And then a small Indian man—maybe only five feet tall, wearing a cable-knit sweater in August, suit pants, and shiny white tennis shoes—is calmly asking me what’s wrong.
“Turn off that music!” I yell. “Shut it off! Right now!”
The tiny man is Dr. Patel, I realize, because he tells his secretary to turn off the music, and when she obeys, Kenny G is out of my head and I stop yelling.
I cover my face with my hands so no one will see me crying, and after a minute or so, my mother begins rubbing my back.
So much silence—and then Dr. Patel asks me into his office. I follow him reluctantly as Mom helps the secretary clean up the mess I made.
His office is pleasantly strange.
Two leather recliners face each other, and spider-looking plants—long vines full of white-and-green leaves—hang down from the ceiling to frame the bay window that overlooks a stone birdbath and a garden of colorful flowers. But there is absolutely nothing else in the room except a box of tissues on the short length of floor between the recliners. The floor is a shiny yellow hardwood, and the ceiling and walls are painted to look like the sky—real-looking clouds float all around the office, which I take as a good omen, since I love clouds. A single light occupies the center of the ceiling, like a glowing upside-down vanilla-icing cake, but the ceiling around the light is painted to look like the sun. Friendly rays shoot out from the center.
I have to admit I feel calm as soon as I enter Dr. Patel’s office and do not really mind anymore that I heard the Kenny G song.
Dr. Patel asks me which recliner I want to relax in. I pick the black over the brown and immediately regret my decision, thinking that choosing black makes me seem more depressed than if I had chosen brown, and really, I’m not depressed at all.
When Dr. Patel sits down, he pulls the lever on the side of his chair, which makes the footrest rise. He leans back and laces his fingers behind his tiny head, as if he were about to watch a ball game.
“Relax,” he says. “And no Dr. Patel. Call me Cliff. I like to keep sessions informal. Friendly, right?”
He seems nice enough, so I pull my lever, lean back, and try to relax.
“So,” he says. “The Kenny G song really got to you. I can’t say I’m a fan either, but …”
I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my mind.
When I open my eyes, he says, “You want to talk about Kenny G?”
I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my mind.
“Okay. Want to tell me about Nikki?”
“Why do you want to know about Nikki?” I say, too defensively, I admit.
“If I am going to help you, Pat, I need to know you, right? Your mother tells me you wish to be reunited with Nikki, that this is your biggest life goal—so I figure we best start there.”
I begin to feel better because he does not say a reunion is out of the question, which seems to imply that Dr. Patel feels as though reconciling with my wife is still possible.
“Nikki? She’s great,” I say, and then smile, feeling the warmth that fills my chest whenever I say her name, whenever I see her face in my mind. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I love her more than life itself. And I just can’t wait until apart time is over.”
“Apart time?”
“Yeah. Apart time.”
“What is apart time?”
“A few months ago I agreed to give Nikki some space, and she agreed to come back to me when she felt like she had worked out her own issues enough so we could be together again. So we are sort of separated, but only temporarily.”
“Why did you separate?”
“Mostly because I didn’t appreciate her and was a workaholic—chairing the Jefferson High School History Department and coaching three sports. I was never home, and she got lonely. Also I sort of let my appearance go, to the point where I was maybe ten to seventy pounds overweight, but I’m working on all that and am now more than willing to go into couples counseling like she wanted me to, because I’m a changed man.”
“Did you set a date?”
“A date?”
“For the end of apart time.”
“No.”
“So apart time is something that will go on indefinitely?”
“Theoretically, I guess—yes. Especially since I’m not allowed to contact Nikki or her family.”
“Why’s that?”
“Umm … I don’t know, really. I mean—I love my in-laws as much as I love Nikki. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m thinking that Nikki will be back sooner than later, and then she’ll straighten everything out with her parents.”
“On what do you base your thinking?” he asks, but nicely, with a friendly smile on his face.
“I believe in happy endings,” I tell him. “And it feels like this movie has gone on for the right amount of time.”
“Movie?” Dr. Patel says, and I think he would look exactly like Gandhi if he had those wire-rim glasses and a shaved head, which is weird, especially since we are in leather recliners in such a bright, happy room and well, Gandhi is dead, right?
“Yeah,” I say. “Haven’t you ever noticed that life is like a series of movies?”