by Millie Sullivan
That Which is Sweet
Delia sat on the velvet settee, her back straight and her knees pressed together. The air was thick with the scent of citrus, undercut by cinnamon and a whisper of clove. Bowls of oranges—plump, dimpled—sat artfully arranged on the small coffee table before her and on Dr. Yasmin Lestrade’s mahogany desk. On the walls, vibrant tapestries depicted luxurious pastoral scenes. She glanced over them, her eyes quickly flicking away from one showing nude nymphs in a forest. Not very professional, she thought, and bit her lip.
Dr. Yasmin Lestrade sat across from her in a high-backed chair, dark hair spilling over her shoulders. “Tell me why you’re here.” Her voice was sweet and rich; honey dripped into aged bourbon.
“This is the first time I’ve left my apartment in months,” Delia said. “I can’t write. I can’t do anything. I think I’m going crazy.”
“I think we shouldn’t use that word.”
“Dr. Lestrade—”
“Yasmin. Dr. Yasmin if you insist on titles and rules.” She picked up an orange and started to peel it with her fingers, a long, painted nail piercing the skin. “When did you stop leaving the apartment, Delia? Not a datetry to tie it to a moment.”
That was hardly the soul-searching Delia had been expecting. “When Vasiliy left me. He said I lacked a passion for life.” She took a breath and went on about the last months of the relationship, how he’d packed his things while she was at work, how he’d either blocked her or changed his number and left only a note on the kitchen table, and how his absence seemed to have left her frozen.
Dr. Yasmin didn’t interrupt, didn’t even glance up. She separated the orange into glistening segments as Delia talked, and carefully placed one into her mouth, her teeth breaking the membrane and a bit of juice dripping down her fingers. She caught it with a serpentine flick of her tongue, then held a slice out to Delia. “Have one.”
Heat flooded Delia’s body, and she bit her lip again. “What?”
“Taste it, Delia. They’re very good.”
The room felt suddenly too hot, too close, the mingling scents wrapping around her like a soft, suffocating shroud. Delia’s fingers twitched in her lap, and before she could overthink it, she reached out and took the slice. The fruit was cool and wet against her fingertips. She raised it to her lips, and as her teeth sank into the flesh, a burst of sweetness filled her mouth.
“Good job,” Dr. Yasmin said.
“It’s just an orange.” Except it wasn’t. The sweetness lingered on her lips and tongue. She exhaled, a tightness in her chest loosening. When was the last time she savored anything? Her twenties, maybe, when the world was new and exciting.
“It was an act of acceptance. Sometimes saying yes is the first step to change.” Dr. Yasmin placed another piece of orange in her mouth and chewed slowly. “It seems to me that you were frozen long before Vasiliy left you. What was your life like?”
“Normal. I was working on my doctoral thesis and teaching. He was working at the Met. We’d come home, make dinner, go out for dinner every Friday, and sleep late on Saturdays. We were settled.”
“Settled?” Dr. Yasmin tilted her head. Her eyes, framed by long, dark lashes and darker eyeliner, narrowed, but she didn’t speak.
Silence stretched on into unease. Delia’s eyes darted to another tapestry. A woman, all soft curves and silk drape, reclined on a pile of cushions, her mouth open, accepting grapes from a slim, naked young man. Delia felt heat creep up her neck and into her cheeks. She glanced back at Dr. Yasmin, who blinked at her like a sleepy cat. “That’s what people our age are supposed to do.”
“According to whom?”
For that, Delia had no answer. “He didn’t say he was unhappy.” He hadn’t, but she hadn’t asked either.
“Did he ever try to initiate something spontaneous? Did he suggest a romantic getaway or taking a class together to try something new?”
Delia sighed. Let’s go salsa dancing. How does a weekend in the Berkshires sound? There’s an immersive theatre show at a warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen—we should go. His eyes, river-stone gray, had lit up with every offer, and she had said “no” each time with some excuse or another. “How is this supposed to make me feel better?”
Dr. Yasmin, orange in hand, stepped out from behind her desk and moved to sit next to Delia. “Therapy isn’t always about feeling good, Delia. Sometimes it’s about recognizing the patterns that hold us back and breaking through them. Open . . .”
She was too close, close enough that the smell of her perfume, jasmine with something darker, mingled with the spiced citrus of the room and made Delia’s head swim. Dr. Yasmin held the orange out like a communion wafer.
Saying yes is the first step to change. Delia closed her eyes and let Dr. Yasmin place the orange in her mouth.
#
That evening, Delia resolved not to return. It had been too close, too personal, and not at all like the clean and clinical session she’d expected. But at night she dreamt of nymphs in an orange grove and woke up the next day soaked in sweat and aching for something she couldn’t name. She threw out the boxes of Lean Cuisine in the freezer and went to the farmers market, where the round, firm oranges called to her in a way they hadn’t before. She ate one on the subway and, had she not been in public, would have moaned in delight.
Delia went back.
The room smelled like incense, smoky and sacred, like the oracle at Delphi. Pomegranates had replaced the oranges, split open like a wound—little rubies spilled out into the bowl, and red had stained Dr. Yasmin’s long fingers the same color as her lips. On the coffee table, a plate of figs sliced in half and glistening with amber honey exuded a heavy, musky sweetness. Delia let herself look at the tapestries a little longer, her eyes skimming the supple nude bodies of nymphs and satyrs, then looked back at the figs.
“Have some.”
She reached, then hesitated. “Seems messy.”
“Isn’t everything? Life, relationships, sex?”
Heat rushed from Delia’s cheeks to her core. “I don’t like mess.” Vasiliy did. He painted like Pollock, and Delia had scolded him for getting paint on the floor each time, even though he always cleaned it up after.
“Then let me start.” Dr. Yasmin placed six pomegranate seeds in her open palm and gestured with her index and middle finger. “Take them.” An invitation, not a command.
Delia did, one at a time, rolling them with her tongue before eating them slowly. The taste was metallically sweet, leaving her thinking of the time Vasiliy bit her lips while kissing her. She shivered, the familiar ache returning, and settled on the settee.
“I left the apartment.” She took another handful of pomegranate seeds, staining her fingers the color of Dr. Yasmin’s full lips. “I went to the farmer’s’’ market.” She brought her hand to her mouth to lick her fingers and stopped herself.
Dr. Yasmin noticed. “Go ahead,” she purred. “We build walls with modesty. When we live too long under self-imposed rules, we lose our instinct. We become so ashamed of the animal in us that we deny ourselves raw experience. What would happen if we let that go, if only for a moment?”
What would happen? Delia told Yasmin the criticisms she endured from her mother: too loud, too messy, too much, always wanting too much, and still somehow never enough.Her mother was dead now, and couldn’t critique her. Vasiliy had left her even though she had long ago shaped herself into her mother’s version of respectable. So, what would happen? Delia licked her fingers and let the juices stain her blouse. She glanced up at Dr. Yasmin and saw no judgment in her kohl-rimmed eyes.
Dr. Yasmin reached a bangled arm toward the figs, picking one up as if it were something precious. Honey dripped down her fingers, shimmering in the light filtering through the windows. “Open.” Another invitation.
Delia pulled back. Who hand-feeds their patients like this? Her cheeks burned at the casual intimacy, but heat thrummed in her core, burning and incessant. I want . . . What it was, she didn’t know, but she wanted. Delia bit into the fig, letting bittersweet juice and sticky honey fill her mouth. This time she didn’t repress the sigh that escaped her lips.
“You mentioned your mother?”
“She”—Delia bit into another honeyed fig—“didn’t like that I wasn’t like her. You know, polished and quiet, a good housewife.”
“But is that what Delia wanted?”
“No. I always wanted more, but I . . .” Vasiliy’s words came back to her: lacking a passion for life. “I gave it up.” She didn’t even remember what the more she once wanted looked like, not a housewife, but not this, not her current beige-and-banal existence either.
“Then imagine what more might look like and take it.” Dr. Yasmin put another sweet fig into Delia’s mouth, and her fingers lingered on Delia’s lips just a moment too long.
#
Delia cleaned out the apartment, sold books she hadn’t read in years, and discarded outdated research papers that she’d once shoved into filing cabinets. For the first time in months, she opened the window. The scent of rain on the pavement and the noise of the city filled the apartment. The sound of a busker’s violin floated in. She felt lighter. Freer. Delia, alone and unprompted, danced.
She studied herself in the mirror, pale and hazel eyed with hair a sandy blond going gray. She frowned and recalled the taste of figs and Dr. Yasmin’s long, dark hair spilling down her back like a black-silk lightning bolt. The longing ache returned, coiled deep in her stomach.
#
She scheduled another appointment for later in the week and arrived with her eyes rimmed with dark eyeliner and her lips painted red.
“I never used to wear makeup,” Delia said. “Not after I turned 35. After being in a relationship for so long, it felt pointless, but it’s not, it’s nice. I feel . . .” She fidgeted with the hem of her blouse, warring with herself over how or if she could explain the sudden want to feel beautiful, the want to want and be wanted.
“Just feel. You don’t have to name every feeling. Let go. Experience.”
Delia looked toward the display on the coffee table, not fruits this time but chocolate truffles on an ornate tray, but stopped short of reaching for one. “I used to think that being beautiful or desirable would make me seem shallow, or that doing something to make myself beautiful would mean I actually am shallow.”
“It’s okay to do things for yourself, Delia. That doesn’t make you shallow.”
Delia nodded and looked toward the chocolates again.
Dr. Yasmin followed Delia’s gaze and laughed softly. “It’s also okay to let people do things for you and to ask for what you want.” She picked up a round truffle with a pink dot on top. “This one is my favorite, a chestnut-and-brandy filling covered in bittersweet chocolate. It’s called the nipple of Venus.”
The heat was back, racing through her body, but Dr. Yasmin placed the chocolate in her mouth before she could protest.
“Vasiliy,” she said through a mouthful of chocolate, bittersweet and strange, “gave me chocolates once. I was so mad because I was on some kind of keto diet, and he . . .” He looked so hurt. He wanted to make me happy because it would have made him happy.
“Forgive yourself.” Dr. Yasmin went to a cabinet in the corner of the room and took out a small bottle. When she opened it, the room filled with the scents of cardamom, cinnamon, and roses. “Have another chocolate and let yourself feel without thinking.”
Dr. Yasmin sat down in front of Delia and with slow, deliberate movements began massaging the oil into Delia’s wrists, tracing small circles over the veins. She worked her way up Delia’s forearms, pausing only to give her another piece of chocolate. When she moved behind Delia to press her long, thin fingers into the tightly coiled muscles of her shoulders, Delia moaned.
“Sorry.” Her face flushed redder than the pomegranates, but she didn’t pull away.
“Shh . . . Just feel, don’t think. Let the animal take over.”
And she did, letting her head loll back and sighing as the therapist’s hands found their way to the base of her neck. She breathed in rose and cardamom, jasmine and musk. The air filled with scents, and her senses dulled and sharpened at once, like the pressure in her ears after diving too deep underwater. Drowning. Tears stung at her eyes, and the heat in her core grew to an inferno. She let out a strangled sound, half gasp, half sob, and then Dr. Yasmin was smoothing sweat-dampened hair back from her forehead.
“Very good,” she murmured. “Very good.”
#
Later that evening, Delia went out for dinner with colleagues for the first time in years and ordered dessert. Lee Kent, the head of the Literature department, a slender man with almond-shaped eyes, flirted with her, but it was the waitress, a woman with dark hair and large green eyes, green like a cat’s, like Yasmin’s, who held Delia’s attention. She watched the way the woman’s hips swayed when she weaved between the tables, and hung on to every low murmur of a question when the woman asked if they wanted a refill. Delia went home with the head of the department, and for a fleeting moment, while Lee was inside her, imagined herself as Yasmin. She left his apartment that morning before he woke and bought a box of hair dye with a label that read Satin Black. When she rinsed the dye off, the woman who looked back at her was both foreign and familiar.
#
Weeks passed. Sessions progressed. The offerings evolved—first fruits, then candied flower petals, their sugared edges dissolving on her tongue like a ghost’s perfumed kiss, and honey from a golden spoon. Then came bits of raw fish, shimmering silver in the low light and filling her mouth with a brine that reminded her of tears. Delia hesitated less and took each offering with an ease that grew ever closer to hunger. The sessions ended, always, with a massage, and Delia found herself leaning into the doctor’s touch rather than tensing. She let herself sigh and moan, let herself feel without thinking.
Imagine what more might look like and take it. For the first time in years, Delia knew what that might be.
#
One afternoon, Dr. Yasmin took the fruit, her mouth closing over Delia’s fingertips, the warmth of her tongue lingering just a moment too long. Delia’s pulse thrummed against her skin. She felt a distant flicker of shock at herself, though it was quickly driven out by the overwhelming realization of how easy it was to want and to give.
At work, colleagues remarked on her newfound glow—her hair unbound and raven dark, a subtle flush on her cheeks. They invited her out more often, and she said yes. Rich jewel-toned blouses with plunging necklines replaced oatmeal-colored cardigans. Delia returned to her lectures with a new passion; she became more animated, told jokes, and watched as her students looked up from their phones to participate more. Her apartment, once practical and sterile, now teemed with tapestries and paintings and velvet cushions that served no purpose other than to be beautiful. She ate chocolates and drank wine. When a stranger on the train flirted with her, she flirted back where she would have once shied away. She enjoyed it, the way people now looked at her with a certain hunger in their eyes.
She returned to the restaurant where she’d first seen the girl with the green eyes. In the dimly lit bathroom, she pressed her against the marble counter. The taste of red wine and blood lingered between them as she traced her lips along the delicate line of her throat. She was slow. Deliberate. Hungry. When she left, her lipstick was smudged, her pulse steady. She did not look back.
#
It was nearly autumn when Delia scheduled her last session. The room was dimly lit, and all the bowls of fruit had been cleared. Instead, a single tray was set out on the low table. A white cloth draped over it, like the sacred covering of an altar.
“You’re glowing,” Dr. Yasmin said. When she stood up, a slit in her skirt showed a shapely, bandaged thigh. “You know what you want.”
You, Delia thought. I want you.
Dr. Yasmin pulled back the cloth. A pale shape gleamed on the silver tray. Soft. Raw. Quivering. Delia’s stomach twisted. There was no smell of blood, no smoke or roasted meat, just a faint, iron sweetness. Her mouth watered. She pressed her thighs together.
Dr. Yasmin met Delia’s gaze with unwavering calm. Slowly, deliberately, she lifted the morsel, holding it between her slender fingertips. A single bead of fluid traced its way down her wrist, glinting in the candlelight.
Delia parted her lips and let Dr. Yasmin place it on her tongue. The taste, warm and delicate, filled Delia’s senses. Her eyes fluttered shut, her heart thudding in her chest. She breathed in the scent of Dr. Yasmin—salt, sweat, and the faint ghosts of orange blossoms and spiced oils. A wave of heat spread through her, followed by an almost delirious sense of release. She moaned, and when her eyes fluttered open, Dr. Yasmin Lestrade smiled at her. Delia leaned in, but Dr. Yasmin placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. Her smile didn’t fade, but her green eyes narrowed slightly.
“Let’s be professional,” she said softly. Slowly, very slowly, she lifted her hand from Delia’s shoulder. Disappointment lingered where her touch had been. Dr. Yasmin rubbed her thigh as if it ached. “You don’t want me, Delia.”
A dozen protests flickered through Delia’s mind, a dozen arguments screaming yes that slowly faded out. Dr. Yasmin opened the cabinet door wide to reveal a mirror, then stood next to Delia. Two women started back, both with ink-dark hair and kohl-rimmed eyes. They blinked in unison.
“You already have what you want.” She shook Delia’s hand and didn’t let her grasp linger, then walked her to the door.
Delia stepped blinking into the sunlight, the disappointment, like a shadow, fading. The taste of the meat, succulent and sweet, lingered on her tongue, and a restlessness, a hunger, clung to her like the damp after rain. Across the street, a man dined alone at a cafe. Delia watched his throat move as he swallowed. She imagined lifting something bloody and raw to his lips and made up her mind to join him.