The Maidens

by Alex Michaelides

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

Mariana was still in love with him—that was the problem.

Even so, parting with them would be an act of self-harm, like pressing a knife to her arm and slicing off a sliver of skin.

That’s why she couldn’t throw away his possessions—by holding on to them, she could keep Sebastian alive, somehow, just a little bit—if she let go, she’d lose him entirely.

behind the veil, behind the veil”—where was that from? Tennyson, probably. Behind the veil.

Their house was always cold, even in sunny Greece.

Mariana thought she must have been a prostitute.

Perhaps her mother—her gentle, delicate English mother—might have softened him, had she lived. But she died tragically young, soon after Mariana was born.

Mariana grew up with a keen awareness of this loss. As a therapist, she knew a baby’s first sense of self comes through its parents’ gaze.

We are born being watched—our parents’ expressions, wha...

in the mirror of their eyes, determines how w...

His eyes told her the truth: she wasn’t good enough.

He was all she had, and she longed to be worthy of his love.

No wonder, then, she grew up a little isolated, and uneasy around other people.

In group therapy, the group, not the individual, is the focus of treatment: to be a successful group therapist is—to some extent—to be invisible.

As soon as any group establishes itself, it always arouses envy and attack—and not just from forces on the outside, those excluded from the group, but also from dark and dangerous forces within the group itself.

We can’t take part in therapy if we feel unsafe. Boundaries make us feel safe. Boundaries are what therapy is about.”

Boundaries, by definition, are the first thing to go when a child is abused. All Henry’s

It was up to her to maintain the boundary between them: to define the parameters of their relationship in a healthy way.

ostensibly

Mariana’s empathy prevailed over her common sense.

Her hand was trembling as she reached for the bottle and poured herself another glass.

tube

draconian.

subterfuge.

avuncular

hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; ’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all …

My argument with so much of psychoanalysis is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness. When in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know have come out of people’s suffering.

untenable;

Medea took an axe to her children,

a fantasist

brasserie

Except Mariana knew he wasn’t a phantom, or a monster. He was just a man, and he didn’t merit being mythologized; he didn’t deserve it.

Even now, I still don’t feel safe.

dais

There were sculptures and ornaments arranged on the mantelpiece and the tables: a human skull glowing in the gloom, and a small statue of Pan—shaggy-haired, clutching a wineskin, with the legs, horns, and tail of a goat. And next to it, a pinecone.

amorous

One is not normally aware of something that is a continuation of one’s own childhood.

Funny, that—he seemed to have vanished.

“Well, they’re both charismatic men, powerful within their community—and, by the sounds of it, highly narcissistic. I wonder if you feel the same urge to win over this man, Edward Fosca, as you did your father.”

“At best, let’s call it a desire to be loved. At worst, it’s a pathological attachment to a narcissistic man: a melting pot of gratitude, fear, expectation, and dutiful obedience that has nothing to do with love in the true sense of the word. You don’t love him. Nor do you know or love yourself.”

Whose eyes was she seeing herself with? Her own eyes? Or her father’s?

reticence

acquiescence.

But you were in the way…”

incredulous.

It wasn’t a question of forgiveness. That wasn’t something Mariana could decide on, anyway. Ruth always said that forgiveness could not be coerced—it was experienced spontaneously, as an act of grace, appearing only when a person was ready.

It were as if every single thing Mariana had ever known, or believed in, or trusted, had fallen away—leaving just an empty, vacant space. She existed in this limbo of emptiness, which lasted for weeks, then months …