Worth and I spent the winter pulled in opposite directions. His clinic had become all the rage and he extended the hours to accommodate the demand. I could tell it was wearing him down and urged him to bring in another psychologist to help with the load.
I spent my days in a rotation between supervising the construction of the new house, Sunset Village activities and my new love of homemaking. At night, Worth and I climbed into our bed, exhausted and had fallen into a routine of a kiss, hug and falling asleep. Neither of us were happy with this, but for the time being, it was our life.
I had cooked a roast with potatoes and vegetables and taken the time to make homemade dinner rolls. Worth came in, circles of exhaustion beneath his eyes.
During dinner, I brought up the topic. “Worth, this is silly. Success is one thing but killing yourself isn’t worth it.”
“I’ve already begun looking for another doctor,” he informed me, picking at his food.
“I’m afraid you’ll get sick,” I urged again.
“I said I have already started looking!” he said, slamming down his fork and leaping up from the table. I heard the bedroom door slam and sat there, shaking at what had just happened. I had never seen Worth lose his temper like that.
I hoped he would come back shortly, apologetic and we could finish dinner but there was no sound from the bedroom. I quietly finished eating and then cleaned up, shutting off the kitchen light and settling on the sofa to watch a bit of television and get my nerves settled. Worth never emerged.
Sad, I finally decided to go to sleep in one of the extra rooms and climbed between the covers, lonely and wanting to cry. There was no movement or sound from the bedroom. Eventually, I fell asleep and when I awakened the next morning, I checked on Worth, but he had already gone.
That night he came in and it was a resumption of the night before. We ate dinner but silence commanded the table. He wasn’t angry — he was simply stone cold.
This bothered me more than a little. This wasn’t the calm, resourceful Worth I knew. Why was he becoming so rough, so temperamental?
“I slept in the other room because I thought you needed some space,” I said in as empathetic tone as I could muster, given the hurt I was feeling.
“I know.” Two words that I could translate a hundred ways. He knew why I slept elsewhere and didn’t care? He didn’t care if I was hurting? He understood that he was being cold and dismissive to me. What did he know?
“Is this about your father?” I tried once more to break open the shell and encourage him to talk.
“No.”
I couldn’t make myself ask the next question. This wasn’t the time or the point in our relationship. I had too much to learn about this man I was now living with. There were times he took me to the pinnacle of happiness and other times when I looked into the pits of hell. I needed to give this time to become more familiar; more time for me to learn what he needed from me. He might say it wasn’t about his father, but I knew differently. His father had literally wished Worth dead in lieu of his illegitimate son.
I could not begin to imagine what Worth’s mother must be going through right now, to learn that she’d been the victim of lies. Lies have a way of becoming a habit and if Worth’s father had perpetrated one, then there were dozens, if not more, atop it.
I thought of my own dad and wondered whether he knew about Mother’s indiscretion. If he did, how could he live with that, day after day, especially considering the way she treated him? If anything, my admiration for my dad grew at that moment. Even if he didn’t know the specifics, he was living with the hell she’d created with her guilt. How could he do that?
“You want to talk?” I finally asked, exasperated.
“No, nothing to talk about,” was his short response. I was trying not to take this personally, but it was tremendously hard to stand by and be dismissed like this and not wonder if I’d done something wrong. I would bide my time, however.
My time, as it came to be more obvious, was going to be of an extended duration. Worth’s demeanor was not confrontational, but distant and very cool. I took up semi-permanent residence in the guest room, even going so far as to move in a share of my clothes and toiletries. He never said a word. I began to wonder whether I should move out entirely, but there didn’t seem to be an opportunity to even discuss that.
Winter was receding and the first signs of spring were advancing. The new house was going exceedingly well. I drove there daily and made the A or B decisions that Beverly put to me. She and I had decided at the outset that one of us had to be the boss, to have the overall knowledge of what needed to happen and in the proper sequence and it was more or less obvious that would be her. I was fine with that. My job would come later in determining the furnishings and fixtures and she kept me busy picking out tile, appliances, carpets and window dressings. The recessive Worth never showed up at the house and I began to wonder whether his heart was still in it. Even Beverly alluded to his absence from time to time and I knew she wanted to know whether there was something wrong. I avoided the topic, commenting on how busy he was.
It had been some time since I’d been to the clinic and the afternoon was gorgeous. The dogwood were just beginning to bud and it smelled like spring, particularly as the sun warmed the bluegrass. I had been at my parents’ farm, riding Carlos and brushing his winter coat away. I was feeling in an unusually perky mood. It was certainly brighter than the atmosphere at home. So, on a whim, as I left the farm, I drove to the clinic. The parking lot was packed and while this made me happy that Worth was enjoying such success, I could also see that this is where his life had turned.
I walked in to find several people milling about, on their way from one therapy to another. Most were women, my age through a couple of decades older. They were well dressed, wearing designer athletic clothing and sporting diamond stud earrings. A few nodded in my direction, but I got the idea they were just being polite and really had no idea who I was. In fact, I knew almost no one who was at the clinic, employee or otherwise. I checked with the receptionist who told me Worth was in with a patient and suggested I have a seat in the juice bar. I did as she suggested and took a stool, ordering a green drink perhaps because spring was well on its way.
On the stool nearby was a very attractive blonde woman built like a dancer and dressed in a three-piece suit as opposed to the athletic clothing everyone else wore. I assumed she was a talk-therapy patient only. I nodded toward her and said hello.
She smiled and spoke. “You seem very familiar to me, but I’m new in town and surely we haven’t met before?”