When it’s my turn I tell her that I used to write but don’t anymore.
“Really, Judy. What did you write before you stopped writing?”
I feel Gary bristle the way he always does when we get to this part: when the therapist finds out I’m a writer. Or was one. I point to her bookshelf. “There’s a Bird on Your Head. It’s about—”
Deirdre’s eyes get huge and her voice is full of exclamation points. “Ohmygod! Judy Vogel! The Judy Vogel!” She fans her face with her hands the way women of a certain age do when they’re having a hot flash. “I know it’s highly unprofessional but I’m a little starstruck! You’ll have to sign my book before you leave!”
Gary shakes his head. “Here we go.”
Deirdre ignores him. “So what happened after Bird that would make you stop writing? Can you trace the source of your writer’s block?”
I shrug. “After the PBS series, I wrote two more books, but they both sank without a trace. So I guess I figured I should just stop.” My mind flashes back to an empty chain bookstore: I’m sitting next to a giant sign promoting a signing for my second book, then my third book, somewhere, in another city not my own, fondling a cup full of black Sharpies and staring into space as people walk by without stopping. I’m alone but for the bird on my head.
Gary shrugs. “I told her to do a sequel.”
“And I told him to keep playing gigs.”
“You’re a musician, Gary?” She checks her notes, as if she’s missed something.
“I was a musician. A bass player. Before and after I tried law school.”
“His band opened for Aerosmith. Right after college. Before I knew him.”
“Once. And it was all downhill from there.”
I ignore him. “He’s really talented.”
Deirdre looks up, impressed. “Really! So why did you stop, Gary?”
He folds his arms across his chest. “The venues we played were terrible.”
I sigh. “They weren’t all terrible.”
“I’d say The Barking Crab and The Lobster Claw were terrible. Although they had great clam rolls.” He turns to Deirdre. “I like a grilled bun.”
“Maybe if you’d agreed to leave the state once in a while you might have found some venues you didn’t hate.”
“I didn’t want to abandon Teddy.”
“Working isn’t abandonment!”
It’s when we start fighting about money that Deirdre makes the hand gesture for a time-out. Then she leans forward and clasps her hands together solemnly. She’s either going to tell us our time is up or ask us to leave and never come back.
“Lots of couples fail in their careers, but it doesn’t mean the marriage has to fail, too.”
Gary and I look straight at each other and then back at Deirdre. She’s now the one with a giant bird on her head.
“Wow. Okay,” Gary says, trying to collect himself.
Deirdre looks at him and then at me. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Kind of.” He’s vibrating as if he’s stuck his finger in an electrical socket. “I wouldn’t exactly say Judy ‘failed’ in her career. No one works harder than she does, and she’s had some bad breaks. And I’d hardly say three books is something to be ashamed of.”
Now I’m nodding. “And Gary didn’t ‘fail’ in his career, either. It’s not his fault he has these mental health challenges, and despite them he couldn’t be a more supportive spouse or better father.”
Deirdre tries to apologize but Gary shrugs her off. “We’re used to it. Everybody says the same thing. ‘What happened to Judy’s career?!’ ‘You should have just finished law school!’ There are no guarantees. Life doesn’t owe you anything. That’s why ‘failure’ is such a big topic for us.”
“Very big,” I confirm.
“It’s kind of our hot button.”
“Very hot.”
“We could explore that,” Deirdre says, with equal parts hope and desperation, glancing at the secret clock partially hidden behind the box of tissues. “We still have twenty minutes left.”
We nod politely, but when we look at each other again a spark jumps between us. My hands are already underneath the dog sling and Gary is already reaching for his jacket.
* * *
Out on the street, on a stretch of Harvard Square where, when I was growing up, there had once been three record stores, two bookstores, four coffeehouses, and a revival house movie theater but where now there’s just a big stupid CVS and yet another bank chain I’ve never heard of, we walk toward the car. There is an unmistakable bounce in our step, which wasn’t there an hour ago. Escaping someplace we don’t want to be has always given us joy. It’s the happiest we’ve been in a long time. It’s almost unseemly how elated we are.
“I’m so glad we left early,” Gary says.
“I know, right?”
“I mean, why stay? She wasn’t going to help us. She’s no Marriage Whisperer.”
“Is there even such a thing?”
We make big smug faces now, like we’ve just cut our losses by leaving a shitty restaurant without ordering dessert. Which doesn’t make sense: If we’re so in sync about leaving things we hate, how bad can our marriage actually be? Wouldn’t we both have already left if it were really that bad?
We step off a curb and a silent Toyota Prius comes out of nowhere and almost runs us over. Gary pushes me out of the way just in time. “Stupid Priuses with your stupid silent battery-engines!” he yells out after the car. “Why don’t you make any fucking noise?”
The driver rolls down his window, sticks his head out as far as it will go. “The plural of Prius is Prii, asshole!”
Gary runs into the street after the car, giving the Prius the finger. Breathless, he walks back toward me. “Massachusetts drivers. They almost kill you and then correct your Latin.”
Inside the car, I pull the harness strap of the seat belt gently around the dog and me until it clicks while Gary yanks on his seat belt and flips up the visor. In the short time inside Deirdre’s office, the sun had moved, coming in sharply now between two gorgeous maples and bathing us in an orangey-red light. “Not to mention the bad shoes,” Gary adds, an endnote to his rant. “Another fifty minutes we won’t get back. Or, actually—” He looks at his phone screen. “Twenty-four minutes. A new record.”
As Gary starts the car and slowly pulls into traffic, I stare out the window, hugging the dog like a big stuffed animal. Autumn, my favorite season, has always made me sad—the brightness of the sky and trees, the promise of hope and renewal always feels like a trick, an invitation for disappointment, instead of a gift. Now I feel the creep of regret. Maybe we made a mistake leaving early. Maybe, this time, we should have stayed. I think of Deirdre’s fuzzy clogs and remember the similar pair I bought my mother when she first got sick, when everything became about comfort and softness and compassion. There was so much pain, so quickly; even the skin on her feet hurt.
The Bird on My Head
For most of my life, I had trouble describing the signature look my mother gave me. Which was strange, given that my unofficial hobbies were recreational psychoanalyzing, conspiracy theorizing, and watching serial killer documentaries. In short: human behavior. Every child’s first science project is mapping and analyzing their parents’ emotional DNA, and while the official Human Genome Project took thirteen years to complete, figuring out your mother—or trying to—is a never-ending farce. It requires decades of data collection, the patience of Margaret Mead, and the skills of an FBI profiler. All I did was whine and complain and make mental notes. No wonder I failed to crack her code.