura corrected. “I always saw you as a protégé because our personalities and worldviews were generally aligned. Your intelligence and social acumen were a good match to my own. Or so I thought. When we disagreed on something so fundamental as the ways to care for a person we both clearly and deeply love, it required me to rethink a great many opinions about you.”

Gillian’s jaw tightened, but she forced her voice to remain neutral. “I see.”

“Your body language suggests you don’t.” Maura smiled lightly. “Gillian, I didn’t stop asking you to come be my second-in-command because I’m disappointed in you. I stopped asking because I realized you’d already moved past me.”

Gillian opened her mouth to object. Then the words sank in. “I’m sorry, what?”

“To be your mentor, I’d need to feel as though I was in a place to teach you things, essential things, not just about content, but about how to make meaning around them, how to look forward, how to project various complexities into structures, and how to situate all of those things within larger contexts pertinent to the field, or even to individual practice. Ultimately, it’s become clear to me in the last year that you already understood those things on a level I don’t.”

“I’m not sure that’s true. There’s so much I don’t understand.”

“Good.” Maura nodded. “I hope that keeps you searching, because your mind and your dedication can be assets to so many if you stay engaged and open, but you must also be self-aware in ways I’ve failed to be. In order to do that, you must recognize you’ve already found a great many of the answers still eluding me.”

Sweat pricked at Gillian’s palms as a realization occurred to her. “You mean Sawyer?”

Maura nodded. “In part. She … I mean they, appear to be thriving, at least in what little of their life they allow me to see. Despite forgoing every single professional recommendation I prescribed for them, Sawyer seems truly happy.”

“You sound mystified by that.”

“I am. With everything I’ve studied and everything I know to be true about human development, the fluidity and instability of their life looks like chaos, and yet they found love, they have meaningful friendships and community, and they move through the world with an ease I don’t share. They’re clearly happy, by every observable metric. By any reasonable calculation, it shouldn’t work, and yet …”

“It does.” Gillian smiled as the first pinpricks of light shone through her own darkness.

Maura, on the other hand, seemed more flustered than Gillian had ever seen her, mumbling, “What did I miss?”

Now it was Gillian’s turn to regard her more closely. She’d aged, of course, everyone does, but more than a few new wrinkles or new strands of gray around her temples gave away hints of long-term stress. Her ever-sharp eyes seemed more sunken, with faint smudges of gray under them, and she’d taken off all her rings, her fingers seemingly too thin to hold them anymore. “Maura, are you okay?”

“Of course.” She waved off the concern quickly. “The work, it compels me and eludes me. I keep taking up additional subsets of study trying to find the missing piece or the new research to solve the puzzles or show the full picture, but there’s always another variable.”

Gillian’s chest tightened, a familiar ache to mirror the one in Maura’s voice.

“What did I miss?” Maura repeated.

“In your studies?” Gillian asked. “You have the most comprehensive research agenda I’ve ever come across.”

“And yet, there are holes. People continue to behave in ways that baffle me, and not just illogically. I could handle that. Humans are irrational for plenty of quantifiable reasons. I’ve studied dysfunction and disorder, trauma, and a million other things that contribute to any number of maladjustments. I’ve studied genes and behavior theories and development theories and every therapeutic modality, and yet every day I feel further from my subjects, my students, my colleagues, my …”

“Your family,” Gillian finished for her.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know,” she started tentatively. “I certainly don’t want to speak out of turn here. I wouldn’t presume to tell you about your work or your parenting.”

“Please.” Maura made a ‘move along’ motion with her hand, and Gillian once again admired this woman’s willingness to face things head-on. “I’m asking for your observation. Don’t coddle me.”

“The issue may lie in trying to turn your people into research projects. Humans aren’t lab rats, and you cannot isolate factors in their existence, or maybe you can compartmentalize in very specific instances, but you cannot extrapolate a whole from some parts.”

Maura stared at her as if trying to process this information. “You don’t study the people you love?”

“I suppose I’m guilty of falling back on other crutches.” She smiled softly. “I think we all have our own coping mechanisms. I like professionalism and best practices and over-intellectualizing, and now that I think about it, those things may’ve led to some compartmentalizing for me, too. And I do love to study theories, research, concepts, and new ideas, but not my people.”

“How do you resist? How do you relate?” Maura pushed, almost pleading. “What do you do instead?”

“I love them.” Gillian’s voice caught as the simplicity of it all hit her square in the chest. “I love them and I’m interested in them and I enjoy spending time with them when I calm down enough to let myself.”

“I don’t understand.” Maura shook her head. “I love Sawyer, but I cannot understand Sawyer. I cannot make them fit with any knowledge I hold, and I cannot trust something I cannot understand.”