“How about ‘passionate,’ Bill? How about ‘appreciative’?”
I looked up into his eyes and felt them drawing me into a space of kindness.
“How about ‘lonely,’ Bill?”
I felt myself take a quick, ragged breath, and I realized that I was crying.
“How about ‘imperfect’? How about ‘human,’ Bill?”
We sat without speaking for a while, tears pouring from my eyes, compassion or acceptance or understanding emanating from his. My nose began to drip, and I pulled a sheaf of tissues from the box on the table beside me. I mopped my face, then blew my nose, messily and loudly. “God, what should I do about this mess?”
“Which mess?”
I laughed through the tears. The word “mess” could apply with equal aptness to the accidental baby in Isabella’s womb, the unresolved tension with Jeff, or the wad of snotty tissues in my hand. “Well, this one here’s pretty easy to deal with,” I said, plopping the tissues into the wastebasket beside my chair, “but what should I do about the others?”
Hoover smiled. “Instead of talking about what youshould do, Bill, can you think about what youwant to do, what youchoose to do, as the intelligent and kind person that you are?”
“What’s the difference? Isn’t doing the right thing all that really counts?”
“Doing the thingright also matters,” he said. “When you do something because you ‘should,’ there’s a way in which you’re not doing it wholeheartedly, a way in which you’re not completely owning it. There’s a little bit of martyrdom in it, a smidgen of resentment or grudge—sort of ‘Look what you made me do; look how you’re making me suffer.’ I had a client once who went to his wife’s family’s Thanksgiving dinner every year, not because he wanted to but because he ‘should’—because that’s what a good husband has to do, right? And every Thanksgiving he felt trapped and resentful, and so his relatives felt a lot of discomfort around him, because who likes to spend Thanksgiving with somebody who’s pissed off? Finally one year his wife sat him down and said, ‘You’re not invited this year. You radiate resentment the whole time, and that spoils it for everyone else. Do us all a favor by spending the day at home or hunting or hiking, doing something you’d rather be doing.’ Complicated story—they had other issues to work on, not surprisingly—but eventually, once she’d let him off the hook, he decided that he actuallywanted to go. And for the first time ever, he had a good time. He discovered interesting things about his in-laws; they discovered that he was a nicer guy than the grouchy husband who’d suffered through all those turkey dinners. What made the difference was that he wanted to go, he chose to go. He went out of ‘get to,’ not out of ‘have to.’ Does that make sense?”
I nodded.
“So as you think about yourself, and your life, and the people you care about, and these things that are swirling around all of you—these messes, if you wish to call them that—what do you want to do, Bill?
What do you choose to do, and why?”
I drew one deep breath and then another. “Isabella, that one’s complicated,” I said. “I’m concerned about her.”
“Do you still care about her?”
“Yes.” I was surprised how deeply true the word rang. “I do, but most of that situation is out of my control. As Miranda said, there’s not much I can do, besides wait for the other shoe to drop.” I grimaced. “The baby shoe.My baby shoe.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t another man who got her pregnant?”
“No, not a hundred percent sure. But I am a hundred percent sure that Imight have gotten her pregnant. That information is relevant to the FBI investigation. That’s why I had to disclose it. No, wait—that’s why Ichose to disclose it.”
He smiled. “That does seem the sort of disclosure a responsible man would make.” He cocked his head slightly to one side. “Why do you think your son is so angry with you?”
“Maybe his feelings are hurt,” I suggested.
“Hurt? Why? Because you didn’t consult him before going to bed with a beautiful woman?”