Brad was gone the next morning when I got up. His office was in a pretty Victorian house in East Orleans (owned by his parents, of course). He shared the space with several other therapists, each of them in their own little suite. As son of the building’s owner, Brad had the nicest space—the library in the back, overlooking a flower garden of my own making.
Brad’s office bespoke a certain attitude that wasn’t quite matched by his financial or professional success. Stacy Benson, one of his office mates, was the renowned one, to be honest. She handled troubled and traumatized children, had appeared on CNN and was often a speaker at national conferences. Jorge was the marriage whisperer, and one of the couples he had counseled worked for Netflix, and a show was in the works, which had made Brad incredibly jealous. Jorge was young, extremely handsome and excellent at his job. It had taken weeks of patience to get through Brad’s sulk about that “blow to my professional dignity,” whatever that meant.
There was also Ellen, a seventysomething hypnotherapist who helped people with chronic pain and addiction. She had a Scottish accent and two degrees from Oxford and was absolutely warm and lovely, the grandmother we all deserved. Four times a year, she gave hypnobirthing classes at Wellfleet OB/GYN with my full blessing—gentle, encouraging meditations for women in labor that worked wonders at helping my mamas feel calm and empowered.
Brad’s corner of the market, now that I thought of it, was middle-aged men, unhappy with their lives, looking back at the roads not taken, the lives they might have had. While Stacy, Ellen and Jorge had a steady stream of new clients (and even waiting lists), I’d seen Brad’s work calendar. He got to work at eight thirty, took two hours for lunch every single day, saying it was because to be a really good therapist (a pointed reference to his office mates), a person had to give himself some time for reflection, not just “assembly line your clients.” He was usually home by five thirty.
But he still had the biggest office, if not the biggest practice.
Six years ago, for Brad’s fortieth birthday, I’d redecorated his office as a surprise while he and his father were on a fly-fishing trip in Canada. Brad had been going through that same phase his man-child clients struggled with, and told me he hated his office, that it felt claustrophobic and suffocating. He was tired of being a therapist and had been talking about writing a book.
So I took that time to overhaul his office. I loved doing that stuff, don’t get me wrong. Brad and I finally had some discretionary money, and I spent a couple thousand so he could have the office of his dreams. I thought it might give him a new lease on his profession.
Before, it had been a cozy room painted dark blue with a Victorian couch, patterned wing chair, Persian carpet and paintings of the Cape shores. But, sensing Brad wanted to seem more sophisticated and cerebral, I made it over with soft gray walls and a long, elegant couch from Pottery Barn (which was not as comfy as the old blue velvet Victorian). I bought three modern, slightly weird Danish chairs and had a desk built (begrudgingly but meticulously) by my father. New lamps, window shades instead of curtains, a low glass coffee table. I reorganized his bookshelves so there was room for a vase here, a sculpture there. A soft blue rug replaced the faded red-and-blue Persian (Stacy appropriated that, as well as the old sofa). Abstract paintings from a couple of avant-garde Cape artists. A gorgeous black-and-white photo of Brad, Dylan and me for his new desk.
He had been overwhelmed. “I feel like a new man,” he said, and the phrase had, at the time, made me so happy, dumbass that I was. “It really suits the real me, Lillie. Thank you. I can’t wait to get started on my book here.”
Should my marital antennae have twitched back then? The book, the “real me,” this “new man”? Should I have sensed his growing discontent? Did he have a point about my attention being too much on Dylan and work?
Regarding Dylan, please, could a mother ever pay too much attention to raising a child? As for work, well, I did love my job, and my job didn’t have regular office hours. Babies didn’t care if it was 3:00 a.m. Miscarriages happened at 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday. Being a midwife was creating an entire relationship with your clients, not just drawing blood or listening to the baby’s heartbeat. Besides, Brad took calls from clients, too . . . though it was true I got a lot more calls than he did. Was he jealous of that fact? That I was needed more often than he was?
I didn’t want to go into work today. Truth was, I did feel sick. My head ached, my stomach was acid. While all our pregnant mamas gave birth at Hyannis Hospital, my boss and friend, Wanda Owens, MD, OB/GYN, had an office here in Wellfleet, right next to Outer Cape Health Services, a family practice staffed with nice docs, APRNs and PAs. I texted Wanda and Carol, our receptionist and medical assistant, and asked how full the schedule was and if I could come in a few hours late.
Sure! Wanda texted back, ever cheerful. A little maternal hangover after graduation?
Carol texted, too. Menopause? Welcome to my world. Can’t sleep, can’t stay awake, have been having hot flashes for 25 years.
Thanks, Wanda, I texted back. Carol, sorry to disappoint you, but I’m still ovulating. But as soon as I have my first hot flash, I’ll call you.
Despite my acidic stomach, I made myself another cup of coffee and went onto the screened-in porch.
If Brad kept up this nonsense . . . could he touch this house? The house where I’d grown up, where our son had grown up?
Dad had sold it to us for a rock-bottom price seventeen years ago and bought a perfect, tiny condo in North Truro. He wanted to be closer to the Goody Chapman, his true love, or so he said. I was pretty sure he just wanted Dylan and me back on the Cape (he had never warmed up to Brad, who had knocked up his daughter and didn’t even know how to shuck an oyster, let alone pilot a fishing boat). We’d been living in an apartment the Fairchilds had found for us, which we never could have afforded on our salaries.
When we bought it, the house on Herring Pond was creaky and leaky, with poor insulation and the original furnace from 1952, bad windows and a roof that was growing all sorts of botany. But it was also a house with waterfront access to and full view of a kettle pond in Wellfleet. The kettle ponds, formed by melting glaciers ten thousand years ago, fell within the National Seashore protected lands. In other words, there could be no new building.
My dad’s parents, who viewed a new blanket as a ridiculous expense when the old one only had four holes, had built it on the cheap, and Dad never did anything to update it, either. When Brad, Dylan and I moved in, there was a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and one bathroom. The cellar was damp and smelly, filled with tools and fishing gear waiting to be repaired, because Vov?, like Dad, had also been a fisherman. Knotty pine everywhere and the faint smell of mold and mustiness, a smell I loved, since it meant home, far more than our swanky apartment in Boston.
The kettle ponds were accessible only by a maze of very long, twisting dirt roads flanked by pine, maple and oak trees. I’d grown up in these woods, learned to swim in these ponds—Higgins and Gull, Herring and Horseleech. I fished, canoed, wandered through the woods my entire childhood. The first time Brad came home to meet my dad, he’d been dazzled by the quiet magic of the area, being a city boy himself.