“This is when I’m supposed to tell you about my childhood damage, huh?”
“Well, yes, if you think your childhood is a reason that you’re reluctant to talk to your husband.”
“Aren’t childhood patterns the reason we do everything?”
“Sometimes people do things as adults because they’re repeating models with which they’ve become accustomed.” He leans back in his chair with a shrug as if nothing I say will bother him. “We humans are a strange lot. We tend to prefer familiarity and predictability over nearly everything. We repeat what we’ve seen, even when we know it’s a mistake.”
He gives me a weak smile, a peace offering. The look robs me of my rage. I mimic his shrug. “My father was an alcoholic with a temper,” I sigh. “But that’s not Jake.”
“What is Jake?”
I remember him when we’d first started trying for a baby. Doting on me. Always asking if I needed anything, if the hormones were making me sick, fixing a water-and-toast breakfast on the days when the smell of everything made me hurl. Preparing pancakes on the better mornings. I don’t know what Jake is.
A tear tumbles down my cheek. I swat at it like a mosquito has landed on my face and then resume picking the lint from the tufted couch. Again, the white tissue materializes out of nowhere, the dove up the doctor’s sleeve. I hate that he is so prepared for me weeping.
“This is really humiliating, you know? I mean, I don’t even know your first name and I’m confessing all my secrets.”
His sympathetic grimace morphs into surprise. “I apologize. I thought you would have seen it on the website—”
“No. Jake booked you. I only see the T. abbreviation on your plaque.”
“Geez. I’m . . .” He shakes his head, admonishing himself. “Tyler. It’s Tyler.”
The tissue still hangs between his fingers. I take it. “Beth.” I manage a little puff of air out my nostrils. “We have to stop meeting like this, Tyler.”
A cry sounds from the basinet. I peer inside and see Vicky’s dark-blue blinking eyes. Her mouth opens with a kitten’s yowl. She pulls her chin in toward her neck and screws up her face. A sound, air slowly escaping a balloon, comes from the carriage. Someone is pooping. I laugh. “Sounds like time’s up.”
Tyler glances at the clock. Technically, our session can go another fifteen minutes, but I doubt he wants me changing a diaper in his office. “Do you want next Wednesday again? Same time? Wednesdays and Fridays?”
Two meetings and all I’ve managed to do is mortify myself in front of a painfully handsome person. Where’s the value in that? I stand beside Vicky’s stroller and flip the handheld break lock. “I’m sorry. Thank you for talking to me. But it’s not helping.”
He grimaces.
I instantly hate myself. The stress of Jake’s affair has afflicted me with foot-in-mouth disease. I’ve become incapable of tact. “It’s not you. I’m sure you’re a very good psychiatrist. I just have to talk to Jake.”
His full mouth parts, as though he’s about to protest. Something about the way I’m avoiding eye contact—or perhaps the increasing volume of Vicky’s tooting—stops him. He nods, stands, and extends his hand.
“I understand that you feel that way right now. I’m here if you change your mind.” His grasp is strong and warm. This is the first thing he’s done to make me feel better.
“Good luck, Beth.”
“Thank you, Tyler. I’ll need it.”
LIZA
Fresh fish doesn’t smell. The fragrance wafting from the grill is all citrus and salt. I shut off the gas and don my mother’s ancient paisley oven mitts to cart the foil-wrapped salmon to the deck table. Chris sits on a cushioned stool beside an uncorked bottle of Pinot. We already polished off the prosecco, though I cut my two glasses with orange juice and she drank her two straight.
She pushes a carrot into the veggie dip and then wags it at me like a slimed finger. “Can you believe that? I ‘made him do it.’ Oh, I ‘only care about Emma.’ Well, maybe I wouldn’t have needed to focus so much on our child if that bitch had done her job and not been busy bedding her boss. The audacity, right? Telling me that I’m too busy with our kid when he’s been fucking her sitter.”
I’ve heard Chris recount this conversation before. It’s her favorite story to share when she drinks, though not because she relishes the telling of it. Dr. Sally once told me that the mind has two ways of dealing with trauma. One is to bury it deep within the subconscious, building up walls of gray matter so thick that our waking brain never senses the event itself, though it dictates our knee-jerk reactions. The second way is to fixate on the injury, burning every detail into our mind in an effort to avoid similar circumstances in the future. Chris’s brain has done the latter with the final argument of her marriage. She never wants to have it again, so she can’t help but repeat it.
I place the salmon on a waiting plate and peel back the foil. Chris pauses her “George the Donkey” tale long enough to compliment me on dinner before picking right back up where she left off. “I tell you, he was lucky that he told me in Manhattan and not out here, where I could have grabbed my Dad’s gun from the cabinet. I really might have shot him. I don’t even think anyone would have faulted me for it.” She chuckles. “Biggest regret of my marriage, that the frame I threw missed his face.”
I murmur something affirmative as I dish out a salmon portion onto Chris’s paper plate. We should eat fast. The night air is chillier than I’d anticipated, and the citronella candles flickering on the table are providing more light than heat. If David were here, we could stay out. He would build a fire in the pit at the end of the pool. Not a flower fire, though. We learned later that the colors came from metal salts soaked into the ocean-bleached wood. Burning them gives off carcinogens.
Chris grabs a fork in one hand and then swaps it for the wine glass. “Cheers.”
I drop the knife for something to clink. The wine splashes up to the rim of my glass as I tap it against Chris’s goblet. She takes a long sip and shakes her head. “I’m going on and on and I haven’t even asked about you. How are the fertility treatments?”
“I started that new one two months ago.” I dish the fish onto my plate. “I’ve seen a reduction in some of the uterine scarring.”
“It’s a pill?”
“It’s an implant.” I place my elbow on the table and angle my arm toward her, showing the raised lines on the inside of my bicep. Chris’s fair eyebrows retreat to her scalp. As much as she wants me to get pregnant, I know she hates my taking hormones. On more than one occasion, she’s cautioned about unforeseen side effects. Though she hasn’t suggested it, I think Chris would rather I hire a doula to chant incantations while dripping honey over my belly than pump my system full of synthetic gland secretions. The former might not work, but at least I wouldn’t suffer morning sickness for months and then fail.
Chris’s nose wrinkles with disgust. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“The treatment is still experimental.”
She snarls. “Does it hurt?”
“I can feel it under there, but it’s not a big deal.” I take a forkful of fish. Smokey lemon flavors coat my tongue. I’m not bad on the grill. David would be impressed. When he finally returns my calls, I can brag about my courage at the academy and my cooking skills.
“What are the side effects?”
I swallow and pick up my wine. “Bloating. Moodiness. Nausea. Forgetfulness. Headaches.” I raise the glass in jest. “Hangover-type symptoms.”